What if our government’s interest in oil-producing Middle Eastern nations was nothing new? What if politicians entrusted with our foreign policy came straight from corporations obsessed with the massive oil fields on the other side of the world?

Sadly enough, these are both true. Corporations learned long ago that the best way to direct company policy is to put employees into high government offices. Worse today, with the rise of the Christian Coalition’s influence, some of these politicians are subject to fantasies of divine power and obligation.

Let’s travel back to 1953. Back then, Iran’s massively popular and socialist prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, was trying to institute an oil nationalization program. His plan had overwhelming support among the Iranian people, but American and British corporations were not pleased with the idea. This financial oligarchy forced the CIA and British MI6 (their equivalent at the time) to organize and carry out a coup against the popular Iranian prime minister.

To make a long and ugly story short, Mossadegh was overthrown, and Iran was brutally ruled by the Shah, a pro-West authoritarian who crushed civil liberties. He was overthrown in the Iranian Revolution of 1979, to which much of Iran’s anti-Americanism can be traced. Thanks a lot, capitalism.

Fast forward to 1983. What were you doing that year? If your name is Donald Rumsfeld, you were meeting Saddam Hussein in person to discuss building the Aqaba pipeline from Iraq to Jordan. This was under the direction of then Secretary of State George Schulz, who had served as CEO of oil giant Bechtel before joining the Reagan administration.

Would you care to take a wild guess which corporation just happened to be chosen for construction of the Aqaba pipeline? You guessed it: Bechtel. The pipeline deal eventually fell through, though, and when Reagan’s cabinet left when Bush Sr. took office, Schulz returned to Bechtel, where he remains on its board of directors to this day. How delightful.

Now let’s return to today. Osama bin Laden (remember him?) is angry about our military presence in Saudi Arabia and other Muslim nations, and al-Qaida is fueled by religious extremism. On the other side is General William Boykin, deputy undersecretary of intelligence at the Pentagon, who views the war on terrorism as a prize fight between God and Satan. He has given numerous speeches to evangelical Christian groups, saying things like “My God is bigger than his God.” Yeah, well, your mama’s so heathen she tops her communion wafers with Velveeta! Is this guy for real?

It shouldn’t be too much to ask for our intelligence people to pass basic integrity tests to remove bias, because our intelligence services must be as accurate as possible. But apparently it is too much to ask. President Bush has been anointed by God to fight this war, because, as everyone knows, God’s main thing is getting heads of state to fight bloody wars.

However, these wars can only be fought if someone’s cutting a profit. Would it surprise you to learn that National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice served as a director at Chevron for 10 years before joining the Bush administration? She even had a 136,000-ton oil tanker named after her during that time, but it was renamed “Altair Voyager” in May 2001 — the same month, curiously, that Enron executives began ditching stock.

But what about Cheney — he always has that smirk. Halliburton stock took a sharp nosedive around May 2001. Hey, small world! It went on to drop 75 percent of its value before bottoming out. Halliburton’s major stockholders — the very people Cheney had come to know during the years he served as CEO — could not have been too happy to see their financial worth plummet. Fortunately for them, Halliburton’s stock skyrocketed back into fashion when talk of war with Iraq began. It has been rising like gas prices ever since and is now even back up to pre-dive levels.

Not everyone has made out as well. Following the rape, torture and murder committed by American soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh argued, “You know, these people are being fired at every day. I’m talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You ever heard of need to blow some steam off?”

Why yes, Rush, after a long day of gobbling Vicodin at the office, I totally need to rape people to mellow out before “Dawson’s Creek” comes on.

Our self-appointed apostles can do no wrong, and their wars will be defended no matter what. Do you know what genocide is? Hitler was all about it. When Bush sees ongoing genocide and mass rape in Sudan and can only respond by dropping care packages from the sky, I denounce that as an insult to humankind.

What would Bush say to the woman being gang-raped by three attackers? “When it’s all over, you can go grab a sandwich half a mile down the road. Hope you like peanut butter and jelly.” What would he say to all the relatives of people slaughtered in one Sudanese village or the next? “The United States is too poor to help you, so tell your government to join my coalition in Iraq.”

Corporations have no financial interest in Sudan. Citizens shouldn’t give politicians — and that’s what they are — blind faith just because they claim to be Christians. CEOs and politicians are subject to the same — and even more intense — temptations as ordinary working people. When their actions are viewed with scrutiny, it is clear that corporations know politics better than we do.

Until we as citizens remove religious and, especially, corporate dominance over government, our foreign policy will continue to perpetuate its savage existence as a reactionary tool of corporate imperialism.