{"id":1648,"date":"2005-01-18T05:01:09","date_gmt":"2005-01-18T12:01:09","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2005-01-18T05:01:09","modified_gmt":"2005-01-18T12:01:09","slug":"nineveh-on-the-potomac","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2005\/01\/18\/nineveh-on-the-potomac\/","title":{"rendered":"Nineveh on the Potomac"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Over at <i>The Guardian<\/i>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/comment\/story\/0,3604,1390103,00.html\">Sidney Blumenthal<\/a> considers the president&#8217;s second inaugural address, recalling a line from the first:<\/p>\n<ul>As Bush draws the sword of righteousness against the forces of darkness, the enemy being evil itself (&quot;evildoers &#8230; axis of evil&quot;), he ascends on messianic imagery. &quot;Do you not think an angel rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm?&quot; he said in his first inaugural, quoting a letter written by a Virginian friend to Thomas Jefferson during the American revolution. &quot;This story goes on,&quot; said Bush. &quot;And an angel still rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm.&quot;<\/ul>\n<p>As Blumenthal notes, &quot;That particular verse originates in the book of the prophet Nahum. It contains no &#8216;angel,&#8217; but the Lord, &#8216;a jealous and avenging God &#8230; full of wrath&#8230;.&#8217;&quot; He goes on to provide some context for that Biblical extract, but alas, not enough. The president could use the tutorial; as a practitioner of refrigerator-magnet Christianity, he probably lacks the vaguest idea what the passage refers to. Refrigerator-magnet Christians (RMCs) &#150; America&#8217;s largest denomination &#150; approach the Bible as a compendium of ye olde inspirational nuggets for posting about the home and office. To be sure, fundamentalist RMCs like the prez believe the Bible to be much more than a sacred <i>Bartlett&#8217;s Familiar Quotations<\/i>, but they leave all that big-picture philosophical and historical stuff for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.patrobertson.com\/\">accredited theologians<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/4988269\/site\/newsweek\/\">bestselling novelists<\/a> to process and distribute in bite-sized (and highly politicized) portions. And by &quot;big-picture philosophical and historical stuff,&quot; I of course mean Armageddon.<\/p>\n<p>But what of actual Biblical history &#150; y&#8217;know, <i>things that have already happened<\/i>, real historical events alluded to in the Bible? As a Christian Web site <a href=\"http:\/\/www.christiananswers.net\/dictionary\/nahumbookof.html\">summarizes the book of Nahum<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>The subject of this prophecy is the approaching complete and final destruction of Nineveh, the capital of the great and at that time flourishing Assyrian empire. Assur-bani-pal was at the height of his glory. Nineveh was a city of vast extent, and was then the center of the civilization and commerce of the world, a &quot;bloody city all full of lies and robbery&quot; (Nah. 3:1), for it had robbed and plundered all the neighboring nations. It was strongly fortified on every side, bidding defiance to every enemy; yet it was to be utterly destroyed as a punishment for the great wickedness of its inhabitants.<\/ul>\n<p>Hmmm. Now where is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/history\/war\/iraq\/iraq_lost_cities_04.shtml\">Nineveh<\/a>? Why, it&#8217;s just outside present-day <a href=\"http:\/\/www.timesonline.co.uk\/article\/0,,7374-1444158,00.html\">Mosul<\/a>. I&#8217;m sure many Bush-supporting RMCs would read Nahum (<i>if<\/i> they read Nahum) as a prophecy re-fulfilled by the fall of Saddam Hussein, but there are a few problems with that. For one, who would say that Hussein&#8217;s Iraq at even its peak was a &quot;great and flourishing <b>empire<\/b>&quot;? &quot;The center of the civilization and commerce of the world&quot;? I think not. Second, Assyrian Nineveh was destroyed by the Babylonians. Hussein fancied himself heir to the Babylonian kings, <a href=\"http:\/\/architecture.about.com\/cs\/countriescultures\/a\/saddamspalace.htm\">particularly<br \/>\nNebuchadnezzar<\/a>. Finally, Nineveh is no longer Saddam&#8217;s and hasn&#8217;t been since it was made part of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.globalsecurity.org\/military\/ops\/images\/nofly-l.gif\">northern no-fly zone<\/a> after the first Gulf War. Thus, even before the &quot;<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pottery_Barn_rule\">Pottery Barn rule<\/a>&quot; went into effect, Nineveh was quite literally <i>us<\/I>.<\/p>\n<p>And I imagine quite a few Iraqis now sympathize with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/index.php?search=nahum%203&#038;version=8\">Nahum&#8217;s vision for Nineveh<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>Nahum 3<br \/>\n1 Woe to the bloody city! it is all full of lies and rapine; the prey departeth<br \/>\nnot.<br \/>\n2 The noise of the whip, and the noise of the rattling of wheels, and prancing<br \/>\nhorses, and bounding chariots,<br \/>\n3 the horseman mounting, and the flashing sword, and the glittering spear,<br \/>\nand a multitude of slain, and a great heap of corpses, and there is no end of<br \/>\nthe bodies; they stumble upon their bodies. &#8230;<br \/>\n17 Thy princes are as the locusts, and thy marshals as the swarms of grasshoppers,<br \/>\nwhich encamp in the hedges in the cold day, but when the sun ariseth they flee<br \/>\naway, and their place is not known where they are&#8230;.<br \/>\n19 There is no assuaging of thy hurt: thy wound is grievous: all that hear<br \/>\nthe report of thee clap their hands over thee; for upon whom hath not thy wickedness<br \/>\npassed continually?<\/ul>\n<p>That&#8217;s one Bible passage I guarantee you won&#8217;t hear on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/6717767\/\">Thursday<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over at The Guardian, Sidney Blumenthal considers the president&#8217;s second inaugural address, recalling a line from the first: As Bush draws the sword of righteousness against the forces of darkness, the enemy being evil itself (&quot;evildoers &#8230; axis of evil&quot;), he ascends on messianic imagery. &quot;Do you not think an angel rides in the whirlwind [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[676],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-1648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-antiwar-movement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1648\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1648"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}