On the Desirability of a Faith-Based Foreign Policy

Fascinating op-ed in today's LA Times (registration required) on the role President Bush's faith plays in his decisionmaking in the war on terror:

In many respects, questions about the role of faith in Bush's presidency are a replay of those raised during Ronald Reagan's administration, when the former president called the Soviet Union an "evil empire" and talked about a spiritual battle against communism. Critics then predicted a possible nuclear Armageddon caused by a president bent on fulfilling prophecy. In reality, what Reagan's faith brought him was a deeper understanding of the Cold War, that it was less about missiles and geopolitics than about core principles. His faith morally clarified the superpower conflict, and according to some dissidents behind the Iron Curtain, encouraged them to further resist the Soviet system.

Faith has played an equally important role in Bush's administration, morally clarifying for him the war on terrorism and encouraging patience in the light of tremendous pressure. But Bush's critics have it backward: It's not so much that Bush thinks God is on his side; rather, he wants to be on God's side and make the correct moral choices. He doesn't think God has given him a blank check; rather, to make the correct decisions, he believes he must study and embrace Judeo-Christian principles. ...

His friend Doug Wead, a former aide to George H.W. Bush, recounted for us a discussion he had with the current president a few years ago on the story of the good Samaritan. Wead was reminding Bush of the story about our moral obligation to help strangers in distress when the president, in typically blunt fashion, asked: What if we got there 20 minutes earlier, when the traveler to Jericho was being attacked. Don't we have an obligation to help him then too? Such thinking not only influenced his decision to liberate Iraq but also fueled his commitment to combat AIDS in Africa. ...

Bush read [Oswald] Chambers devotionals throughout 2003, and Chambers is hardly what you would call a hawk. "War is the most damnably bad thing," Chambers wrote. "Because God overrules a thing and brings good out of it does not mean that the thing itself is a good thing." Far from making Bush gung-ho, his Bible readings create an unusual cocktail of courage and patience. ...

Even those who don't share Bush's religious convictions should see them as a good thing. His faith compels him to wrestle with ethical questions that less religious men might simply ignore. And his strong faith offers us visible guideposts by which we can evaluate his performance as president. Find me a commander in chief who lacks core convictions rooted in something greater than himself, and you'll have a leader who lacks an identifiable moral compass and will, accordingly, be prone to drift off course.

I urge you to go read the whole thing, even at the cost of complying with the Times' intrusive registration requirements.