Worse, both presidents were clueless about the societies they were blindly determined to "improve" - forcefully. Something like helping a little old lady across the street when she doesn't want to go, kicking and screaming all the way. As in Shakespeare, "Virtue turns vice, being misapplied."
Our Iraq quagmire is tragic enough. But the same incompetence and duplicity that produced it persists in Washington, poisoning virtually every program or policy the Bush neocons touch. They've reignited the nuclear arms race, driven 17 percent more Americans below the poverty line, dumped unprecedented massive public debt on our kids and more.
But, there's a larger issue, more critical than all others combined. It is the global warming crisis, the compelling moral imperative of our time. It's not partisan. It's moral: humanity's survival.
More than 95 percent of the world scientific community agrees. Our Earth is under terminal assault by a predatory species - us - the only animal species in surplus. To the biosphere, we're like a plague of locusts, devouring everything in our path. Too much consumption, waste and pollution - but too little wisdom to control ourselves.
And leading our headlong dash to environmental collapse? The Bush neocons. As echo chambers for big energy companies, they discount environmental science, censor government scientists and politicize the process toward the radical right wing.
They've hijacked the Republican Party, which for years stood for moderation and fiscal responsibility. But now, masquerading as "compassionate conservatives," the Republican credit-card Congress slavishly follows the neocons' special-interest agenda of borrow, squander, waste and pollute. Corruption, incompetence and cronyism riddle the bloated bureaucracy as we spend more on weaponry than the rest of the world combined.
Under the guise of religiosity the neocons have arrogantly insinuated the Republican Party as the party of Christianity - never mind that neo(new)conservatives and the New Testament have nothing in common. Does the LDS Church really want to continue to be perceived as a front for the neocons? The church's recent statement, indicating political neutrality, was commendable - but insufficient.
Given the oncoming climate crisis, wouldn't it be wise to step up and fill the country's moral leadership vacuum by publicly instructing LDS members, worldwide, to exercise responsible stewardship of God's green Earth, starting with reducing CO2 emissions? Pro-life begins with pro-environment. Carbon-based fuels are the problem. Those who campaign to drill, mine or war for more are the enemy. Those of us who stand idly by are complicit.
To gamble with our only life support system is immoral. At the judgment seat, if asked what part you played, how will you answer? Pleading ignorance won't work. As Edmund Burke said, "The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing."
Religions are faith-based belief systems. When confronted by cognitive dissonance between the evidence and their beliefs, true believers follow their dogma and deny the evidence. To do so now, in the face of impending environmental collapse, is worse than blind. It's sacrilege, the moral equivalent of murdering our kids' future - forever.
The LDS Church has been more enlightened in that regard. According to public statements by LDS President Gordon B. Hinckley, the LDS Church doesn't view the Bible as the literal description of how life began or how it will end, but how life ought to be lived. An ennobling viewpoint, I'd say.
But, for any true believers who still see global warming as the literal fulfillment of apocalyptic prophecy in the Bible's book of Revelation, then I ask: If you weren't willing to clean up after yourselves in this life, what makes you think you deserve another?
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Jerold Willmore is a behavioral scientist and president of a leadership training company in Salt Lake City.
