Yeah, yeah -- Bush is a theocrat, a tinpot televangelist, I know, you've heard it. Nevertheless, this quote deserves some examination:
"I base a lot of my foreign policy decisions on some things that I think are true. One, I believe there's an Almighty. And, secondly, I believe one of the great gifts of the Almighty is the desire in everybody's soul, regardless of what you look like or where you live, to be free."
Take Bush at his word (because in the beginning there was the word, and the word was...), he believes theism and its implications guide his foreign policy decisions. What I can't figure out is how they actually function. Simply assuming there's an Almighty doesn't offer much in the way of implications for foreign policy. And given that Bush is an evangelical, it offers even less. Evangelicals in the US generally hew to four key beliefs:
1. Biblical inerrancy
2. Salvation comes only through faith in Jesus and not good works
3. Individuals (above an age of accountability) must personally trust in Jesus Christ for salvation.
4. All Christians are commissioned to evangelize
Check out #2 above; evangelicals don't have a "works" centered religion, and Christ's position on the great foreign policy debates ("So Jesus -- who's your favorite international relations scholar?") of the day was, and remains, a bit foggy. Simply believing in the Almighty, particularly in the evangelical tradition, is not a recipe for action. So how Bush's theism would direct him is a bit less than obvious.
As for his insistence that our souls cry out for freedom, that's similarly puzzling in its implications: how does Bush define freedom? He's not seemed terribly tortured over America's surfeit of jail or imprisoned youth. Nor has he made the promotion of freedom a central tenet in his foreign policy, save for some of the rhetoric around Iraq. Nuclear disarmament, not political liberalization, has underscored our talks with Iran and North Korea, and we seem to have no problem with such decidedly unfree countries as China and Uzbekistan. Bush may hate tyranny in the countries he decides to invade, but that's a different, and altogether stranger, belief.
All of which is to say, Bush's rationale here is bullshit. It's a sop to the Christian Right, the evangelicals Bush and Rove fear won't turn out for Republicans in 2006. He's trying to reinvest them in his disastrous foreign policy by syncing it to their faith, but it's just rhetoric. It's never been clear to me exactly what Bush's foreign policy is, but it's long been obvious that it doesn't much matter. As Bob Dreyfuss explained in the latest American Prospect, the government's foreign policy, now, is Dick Cheney's foreign policy, and that's an altogether more coherent, pernicious, and less publicized beast.
