Does finding out that a top military intelligence official was sending Donald Rumsfeld briefings emblazoned with religious crusader talk about the invasion of Iraq, like “open the gates so that the righteous may enter” fit “the left’s narrative that the Iraq war must have been conceived with an ulterior motive — war for oil, war for Israel, war because Bush heard God’s voice in his head”?
uh, yeah.
Robert Draper of GQ has a searing profile of ex-Sec Def Rumsfeld and how he botched the 2003 war of choice against Iraq. It includes a description of Gen. Glen Shaffer’s daily briefings to Rumsfeld:
on the morning of Thursday, April 10, 2003, Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon prepared a top-secret briefing for George W. Bush. This document, known as the Worldwide Intelligence Update, was a daily digest of critical military intelligence so classified that it circulated among only a handful of Pentagon leaders and the president; Rumsfeld himself often delivered it, by hand, to the White House. The briefing’s cover sheet generally featured triumphant, color images from the previous days’ war efforts: On this particular morning, it showed the statue of Saddam Hussein being pulled down in Firdos Square, a grateful Iraqi child kissing an American soldier, and jubilant crowds thronging the streets of newly liberated Baghdad. And above these images, and just below the headline secretary of defense, was a quote that may have raised some eyebrows. It came from the Bible, from the book of Psalms: “Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him…To deliver their soul from death.â€
This mixing of Crusades-like messaging with war imagery, which until now has not been revealed, had become routine. On March 31, a U.S. tank roared through the desert beneath a quote from Ephesians: “Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.†On April 7, Saddam Hussein struck a dictatorial pose, under this passage from the First Epistle of Peter: “It is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men.â€(snip)
These cover sheets were the brainchild of Major General Glen Shaffer, a director for intelligence serving both the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the secretary of defense. In the days before the Iraq war, Shaffer’s staff had created humorous covers in an attempt to alleviate the stress of preparing for battle. Then, as the body counting began, Shaffer, a Christian, deemed the biblical passages more suitable. Several others in the Pentagon disagreed. At least one Muslim analyst in the building had been greatly offended; others privately worried that if these covers were leaked during a war conducted in an Islamic nation, the fallout—as one Pentagon staffer would later say—“would be as bad as Abu Ghraib.â€
But the Pentagon’s top officials were apparently unconcerned about the effect such a disclosure might have on the conduct of the war or on Bush’s public standing. When colleagues complained to Shaffer that including a religious message with an intelligence briefing seemed inappropriate, Shaffer politely informed them that the practice would continue, because “my seniorsâ€â€”JCS chairman Richard Myers, Rumsfeld, and the commander in chief himself—appreciated the cover pages…
No matter how you parse it — this is creepy. On one level it calls into question judgment. Why spend millions of dollars on cultural and religious sensitivity training and anthropologists to game out the war, if you are going to spit in everyone’s eye anyway? But even darker, it calls into question, again, the motivation behind the invasion and subsequent occupation of Mesopotamia.
And yes, Hot Air, it does call into question the very sanity of the operation. Bloggers there would prefer we pretend it was all about indulging the chief : “Proof that Don Rumsfeld was actually a closet crusader?” quips Allapundit. ” No, more like proof that Rumsfeld tried to speak Bush’s language in the early days of the war to give him strength as the first casualties were taken.”
We all have our crosses to bear.
UPDATE: Former aide to Rumsfeld said his boss disputes he “appreciated” religiously tinged briefing papers
you wonder why it’s taken this long for all this rumsfeld stuff to come out. he obviously had alot more to do with the disaster that was the bush adminstration than anyone had thought. We’ll see if it turns out to be true but it makes perfct sense
I remain completely shocked that any Americans would follow Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney into a war of choice. The educational, cultural and moral failures which must combine and multiply in order to produce a generation like that is very frightening.
More evidence that “all have sinned and come short of the glory of G-d.”
Lester Ness
Kunming
China
Many liars who label themselves followers of Christ claim to believe that one day they will meet Him face to face and reap the rewards of their virtue. Perhaps they should review Matthew 7:22,23 where Jesus says, “Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”
When Billy Graham, Jerry Falwel and their likes have always been frequent guests at the white house and white house often consulted them on matters of war.
