May 25, 2009
That Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld supplied President Bush with Bible-laced Pentagon intelligence briefings might only seem like more Bush-era loopiness, but wait a minute. The deeper, and still current, question is: What in heaven (or, what the hell) is going on inside the US military?
A Robert Draper article in Gentleman's Quarterly revealed that some of the top-secret "World Wide Intelligence Briefings" that Rumsfeld provided to Bush were covered with photographs of Americans at war, and captions taken from Scripture. In one, above a huddle of GIs apparently at prayer, is the question famously put by God, "Whom shall I send and who will go for Us?" Over the soldiers is the answer from Isaiah: "Here I am, Lord. Send me." Above a trooper hunched over a machine gun is this promise from Proverbs: "Commit to the Lord, whatever you do, and your plans will succeed." Another cover shows Isaiah-inspired US tanks: "Open the gates that the righteous nation may enter."
Sent by God. Protected by God. Sure to succeed. The righteous nation. A war defined not merely as just, but as holy. Such manifestations are one thing from eccentric religious groups operating on the fringe of the US military, in space guaranteed by freedom of religion. It is another when they show up at the peak of the chain of command - and from inside the intelligence community, which is charged with nothing less than defining the character of America's wars.
Those downplaying the significance of Draper's revelations suggest the wily Rumsfeld was just indulging the born-again commander-in-chief. Others merely blame the Bible-thumping Air Force general who prepared the briefing documents for the secretary of defense. (Once, that general would have been my father, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. A convinced Catholic, yet he would be appalled and alarmed by this business.)
No matter what the down-players say, Draper's revelation is only the latest of many that show a US military unduly influenced by an extreme kind of Christian evangelicalism.
Why should that appall and alarm? Let me suggest a biblical seven reasons:
- Single-minded religious zealotry bedevils critical thinking, and not just about religion. Military and political thinking suffers when the righteousness of born-again faith leads to self-righteousness. Critical thinking includes a self-criticism of which the "saved" know little.
- Military proselytizers use Jesus to build up "unit cohesion" by eradicating doubt about the mission, the command, and the self. But doubt - the capacity for second thought - is a military leader's best friend. Commanders, especially, need the skill of skepticism - the opposite of true belief.
- Otherworldly religion defining the afterlife as ultimate can undervalue the present life. Religion that looks forward to apocalypse, God's kingdom established by cosmic violence, can help ignite such violence. Armageddon, no mere metaphor now, is the nuclear arsenal.
- Religious fundamentalism affirms ideas apart from the context that produced them, reading the Bible literally or dogma ahistorically. Such a mindset can sponsor military fundamentalism, denying the context from which threats arise - refusing to ask, for example, what prompts so many insurgents to become willing suicides? Missing this, we keep producing more.
- A military that sees itself as divinely commissioned can all too readily act like God in battle - using mortal force from afar, without personal involvement. An Olympian aloofness makes America's new drone weapon the perfect slayer of civilians.
- A bifurcated religious imagination, dividing the world between good and evil, can misread the real character of an "enemy" population, many of whom want no part of war with us.
- The Middle East is the worst place in which to set loose a military force even partly informed by Christian Zionism, seeing the state of Israel as God's instrument for ushering in the Messianic Age - damning Muslims, while defending Jews for the sake of their eventual destruction.
The Pentagon is the wrong place for unbound Christian zealotry, not just because it violates the separation of church and state (and the rights of non-believers in the chain of command), but even more because it is inimical to the prudent use of force. When the history of America's failures in Iraq, and now Afghanistan, is written, expect to find that US military decision-making was made blind by faith.
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James Carroll
James Carroll a former Boston Globe columnist, is the author of 20 books, including the new novel "The Cloister" (Doubleday). Among other works are: "Christ Actually: The Son of God for the Secular Age." His memoir, "An American Requiem: God, My Father, and the War That Came Between Us," won the National Book Award. His 2021 book is "The Truth at the Heart of the Lie: How the Catholic Church Lost Its Soul." He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He lives in Boston with his wife, the writer Alexandra Marshall.
That Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld supplied President Bush with Bible-laced Pentagon intelligence briefings might only seem like more Bush-era loopiness, but wait a minute. The deeper, and still current, question is: What in heaven (or, what the hell) is going on inside the US military?
A Robert Draper article in Gentleman's Quarterly revealed that some of the top-secret "World Wide Intelligence Briefings" that Rumsfeld provided to Bush were covered with photographs of Americans at war, and captions taken from Scripture. In one, above a huddle of GIs apparently at prayer, is the question famously put by God, "Whom shall I send and who will go for Us?" Over the soldiers is the answer from Isaiah: "Here I am, Lord. Send me." Above a trooper hunched over a machine gun is this promise from Proverbs: "Commit to the Lord, whatever you do, and your plans will succeed." Another cover shows Isaiah-inspired US tanks: "Open the gates that the righteous nation may enter."
