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The Hounds of Heaven
It's worse than you think.
Torture, religion, democracy, God. They're all part of the mixed-up, horrific business that George Bush unleashed in the Middle East and Central Asia, and that Barack Obama is struggling to control and rationalize. As the words above demonstrate, the 12th century is striving mightily to join hands with the 20th in the U.S. military: Unbridled religious arrogance is forging a link with high-tech weaponry and an unlimited defense budget.
The speaker, Lt. Col. Gary Hensley, who is no less than the chief of U.S. military chaplains in Afghanistan, was videotaped last year delivering a sermon at Bagram Air Base. Since Al Jazeera first broadcast the footage at the beginning of the week, it has spread widely on the Internet. Like so much else that the Bush administration has bequeathed us, and the world - pre-emptive war and torture, for instance - this is nothing new, but suddenly it's overt. I can't exactly say this is a good thing, but certainly this is where we want it.
A U.S. military spokesman has denied that American soldiers are allowed to try to convert Afghans to Christianity - it violates Central Command's General Order No. 1 - and said that Hensley was quoted out of context. U.S. military spokesmen, of course, also routinely deny that U.S. bombing raids kill civilians.
And indeed, U.S. airstrikes this week in a densely populated area in western Afghanistan's Farah Province, during a battle between Afghan soldiers and the Taliban, may have killed as many as 100 civilians, according to the New York Times. The Red Cross, the United Nations and the Afghan government are all expressing shock at the death toll, but our government will only acknowledge that it is "investigating the reports of civilian deaths," which is the standard, meaningless comment that reporters work into such stories, seemingly with no obligation to follow up. This lets us forget about it and move on.
The possibility that we are - not officially, of course, but in the minds of many American soldiers and officers - waging a religious war that parallels the secular one, an Ann Coulter war, if you will ("We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity," Coulter wrote on Sept. 12, 2001), is both deeply disturbing and utterly appropriate. The arrogance required for both efforts is so similar, I can understand if the line blurs for many of the participants.
What is the difference, for instance, between believing one can bomb a country into democracy and any sort of armed, uniformed proselytizing? Putting a religious spin on the war on terror may be an official no-no, but when I read about Bargram's "hounds of heaven" and other recent reports of the growing evangelical Christian influence in the U.S. military (such as Jeff Sharlet's stunning investigative piece in the May issue of Harper's, titled "Jesus Killed Mohammed"), I think first of the extraordinary Winter Soldier testimony I attended a year ago in Washington, D.C.
This testimony, sponsored by Iraq Veterans Against the War, and vastly underreported in the media, featured vet after vet giving agonized, conscience-wracked testimony on his or her training and service in Iraq and/or Afghanistan. If one word could describe the overarching theme of the four-day event (I attended two of those days), it might be "dehumanization."
"When I joined the Army, I was told racism was gone from the military," said Mike Prysner, who enlisted in June 2001. "After 9/11, we heard words like towel head, camel jockey, sand nigger. These came from up the chain of command. The new word (we used was) hadji. A hadji is someone who takes a pilgrimage to Mecca. We took the best thing from Islam and made it the worst thing.
"Racism is a vital weapon employed by this government," he said. "It's more important than the rifle, the bunker buster missile."
"In our boot camp," said former Marine Matthew Childers, "we sang cadences about killing people."
Occupation means implicit disrespect. The testimony went on and on, describing detainee abuse, humiliation and starvation; the terrorizing of families during house raids; the casual brutalities and killings at checkpoints; vandalism and joy-riding around the ruins of Babylon; the shooting of pets to relieve boredom. And this is the context in which we now hear about earnest American Christians harvesting the souls of Muslims.
Let us bow our heads in prayer, America. The worst of who we are is stalking the world with religious fervor.
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15 Comments so far
Show AllIt would appear that occupying another country inevitably destroys the conquering nation, which quickly degenerates to barbarism, religious zealotry, torture, and genocide.
I cite the example of Israel as proof.
Nice.
"The Barbarians at the Gate" by Cavafis.
"We have met the enemy and he is us," by Pogo.
I know for a FACT that Jesus would've supported the use of Predator drones to shoot missiles into crowds of poor people unless they agreed to follow his example of love and acceptance!
Nobody can even argue with this because it's a FACT!
Maybe some Muslim scholars well versed in Christian theology and the
Bible, could try deprogramming captured fanatical, nasty Christians,
getting them to look at some much overlooked teachings of Christ, that
are not very compatible with these "Christian" soldiers' actions. :-)
God said they will be killing thinking they are doing him a favor. This in not necessarily limited to any one Religion, People's, or Nations. The Religious Leaders of the Temple that conspired to kill Jesus, not all, thought they were doing God a favor by getting rid Jesus they considered to be a trouble maker.
Jesus came teaching his Father's Spritiual Kingdom that is not of the world, or man, this world. He even said he did not come to call the Righteous but to call the wicked to repent. He told the Religious Political Pharisees of that day that they would travel a 100 miles to find one "Convert" & then turn them into a child of hell 1000 times worse than they.