I notice that most of the Scriptural quoting are from the Old Testament. It seems to be the case whenever “Christian Evangelicals” use Bibical quotes, it is almost always from the Old Testament. Always from Deuteronomy, Numbers, Isiah, etc.; rarely from the Gospels, Acts, etc. It is always the Ten Commandments, never the Beatitudes. Always the God of vengeance, never the one of forgiveness. Always the jealous God, never the message of Jesus of love and mercy. It is enough to give Christianity a bad name.
The Old Testament was the Bible of the New Testament writers. Only the New has eternal punishment. Both have always formed the Christian Bible.
Lester Ness
Kunming
China
Agreed, this is freighting stuff. Its right up there in a class with the women’s right’s religionists who want the war in Afghanistan converted into a crusade to force Western liberationist amorality on Muslims. Some of them were even enthusiastic about Obama’s announced escalation for this very reason. Here, instead of a report with a picture of a tank adorned with a quotation from scripture, one might envision a platoon of infantry knocking down the door to a Mosque and Barbara Boxer disembarking from a jeep in medical gear prepared to perform late term abortions. I fail to see any difference between the two, frankly.
I fail to see how reasons for war urged on Americans is the same as Bibles handed out at the end of a gun-barrel.
Oh, and it’s not “secularists” you want to fear. It’s “Secular-Humanists” and worst of all “Ethical culture”! Whenever some says “ethical” and “culture” in the same sentence I reach for my Taser. So should you. Or perhaps you are a fan of “American Idol” and “Dancing With the Stars.” In my day we looked at stars through telescopes, and did not deign to do the Black Bottom or Varsity drag with their fiery excrescences. These kids now-a-days! Why won’t they stay after class and learn how it goes?
Whenever I miss “Alfalfa Bill” Murray, all I have to do is turn to Anti-war.com.
Mooser,
“I fail to see how reasons for war urged on Americans is the same as Bibles handed out at the end of a gun-barrel.”
Perhaps if you tried to see the matter as condoms being handed out at the end of a gun barrel, or copies of “Heather Has Two Mommies”, instead of Bibles you’d grasp the equivalence I’m recommending to you, Mooser. I assure you, the Muslims see it that way. They see nothing at all benign about Western elitist amorality and neither do I, frankly. Its been as much of as curse to our people as it would be to theirs. I mean you haven’t had enough of people like Ellen at this point? The Afghans, Pakistanis, Iranians and Iraqis have. Wonder why?
Lots of secularists, whether Left, Right, up, down or sideways, don’t want to think religious nuttery can effect a modern day Western politician. They find Dispensationalism, the currently fashionable version of millenialism, to be distasteful, and prefer to believe it can’t be important, all evidence to the contrary. It’s not crazier than Marxism, just very different its assumptions and its conclusions.
Lester Ness
Kunming
China
“Gog and Magog”
In real history, Magog was a kingdom in what is today Turkey, probably the Phrygian kingdom. Gog was the king of Phrygia known to the Greeks as Gyges. Check out Edwin Yamauchi’s excellent _Foes from the Northern Frontiers_, which demonstrates that the invasion in Ezekiel was an invasion of Iran by Scythians from the steppes, well-known to Greek historians. I know Yamauchi rather well, and he is a big frog in the evangelical pond, but not a nut-case or an ignoramus.
Lester Ness
Kunming
China
Where do you get the idea that the job of the Army is to missionize or educate?? Armies kill people and break things!
Lester Ness
Kunming
China
I agree with John Lowell If Secularists can propagate their ‘theology of liberation’ so openly why can’t Christian soldiers propagate theirs? Their was another similar news item about Christian soldiers distributing Bible in Afghanistan. Why can’t they? No one is stopping Secularists from distributing their newspapers and magazines no matter how offensive they might look to an ordinary Afghan.
