In the May, 2009 issue of Harper's Magazine, the lead article is Jesus Killed Mohammed: The Crusade for a Christian Military" by Jeff Sharlet which describes the rise of evangelical fundamentalist Christians in the officer ranks of the Armed Services and the havoc this plays not only on the esprit de corps of the troops but in the way that war is pursued by the United States in the foreign lands that it occupies and is stationed in.
Towards the end of the article Sharlet writes:
"Today, fundamentalism, based as it is on a vigorous assertion of narrow and exclusive claims to truth, can no longer justify common cause with secularism. In it principal battle, the front lines are not Iraq or Afghanistan but right here, where evangelical militants must wage spiritual war against their own countryman."
Scarlet goes on to embellish this statement with evidence:
"...Army Lieutenant Colonel Greg E. Metzgar explained that Christian soldiers must always consider themselves behind enemy lines even within the ranks, because very unsaved member of the military is a potential agent of 'spiritual terrorism.'"
Scarlet writes eloquently about the problem when he writes in conclusion in his article :
"They're spiritual warriors themselves, men and women persuaded that the only God worth believing in is one who demands that they break - in spirit and in fact - the oath to the Constitution they wear to uphold in their lives."
Scarlet's last sentence to his article is "True truth; truth than requires an amplifier. For the God soldiers, democracy is not enough."
George W. Bush who said that he believed that it was God who wanted him to be president, who developed alliances with the right wing dominionists, who poured billions of dollars into faith based initiatives, has contributed to the development of an America which is insidiously becoming fascist and when this kind of belief insinuates itself into the military, the citizens of a free democracy are in peril of loosing their freedom to religious fanatics who would have the world join them in their beliefs or die.
The scary thing is that they honestly and truly believe that this is what their God wants and that they will be glorified in killing for such a righteous cause.
In psychiatry this kind of delusional thinking has been labeled religiosity. It is not true religion but an egotistical belief that one's way of thinking is the only way of thinking and it is, of course, nuts.
I saw an 18 year old young woman yesterday who is barely passing in her first year at college and tells me that she and a friend are thinking of joining the military. Unfortunately, she is getting desperate in considering her life choices and the military is making all kinds of promises to her and yet she has no idea what she is getting into.
I am of the Viet Nam generation when there still was a draft, and I am against the draft and glad that it hasn't been used, that leaves us in a democracy with a mercenary military where people join voluntarily for the money and the opportunity of social advancement if they submit themselves to the discipline, regulatory environment, values, and thought patterns required to be a "good soldier", i.e. a trained killer who obeys orders from a superior. It is this voluntary abdication of ethical choice under the rationalization of obedience to a higher cause that destroys the fabric of a democracy and leads to totalitarian control. It is distressing to me to see this happening in the United States of America and to be ignored and/or accepted by its citizens.
At: www.myspace.com/ronwestglacier
ReplyDelete“An Easter Sunday raid on Iraqi insurgents in 2004. Special Forces Officers, inspired by a showing of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, wrote the words “Jesus Killed Mohammed” in Arabic on their Bradley Fighting Vehicle and shouted the saying in both English and Arabic to entice Muslim soldiers into the open before embarking on an attack to put down the insurgency.”
Having served nearly a year, 1974-75, as operations and intelligence sergeant for Detachment 1, Company C, 5th Special Forces Battalion (19th Special Forces Group), I can remark on the above Harper’s excerpt (see the release further down the page) with the observation there is more to this than Mel Gibson’s ‘Passion’, although the ‘Passion’ certainly could/would be the instigator for this particulary serious breach of our Special Forces ‘psy-ops’ rules.
Special Forces officers, and Special Forces operational non-commisioned officers (in my case I did not attend the military psy-ops school but held the operations slot because of my civilian psychology studies and wilderness survival skills and cross trained into the Special Forces position on the job), are trained in psychological operations (psy-ops are, or often can be mental torments inclusive) calculated to enrage or otherwise prod their opponents into making mistakes, elements of which I’ve incorporated to some of my blogs.
The incident noted in the Harper’s article bears the hallmarks of, or points to people with psy-ops training having researched and played on the Islamic folklore (which probably dates from the period of Crusades) that Mohammed’s Christian wife had murdered him with poison, as opposed to the formal history of Islam which traditionally holds high regard for the Christian faith.
All ethics aside, under the rules I am familiar with, the cardinal sin in this incident was to ignore the social context, a required element to be considered, that would have immediately ruled out this gross violation of the Special Forces rulebook on account of it’s collateral effect as a recruiting tool for the enemy.
Less education in a recuitment targeted populace renders the assault on the psyche to be more effective, with the consequent enemy propaganda ploys these incidents provide.
These bozos passion for the ‘Passion’ may well have recruited ten or a hundred or more Islamic jihadists for every insurgent killed in this single incident. The bottom line is this: Our ‘Christian soldiers’ almost certainly, on account of this and other incidents, cause more of our soldiers to die elsewhere, prolong hostilities, and contribute towards foiling political prospects for peace.
Consider the cited incident, and worse, is example of widespread behavior in our military and think: when is our ‘war’ with Islam going to end, and under what circumstance. In the past six months or eight months alone, General Patraeus’ Central Command’s special operations commandos have killed numerous civilians in Afghanistan, on occasion under circumstances pointing to war crimes by his Christian ‘jihadists’, in what appear to be flagrant incidents that receive only the cursory attention by our military, and that attention is given over to what appears to be cover-up and denial. These fundamentalist American soldier’s crimes are generating perpetual ‘holy war’ for which ALL of our society pays with the threat of terror, and particularly paying a price just now are our soldiers who are in our military service as patriots, NOT as Bible jihadists, or Christian ‘holy warriors.’