Sent by God. Protected by God. Sure to succeed. The righteous nation. A war defined not merely as just, but as holy. Such manifestations are one thing from eccentric religious groups operating on the fringe of the US military, in space guaranteed by freedom of religion. It is another when they show up at the peak of the chain of command - and from inside the intelligence community, which is charged with nothing less than defining the character of America's wars.
Those downplaying the significance of Draper's revelations suggest the wily Rumsfeld was just indulging the born-again commander-in-chief. Others merely blame the Bible-thumping Air Force general who prepared the briefing documents for the secretary of defense. (Once, that general would have been my father, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. A convinced Catholic, yet he would be appalled and alarmed by this business.)
No matter what the down-players say, Draper's revelation is only the latest of many that show a US military unduly influenced by an extreme kind of Christian evangelicalism.
Why should that appall and alarm? Let me suggest a biblical seven reasons:
- Single-minded religious zealotry bedevils critical thinking, and not just about religion. Military and political thinking suffers when the righteousness of born-again faith leads to self-righteousness. Critical thinking includes a self-criticism of which the "saved" know little.
- Military proselytizers use Jesus to build up "unit cohesion" by eradicating doubt about the mission, the command, and the self. But doubt - the capacity for second thought - is a military leader's best friend. Commanders, especially, need the skill of skepticism - the opposite of true belief.
- Otherworldly religion defining the afterlife as ultimate can undervalue the present life. Religion that looks forward to apocalypse, God's kingdom established by cosmic violence, can help ignite such violence. Armageddon, no mere metaphor now, is the nuclear arsenal.
- Religious fundamentalism affirms ideas apart from the context that produced them, reading the Bible literally or dogma ahistorically. Such a mindset can sponsor military fundamentalism, denying the context from which threats arise - refusing to ask, for example, what prompts so many insurgents to become willing suicides? Missing this, we keep producing more.
- A military that sees itself as divinely commissioned can all too readily act like God in battle - using mortal force from afar, without personal involvement. An Olympian aloofness makes America's new drone weapon the perfect slayer of civilians.
- A bifurcated religious imagination, dividing the world between good and evil, can misread the real character of an "enemy" population, many of whom want no part of war with us.
- The Middle East is the worst place in which to set loose a military force even partly informed by Christian Zionism, seeing the state of Israel as God's instrument for ushering in the Messianic Age - damning Muslims, while defending Jews for the sake of their eventual destruction.
The Pentagon is the wrong place for unbound Christian zealotry, not just because it violates the separation of church and state (and the rights of non-believers in the chain of command), but even more because it is inimical to the prudent use of force. When the history of America's failures in Iraq, and now Afghanistan, is written, expect to find that US military decision-making was made blind by faith.
James Carroll
James Carroll a former Boston Globe columnist, is the author of 20 books, including the new novel "The Cloister" (Doubleday). Among other works are: "Christ Actually: The Son of God for the Secular Age." His memoir, "An American Requiem: God, My Father, and the War That Came Between Us," won the National Book Award. His 2021 book is "The Truth at the Heart of the Lie: How the Catholic Church Lost Its Soul." He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He lives in Boston with his wife, the writer Alexandra Marshall.
That Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld supplied President Bush with Bible-laced Pentagon intelligence briefings might only seem like more Bush-era loopiness, but wait a minute. The deeper, and still current, question is: What in heaven (or, what the hell) is going on inside the US military?
A Robert Draper article in Gentleman's Quarterly revealed that some of the top-secret "World Wide Intelligence Briefings" that Rumsfeld provided to Bush were covered with photographs of Americans at war, and captions taken from Scripture. In one, above a huddle of GIs apparently at prayer, is the question famously put by God, "Whom shall I send and who will go for Us?" Over the soldiers is the answer from Isaiah: "Here I am, Lord. Send me." Above a trooper hunched over a machine gun is this promise from Proverbs: "Commit to the Lord, whatever you do, and your plans will succeed." Another cover shows Isaiah-inspired US tanks: "Open the gates that the righteous nation may enter."
Sent by God. Protected by God. Sure to succeed. The righteous nation. A war defined not merely as just, but as holy. Such manifestations are one thing from eccentric religious groups operating on the fringe of the US military, in space guaranteed by freedom of religion. It is another when they show up at the peak of the chain of command - and from inside the intelligence community, which is charged with nothing less than defining the character of America's wars.
Those downplaying the significance of Draper's revelations suggest the wily Rumsfeld was just indulging the born-again commander-in-chief. Others merely blame the Bible-thumping Air Force general who prepared the briefing documents for the secretary of defense. (Once, that general would have been my father, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. A convinced Catholic, yet he would be appalled and alarmed by this business.)
