Following Sept. 11, 2001, the Republican Party ostensibly took the lead on the War on Terror. President Bush took a positive step forward and promised to "make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them." However, it is now 2006, and the president has not been able to live up to that promise. Because of his religious agenda at home, he is unable to attack the religious component of many of these terrorist-friendly regimes abroad.

Within the past several years, instead of remaining focused on the War on Terror, Republicans have recommitted themselves to the "culture war" here at home. Some of the party's most recent issues of concern include passing a constitutional gay-marriage ban, keeping Terri Schiavo alive and elevating intelligent design to the level of science in our nation's public schools. No matter how thick the rhetoric, the basic premises of these conservative arguments all have an undeniable religious basis. By getting involved in this religiously motivated culture war, the Republican Party has effectively limited what it can reasonably demand of our even more religious enemies abroad.

After the United States invaded Iraq and turned up empty-handed in its search for weapons of mass destruction, the language used to justify combat shifted to the importance of "democracy" and "liberation." While certainly important, democracy is only as valuable as the protections that accompany it. For example, without a clearly defined separation of church and state, a democracy can violate the rights of minorities just like a dictatorship.

The much-celebrated Iraqi Constitution declares Islam Iraq's official state religion and guarantees that "No law can be passed that contradicts the undisputed rules of Islam." Past experience indicates this situation is problematic. However, President Bush's own domestic agenda prevents him from taking any sort of high ground on the issue of religion in government.

With the notable exception of North Korea, most terrorist-friendly regimes are also theocratic to some degree. Since the United States first clashed with Iranian terrorists in 1979, the militantly Islamic state of Iran has become the leading sponsor of global terrorism. Within the past several months, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad attracted international attention for his Holocaust denials and his calls to "wipe Israel off the map." And, most recently, on Jan. 11, 2006, Tehran flouted International Atomic Energy Agency resolutions and resumed its nuclear-research program to the unanimous chagrin of the rest of the world community.

To address these problems and their core religious underpinnings, the president and his party must demonstrate a willingness to scale back their own religious agenda at home. While adding an important level of consistency to the president's claims, this move could also at least partially allay critics who claim that the United States' "freedom"-focused foreign policies are simply a veneer for promoting Christianity abroad. Also, instead of the current over-simplified Bush dichotomy that divides the world into freedom-haters and freedom-lovers, this new approach would allow him to attack the unacceptable intermingling of church and state so central to the governments of terrorist-friendly nations.

As it currently stands, it is reasonable to believe Mr. Bush's motives may be disingenuous. When a leading Jewish newspaper reported President Bush told then-Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas that "he (God) instructed me to strike at Saddam," concern certainly seemed justified. Indeed, one must wonder why the president makes so little effort to distinguish what motivates United States policies from what motivates the fundamentalist enemies we face.

It is time for conservatives to table their overtly religious agenda. It is time for the Republican Party to cease the unprincipled pandering to the religious special interests that have acquired a disconcerting amount of power in our government. And it is time to frame the Iraq war and the broader War on Terror in the secular terms that could have and ought to have been used in the first place.

Whatever is at stake in the domestic culture war pales in comparison to consequences of defeat in the global culture war. As the party that prides itself on a strong stance on foreign affairs, it is time for Republicans to begin acting like it. Failure to do so would be tacit admission of backward priorities that leave the party woefully unfit for command and the nation vulnerable in an increasingly dangerous world.

Mark Murphy ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in economics and finance.