-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: May 3, 2007 7:19:50 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Fwd: "The Christian Taliban is Running the Department of
Defense"
"Kill everybody -- Let God sort 'em out!"
On Judgment Day?
Which, thanks to them, could be tomorrow.
Can you imagine a contingent of religious zealots, with their contempt
for secular values (and such manifestations of secular order as the
U.S.
Constitution) -- and with their zest for holy war -- in control of the
most potent fighting force and weaponry in human history? Is this
possible?
Well, said Weinstein, consider the 523rd Fighter Squadron, based at
Cannon Air Force Base, N.M., which calls itself The Crusaders, and
whose
emblem consists of a sword, four crosses and a medieval knight’s
helmet.
Check 'em out at: globalsecurity.org , which reports that the
payload on
the F-16s they fly consists of "a wide variety of conventional,
precision guided and nuclear weapons."
And listen once again to Commander-in-Chief Bush, speaking in 2003 to
Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, according to the Israeli
newspaper Ha'aretz: "God told me to strike at al-Qaida and I struck
them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and
now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East."
If this is a religious war -- a "clash of civilizations," waged by
competing agents of God's will -- victory may be indistinguishable
from
Armageddon. God help the human race.
See what's free at AOL.com.
From: "Jim S." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: May 3, 2007 6:51:54 PM PDT
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
Subject: "The Christian Taliban is Running the Department of Defense"
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17642.htm
THE CRUSADERS
*"The Christian Taliban is Running the Department of Defense"*
By Robert Koehler
05/03/07
"ICH" -- Sixteen words may be all that stand right now between the
apparatus of government and the Founding Fathers' worst nightmare.
And those words are starting to give.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ..."
When George Bush, in the wake of 9/11, puffed himself into Richard
the Lionheart and declared he would lead the country in a "crusade"
against terrorism -- you know, crusade, as in slaughter of Muslim
infidels -- turns out ... oh, how awkward (if you’re on White House
spin duty) ... he may have been speaking literally.
What's certain, in any case, is that a lot of people in high and
low places within the Bush administration -- and in particular, the
military -- heard him literally, and regard the war on terror as a
religious war:
"The enemy has got a face. He's called Satan. He lives in Fallujah.
And we're going to destroy him," a lieutenant colonel, according to
a BBC reporter, said to his troops on the eve of the destruction of
that undefended city in post-election 2004.
"I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real
God and his was an idol," Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Jerry
Boykin notoriously boasted a few years back, speaking of a Muslim
warlord in Somalia. And by the way, George Bush is "in the White
House because God put him there."
And, of course, just the other day, Lt. Col. Ralph Kauzlarich, who
conducted the first official investigation into Pat Tillman's
death, opined that Tillman's family is only pestering the Army for
the, ahem, truth about how he died because their loved one, a non-
believer with no heavenly reward to reap, is now "worm dirt."
Until I read the newly published "With God on Their Side" (St.
Martin's Press), Michael Weinstein's disturbing account of anti-
Semitism at the U.S. Air Force Academy, I shrugged off each of
these remarks, and so much more, as isolated, almost comically
intolerant noises out of True Believer Land. Forgive them, Lord,
for they know not what they do ...
Now my blood runs cold. Weinstein, a 1977 graduate of the Academy
and former assistant general counsel in the Reagan administration,
and a lifelong Republican, has devoted the last several years of
his life to battling what he has come to regard as a fundamentalist
takeover of the Academy, turning it, in effect, into a taxpayer-
supported Evangelical institution. He charges that the separation
of church and state is rapidly vanishing at the school, which
routinely promotes sectarian religious events, tolerates the
proselytizing of uniquely vulnerable new recruits and, basically,
conflates evangelical interests and the national interest.
If you think this is just a fight over some abstract principle,
with ramifications only for atheist, Jewish, Buddhist, and other
cadets who may be "offended" by fundamentalist God talk, I urge you
to check out Weinstein's book or website. He documents a chilling
phenomenon: The whole U.S. military, up and down the chain of
command, is coming to be dominated by members of a small,
characteristically intolerant sliver of Christianity who truly
regard themselves as Christian soldiers, on a God-appointed mission
to harvest souls and battle evil.
Weinstein, whose family tradition of national service is pretty
impressive, does not do battle lightly with those who now run his
alma mater. One of his sons is a recent graduate of the Air Force
Academy and the other is still a cadet there. The fact that both of
them endured anti-Semitic harassment initially spurred him to take
action. But this goes deeper than disrespect for other faiths. The
attitude he has encountered in his attempt to hold the institution,
and the rest of the military, accountable smacks of a coup: "The
Christian Taliban is running the Department of Defense," he told
me. "It inundates everything."
Can you imagine a contingent of religious zealots, with their
contempt for secular values (and such manifestations of secular
order as the U.S. Constitution) -- and with their zest for holy war
-- in control of the most potent fighting force and weaponry in
human history? Is this possible?
Well, said Weinstein, consider the 523rd Fighter Squadron, based at
Cannon Air Force Base, N.M., which calls itself The Crusaders, and
whose emblem consists of a sword, four crosses and a medieval
knight’s helmet. Check 'em out at: globalsecurity.org , which
reports that the payload on the F-16s they fly consists of "a wide
variety of conventional, precision guided and nuclear weapons."
And listen once again to Commander-in-Chief Bush, speaking in 2003
to Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, according to the
Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz: "God told me to strike at al-Qaida and
I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which
I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle
East."
If this is a religious war -- a "clash of civilizations," waged by
competing agents of God's will -- victory may be indistinguishable
from Armageddon. God help the human race.
~~~
[Robert Koehler, an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist, is an
editor at Tribune Media Services and nationally syndicated writer.
You can respond to this column at: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ]
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