masmanz,
With all respect, I think you may have misunderstood me. Mine was a criticism of both kinds of proselytism, not a justification of one if the other is to be given latitude. Both ought to be forbidden in my view. A soldier serving in Afghanistan is there in service to the United States, as unconscionable as that may be when considered in light of the reptiles who have sent him there. This service defines the soldier’s entire presence there and acts as its context as it were. If he were in Afghanistan as a missionary that would be another matter entirely. Here, however, in an almost opportunistic way – and my personal experience with Evangelicals over the years would suggest that they are by no means above a certain opportunism – soldiers in service to the United States government, which in no way endorses the particular sectarian outlook of Evangelicals, seize upon this service in pursuit of an objective wholly apart from it. There is something dishonest and cheesy, something contrived, about such use of one’s service to country. An interesting piece concerning a not dissimilarly deceptive approach to Evangelical proselytism appeared at CounterPunch just last week:
http://www.counterpunch.org/brauchli05152009.html
How one is to see much of Jesus Christ in such manipulations escapes me.
Yet one is equally appalled at the all-too-easy expressions of support for military intervention in Muslim countries that come from arrogant and amoral western journalists hellbent upon assuring that no woman now living in them ever again wears a burka. How these sentiment differ in any way from those that informed the coerced conversions of American Indians by Christian missionaries in the 18th and 19th century I’ll never know.
Franklin Graham: Spiritual Carpetbagger
From Bosnia to Iraq, the Evangelical Christian Leader Has Long Seen Military Battlefields as His Personal Mission Field
Franklin Graham is a spiritual Carpetbagger and war profiteer who trades in souls. Those are near-fightin1 words for a Southern boy from Boone, North Carolina who delivered the invocation at President Bush’s 2001 Inauguration.
Like the Yankee Carpetbaggers who flocked to the South for political or financial advantage after the Civil War, Graham plans to go to Iraq in the wake of the current war to win Muslim souls.
Like the despised Carpetbaggers of yore, Graham plans to exploit the humanitarian crisis for his own calculating gain, by subjecting vulnerable Iraqis to his Faustian Christ-for-food program.
Graham, who has called Islam “a wicked religion”, views the US military and its wars in the Muslim world as the perfect vehicles for missionary work in the difficult “10/40 Window”. The 10/40 Window is evangelical Christian-speak for the rectangle with boundaries of latitudes 10 and 40 degrees north of the equator; encompassing most of the Muslim World.
Graham and his Samaritan’s Purse organization have a record of exploiting wars and preying on victims for their own missionary ends. They rode with IDF convoys into Lebanon during Israel’s 1982 invasion to reach Palestinian refugees, preached pretentiously to Kurds fleeing Saddam’s forces in 1991 and sheltered and proselytized young Bosnian Muslim girls who had been raped by Orthodox Christian Serbs.
A thought that struck Graham in the Spring of 1991 shortly before the Kurds were betrayed by America and slaughtered in droves by Saddam’s military is telling:
“What a time to preach the gospel to these people! America is number one with them right now. They’re eager to listen to anything we have to say!”
Graham and his group have repeatedly used the heightened vulnerability that war brings to target those in uniform, POWs, refugees, and civilians with physical assistance and “spiritual ammunition”.
“I think we need to do all we can to use [the US military] presence,” Graham urged his followers during the 1990 Operation Desert Shield , ” to share with the people of that region the faith that our nation was built on.”
During the Persian Gulf military build-up in 1990 and ensuing war in 1991, Graham made creative use of “embedded” fundamentalist Christian sympathizers in the chaplain corps, officer corps, and rank and file.
Under the Cover of Operation Dear Abby, in which the advice columnist urged Americans to write letters of encouragement to anonymous soldiers, Graham’s followers mailed over 200,000 Arabic-language Christian tracts to US troops based in Saudi Arabia.
“Let them know you are praying that God will protect them,” Graham instructed participants in his grassroots letter-writing campaign to send Christian tracts to Saudi Arabia. “Subtly drop the hint that while they are in Saudi Arabia, they may have an opportunity to share it with someone.”
http://www.counterpunch.org/cajee04112003.html
“….amoral western journalists hellbent upon assuring that no woman now living in them ever again wears a burka.”
Given the number of ugly people around, maybe more people ought to wear the burka. Every member of Congress, perhaps.
Lester Ness
Kunming
China
Uh — “two wrongs don’t make a right”? If it’s wrong for one group to proselytize at gunpoint, it’s wrong for all — even the ones who don’t call their religion by that name.
Because “all things are lawful but not all things are convenient.”