No matter what the down-players say, Draper's revelation is only the latest of many that show a US military unduly influenced by an extreme kind of Christian evangelicalism.
Why should that appall and alarm? Let me suggest a biblical seven reasons:
- Single-minded religious zealotry bedevils critical thinking, and not just about religion. Military and political thinking suffers when the righteousness of born-again faith leads to self-righteousness. Critical thinking includes a self-criticism of which the "saved" know little.
- Military proselytizers use Jesus to build up "unit cohesion" by eradicating doubt about the mission, the command, and the self. But doubt - the capacity for second thought - is a military leader's best friend. Commanders, especially, need the skill of skepticism - the opposite of true belief.
- Otherworldly religion defining the afterlife as ultimate can undervalue the present life. Religion that looks forward to apocalypse, God's kingdom established by cosmic violence, can help ignite such violence. Armageddon, no mere metaphor now, is the nuclear arsenal.
- Religious fundamentalism affirms ideas apart from the context that produced them, reading the Bible literally or dogma ahistorically. Such a mindset can sponsor military fundamentalism, denying the context from which threats arise - refusing to ask, for example, what prompts so many insurgents to become willing suicides? Missing this, we keep producing more.
- A military that sees itself as divinely commissioned can all too readily act like God in battle - using mortal force from afar, without personal involvement. An Olympian aloofness makes America's new drone weapon the perfect slayer of civilians.
- A bifurcated religious imagination, dividing the world between good and evil, can misread the real character of an "enemy" population, many of whom want no part of war with us.
- The Middle East is the worst place in which to set loose a military force even partly informed by Christian Zionism, seeing the state of Israel as God's instrument for ushering in the Messianic Age - damning Muslims, while defending Jews for the sake of their eventual destruction.
The Pentagon is the wrong place for unbound Christian zealotry, not just because it violates the separation of church and state (and the rights of non-believers in the chain of command), but even more because it is inimical to the prudent use of force. When the history of America's failures in Iraq, and now Afghanistan, is written, expect to find that US military decision-making was made blind by faith.
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LATEST NEWS
Entire UN Security Council Except US Says Gaza Famine 'Man-Made' as 10 More People Starve to Death
While acknowledging that "hunger is a real issue in Gaza," the US ambassador to the UN repeated a debunked claim that the world's leading authority on starvation lowered its standards to declare a famine.
Aug 27, 2025
Every member nation of the United Nations Security Council except the United States on Wednesday affirmed that Israel's engineered famine in Gaza is "man-made" as 10 more Palestinians died of starvation amid what UN experts warned is a worsening crisis.
Fourteen of the 15 Security Council members issued a joint statement calling for an immediate Gaza ceasefire, release of all remaining hostages held by Hamas, and lifting of all Israeli restrictions on aid delivery into the embattled strip, where hundreds of Palestinians have died from starvation and hundreds of thousands more are starving.
"Famine in Gaza must be stopped immediately," they said. "Time is of the essence. The humanitarian emergency must be addressed without delay and Israel must reverse course."
"We express our profound alarm and distress at the IPC data on Gaza, published last Friday. It clearly and unequivocally confirms famine," the statement said, referring to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification's declaration of Phase 5, or a famine "catastrophe," in the strip.
"We trust the IPC's work and methodology," the 14 countries declared. "This is the first time famine has been officially confirmed in the Middle East region. Every day, more persons are dying as a result of malnutrition, many of them children."
"This is a man-made crisis," the statement stresses. "The use of starvation as a weapon of war is clearly prohibited under international humanitarian law."
Israel, which is facing a genocide case at the UN's International Court of Justice, denies the existence of famine in Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are wanted by the International Court of Justice for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder and forced starvation.
The 14 countries issuing the joint statement are: Algeria, China, Denmark, France, Greece, Guyana, Pakistan, Panama, the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, Somalia, and the United Kingdom.
While acknowledging that "hunger is a real issue in Gaza and that there are significant humanitarian needs which must be met," US Ambassador to the UN Dorothy Shea rejected the resolution and the IPC's findings.
"We can only solve problems with credibility and integrity," Shea told the Security Council. "Unfortunately, the recent report from the IPC doesn't pass the test on either."
Shea also repeated the debunked claim that the IPC's "normal standards were changed for [the IPC famine] declaration."
The Security Council's affirmation that the Gaza famine is man-made mirrors the findings of food experts who have accused Israel of orchestrating a carefully planned campaign of mass starvation in the strip.
The UN Palestinian Rights Bureau and UN humanitarian officials also warned Wednesday that the famine in Gaza is "only getting worse."
"Over half a million people currently face starvation, destitution, and death," the humanitarian experts said. "By the end of September, that number could exceed 640,000."
"Failure to act now will have irreversible consequences," they added.
