If there’s one thing that can be depended upon from year to year, it’s that Americans wouldn’t think of going to war without God, and that God wouldn’t miss an American war for love or money. War after war, police action after police action, God is always there to enforce American foreign policy and extend it into the spiritual realm.

Or at least, that’s what some people believe. Tune in to any of the several televangelists who expound daily on the Iraq War, and you will be told that Jesus Christ Himself is currently cruising the skies over Iraq in a white-hot rage, furiously grinding His teeth at Osama bin Laden and his followers for messing with His favorite country, and that He will, at any moment, swoop down in a fiery F-16 and blow them all straight to hell.

There are other churches, of course, and other views, but those people don’t get the coverage that neoconservative zanies do, because “consumers” fail to respond to them with the same intensity.

I tell you a marvel: There are people in this country who say three million sane, intelligent, insightful, quotable things for every lame, hateful statement Ann Coulter makes. They will never be heard.

Therefore I suggest that the Christian Left should get in the God War. They should find their own idiotic firebrand, some loudmouth who has no conscience and no prospect of acquiring one. They need someone who can stand up, face the cameras and say…well, what?

See? Therein lies the problem. If you’re not convinced by Those People, if you avoid conservative talk radio, if you don’t see Jesus packing a Glock to Calvary — if you don’t believe that God is right now ramming around the Middle East in His Holy Humvee looking for the shit, you’re at a loss: you’re helpless, essentially disarmed in this conflict. The best you can do is repeat things Jesus said: “Love your enemies and pray for them.”  “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would fight…”

As foreign as these statements are to the Christian right, as otherworldly they might sound in the ears of jaded and distracted newsdrones, they still bear repeating. They just don’t command the same attention.

And so what? Jesus is just alright with me, bub — more than alright. Jesus may not get the press that Ann Coulter gets, but he’s much better public speaker.