[Dialogue] Not So Fast, Christian Soldiers

[Harry Wainwright]

Published on Wednesday, August 22, 2007 by the Los Angeles Times
<http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-oe-aslan22aug22,1,2971
273.story?coll=la-news-a_section>  

Not So Fast, Christian Soldiers

Maybe what the war in Iraq needs is not more troops but more religion. At
least that's the message the Department of Defense seems to be sending.

Last week, after an investigation spurred by the Military Religious Freedom
Foundation, the Pentagon abruptly announced that it would not be delivering
"freedom packages" to our soldiers in Iraq, as it had originally intended.
<http://www.commondreams.org/archive/wp-content/photos/0822_01.jpg> 

What were the packages to contain? Not body armor or home-baked cookies.
Rather, they held Bibles, proselytizing material in English and Arabic and
the apocalyptic computer game "Left Behind: Eternal Forces" (derived from
the series of post-Rapture novels), in which "soldiers for Christ" hunt down
enemies who look suspiciously like U.N. peacekeepers.

The packages were put together by a fundamentalist Christian ministry called
Operation Straight Up, or OSU. Headed by former kickboxer Jonathan Spinks,
OSU is an official member of the Defense Department's "America Supports You"
program. The group has staged a number of Christian-themed shows at military
bases, featuring athletes, strongmen and actor-turned-evangelist Stephen
Baldwin. But thanks in part to the support of the Pentagon, Operation
Straight Up has now begun focusing on Iraq, where, according to its website
(on pages taken down last week), it planned an entertainment tour called the
"Military Crusade."

Apparently the wonks at the Pentagon forgot that Muslims tend to bristle at
the word "crusade" and thought that what the Iraq war lacked was a dose of
end-times theology.

In the end, the Defense Department realized the folly of participating in
any Operation Straight Up crusade. But the episode is just another example
of increasingly disturbing, and indeed unconstitutional, relationships being
forged between the U.S. military and private evangelical groups.

Take, for instance, the recent scandal involving Christian Embassy, a group
whose expressed purpose is to proselytize to military personnel, diplomats,
Capitol Hill staffers and political appointees. In a shocking breach of
security, Defense Department officials allowed a Christian Embassy film crew
to roam the corridors of the Pentagon unescorted while making a promotional
video featuring high-ranking officers and political appointees. (Christian
Embassy, which holds prayer meetings weekly at the Pentagon, is so
entrenched that Air Force Maj. Gen. John J. Catton Jr. said he'd assumed the
organization was a "quasi-federal entity.")

The Pentagon's inspector general recently released a report recommending
unspecified "corrective action" for those officers who appeared in the video
for violating Defense Department regulations. But, in a telling gesture, the
report avoided any discussion of how allowing an evangelical group to
function within the Defense Department is an obvious violation of the
establishment clause of the 1st Amendment.

The extent to which such relationships have damaged international goodwill
toward the U.S. is beyond measure. As the inspector general noted, a leading
Turkish newspaper, Sabah, published an article on Air Force Maj. Gen. Peter
Sutton, who is the U.S. liaison to the Turkish military - and who appeared
in the Christian Embassy video. The article described Christian Embassy as a
"radical fundamentalist sect," perhaps irreparably damaging Sutton's primary
job objective of building closer ties to the Turkish General Staff, which
has expressed alarm at the influence of fundamentalist Christian groups
inside the U.S. military.

Our military personnel swear an oath to protect and defend the Constitution,
not the Bible. Yet by turning a blind eye to OSU and Christian Embassy
activities, the Pentagon is, in essence, endorsing their proselytizing. And
sometimes it's more explicit than that.

That certainly was the case with Army Lt. Gen. William "Jerry" Boykin,
deputy undersecretary of Defense for intelligence. The Pentagon put him in
charge of the hunt for Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda in 2003. The same year,
Boykin was found to be touring American churches, where he gave speeches -
in uniform - casting the Iraq war in end-times terms. "We're in is a
spiritual battle," he told one congregation in Oregon. "Satan wants to
destroy this nation . . . and he wants to destroy us as a Christian army."
The story wound up in newspapers, magazines and on "60 Minutes." And, of
course, it was reported all over the Muslim world. The Pentagon reacted with
a collective shrug.

American military and political officials must, at the very least, have the
foresight not to promote crusade rhetoric in the midst of an already
religion-tinged war. Many of our enemies in the Mideast already believe that
the world is locked in a contest between Christianity and Islam. Why are our
military officials validating this ludicrous claim with their own fiery
religious rhetoric?

It's time to actively strip the so-called war on terror of its religious
connotations, not add to them. Because religious wars are not just ugly,
they are unwinnable. And despite what Operation Straight Up and its
supporters in the Pentagon may think is taking place in Iraq, the Rapture is
not a viable exit strategy.

Copyright 2007 Los Angeles Times

Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org 

URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/22/3331/

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://wedgeblade.net/pipermail/dialogue_wedgeblade.net/attachments/20070822/8602b585/attachment-0001.html 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/gif
Size: 6731 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://wedgeblade.net/pipermail/dialogue_wedgeblade.net/attachments/20070822/8602b585/attachment-0001.gif