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THE GAG RULE IS JUST THE TIP OF THE ICEBERGTHE RIGHTS SUCCESS IN INFLUENCING FOREIGN POLICY ON ABORTION SPILLS OVERTHE MEXICO CITY POLICY CANNOT BE UNDERSTOOD APART FROM ITS CONTEXTTHE PUSH FOR A CHRISTIAN WORLD ORDER, REGARDLESS THE COST. Yifat Susskind, Communications DirectorMADRE, 2007 (It's Not Just an Abortion Ban: The Christian Right's Global Agenda, http://www.madre.org/articles/usfp/christianright.5.07.html) After the initial shock of the recent Supreme Court ruling upholding President Bush's abortion ban, it's time to acknowledge the full reality of the decision. According to the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists which represents 90 percent of OB/GYNs in the USthe ruling is harmful to women's health. But the Court's decision is about much more than a woman's right to safely end a pregnancy. That's because today's Supreme Court is a product of the Bush Administration (newcomer Justices Roberts and Alito tipped the decision); and the Bush Administration is a product of the Christian Right. Anyone who has been watching the Christian Right chip away at abortion access and the separation of church and state knows that criminalizing abortion is just the tip of the Christian-fundamentalist iceberg and that their agenda is global in scope. Globalizing the Culture War Today, Regent, the flagship university of the openly theocratic wing of the Christian Right, has 150 alumni working in the Bush Administration. Their alma mater's mission: to provide "Christian leadership to change the world." Overturning Roe v. Wade in the US has been their signature preoccupation, but as missionaries, the battlefield of the Christian Right is the whole world. Christian Right activists recognized years ago that they weren't winning any decisive battles in the domestic "culture war." But they also noticed that the mainstream women's movement was largely absent from foreign policy debates. Compared with domestic politics, foreign policy was a feminist-free zone so the Christian Right moved in. Since 2000with one of their own finally in the White Housereligious fundamentalists have turned their attention to US foreign policy like never before. They started where all religious fundamentalists start: with asserting control over women's bodies. For them, the subordination of women is both a microcosm and a precondition for the world they want to create. And everyone knows that a sure-fire way to subordinate women is to prevent them from controlling their fertility. After all, when you can't decide whether, how often, or even with whom to have children, what can you decide? That's why the Christian Right's first big payback from Bush was the reenactment of the "global gag rule," which bars organizations that receive US funds from counseling, referring, or providing information on abortion. Enacted on Bush's second day in office, the gag rule has forced not only abortion providers, but whole clinics to shut down all of them in the world's poorest countries, where health services depend on international aid. The UN estimates that by denying women access to contraceptives and a range of health services, Bush's gag rule has led to an additional two million unwanted pregnancies and more than 75,000 infant and child deaths. Moreover, because there is a direct link between women's ability to control their fertility and their capacity to escape poverty, the gag rule violates a range of social and economic rights, in addition to women's reproductive rights. Sanctifying the United Nations Religious fundamentalism was invented by US Protestants at the end of the 19th century, but now, there are powerful fundamentalist movements in Latin America, Eastern Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia all working to restrict women's rights in the name of religion. Many of them gained traction during the Cold War, when the US supported fundamentalist groups as an antidote to the influence of the Soviet Union and secular nationalists. The spread of religious fundamentalism has helped transform the United Nations from a "Godless institution" vilified by the Christian Right into an arena of potential allies, ripe for infiltration. Under Bush, religious fundamentalists have been appointed to represent the US at international health and human rights conferences. They have allied with the Vatican (which enjoys a quasi-governmental status in the UN), Iran, and others seeking to unravel and reshape the UN agenda. As Austin Ruse, president of the US-based Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, which "monitors UN activity" said, "without countries like Sudan, abortion would have been recognized as a universal human right in a UN document." Where other countries' allegiance to fundamentalist values has been thin, US religious fundamentalists have relied on sheer bullying at the UN. These delegates have felt doubly empoweredas emissaries of the world's "only true faith" and its only superpower. Over the past six years, the unparalleled global economic, political, and military might of the United States has enabled Christian fundamentalists to push through international public health and human rights policies that have had grave repercussions for women worldwide. Under Bush, they have succeeded in denying the morning-after pill to rape survivors in Kosovo and barred access to condoms and sexual education in AIDS-ravaged Africa. Bringing It All Back Home For the most part, policies such as these did not cost the Republican Party votes because they didn't impact women in the US at least not at first. But the US attack on women's reproductive rights abroad followed by the recent Supreme Court ruling is a stark

