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US Soldiers in Afghanistan Told to "Hunt People for Jesus... So We Get Them into The Kingdom"
Military officials at Bagram are caught on tape urging US soldiers to evangelize in the Muslim country.
New video evidence has surfaced showing that US military forces in Afghanistan have been instructed by the military's top chaplain in the country to "hunt people for Jesus" as they spread Christianity to the overwhelmingly Muslim population. Soldiers also have imported bibles translated into Pashto and Dari, the two dominant languages of Afghanistan. What's more, the center of this evangelical operation is at the huge US base at Bagram, one of the main sites used by the US military to torture and indefinitely detain prisoners.
In a video obtained by Al Jazeera and broadcast Monday, Lieutenant-Colonel Gary Hensley, the chief of the US military chaplains in Afghanistan, is seen telling soldiers that as followers of Jesus Christ, they all have a responsibility "to be witnesses for him."
"The special forces guys - they hunt men basically. We do the same things as Christians, we hunt people for Jesus. We do, we hunt them down," he says.
"Get the hound of heaven after them, so we get them into the kingdom. That's what we do, that's our business."
The translated Bibles appear to be the New Testament. According to Al Jazeera, US soldiers "had them specially printed and shipped to Afghanistan." On the tape, one soldier describes how his church in the US helped raise money for the bibles. Al Jazeera reports that "What these soldiers have been doing may well be in direct violation of the US Constitution, their professional codes and the regulations in place for all forces in Afghanistan." The US military officially forbids "proselytising of any religion, faith or practice." But, as Al Jazeera reports:
[T]he chaplains appear to have found a way around the regulation known as General Order Number One."Do we know what it means to proselytise?" Captain Emmit Furner, a military chaplain, says to the gathering.
"It is General Order Number One," an unidentified soldier replies.
But Watt says "you can't proselytise but you can give gifts."
Trying to convert Muslims to any other faith is a crime in Afghanistan. The fact that the video footage is being broadcast on Al Jazeera guarantees that it will be seen throughout the Muslim world. It is likely to add more credence to the perception that the US is engaging in a war on Islam with neo-crusader forces invading Muslim lands.
Former Afghan prime minister Ahmed Shah Ahmedzai told Al Jazeera there must be a "serious investigation," saying, "This is very damaging for diplomatic relations between the two counties." Sayed Aalam Uddin Asser, of the Islamic Front for Peace and Understanding in Kabul, told the network: "It's a national security issue ... our constitution says nothing can take place in Afghanistan against Islam. If people come and propaganda other religions which have no followers in Afghanistan [then] it creates problems for the people, for peace, for stability."
A US military spokesperson, Major Jennifer Willis, denied that the US military has allowed its soldiers to attempt to convert Afghans and said comments from sermons filmed at Bagram were taken out of context. She said the bibles were never distributed. "That specific case involved a soldier who brought in a donation of translated bibles that were sent to his personal address by his home church. He showed them to the group and the chaplain explained that he cannot distribute them," she said. "The translated bibles were never distributed as far as we know, because the soldier understood that if he distributed them he would be in violation of general order 1, and he would be subject to punishment."
The video footage was shot about a year ago by documentary filmmaker Brian Hughes, who is also a former US soldier. "[US soldiers] weren't talking about learning how to speak Dari or Pashto, by reading the Bible and using that as the tool for language lessons," Hughes told Al Jazeera. "The only reason they would have these documents there was to distribute them to the Afghan people. And I knew it was wrong, and I knew that filming it ... documenting it would be important."
The broadcast of this video comes just days after a new poll of White Americans found that, in the US, church going Christians are more likely to support the use of torture than other segments of the population. The Pew Research Center poll found: "White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified - more than six in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only four in 10 of them did."
This is certainly not the first scandal where US military forces or officials have been caught on tape promoting an evangelical Christian agenda. Perhaps the most high-profile case involved Lieut. Gen. William Boykin, who was a Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence under Bush. Boykin was part of Donald Rumsfeld's inner circle at the Pentagon where he was placed in charge of hunting "high-value targets." Boykin was one of the key U.S. officials in establishing what critics alleged was death-squad-type activity in Iraq.