Lester Ness
Kunming
China
Soldiers are men under orders. They are not supposed to be missionaries, and probably can’t do it well, if they try. Could a Janissary persuade you to become a Muslim?
Lester Ness
Kunming
China
They can do it, but off-duty, OK? On duty, they have other duties.
Lester Ness
Kunming
China
Perhaps the most ironic tragedy in the long list of tragedies to befall Iraq in recent years and decades is that it was self-styled Christian Crusaders who brought about the worst disaster to ever befall the ancient Christian communities of Iraq.
self-styled Christian Crusaders see in wars as an oppertunity to convert people because they are easy for the picking since they lost homes,income,and family .
The original Crusades of the Middle Ages were also disastrous for the native Jewish and Christian population of the Holy Land and the Levant. just like the Bush Crusade has nearly eliminated Christians from Iraq. I guess it’s comforting to know that some things never change.
It is disheartening that the Muslims have not tried to protect and preserve their Christian neighbors in Iraq like the Muslim armies of the Middle Ages protected indigenous Christians and Jews from the Crusaders. Of course, the modern Arab world was already artificially divided and subject to the multifarious interests of Western imperialism even before the 2003 invasion/occupation, and hence they are much less able to defend themselves than the more unified and inpependent Middle East of 700 to 900 years ago.
Quite true. The last hundred years have been disastrous for the Assyrians and Chaldaeans. Modern nationalism has been their biggest problem.
Lester Ness
Kunming
China
Iraqi Christians are mostly Eastern Rite Catholics (Chaldeans). Bush’s type of born-again Protestant doesn’t think Catholics are real Christians. I doubt they have much respect for the Assyrians, mostly members of the Church of the East, either.
Lester Ness
Kunming
China
The invasion of Iraq was designed by Zionists, and the Old Testament is not Christian.
The Old Testament is definitely Christian.
Lester Ness
Kunming
China
Indeed! Not that the medieval crusaders didn’t massacre middle eastern Christians, either.
Lester Ness
Kunming
China
Oh big deal! Who cares? You might not want to hear this but the fact of the matter is that this country is over 85% Christian and it was FOUNDED by Christians ( John Jay our first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court was also the President of the American Bible Society). With the notable exception of Thomas Jefferson ( who was most likely a “deist” but not a Christian) all the founding fathers were Christian and they quoted Scripture often. So what if Bush and Or Cheney or Rumsfeld did the same?
I for one am a LOT more nervous about radical Muslims who quote blood thirsty passages of the Quran than I am about Christians quoting the Bible.
You may not want to hear this, but you are a coward.
HOW is he a coward?
Perhaps “fool” and “bigot” would be better words.
He is demagogue and an ideologue !
He is ruled by irrational fear.
The US was not founded on the Christian religion. So George Washington and John Adams, anyway.
Lester Ness
Kunming
China
Of course, if you were a Muslim in Iraq you’d be a LOT more nervous about radical Christians who quote blood thirsty (sic) passages of the Bible than you are about Muslims quoting the Quran. Especially when those Christians have already launched an aggressive war against your country and are daily killing Muslims who’ve never threatened America.
From the born-again point of view, one of the ironies of the war is that it will probably end up establishing Islam much more firmly in the US. WW II, Korea, Viet Nam, certainly established Buddhism much more firmly. Frankly, Islam would be a more serious competitor than Buddhism, because grass-roots Islam and grass-roots born-again Christianity are not very different in practice.
All the better known founders of the USA were Deists, that is to say, Unitarians. Anyway, why do the religious statistics of the USA justify invading Iraq or Afghanistan?
“I for one am a LOT more nervous about radical Muslims who quote blood thirsty passages of the Quran than I am about Christians quoting the Bible.”
Actually, the Koran and the Bible are pretty much the same thing.
Lester Ness
Kunming
China
I am not an expert in anyway. But I have read them both, It seems like the Koran in very old testimate, only with tons of extra rules thrown in. I wish I could read it in it’s original form, not just a penguin version. But then again I guess I could say the same about the bible.
As for bloodthurst, I didn’t think the Catholics could be outdone but now the evengelicals are giving it a try. John Hagee and his crue, that’s about as demented as you can get. I’m a Christian without a church, but as far as war goes I would almost rather be a Satinist, how many people have really been killed in Lucifers name?