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reminder that ideologically speaking, there's no such thing as foreign policy. The Christian Right seeks to restrict women's rights domestically, just as they have internationallyas part of one coherent "vision" that includes much more than a world without abortion. We only need to look at countries where religious fundamentalists have gained the upper hand in policymaking to see where the US Christian Right would like to take us. Fundamentalists of different religions draw on different texts and operate in diverse cultures and contexts. But when it comes to their rigid and retrograde gender ideology, they show a lot more commonalities than differences. The Christian Right's agenda extends to restricting women's rights to work, equality before the law, education, and freedom from a range of gender-based human rights abuses, including domestic battery and marital rape. And the Christian Right's "vision" goes beyond attacks on any narrowly construed notion of "women's rights." They're angling for more of the kind of messianic militarism that characterized Bush's response to 9/11 (which he originally called a "crusade"), and more neoliberal economic policies that promise greater ruin to the world's poor people and ecology.

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THIS FUNDAMENTALIST ESCHATOLOGY MAKES NUCLEAR ANNIHILATION IMMINENT AS ANY ACT OF VIOLENCE IS JUSTIFIED AS PART OF GODS PLAN. Larry Ross, Secretary, New Zealand Nuclear Free Peacemaking Association, 2004 (http://www.nuclearfreenz.org.nz/bushfundimentalism.htm)
George Bush is the most powerful man in history. President of the world's only superpower or hyper power, the United States, he controls an arsenal of conventional and nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and their delivery vehicles capable of destroying all life on earth many times over. With the end of the cold war no other country rivals the U.S. and George Bush has announced the US will never allow a challenger to arise. Bush considers God a key political ally, according to an article from Capitol Hill Blue as reported by Scripps Howard News Service March 5, 2003. He wrote: Bush told a conference of lawmakers that people cannot "claim to know all the ways of Providence" "Yet we can trust in them, placing our confidence in the loving God behind all of life and all of history" he said "May he guide us now" (LR Comment: Whatever happens' whatever I do, could be due to Providence. So place your confidence in God, as he is behind all of history. Trust them, trust us. God, or Providence is really responsible for anything that happens) "Bush has constantly prayed about the Iraqi situation and come to the conclusion that the man (Saddam Hussein) must be disarmed for the safety and security of the American people" (LR Comment: I claim that God has instructed me through prayer, to disarm Saddam Hussein. That means I can go to war and kill thousands of people and that this is the result of what God told me to do in my prayers) Bush said "he is sustained by the prayers of the people." (LR Comment: Bush is claiming that the prayers of the people help him make the decision to go to war) "Le Monde, the influential Paris daily, said in one editorial that Bush "is convinced he is inspired by God, and he is dangerous"" (LR Comment: As he claims to read the Bible and pray every day and thereby claims to get divine guidance, he can claim to follow that divine guidance whatever he may do. Even launching a nuclear armageddon could be an act of divine guidance as he says we "cannot know all the ways of Providence" "Bush is a self-described born-again Christian, at least in part because of a battle with the bottle. Born an Episcopalian, he is now a Methodist. He prays daily and often participates in West Wing Bible studies." Bush said "I pray for strength, I pray for guidance, I pray for forgiveness. And I pray to offer my thanks for a kind and generous almighty god. (LR Comment: Is it strength and guidance to bomb, knowing you will kill and maim thousands of innocent people who you know are no threat to you. Do you really believe that a kind and generous almighty God will forgive you these horrendous crimes? Or is that just the cynical wishful thinking of a duplicitous war criminal?) Bush said "We're being challenged. We're meeting those challenges because of our faith" (LR Comment: How he meets those challenges is with 'shock and awe' massive bombing campaigns and spreading tons of DU weaponry that will kill, and cause mutations is innocent people for 4.5 billion years. That's not really me doing it he might claim. It is "because of our faith and providence" he says) One of the best papers I've read is on this subject is: "BUSH'S ARMAGEDDON OBSESSION, REVISITED" http://www.counterpunch.org/hill01042003.html by Michael Ortiz Hill. Author of Dreaming the End of the World I will quote a lot from it but suggest you get the original from the above website. To quote: " The man is delusional and the shape of his delusion is specifically apocalyptic in belief and intent. That Bush would attack so many vital systems on so many fronts from foreign policy to the environment may seem confusing from the point of view of Realpolitik but becomes transparent in terms of the apocalyptic worldview to which he subscribes. All systems are supposed to go down so the Messiah can come and Bush, seemingly, has taken on the role of the one who brings this to pass." "The Reverend Billy Graham taught Bush to live in anticipation of the Second Coming but it was his friendship with Dr Tony Evans that shaped Bush's political understanding of how to deport himself in an apocalyptic era. Dr Evans, the Pastor of a large Dallas Church and a founder of the Promise Keepers movement taught Bush about "how the world should be seen from a divine viewpoint" "S.R. Shearer of Antipas Ministries writes, "Most leaders of the Promise Keepers embrace a doctrine of 'end times (eschatology) known as 'dominionism. Dominionism pictures the seizure of earthy (temporal) power by the people of God as the only means through which the world can be rescued "It is the eschatology that Bush has imbibed; an eschatology through which he has gradually (and easily) come to see himself as an agent of God who has been called by him to 'restore the earth to God's control' a 'chosen vessel' so to speak, to bring Restoration of All Things. Shearer calls this delusion, "Messianic leadership" - that is to say usurping the role usually ascribed to the Messiah. "In the book Bush at War, Bob Woodward writes, "Most presidents have high hopes. Some have grandiose visions of what they will achieve, and he was firmly in that camp. "To answer these attacks and rid the world of evil" says Bush. And again he said: "We will export death and violence to the four corners of the earth in defense of this great nation" "Woodward comments, "The president was casting his mission and that of the country in the grand vision of Gods Master Plan. All the objections from the highest Republican and International and Allied authorities, including the Pentagon, to