In October 2003, Boykin was revealed to have gone on several anti-Muslim rants, in public speeches, many of which he delivered in military uniform. Since January 2002, Boykin had spoken at twenty-three religious-oriented events, wearing his uniform at all but two. Among Boykin's statements, he said he knew the U.S. would prevail over a Muslim adversary in Somalia because "I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol." Boykin also charged that Islamic radicals want to destroy America "because we're a Christian nation" that "will never abandon Israel." Our "spiritual enemy," Boykin declared, "will only be defeated if we come against them in the name of Jesus."
As for President Bush, Boykin said, "Why is this man in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him. Why is he there? And I tell you this morning that he's in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this." In another speech, Boykin said other countries "have lost their morals, lost their values. But America is still a Christian nation." He told a church group in Oregon that special operations forces were victorious in Iraq because of their faith in God. "Ladies and gentlemen, I want to impress upon you that the battle that we're in is a spiritual battle," he said. "Satan wants to destroy this nation, he wants to destroy us as a nation, and he wants to destroy us as a Christian army."
Watch Al Jazeera's report here.
- Posted in
95 Comments so far
Show AllEven if the various justifications and excuses are actually true, how well do these idiots think this is going to go down among Muslims worldwide?
[ "White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified - more than six in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only four in 10 of them did." ]
This poll is disturbing, and those who oppose torture need to be aware of this.
Such wonderful christians. So very christ-like....
Mixing religion with politics is always dangerous and the narrower the religion the worse it gets. Blind belief allows unconditional acceptance of all manner of evils.
As an aside there is a new book review in the Asia Times by Anthony Fenton; I have not read the book yet but it may shed considerable light on the lead up to present day meddling in Afghanistan:
Invisible History: Afghanistan's Untold Story by Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould. (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2009). ISBN-10: 0872864944. Price US$18.95, 300 pages.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KE02Df01.html
(note underscore character between South and Asia)
Excerpt from Fenton's review:
"Returning to the strength of their analysis, Fitzgerald and Gould do urge Obama to "re-open the national debate on US identity and its future", arguing that "the roots of this [current] dilemma stem from the reality-creation machine dreamed up by Dean Acheson, George Kennan, Paul Nitze and James Foretal at the beginning of the Cold War." (p 326) And as Fitzgerald warned in the interview, "It's going to dawn on Americans that when we ask our government what exactly are they doing and the solution, once again, is more troops, or a surge, it's not going to be enough of an answer."
Although providing little analysis of the 21st century "brain trust", they also presciently warn in conclusion, "If our government has no other purpose than to serve the fantasies of its own defense intellectuals in their desire to create new ways of making endless war, then we are in serious trouble and like the Soviet Union, Afghanistan will be our final test." (p 328)"
Writing from a viewpoint of strict fairness, Islam also is an evangelizing religion.
That white Protestants are foolish enough to try this in a place such as Afghanistan bespeaks more of their narrow and uneducated worldview that is eerily similar to Muslim fundamentalists. In my perfect world, I would have both plopped on to a desert island and let them have at it without the rest of us being harmed by their stupidity.
It is not a question of religion. It is a question of what the miliary goal is supposed to be. The only army that is supposed to evangelize is the Salvation Army.
(Of course we have absolutely no right to be occupying their country in the first place.)
Writing from a viewpoint of strict fairness, I don't think Americans would like it either if Afghans invaded the US and tried to convert people from behind a rifle.
The preacher will never propose such an idea as "strict fairness" to the congregation. It's too humanist. It's too challenging to authority.
Amen. You might add Mormons and Catholics in the mix, and lets not forget those Black Baptists who are so against gay marriage. Make it a rather small island.
Actually, Islam is not an evangelical religion--at least not in the up front way that most Christian sects are. We do not, for instance, corner people on buses or sidewalks passing out phamplettes. Most phamplettes, oddly enough, are located inside Masjids entrances for visitors to peruse. Even the most fundamental Muslim you can find isn't going to be brazen enough to slip a Qur'an into your non-Muslim hand and try to "save" you. People come to Islam, Islam doesn't tend to come to them. You want Islam, you got to find it, we're not going to bother if you don't care.
