A general in God's patriotic
army By Bill Berkowitz
OAKLAND, California - In recent
appearances on two US cable news networks, he was
slinging and zinging - the well-rehearsed pitchman
for the biblical "End Times" was dead certain that
"Iran is going to have to be attacked" before
2008. He also claimed that during a recent visit
to Iraq, he was told by intelligence sources that
Iran had given the green light to Hezbollah to
unleash suicide bombers in the United States this
summer.
Mike Evans is a shock jock for
Armageddon, a cheerleader for the apocalypse.
These days, the best-selling author and head of the
"Jerusalem Prayer Team", a
US-based pro-Israel Christian evangelical
organization, is at the top of his game. On June
3, his new book, The Final Move Beyond Iraq:
The Final Solution While the World Sleeps,
made it on to the New York Times best-sellers'
list at No 1 in the paperback category.
Evans' publisher bills him as "one of
America's top experts on the Middle East" and "a
personal confidant to most of Israel's top
leaders". He has several best-selling books under
his belt, including Beyond Iraq: The Next
Move and The American Prophecies.
Evans' latest offering - 200 pages of text
and 100 of assorted appendices - is relatively
uncomplicated: Iran is the biggest threat to the
United States and to peace in the Middle East, and
it should be confronted militarily no later than
the end of George W Bush's presidency. Under no
circumstances should US troops be withdrawn from
Iraq before the mission is accomplished - the
mission being the disarming of Iran.
The
US public has been dumbed down by the secular left
and the liberal media. And God has been removed
from the public square in the US, resulting in
Christians being systematically "stripped" of
their rights.
His prose is pugnacious, a
style you might expect from a writer who claims
that he is giving the US its "final wake-up call".
In the book, and in its promotional materials,
such terms as "appeasement", "secular humanist
God-haters" and "pro-Islamic radical sympathizers"
are tossed around as easily as if he were playing
catch in the back yard.
In one passage,
Evans maintains that the recommendations in the
bipartisan Iraq Study Group (ISG) Report, issued
in early December, are a "call to appeasement -
just like [British prime minister Neville]
Chamberlain's in the face of Nazi aggression in
1938".
The ISG Report, which was largely
ignored by the Bush administration, had urged the
withdrawal of virtually all US combat troops by
next spring, as well as the engagement of Iraq's
neighbors, including Syria and Iran, as part of a
comprehensive "diplomatic offensive" designed both
to stabilize Iraq and to address "key regional
issues", including the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Evans in essence agrees with the core
group of neo-conservatives in the administration
who were the architects of the war in Iraq and
have more recently been advocating a robust
response to Iran. He parts company with them,
however, in that his analysis appears to be
strictly based on his reading of the Bible and
what he calls the relentless attack on Christians
in the United States.
In the penultimate
chapter, "The Battle for the Soul of America",
Evans argues that the assassinations in the 1960s
of president John F Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and
Martin Luther King Jr "signaled the end of the age
of innocence that had been enjoyed by the American
people".
The social revolution that
followed "was a full frontal assault against
traditional family values and an American culture
steeped in the tenets of the Bible", and was
accompanied by a "lack of moral clarity".
This "lack of moral clarity" resulted in
"battle after battle [that] has slowly stripped
Christians in America of their rights", he says.
"The American courts that espouse such movements
as 'gay rights', 'abortion rights' and even
'animal rights' are now pursuing the right to be
Godless."
The book's appendices offer an
interesting array of excerpts from interviews with
former Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff Moshe
Ya'alon, former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu,
former US director of central intelligence James
Woolsey, former chairman of the armed services
General Hugh Shelton, Harvard University law
professor Alan Dershowitz, and US News & World
Report editor-in-chief Mort Zuckerman.
The
journey of The Final Move Beyond Iraq to
the No 1 spot on the New York Times' list of
best-selling paperback books is a fascinating tale
in and of itself. Evans and his publisher,
FrontLine, an imprint of the Christian publishing
house Strang Communications, flew under the radar
of the mainstream media, using near-daily e-mail
blasts to supporters urging them not only to buy
multiple copies of the book, but to help publicize
it by writing five-star reviews at Amazon.com.
The goal of the campaign was twofold: make
the book a best-seller, and have that result in
multiple appearances on mainstream radio and
television programs. By all accounts, this
approach has achieved its aims.
Evans had
"made himself a major religious-movement and media
figure long before his new book was published",
said John Stauber, executive director of the
Center for Media and Democracy and the co-founder
of PRWatch. Although "he pegs himself as a
'journalist', he's really a right-wing religious
political advocate with great media marketing
savvy".
For Stauber, the co-author two
books on Iraq, Weapons of Mass Deception
and The Best War Ever, Evans fits into
the same category as conservative evangelist Pat
Robertson "in some ways". After all, "Pat started
the 700 Club and morphed his run for the
presidency into the Christian Coalition."
The success of Evans' book "shows is that
if you can tap into a passionate movement, present
yourself well in the media, know how to raise
money, and have a fan base of hundreds of
thousands of rabid fans, you can sell books. He
uses the media - right-wing, religious, mainstream
and online - very effectively. He's not just an
author, he's a general in God's patriotic army,
and he knows how to mobilize his troops," Stauber
said.
Bill Berkowitz is a
longtime observer of the US conservative movement.
His column "Conservative Watch" documents the
strategies, players, institutions, victories and
defeats of the US right.
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