In his latest Screeeedblog, James Lileks writes:

One of the signs, of course, said “Who Would Jesus Bomb.” Never heard that before. Hmm. Well. I think the proper question is “On Whom Would Jesus Levy Porous Sanctions Undermined by Corrupt International Officials Who turned Oil-For-Food Into a Massive Payola Operation for the International Nomenklatura,” but that wouldn’t fit on a sign.

The answer would, though. Jesus, you may recall, got the moneylenders out of the temple. How? With sternly worded pamphlets, I think. Also a march, which oddly enough included people who wanted the Jews out of Palestine. Strange bedfellows and all that.

So why do they get to play the Jesus card? Everyone got highly spooked over that bogus and rebogused story about how God came down in a flaming pillar and told Bush to invade Iraq. It makes an annual appearance, because it confirms what so many wish to believe: Bushitler is a freaky nutwad who thinks he gets specific operational instructions from on high everytime his knees hit the carpet. Sometimes the message comes in a dream, sometimes it’s a bird that looks at him with a cocked head, sometimes it’s the change in the color of his urine. You have to be careful to note the augurs.

He’s batshite, in other words, because he thinks he speaks for Jeebus. But the people on the streetcorner appear certain that Jesus did not want the Iraqi Defense Ministry leveled by Tomahawks in the middle of the night, no? Probably not. It’s just a jape to needle the Red State God-botherers, just the way they used to needle The Man in the 60s by pointing out that Jesus wore long hair and sandals just like high holy hippies did. Of course, I doubt Jesus had crabs, the clap, collapsed veins from a heroin habit and the abiding conviction that monkey-headed silverfish were coming out of the kitchen sink. But otherwise, yeah, peapod mates.

Yes, I know, it’s rather tired to beat up on “Hippies” this late in the game; it’s like, oh, making the 832nd movie about the sins of the McCarthy era. And Lord knows we’ve put that one behind us.

My point? No point. Just that the day the people of Iraq went home with purple fingers, some folks in a nice safe suburb of Minneapolis reacted by standing on a streetcorner with transcribed bumperstickers urging the US to abandon Iraq tomorrow.

Maybe that bumper sticker is much rarer in Minneapolis than it is on the West Coast, because I've seen it--or at least a slight variation on it--a few times these past two years.

In the spring, I saw it on the back of a Subaru wagon in Washington State, when Nina and I drove back to the US after a weekend cruise up to Vancouver. As soon as I spotted it, I thought, "Hey, I knew we're back in the US now".

But during the previous two summers, I could spot it nightly, on a pickup parked in front of a neighbor's house, which is a fascinating story in and of itself. The neighbor is a Vietnam vet (complete with the appropriate tags on his car), and frequently flies the American flag above his garage. But for a couple of months a year during the summer, someone visits with a "WHAT WOULD JESUS BOMB" sticker on his truck. I have no idea if this fellow is his son, son-in-law, brother, or what, but his host's acceptance of it is an amazing example of something that Mark Steyn wrote yesterday:

Anyone can be tolerant of the tolerant, but tolerance of intolerance gives an even more intense frisson of pleasure to the multiculti- masochists.

Evidently so. Because it seams to me that taking "WHAT WOULD JESUS BOMB" literally would mean that no bombs can possibly meet the Jesus test, which means that no wars would either. So:

Founding America? Forget it! Remember: WWJB!

Ending slavery via the Civil War? Not a chance. Hey...WWJB!?

Freeing western Europe? Verboten. After all, WWJB?

Ending the Cold War?

Well, this one's a bit tricky. After all, Reagan defeated the Soviet Union with just about nil in the way of bomb tonnage.

So on that basis alone, and to find an ironic way to wrap this post up, evidently, the WWJB crew are hardcore Pat Buchanan isolationist paleoconservatives who supported the Gipper, but have little desire to spread democracy to the Middle East or protect its most important democracy, the one that's been there since 1948.

Which, oddly enough, could be possible, come to think of it.