Regarding these guys spreadin' the word, I thought Islam was supposed to be the religion that gets spread by the sword. If these guys really want to save some souls, instead of trying to convert them with Bibles and ammunition, they should show them some cash and improved living conditions courtesy of their "savior". As was done with the "savage African nations" by the oh-so-helpful evangelical humanitarian movement. As Harry Belafonte sang,
"One night I was walking down Fred'rick street
Poor and hungry, no shoes on me feet
I passed a door that said "Down with sin"
It was the smell of food that pulled me in"
- Insurgent
Poll's often lie or are slanted to give credence to a particular viewpoint. So I wouldn't get quite so gleeful about another secular attack on Christians.
If the part about instructions to our troops to proselytise the Christian religion to Muslims by a military chaplain is true, the man should be court martialed. This has no place in the military.
You are missing the point about the poll.
Even if you omit the (white) Evangelical Christians, 4 out of 10 of the non religiously affiliated supported 10. Throw in the fact that most Americans are Christians You have a poll here indicating a pretty large group of Americans who believe that torture is justified. Maybe even a majority.
rfloh
Good point....but they must have hit a bunch of fundamentalist if you ask me. I know quite a few Christians (could be territorial) and very few believe that.
But your point is valid.
Another secular attack on Christians? What dimension do you live in?
Darn George.....do you miss the consistent secular attacks on Christianity? I live in this dimension not some fantasy dimension.
Sorry, Tom. I live in a family of fundamentalists. Most if not all of the attacks I see are by fundamentalists on gays and abortionists and those not properly indoctrinated. Thats the dimension I live in.
One in which a large percentage of Christians think they torture for God. That's nothing new, though, is it? Missionary work and "White man's burden" have hung out together for years, even though they are not mutually necessary.
I do beleive there is another way of looking at this. Soldiers know that the war isn't and can't be won militarily. They know that they're wasting lives by being there. They're also smart enough to know that pulling a stunt like getting an idiot priest to talk like that on camera, and packing bibles from home, is not going to play well in the muslim world. In fact, the story might just be enough to get them home sooner than Obama is going to get them home. Of course the above is pure speculation. Entirely wishful thinking on my part.
It's obvious you haven't had much experience with "born agains", or religious fanatics of any kind, for that matter.
I have, and the faster we can get them to meet their maker the happier I will be.
Yes, the happier I will be too because I do not want to be around for what is about to happen to this world.
I've had my share, but they're not quite as fanatic as they are down south. And when I meet up with one, I generally pre-empt the discussion on religion by saying 'the holy spirit is satan in drag.' Once you blaspheme the HS you're unsaveable, saves tons of pointless debate. Of course if they're persistant I voice my opinion that Jesus Christ blows goats, and that the only true god is coffee. (evil grin)
Years ago I actually debated them using their own holy books to poke hole after hole in their own arguements, then I realised that it's nothing more than engaging in a battle of wits with the unarmed...
I've had the same experience. I was called the devil incarnate by one poor newly converted lady, because I could quite more scripture than she could. Now I just cross the street whenever I suspect a fundamentalist is coming towards me. As for my family, they know better than to engage me in argument. They all agree that taking care of my Mom and other similar actions speak louder than words anyway.
This issue is also covered quite extensively in the May issue of Harper's magazine in the article entitled Jesus Killed Mohammed: The Crusade for a Christian Military by Jeff Sharlet.
Hensley, I have news for you and the rest of your wacko Bible thumpers, examples speak louder than words and you are setting the kind of example that few would want to follow. You people are not anything but pseudo-christians, actually a church cult that is a tool of the MIC otherwise; you would not have military access, because if you were real Christians, you would be against war and torture.How come you do not love your enemies and protest wars like REAL CHRISTIANS do? John Lennon:"Imagine there is no countries, it isn't hard to do, there is nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too". What gives you self-righteous hypocrites the right to hunt down Muslims to convert them; than the right of fanatic Muslims the right to hunt down you and convert you to their religion! John, you were right on!
