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How to Pray for Peace

"Communism is like Christianity. It turned out to be a very beautiful theory that has never been put into practice." - Ring Lardner, Jr.

It's the little things, really, that tell so much about a person. Take yesterday, for example. Mr Bush was at Fort Hood for worship service at the Army base there and the chaplain said God is "kind of like Santa Claus. He knows if you've been good or if you've been bad."¹ That cartoonish piece of blasphemy was later followed by this comment from Mr Bush:

I suppose his declaration would bring comfort to at least a few patriots, but I just don't know what he could mean when he says he prays for peace.²

I'm not at all in a position to tell the President how to pray, or what to pray for, but I think his admission is surely the kind one would make in the face of circumstances that leave a person feeling so vulnerable as to require supernatural assistance from the Creator. I mean, much of what Mr Bush says he wants could be achieved with a few brief telephone calls. I would think that he would have prayed instead for the courage to change course from the sanguine disaster that is the Cheney-Bush plan for freedom in Iraq, and for success in ending the "surge" in Baghdad, in withdrawing all US troops from the Middle East region, in releasing the more than 17,000 Iraqi citizens detained in prison complexes in camps south of Baghdad,³ and in closing the Guantánamo Bay detainment facility and releasing the prisoners who have been detained and tortured there in violation of international law.⁴

Maybe he was nervous—maybe the Christian poseur looked over and saw Dick Cheney in the bushes and what he said was not "peace" but "peas," for whatever reason he might have had.⁵ Maybe he was just so comforted by the thought that there might be a Santa Claus after all, or that God was really like Santa. I don't know what the man prays for. I thought at one time that I would like to get inside his head just for a few minutes, but I don't think I could handle the horror of what I would most assuredly find there.

1.  "Bush's Easter prayer is for troops, peace," Washington Times, April 9, 2007.
2.  Aside from his contributions to the National Prayer Breakfast each February, every May this president gets together the typical cookie-cutter proclamation for a "Prayer for Peace" on Memorial Day, and I imagine we'll be blessed with the same thing next month, with unnervingly similar words proclaiming a day of prayer for permanent peace in the world. At least it looks like the same proclamation in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006.
3.  "US to expand Iraq prisons,"Aljazeera Magazine, March 16, 2007. And let's also close all the other secret prisons the US has set up around the world. See, most recently, "US Agents Visit Ethiopian Secret Jails," AP/Guardian Unlimited, April 4, 2007.
4.  "Conditions in Guantánamo Detention Center Flout International Standards, Charges New Amnesty International Report," Amnesty International News Release, April 5, 2007.
5.  "Bush Seeks Iraq Funding," YouTube video.