The comments caused an outcry.  Even President Bush chided the two Virginia-based pulpit-thumpers, affirming the goodness of American pluralism and the evil of Islamist intolerance.

Yet in the war between fundamentalist intolerance and democratic pluralism, which side is the Bush administration really on?  This question was raised by a June 17 Washington Post article entitled "Islamic Bloc, Christian Right Team Up to Lobby U.N." The article, by Colum Lynch, reported that "Conservative U.S. Christian organizations have joined forces with Islamic governments to halt the expansion of sexual and political protections and rights for gays, women and children at United Nations conferences."

Most significantly, this "new alliance...has received a major boost from the Bush administration." Indeed the Bush administration led an Islamic-Christian coalition at a recent U.N. children's meeting that succeeded "in blocking an effort by European and Latin American countries to include a reference in the final declaration to 'reproductive health care services,' a term the conservatives believed could be used to promote abortion."

Among those European countries that the White House is scheming against are our fellow NATO members - nations that the Bush administration has been struggling to maintain as partners in the U.S. war on terrorism. And the Islamic countries with whom Bush's people are conspiring include Iran and Iraq - both of which he has publicly identified as part of the "axis of evil."

How to explain this mind-blowing contradiction? "The main issue that brings us all together is defending the family values, the natural family," Mokhtar Lamani, a Moroccan diplomat, told the Post. "The Republican administration is so clear in defending family values."

It is hardly a news flash, of course, that "family values" as defined by, say, the Southern Baptist Convention and the Mormons - "values" that include the firm subordination of women to their husbands, the utter denial of any concept of children's rights, and the demonization of homosexuals - are popular among many Bush associates and supporters. Nor is it news that this understanding of "family values" is shared by many in the Islamic world.

All the same, this is the same President who after September 11 spoke up against divisive Falwell-style rhetoric. This is the same President who has insisted that his government cherishes tolerance and diversity - and that the war he has been urging us to support is in fact a war in defense of those values against political Islam's oppression and intolerance.

Yet how can these claims be squared with the policy that Bush's own people are pursuing in the international arena? How can Bush ask American citizens to support - let alone fight - a war against fanatical intolerance, and for democratic pluralism, when on some fronts, anyway, he is in fact collaborating with the former to defeat the latter? How can he expect America's allies to commit themselves wholeheartedly to the war when he is working against them on issues that strike to the heart of what the war is supposed to be about?

BRUCEBAWER.COM, 24 June 2002