This is a war for G.O.D... Guns... Oil... & Drugs...
These soldiers and chaplains are useful idiots for the resource wars...
Of course they must adorn their raping & killing with a crown of thorns...
It makes sense when one considers that the esoteric initiation rites of the mystery schools (Yoshua) became Bastardized by the roman empire into a death cult glorifying the torture and murder of the one & only Son Of God by the State... Sending a chilling underlying message to everyone in Christiandom that "you don't fuck with EMPIRE"... Dare challenge the existing power structure and you will be humiliated and murdered like a common thief...
This myth has been intentionally misinterpreted or altered in dangerous ways... By having Jesus be able to take away your sins is a simplistic justification for harmful actions in the past or present... Jehovah, the Babylonian god of war, has been confounded with Yahweh, YHWH, the Ein Soph, the Tao of western Gnosticism... The very belief that God sent his son to die for our sins before we were even born... strips individuals of their sense of free will, autonomy, and individuality... And violates the core principles of other spiritual knowledge systems like karma & divine balance... And having folks go to heaven for ever and ever if they obey and behave like the rest of the flock, and the rest of the heathens be damned to eternal hellfire ideology reinforces the "Us vs. Them" war mentality and reduces life to one lifetime, what ever station you were born into, you must endure Being poor or killing for Jesus til you die and you will be rewarded in heaven... The Heaven/Hell duality model also short-circuits the idea of reincarnation, a major tenet in other schools of wisdom, which like Karma, was bleached from the Old testament writings...
Sioux Rose
GOLDEN MEAN: Thank you for bringing in the esoteric component.
There are two deep and profound ironies: First, this idea that KILLING will win converts, that it has anything remotely to do with Jesus.
Second, when Bush made the Freudian slip that we were involved with another CRUSADE he was not exactly joking. Tony Blair and Bush, as born again Christians probably DO believe in a holy war, an Armageddon. Their minds are so twisted by a military perspective that they probably think God really wants to see the world divide up into teams that fight to the finish to prove who's got the strongest sense of fealty. It's as if there's been NO evolution of consciousness at all. I've often argued in this forum that the Age of Aries, that ruled by Mars, led to beliefs about an angry, jealous father God. When Jesus arrived, the time was ripe for a new belief system for mankind, one that integrated the Divine feminine through emphasizing traits like empathy and compassion. Ultimately the old warring ways were maintained, the only difference, the NAME of Jesus was attributed to the new and evolving conflicts.
I read about the military and its Christian prosletyzing on Truth-out, too. This is NOT an isolated event. And many churches told their congregants to vote for Bush, that Bush was a man of God, and this is one reason why so many from the White Protestant (authoritarian!) fold(s) see no disconnect with torture. They are so thoroughly convinced that this particular conflict is designed by God and that allegiance to it is proof of fealty. These demonstrable behaviors on the part of MILLIONS explain why I return to the premise that MARS, god of war, rules, and all the talk of Jesus (except on the part of the Initiated of Spiritually mature, like Dorothy Day, Father Dear, and Dorothy Day to name a few) is really just the extremely powerful and hypnotic PR probably begun by the likes of Carl Rove.
When ANY religious denomination begins to talk about DEATH to other, it blasphemes the very nature of true worship of the Infinite. The ONLY 'god' this twisted distorted behavior serves is Mars, and that's why the military has an interest in keeping "the faith" alive. Young persons who don't question authority make good soldiers. And if they think they are giving up their lives for a religious ideal, all the better. In my view, they are not unlike the Islamic suicide bomber... and both ARE promised rewards in another lifetime. One gets the presumed virgins, the other "heaven" which may in fact consist of the same image in the mind of the Christian who has undertaken a more covert suicide mission, all for the love of Bush/bombs, but hardly Jesus. Who will tell the people?
There seems to be some force that allows so many humans to follow these junk religious cults. Call it Mars or Aries. I wish the age of Aquarius would hurry up and get here!
