AIPAC, the religious right and American foreign policy

These days, the American religious Right has its own special interest office within the State Department. It is called the 'Office of International Religious Freedom', whose principal mission is to meddle in the domestic affairs of other countries. Such a state agency would seem to run contrary to the "wall of separation" between church and state that President Thomas Jefferson thought he had erected with the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Such governmental forays in religious matters are in addition to the state-financed 'Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives' that the Bush administration created soon after it took office. Since the current occupant of the White House is a born-again Christian who harbors ideas which are close to those advanced by the American Christian Right it should not be too surprising if the Bush administration's policy in the Middle East has very strong religious overtones.

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In any government, one has to look behind the curtains to see who is really pulling the strings and who is steering the policies. In the case of the Bush-Cheney administration, one has to know about 'The Lobby' and the 'religious Right'. Without that knowledge, one is in the dark when it comes to understanding the direction taken by certain policies.

Rodrigue Tremblay

Rodrigue Tremblay is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Montreal and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@ yahoo.com. He is the author of the book 'The New American Empire'.

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