Wednesday's UN actions came as Israel intensified Operation Gideon's Chariots 2, the campaign to conquer, occupy, and ethnically cleanse around 1 million Palestinians from Gaza, possibly into a reportedly proposed concentration camp that would be built over the ruins of the southern city of Rafah.
The Gaza Health Ministry (GHM) on Wednesday reported 10 more Palestinian deaths "due to famine and malnutrition" over the past 24 hours, including two children, bringing the number of famine victims to at least 313, 119 of them children.
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Israeli Government Social Media Urges Europe to 'Remove' Muslims
"What would the reaction would be if an Arab state wrote this about synagogues and Jews?" asked one critic.
Aug 27, 2025
Israel faced backlash this week after its Arabic-language account on the social media site X published a message warning Europeans to take action against the proliferation of mosques and "remove" Muslims from their countries.
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"This is what is happening while Europe is oblivious and does not care about the danger," the post continues. "And the danger does not lie in the existence of mosques in and of themselves, for freedom of worship is one of the basic human rights, and every person has the right to believe and worship his Lord."
"The problem lies in the contents that are taught in some of these mosques, and they are not limited to piety and good deeds, but rather focus on encouraging escalating violence in the streets of Europe, and spreading hatred for the other and even for those who host them in their countries, and inciting against them instead of teaching love, harmony, and peace," Israel added. "Europe must wake up and remove this fifth column."
Referring to the far-right Alternative for Germany party, Berlin-based journalist James Jackson replied on X that "even the AfD don't tweet, 'Europe must wake up and remove this fifth column' over a map of mosques."
Other social media users called Israel's post "racist" and "Islamophobic," while some highlighted the stark contrast between the way Palestinians and Israelis treat Christian people and institutions.
Others noted that some of the map's fearmongering figures misleadingly showing a large number of mosques indicate countries whose populations are predominantly or significantly Muslim.
"Russia has 8,000 mosques? Who would've known a country with millions of Muslim Central Asians and Caucasians would need so many!" said one X user.
Israel's post came amid growing international outrage over its 691-day assault and siege on Gaza, which has left more than 230,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing and hundreds of thousands more starving and facing ethnic cleansing as Operation Gideon's Chariots 2—a campaign to conquer, occupy, and "cleanse" the strip—ramps up amid a growing engineered famine that has already killed hundreds of people.
Israel is facing an ongoing genocide case at the International Court of Justice, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, are fugitives form the International Criminal Court, where they are wanted for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity including murder and forced starvation.
European nations including Belgium, Ireland, and Spain are supporting the South Africa-led ICJ genocide case against Israel. Since October 2023, European countries including Belgium, France, Malta, Portugal, Slovenia, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Norway, and Spain have either formally recognized Palestinian statehood or announced their intention to do so.
'Evil': Critics Recoil as Trump DHS Moves to Bar Disaster Aid for Undocumented Immigrants
"This is unfathomable discrimination against immigrants that will cost our country lives," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal.
Aug 27, 2025
The Trump administration is reportedly putting new restrictions on nonprofit organizations that would bar them from helping undocumented immigrants affected by natural disasters.
The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is "now barring states and volunteer groups that receive government funds from helping undocumented immigrants" while also requiring these groups "to cooperate with immigration officials and enforcement operations."
Documents obtained by the paper reveal that all volunteer groups that receive government money to help in the wake of disasters must not "operate any program that benefits illegal immigrants or incentivizes illegal immigration." What's more, the groups are prohibited from "harboring, concealing, or shielding from detection illegal aliens" and must "provide access to detainees, such as when an immigration officer seeks to interview a person who might be a removable alien."
The order pertains to faith-based aid groups such as the Salvation Army and Red Cross that are normally on the front lines building shelters and providing assistance during disasters.
Scott Robinson, an emergency management expert who teaches at Arizona State University, told The Washington Post that there is no historical precedent for requiring disaster victims to prove proof of their legal status before receiving assistance.
"The notion that the federal government would use these operations for surveillance is entirely new territory," he said.
Many critics were quick to attack the administration for threatening to punish nonprofit groups that help undocumented immigrants during natural disasters.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) lashed out at the decision to bar certain people from receiving assistance during humanitarian emergencies.
"When disaster hits, we cannot only help those with certain legal status," she wrote in a social media post. "We have an obligation to help every single person in need. This is unfathomable discrimination against immigrants that will cost our country lives."
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said that restrictions on faith-based groups such as the Salvation Army amounted to a violation of their First Amendment rights.
"Arguably the most anti-religious administration in history," he wrote. "Just nakedly hostile to those who wish to practice their faith."
Bloomberg columnist Erika Smith labeled the new DHS policy "truly cruel and crazy—even for this administration."
Author Charles Fishman also labeled the new policy "crazy" and said it looks like the Trump administration is "trying to crush even charity."
Catherine Rampell, a former columnist at The Washington Post, simply described the new DHS policy as "evil."
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