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his war on Iraq "is in the least relevant to Bush." His advisors are the extremist neocons that he has surrounded himself with and agree with him and "his mandate is from God" "The scriptured text that informs Bush understanding of and enactment of the End Of Days (Revelations 19) depicts Christ returning as the Heavenly Avenger. Revelations is the only New Testament book that justifies violence of any kind, and this it takes to the limit "Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. And I saw an angel standing in the sun who cried in a low voice to all the birds flying in mid-air - come gather together for the great supper of God, so you may eat the flesh of kings, generals and mighty men, of horses and their riders, and the flesh of all people, free and slave, small and great" "Such is "the glory of the coming of the Lord. Truth, carnage, and the ecstasy of vultures. In a ruined world the Messiah slays the antichrist and creates "a new heaven and a new earth" The dead are judged, the Christians saved and the rest of us damned to eternal torment. The new Jerusalem is established and the Lord rules it with an iron sceptre" "It is not inconceivable that Bush is literally and determinedly drawn consciously and unconsciously, toward the enactment of such a scenario, as he believes, for God's sake. Indeed the stark relentlessness of his policy in the Middle East suggests as much" The well-known American author Gore Vidal, commenting on previous US Administrations made similar comments about Bush in his article "The Erosion of the American Dream" 19/3/03 http://wwwcounterpunch.org/vidal03132003.html "No, he certainly is worse(than previous Administrations). We've never had a kind of reckless one who may believe - and there's a whole history now that he's inspired by love of Our Lord -that he is an apocalyptic Christian who'll be going to Heaven while the rest of us go to blazes.

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ImpactChristian Right Bad

Charles Tiefer, LawUniversity of Baltimore School of Law, 2004 (Veering Right: How the Bush Administration Subverts the Law for Conservative Causes, p.2967)
What does President Bush's approach to governance in his 20012004 term tell us about the future? We can measure those prospects against the standard of his apparent goal: consolidating a national power structure under the dominancefor the foreseeable futureof his party's most conservative wing despite the public's opposition or indifference to its policies. In many ways, the unprecedented speed and intensity with which Bush implemented his agenda from 2001 to 2004 can be expected, barring major upsets, to lock in many aspects of that agenda for at least the next two presidential terms (through 2012). But the political, economic, judicial, and even constitutional sea change that Bush and his administration set in motion may cause ripple effects even further into the future, especially when a successor president attempts to duplicate his tactical successes. That alone is an unprecedented milestone in American governance and one, I would argue, that augurs ill for the nation's future in a number of ways. Because most Americans hold views far less radical than those of Bush's right-wing bases, for a conservative power structure centered in the executive branch to dominate it must subvert rather than accept the balancing powers in the Constitution. As Bush's presidency showed almost from the beginning, constitutional checks and balances can be circumvented and weakened through the political abuse and subversion of the law. With new extralegal mechanisms in place, we would be right to ask: What kinds of projects already under way would be advanced even further during the terms of future conservative leaders? What larger, grander projects would emerge? Conversely, what kinds of negative repercussions, even scandals, may result from a political structure built on secrecy and the abuse of law to serve special interests? How might the mainly centrist American publickept in the dark but uncomfortably aware after the fact of the damage to its constitutional structuresbelatedly fight back?