So is that what's been happening all along, & again not necessisarily limited to any one Religon, People's or Nations, that those "Converted" to Politics & Relgion have been doing as God said they would doing which is killing thinking they are doing him a favor?
Did God tell your Nation's former Head Honcho Bush to go war on those Nations, or was he like many men just clever enough to use God's name in vain in connection with what was nothing more than the evil ambitions of men, New World Order, upon the earth?
When the big land swipe was going on in this land according to my reading the Seventh Day Adventists considerd your Govt to be the Beast of Revelation. They had a different perspective of what was happening, & while a Religious Sect did not give their Spiritual Yes to such things. They weren't able to stop these things as prophecy merely states what is going to happen, but doesn't say people are going to be able to stop those things from happening.
Many prophecy researches consider your Nation may be Mystery Babylon that build the globalist system of the Beast through the U.N. as Mystery Babylon fornicates with all the Kings of Earth, & often supported by what may be factions of Religious Political Pharisees who think this Beast is doing God's work when the Beast may be doing the Devil's work?
In those regards are Politicians who support these things, the business world, Corporations, Banks, and Political Religious Factions who support these things worshipping the Beast & the Image of the Beast? God has already cast his judgment on any who worship the Beast & the Image of the Beast as many Beast Kingdoms are listed throughout time & will continue on until Jesus returns in Revelation 19.
Terrorism and evil are so enmeshed in religion, just as in most of humanity. Consider the Bible, Numbers 31 13-18: "Moses became angry...He asked them,'Why have you kept all the women alive?...So now kill every boy and kill every woman who has had sexual intercourse but keep alive for yourselves all the girls and all the women who are virgins.'" Now I happen to feel that people like Bush and Cheney are evil, but put in this context, I'd have to say Moses is a big step up the ladder of evil.
Ray Berthiaume
ShadowDancer, this is a good example of what happens when one takes the mythology of the book of Revelation as physical fact (tho in the future). You stumble all over yourself. What a waste of thought.
"Let us bow our heads in prayer, America."
WTF?!?! How about let's not! It only encourages these fanatics!
Onward, Christian Soldiers!!!!
Kill'em all.
It's so sad to see that they are actually doing it!
This phenomenon is not new: sending our youth overseas to kill in the name of God (or Country, or whatever) and wounding or destroying them along with "the enemy". Almost all wars are this way. Clint Eastwood's resent film "Gran Torino" illustrating this for the Korean war. For those who have seen it, have you asked yourself why was Walt Kowalsky was the way he was. Why was he so unable to relate to his own children, his religion, his new "gook" neighbors? Why was he so full of conflict and hate? Could it have been because as a youth he had been sent half way around the world to see his buddies killed and having to kill "13 at least" of the "slopes"? Could it have been that he had never been able to completely accepted what his government had taught him so that he could endure the war: American good; North Korean/Chinese bad. Walt was a good man as his actions proved but it wasn't until the end of the film that he was able to redeem himself by standing up against what he knew was evil. We are again destroying our youth in Iraq, Afghanistan and who-knows-where-else in the world. Pitty.
If we can assume that Jesus knew what he was talking about, the Lieutenant Colonel Reverend Potentate should have been telling his troops to put down their guns and go home. It's unimaginable that the Prince of Peace would sanction the kind of carnage and brutality we're inflicting on the Afghan people in his name and while invoking his blessings. And just why would he think that the Afghans would believe that Christianity is about love and compassion? As Ghandi said, after his experience with the British, "If not for Christians, I'd be one."
Sioux Rose
DR BRIAN: POwerfully and succinctly stated. I try often to express these exact sentiments & observations in this forum.
It is all a Big Lie. If they believe that, they'll believe anything! There is no proof to any of this "religion". In fact, it is disproved by reason and
empirical evidence.
"If I told you how to reach the highest high,
You'd laugh and say nothing's that simple.
But you've been told many times before,
Messiah's pointing to the door,
But no one's got the guts to leave the temple."
I'm Free -The Who
Look what they do to the Tree of Life which is universal and predates history. Stand Truth on its head: The Tree (Truth) becomes forbidden, the snake (Wisdom) is evil, and humanity is alienated from its source. [Now we got 'em.]
I prefer the symbolism of the caduceus, often the symbol of the medical profession. The staff is the Tree of Life, the snake is life ascending the Tree toward the wings of freedom and enlightenment (the light of the Sun, as represented by the apical sphere).
Also, regarding revelation, the creation myth and much of the rest predates biblical accounts by at least a millennium. Claim it as their own exclusively (plagiarism) and use it to justify the most reprehensible behavior.
The truth is that Nature is not contingent -it was not created by someone out there. N.B. the immanence of Being, not false dichotomy.
They all yelled, "Kill a Commy for Christ."
But I knew Christ was a communist.
Little new here these thousand-years. With the first surviving prayers men ask Deity to slaughter their enemies that they may use the land and daughters.