Bush's Biggest Mistake: Declaring Religious War

The 9/11 attacks would’ve posed a great challenge to any president, but George Bush’s response, to invoke God and declare a Manichean quest to “rid the world of evil,” made him Osama bin Laden’s accomplice, writes James Carroll in the Boston Globe. "Bush is criticized for many things," writes Carroll, "but his most grievous failure lies in having fallen into bin Laden's trap."

With reality having proven the Bush crusade a failure, Christian-centric politics are less popular: After all, John McCain beat Mike Huckabee. But McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin is a red flag for Carroll. "When conservative Christian leaders openly transformed their faith-based networks into a partisan political movement," he writes. "The political-religious convictions of an evangelical candidate must be addressed."
(More Osama bin Laden stories.)