Sioux Rose
GEORGE: It can only be born through us: that is, there has to be a critical mass of enough persons waking up to a different understanding. The individuals who have met and continue to meet for The World Social Forum get it. That ANOTHER way is possible, and given the facts of global warming and the US trafficking in horrific weapons, the time as you put it, needs to hurry up! We are in the transition now, the spin cycle on the cosmic "washer" as the old stuff is getting churned up and if enough persons say--as some did on a different thread--they no longer GRANT their consent, psychic energy is removed from these dangerous forms, behaviors, and established bastions of power.(i've explained the astrological cycles that indicate this transition phase in a number of previous posts, so I will not repeat myself. Some take offense at this information. Ironically what I find obscene doesn't seem to bother them in the least.)
From the article:
"People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back (torture)."
Is this the height of irony, that the unchurched are more scrupulous about the Golden Rule than the ostensibly religious?
Perhaps one's moral sensibilities exist independently of, or are even compromised by, one's belief in his or her own eventual redemption.
Least likely, but still 4 out of 10. 40%.
Sioux Rose
RFLOH: Probably the same percentage that views porn, oh, ye who thinks there's nothing wrong with that form of desecration of the female/feminine. A society that suffers from depraved indifference by entering a moral vacuum where pain and pleasure are no longer discernible, and the humanity of the individual ceases to matter, can justify anything. For all your obvious intellectual acumen you sure miss the forest for the trees on this one! (This goes back to the Frank Rich article posted a week ago.)
Making any person an object for any reason is harmful. That includes all the advertising on TV. In a way, it's all porn.
Sioux Rose
JETHRO: I noticed that, too. I guess it indicates that they can think for themselves, but what a castigation of religion that it intensifies the belief in punishment to the point of accepting, enthusiastically! the torture of other, all for a "good" cause. After all, God wants them to do it (I am being facetious).
This reminds me of the crowds that cheered as women were burned as witches by the all-seeing, ever-compassionate church. And someone posted on CD that the Catholic Church was probably the originator of plenty of torture devices. When people are given the false belief that their actions are supported by "god" many take that for a free pass, and it sets loose THEIR inner demons.
JESUS, at the occasion of his second coming, is immediately surrounded by crowds of Christians of every sect. Righteous Pat Robertson pushes through the crowd, hands Jesus a microphone and says "Jesus, speak to us, your loving followers." To which Jesus responds: "What part of You're all Gods Children don't you get?"
Deepa
This reminds me of America's crusade in Philippines.
The American history is filled with its sacred missions in the world. One of them was to Philippines.
William McKinley, then US President explained:
"I went down on my knees and prayed to Almighty God for light and guidance more than one night. And one night late it came to me: 1) That we could not give them [the Philippines] back to Spain — that would be cowardly and dishonorable; 2) that we could not turn them over to France and Germany — our commercial rivals in the Orient — that would be bad business and discreditable; 3) that we could not leave them to themselves — they were unfit for self-government — and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain's was; and 4) that there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God's grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow-men for whom Christ also died. And then I went to bed, and went to sleep, and slept soundly, and the next morning I sent for the ... War Department map-maker, and I told him to put the Philippines on the map of the United States (pointing to a large wall map), and there they are, and there they will stay while I am President!"
The President described the combination of sadistic cruelty and starry-eyed self-adulation as a noble campaign to ``uplift and civilize and Christianize" the Filipinos. “Civilizing” and “Christianizing” the Filipinos took longer than McKinley thought. This noble campaign brought out the brute in the soul of the US Christian crusaders. A frustrated US General ordered troops to kill every Filipino male over age ten. The righteous American Christian warriors succeeded in their campaign by overcoming local resistance forces through their overwhelming superiority in weapons and sheer ruthlessness. They slaughtered about half-a-million Filipinos within the next few years. The American media explained that it would take patience to overcome evil, and bring liberty and happiness to the Filipinos.
One critical citizen satirized McKinley's war: "G is for guns/ That McKinley has sent/ To teach Filipinos/ What Jesus Christ meant."