Peace!
Brad,
Maybe this would help!
Towards Understanding the Quran
http://www.islamicstudies.info/tafheem.php?sura=1
Thanks, It was an interesting read.
Peace!
On the link above you can read every chapter by clicking on the chapter section,1,2,3….
This website is helful.
Guide to Your Qur’an
http://www.bookofsigns.org/2009/04/about-islam/
I was a bible scholar, at one point. A biblical archaeologist, anyway. The Koran and the Bible, both OT and NT, the Talmuds, all come out of the same tradition. The story of the boy Jesus bringing clay birds to life is in the Koran but also in one of the infancy gospels. (Early Christians wrote lots of books that are not in the New Testament.) The story of Satan rebelling because he didn’t want to kowtow to the body of Adam, before it was given life, is in both the Koran and the Midrash.
Claims that religion X is more violent or whatever than religion Y or that wars and massacres are because of religion are mostly bogus, by the way. There are lots of wars and atrocities in human history, and lots of excuses for them. At certain times and places, religion is one excuse, but there are lots of others. I think the real issue should be with violence.
Lester Ness
Kunming
China
Be critical, whatever you read, and especially of what you read on the Net. The Internet is a giant dungheap with a few pearls hidden in it.
Lester Ness
Kunming
China
I for one am a LOT more nervous about fundmantlist Christians in the US who are doing everything to bring about the end of the world because they have much more infulence in the US government,the military,on so many people than so called radical Muslims have in their countries.
It’s true that if fundies control the US, then they control nukes, too. Anyway, we can do more about trouble-makers in our own country than we can about trouble-makers abroad.
Lester Ness
Kunming
China
Tim R ,
Your “facts” confuse me, but I admire your confidence; you cite nonexistant facts with the certitude of a scholar.
Cheney quoted Scripture often? How did I miss that? And where do you get the notion that “this country is over 85% Christian”? I think, you are confusing a belief in God with being Christian. Actually, the fastest growing religious preferrance in America is atheism (no religion).
As for our founding fathers, one thing is for sure – they wanted nothing to do with a state sponsored religion. And, Jefferson was a Christian in the most narrowest definition – he modified his personal Bible by getting rid of everything except the actual words of Christ.
Lastly, the copy of the Quran that I read must have been also modified – there were fewer “blood thirsty” passages in it than the copy you obviously read.
Can you imagine the number of bricks that US fundies would sh*t if Jefferson’s Bible were republished today? Let alone printed up by the government and a copy given to each Congressman? Like with the first edition?
Lester Ness
Kunming
China
More verbal vomitus from a spokescreature of one of the benighted masses that calls itself “Christian,” but that wouldn’t recognize a passage out of the New Testament if it smacked it in the nose.
Thanks again, Timmy, for serving as a living example of why this nation is in its death throes – and for furnishing irrefutable proof that the Satan’s Soldier Constantine’s quest to co-opt and destroy real Christianity has finally succeeded after seventeen hundred years beyond even his wildest dreams.
The political regime may be in its death throes, but I doubt the country or the people will disappear. Civilizations and societies are much sturdier than most people think. China has survived Chairman Mao and the US will survive too.
Lester Ness
Kunming
China
I’m not worried about anyone quoting anything, but I am concerned about being killed. Lynching used to be real popular in the S. Baptist regions of the US, and I suspect that if assorted televangelists were to tell their followers “kill the heathen,” there would be ‘way too many who would obey. Don’t believe me? Read up on Cromwell and the Rule of the Saints, back in our colonial days.
Lester Ness
Kunming
China
Shakespeare said it best in Merchant of Venice, “Even the devil can quote scripture to his purposes.”
Rumsfeld didn’t quote from the Book of Mormon, but it seems he read the intelligence briefs with the same diamond-encrusted amazing Morm-O-Matic decoding spectacles Joseph Smith used.
I suspect J. Smith was several times as clever as Rummie. Not that that would be hard.
Lester Ness
Kunming
China
God must be talking to Obama, Biden, Billy’s wife, Pelosi and other torturers and exterminators of Muslims.