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Fundamentalism ImpactGenocidal Violence

This attempt to include everyone in Gods community inevitably turns violent as the faithful feel they have moral violence to eliminate all those who do not share the strength of their convictions. William Rasch, Germanic StudiesIndiana University, 2003 (Human Rights as Geopolitics: Carl Schmitt and the Legal Form of American Supremacy, Cultural Critique 54, muse)
"To preach and announce the Gospel in the lands of the barbarians," Vitoria admonishes us, is not just a right; it is also a Christian duty. "Brotherly correction is as much part of natural law as brotherly love; and since all those peoples are not merely in a state of sin, but presently in a state beyond salvation, it is the business of Christians to correct and direct them. Indeed, they are clearly obliged to do so" (1991, 284). Though it is wrong to convert the barbarians forciblyhere, as almost everywhere, Vitoria follows Aquinas it is right and just to force them to listen, whether they accept the truth or not. Accordingly, if the barbarians obstruct or prevent the Spaniards in any way from exercising their Christian duty to spread the truth, then the Spaniards may "take up arms and declare war on them, insofar as this provides the safety and opportunity needed to preach the Gospel." They may even "lawfully conquer the territories of these people, deposing their old masters and setting up new ones and carrying out all the things which are lawfully permitted in other just wars by the law of war, so long as they always observe reasonable limits and do not go further than necessary" (285-86). It was Vitoria's sad and sincere belief that Spaniards had not observed "reasonable limits" and had, in fact, "gone beyond the permissible bounds of justice and religion," but their excesses neither cancelled their rights to use force when necessary nor vitiated the legal and moral principles involved (286). Christians had the right and the duty to travel wherever they pleased, take the gold and other goods that they found to be unused and unclaimed, and preach their way of life, by force if necessary, in order to bring the barbarians of the New World out of their self-imposed immaturity and into civic adulthood as full members of the Christian community. Vitoria is careful to specify that the barbarians of the Americas had nearly all of the same rights as the Spaniards, for instance, the right to travel to Spain and receive the full protection of Spanish law. But, for all of Vitoria's concern with reciprocitygranting the Indians the same rights of travel and tradehe cannot grant them equal rights when it comes to religion. Here, as Schmitt is quick to point out, one finds Vitoria's, and Christendom's, central and inescapable asymmetry. The ultimate justification for the Spanish conquests lies in Christ's command to the apostles to "teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you ... even unto the end of the world" (Matthew 28:19- 20). In more secular terms, the Church's evangelical mission becomes Spain's "civilizing" mission, a mission for which, perhaps because of his lingering Catholicism and his adamant Eurocentrism, Schmitt cannot help but have some sympathy. It is worth listening to what Schmitt has to say here at some length:

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Fundamentalism ImpactExtinction
The rise of fundamentalism guarantees extinction as faith becomes a justification for bringing about apocalypse. Sam Harris, PhilosophyStanford, 2004 (The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, pg 13-14) But technology has a
way of creating fresh moral imperatives. Our technical advances in the art of war have finally rendered our religious differences-- and hence our religious beliefs-- antithetical to our survival. We can no longer ignore the fact that billions of our neighbors believe in the metaphysics of martyrdom, or in the literal truth of the book of Revelation, or any of the other fantastical notions that have lurked in the minds of the faithful for millennia- - because our neighbors are now armed with chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. There is no doubt that these developments mark the terminal phase of our credulity. Words like "God" and "Allah" must go the way of "Apollo" and "Baal," or they will unmake our world.

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ImpactAutonomyValue to Life
Personal autonomy creates a value to life, if one is not in control of their own life it ceases to belong to them and it strips the value from it Marilyn Friedman, Professor of Philosophy at Washington University, Autonomy, Gender Politics, 2003, p. 57
An ideal of personal autonomy is based on the presumption that there is value in a life lived in accord with the perspective of the one who lives it. The best way to appreciate that value is to start with a first-person perspective I start with my own wants and desires, cares, concerns, values, and commitments. If I want something, that means that I am oriented toward attaining whatever that want is focused on. If I have a certain value, that means that I approve of whatever the value is about. Commitments of these sorts involve me in thinking that certain outcomes I could aim at are better than others. If I also conceive of myself as a being in the world who can act to bring things about, then it is only fitting for me to try to guide my efforts to act so as to attain or realize those things toward which I am positively oriented. There would be something odd about me, given my wants, desires, cares, concerns, values, and commitments, nevertheless setting aside these behavioral guidelines of my own and leaving the direction of my actions to other factors. Those wants and values express how I want to live my life and how I think I ought to live it. My life, after all, is who I am. It is the narrative, space-time trajectory that is me. This recognition is at least partly appealing to me because all the alternatives are worse. The alternatives involve living in some way that I do not want or think I ought not to live. Aside from the uncontrollable conditions of the nonhuman world, the causes of my living as I do not want to live would stem from control by other persons. If my life is to be lived by me according to someone else's plan or conception, then it somehow ceases to be genuinely me. I would become a mere instrument of someone else's intentions. It would be an odd standpoint, to say the least, to be willing to live according to wants and values imposed by others that I could not recognize as worthwhile.

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