America’s Holy Warriors (burrowed deep inside the Pentagon)

America’s Holy Warriors
by Chris Hedges

Editor’s note: The former New York Times Mideast Bureau chief warns that the radical Christian right is coming dangerously close to its goal of co-opting the country’s military and law enforcement.

The drive by the Christian right to take control of military chaplaincies, which now sees radical Christians holding roughly 50 percent of chaplaincy appointments in the armed services and service academies, is part of a much larger effort to politicize the military and law enforcement. This effort signals the final and perhaps most deadly stage in the long campaign by the radical Christian right to dismantle America’s open society and build a theocratic state. A successful politicization of the military would signal the end of our democracy.

During the past two years I traveled across the country to research and write the book “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.” I repeatedly listened to radical preachers attack as corrupt and godless most American institutions, from federal agencies that provide housing and social welfare to public schools and the media. But there were two institutions that never came under attack—the military and law enforcement. While these preachers had no interest in communicating with local leaders of other faiths, or those in the community who did not subscribe to their call for a radical Christian state, they assiduously courted and flattered the military and police. They held special services and appreciation days for all four branches of the armed services and for various law enforcement agencies. They encouraged their young men and women to enlist or to join the police or state troopers. They sought out sympathetic military and police officials to attend church events where these officials were lauded and feted for their Christian probity and patriotism. They painted the war in Iraq not as an occupation but as an apocalyptic battle by Christians against Islam, a religion they regularly branded as “satanic.” All this befits a movement whose final aesthetic is violence. It also befits a movement that, in the end, would need the military and police forces to seize power in American society.

One of the arguments used to assuage our fears that the mass movement being built by the Christian right is fascist at its core is that it has not yet created a Praetorian Guard, referring to the paramilitary force that defied legal constraints, made violence part of the political discourse and eventually plunged ancient Rome into tyranny and despotism. A paramilitary force that operates outside the law, one that sows fear among potential opponents and is capable of physically silencing those branded by their leaders as traitors, is a vital instrument in the hands of despotic movements. Communist and fascist movements during the last century each built paramilitary forces that operated beyond the reach of the law.

And yet we may be further down this road than we care to admit. Erik Prince, the secretive, mega-millionaire, right-wing Christian founder of Blackwater, the private security firm that has built a formidable mercenary force in Iraq, champions his company as a patriotic extension of the U.S. military. His employees, in an act as cynical as it is deceitful, take an oath of loyalty to the Constitution. These mercenary units in Iraq, including Blackwater, contain some 20,000 fighters. They unleash indiscriminate and wanton violence against unarmed Iraqis, have no accountability and are beyond the reach of legitimate authority. The appearance of these paramilitary fighters, heavily armed and wearing their trademark black uniforms, patrolling the streets of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, gave us a grim taste of the future. It was a stark reminder that the tyranny we impose on others we will one day impose on ourselves.

“Contracting out security to groups like Blackwater undermines our constitutional democracy,” said Michael Ratner, the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights. “Their actions may not be subject to constitutional limitations that apply to both federal and state officials and employees—including First Amendment and Fourth Amendment rights to be free from illegal searches and seizures. Unlike police officers they are not trained in protecting constitutional rights and unlike police officers or the military they have no system of accountability whether within their organization or outside it. These kind of paramilitary groups bring to mind Nazi Party brownshirts, functioning as an extrajudicial enforcement mechanism that can and does operate outside the law. The use of these paramilitary groups is an extremely dangerous threat to our rights."


http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views06/0103-59.htm

Many of the "rank-and-file" Christians want nothing to do with holy terrorism, and are beginning to defect en masse. I know several such Christians, and they're very disillusioned with the Radical Right. They don't hate gays, they don't think war is a "Good Thing", they don't "believe in" whipping their children, they don't like the neurotically heavy emphasis on gender roles, they support taking care of the poor and destitute, and they are questioning the idea that "God is a Republican" more loudly these days.

I know that Fundamentalist Christians are not the most beloved people here at DU, but it would be a good idea to look beyond the movement and see the individual. A lot of them are becoming substantially liberal. They read their Bibles and see more injunctions against eating pork and shrimp than against "sodomy". They know that Jesus said "blessed are the peacemakers", not "kick Iraq's ass", and have spent a little time meditating on the commandment "bear no false witness against your neighbor", including Saddam Hussein. And Hillary Clinton. And John Kerry.

Nobody likes being lied to, hoodwinked, played, and kicked to the curb. This may present our biggest opportunity for recruitment and outreach in decades, and we'd be fools not to welcome our confused, excluded Fundamentalist and Evangelical neighbors.

In fact, if we want to be the mainstream in America, then we must speak for the painfully shorn sheep of Christianity. After all, Moloch is tiring of pretending to be kind to the followers of the gentle Nazarene. It misses the taste of blood, and wants some new easy pickins'.

--p!