The war by bloodthirsty anglos against Islam is expanding with help of satraps and quislings in Pakistan.
This is news?
Lester Ness
Kunming
China
I can just imagine: some colonel goes to a village that’s been “droned” and talks to a survivor: “I’m real sorry we killed your daughter and the people at her wedding, but here’s a Bible to show you that Jesus loves you and so do we!!” How many people do you think will be converted?
Before the start of the Iraq War, Franklin Graham (son of Billy and celebrity muslim-hater) had a plan with his old pal George W. Bush. They were going to send food packages to Iraqis, once the country was over-run, each package to contain a tract, telling the survivors of the bombing campaign, etc., all about the love of Jesus. BBC World Service did a live interview with him and even tried to have a debate with an Iraqi Muslim, a heart surgeon working in the UK. The surgeon was non-plussed and only said that Muslims aleady knew all about Jesus, that he was one of them. Again,can you imagine anything more likely to make the name “Christian” to stink!?” Happily, they didn’t go through with it.
Lester Ness
Kunming
China
That’s the truly intriguing thing about these creatures: they really don’t want to “convert” anyone, just wipe them off the face of the Earth. I guess I just keep missing that passage in the Gospels or in Paul’s epistles where Christ commands his followers to just KILL certain groups of people rather than love them as brothers (even if they are enemies) or share the Word with them. OTOH, I’ve been looking for a copy of the Evangelical Bible for ages now (that’s the one that contains all these “missing” passages I can’t seem to locate in any other version of the Scriptures of which I have a copy), but just can’t seem to locate it in any “Christian” bookstore, so maybe that’s the version I need in order to become fully “informed.” Does anyone have an Amazon or Wycliffe link that has a copy for sale?
Lots of born-agains don’t actually read the Bible much, just listen to preachers talk about it. Lots keep a Bible in their house, as a sort of good-luck token, but reading it is another story.
Lester Ness
Kunming
China
These people were never Christians in the first place. Jesus Christ himself personally denied their kind and their actions many times during his ministry.
A Christian soldier is actually someone who goes to “spiritual” war and gladly lays down his life for his beliefs. It has nothing to do with the military, killing people or promoting one’s beliefs over another ones. It is strictly a metaphor. A military Crusader is actually the antithesis of this.
RE: “Onward, Christian Soldiers”
BUSH TOLD CHIRAC:“Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East”
FROM THE 03/06/09 ARTICLE “When God Spoke to Me”: …..During those private interviews, Jacque Chirac had purportedly confessed to the journalist some personal remarks regarding the faith of George W. Bush that seemed quite daunting. He told the journalist that the latter called him twice beseeching him basically, in the name of their common “spiritual faithâ€, i.e., “Christianityâ€, to join the collective effort of the coalition being formed to wage a preemptive war against Iraq. In his first telephonic call he reportedly said to Jacque Chirac: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East†and then added that “the biblical prophecies are being fulfilled ..
ENTIRE ARTICLE – http://www.palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=14890
Look, folks, either the poor schlubs in Afghanistan get those Bibles on the end of bayonets, or we will, when they come home and claim their “reward” for “saving” us from the Iraqis and Afghanis. I say keep ’em over there with the foreigners, I’m much more worried about my family.
Look, we got a kid in my hood who just got back from the Army. You know what he did with all the money he saved up? He bought equipment for a “Health Club” A “Health Club”? I saw those machines in the truck. He can’t fool me, he’s opening some kind of torture center.
Mooser, are you on dope or what? Wow,I feel dumber every time I read one of your postings. What exactly is your point?
Peace!
Sure, remove the Christian language, and put on AIPAC and – how shall I put this? – ‘similar’ groups’ language. That, at least, would more accurately reflect who makes U.S. foreign policy.
No, no, no, our mistakes are our own fault. If I go out tonight and get the clap, it’s not the fault of some guy in Tel Aviv. Ditto if GWB was thinking about the Rapture when he planned his invasion, it was his fault, not some Israeli’s. Israelis never understand Dispensationalism.
In any case, Cheney was undoubtedly thinking mostly of stealing the oil, Rummie of enriching himself via plundering and war profits, etc.