Read about American Evangelical Proselytization in Iraq and Afghanistan:
http://www.aljazeerah.info/News/2009/May/4%20n/Evangelical%20Proselytizing%20Continues%20in%20Afghanistan%20Under%20Obama%20Administration.htm
"Jesus killed Mohammed: The crusade for a Christian military" By Jeff Sharlet
http://harpers.org/archive/2009/05/0082488
Sioux Rose
DEEPA: It's a White Christian thing... (not that the Jewish Zionists of Israel haven't taken on similar tactics lately). Ever read about the way the Indigenous of North and South America were treated when they refused to "convert" as the boatloads of European settlers and explorers arrived?
Maybe that's where "gunboat diplomacy" began. This idea that torture leading to conversions makes for faithful followers. Forget about setting an example in decency and grace that others willingly wish to follow. I believe in reincarnation and it's clear that these patterns are deeply etched into mass consciousness. Much of their essential formation began by and through religious programming. Seeing the same disgusting behaviors articulated again today in my view is evidence of a great many minds being held hostage to "old gods." Until a complete disconnect is established between religion/spirituality/the claim to speak for the Divine and any urge to kill/destroy/torture/dehumanize other, the darkest components of human nature will find ways to take up arms and destroy civilization for the rest of us, that is, the awakened souls who are consciously seeking to evolve and grow and work on the ways and means to live peacefully together. It is a battle between the Light (love) and the dark (fear/hatred).
Speaking of soldiers, on this date almost forty years ago-May 4, 1970-U.S. soldiers shot 12 students and killed four others. Another blot on the First Amendment and the United States of America.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OmZvyNrzAs
Just following orders. "You've got to be carefully taught." That would include Bible School lessons.
"...the center of this evangelical operation is at the huge US base at Bagram, one of the main sites used by the US military to torture and indefinitely detain prisoners."
Sounds like they have their own little Crusade setup there. Wonder how much time is spent covertly trying to convert the prisoners while torturing them for terrorist fairy tales?
These are top predators using their bible as a weapon. Guns, bibles, cultural blindness and propaganda. What a horrible mixture.
Conversion at the point of a gun? This is how the Spanish made slaves of native Americans.
King Leopold's Ghost stalks the night again. Right out of Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart".
This is the evil triad of the Missionaries, the Merchants and the Military.
Sioux Rose
HUMBABA: I had the same image come to me. (I hadn't read your post when I posted it.) Amazing isn't it, that this shit has lasted so many centuries, and it's always justified using God's alleged name?
I'm sure Jesus is pleased.
The U.S. military is just practicing on the Afghans.
Wait till they try this stuff on the Americans...
Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!
US Soldiers in Afghanistan Told to "Hunt People for Jesus... So We Get Them into The Kingdom"
This just about perfectly describes the level of intelligence in the United States. The Afghans will never be converted. Their country will never be subdued. The shuffling, tongue-tied Gringo, with his vacant, thousand yard stare and short-short memory, is once again going to learn the hard way.
Hunting with the 'Big White Jesus'?
The blonde, non-jewish, fair-skinned one who speaks English and drives an SUV?
"The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts." - John Keats
Sioux Rose
MUJERIEGO: Good one. Thanks for the laugh! Sometimes it's necessary medicine!
This seems ok. The Afghans are now in possession of all the relevant facts. Armed crackpots with dopey haircuts represent the religious culture of the current invader, which also kills and tortures Afghans. Yep, that's us all right.
We've got them right here in our own communities, though they are not allowed to carry weapons and we are able to get restraining orders to keep them off our property and away from our children - an option not available to Pashtuns. The only reason they are scary is because they are both loony and numerous. Since they are in no danger of selling their hokum to anybody outside the Bible Belt, I sort of think that little circle jerk in Baghram is the best place for them until evangelical Protestantism can be officially declared a mental illness.
As a peace loving Christian, I strongly detest this kind of religious "manifest destiny". Real Christians would never go out of their way to spread their religion. Trust me.