“Recent reports of atrocities committed by Israeli soldiers in the course of the intervention in Gaza have described the incitement of conscripts and reservists by military rabbis who characterized the battle as a holy war for the expulsion of non-Jews from Jewish land. The secular Israeli academic Dany Zamir, who first brought the testimony of shocked Israeli soldiers to light, has been quoted as if the influence of such extremist clerical teachings was something new. This is not the case.
I remember being in Israel in 1986 when the chief army “chaplain” in the occupied territories, Rabbi Shmuel Derlich, issued his troops a 1,000-word pastoral letter enjoining them to apply the biblical commandment to exterminate the Amalekites as “the enemies of Israel.” Nobody has recently encountered any Amalekites, so the chief educational officer of the Israeli Defense Forces asked Rabbi Derlich whether he would care to define his terms and say whom he meant. Rather evasively—if rather alarmingly—the man of God replied, “Germans.” There are no Germans in Judaea and Samaria or, indeed, in the Old Testament, so the rabbi’s exhortation to slay all Germans as well as quite probably all Palestinians was referred to the Judge Advocate General’s Office. Forty military rabbis publicly came to Derlich’s support, and the rather spineless conclusion of the JAG was that he had committed no legal offense but should perhaps refrain in the future from making political statements on the army’s behalf.
The problem here is precisely that the rabbi was not making a “political” statement. Rather, he was doing his religious duty in reminding his readers what the Torah actually says. It’s not at all uncommon in Israel to read discussions, featuring military rabbis, of quite how to interpret the following holy order from Moses, in the Book of Numbers, Chapter 31, Verses 13-18, as quoted from my 1985 translation by the Jewish Publication Society. The Israelites have just done a fairly pitiless job on the Midianites, slaughtering all of the adult males. But, says their stern commander-in-chief, they have still failed him.
http://www.slate.com/id/2214440/
Happily, most Israelis are far from religious! Israel is much more secular a society than the USA.
Not that secular nationalism can’t serve to excuse atrocities as well. Look at 20th century history.
Lester Ness
Kunming
China
“An ex-soldier convicted of raping and killing an Iraqi teen and murdering her family was spared the death penalty Thursday and will serve a life sentence after jurors couldn’t agree unanimously on a punishment…
In a March 2006 attack in Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, Green and three other soldiers went to the home of 14-year-old Abeer Qassim al-Janabi. Green shot and killed the teen’s mother, father and sister, then became the third soldier to rape the girl before killing her.
Green’s attorneys never denied Green’s involvement in the attack. Instead, they focused on trying to build a case that Green didn’t deserve the death penalty.
“I do think it gives him a chance to have some semblance of a life,” Doug Green said. “We’re grateful for that.”
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2009/05/19/onward-christian-soldiers/
How about Abeer?!How about her family!?
This from Texas the death penalty capital of the US!
Well, yes. Although life in prison might well be worse than death.
Lester Ness
Kunming
China
In Genesis and Ezekiel Gog and Magog are forces of the Apocalypse who are prophesied to come out of the north and destroy Israel unless stopped. The Book of Revelation took up the Old Testament prophesy:
“And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle … and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.”
Bush believed the time had now come for that battle, telling Chirac:
“This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins”.
The story of the conversation emerged only because the Elysée Palace, baffled by Bush’s words, sought advice from Thomas Römer, a professor of theology at the University of Lausanne. Four years later, Römer gave an account in the September 2007 issue of the university’s review, Allez savoir. The article apparently went unnoticed, although it was referred to in a French newspaper.
The story has now been confirmed by Chirac himself in a new book, published in France in March, by journalist Jean Claude Maurice. Chirac is said to have been stupefied and disturbed by Bush’s invocation of Biblical prophesy to justify the war in Iraq and “wondered how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs”.
In the same year he spoke to Chirac, Bush had reportedly said to the Palestinian foreign minister that he was on “a mission from God” in launching the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and was receiving commands from the Lord.
There can be little doubt now that President Bush’s reason for launching the war in Iraq was, for him, fundamentally religious. He was driven by his belief that the attack on Saddam’s Iraq was the fulfilment of a Biblical prophesy in which he had been chosen to serve as the instrument of the Lord.
http://www.counterpunch.org/hamilton05222009.html
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