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America's Holy Warriors
By Chris Hedges
Truthdig.com
Sunday 31 December 2006
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."
The politicization of the military, the fostering of the belief that
violence must be used to further a peculiar ideology rather than defend
a democracy, was on display recently when Air Force and Army generals
and colonels, filmed in uniform at the Pentagon, appeared in a
promotional video distributed by the Christian Embassy, a radical
Washington-based organization dedicated to building a "Christian America."
The video, first written about by Jeff Sharlet in the December issue of
Harper's Magazine and filmed shortly after 9/11, has led the Military
Religious Freedom Foundation to raise a legal protest against the
Christian Embassy's proselytizing within the Department of Defense. The
video was hastily pulled from the Christian Embassy website and was
removed from YouTube a few days ago under threats of copyright enforcement.
Dan Cooper, an under secretary of Veterans Affairs, says in the video
that his weekly prayer sessions are "more important than doing the job."
Maj. Gen. Jack Catton says that his being an adviser to the Joint Chiefs
of Staff is a "wonderful opportunity" to evangelize men and women
setting defense policy. "My first priority is my faith," he says.
"I
think it's a huge impact.... You have many men and women who are seeking
God's counsel and wisdom as they advise the chairman [of the Joint
Chiefs] and the secretary of defense."
Col. Ralph Benson, a Pentagon chaplain, says in the video: "Christian
Embassy is a blessing to the Washington area, a blessing to our capital;
it's a blessing to our country. They are interceding on behalf of people
all over the United States, talking to ambassadors, talking to people in
the Congress, in the Senate, talking to people in the Pentagon, and
being able to share the message of Jesus Christ in a very, very
important time in our world is winning a worldwide war on terrorism.
What more do we need than Christian people leading us and guiding us,
so, they're needed in this hour."
The group has burrowed deep inside the Pentagon. It hosts weekly Bible
sessions with senior officers, by its own count some 40 generals, and
weekly prayer breakfasts each Wednesday from 7 to 7:50 a.m. in the
executive dining room as well as numerous outreach events to, in the
words of the organization, "share and sharpen one another in their quest
to bridge the gap between faith and work."
If the United States falls into a period of instability caused by
another catastrophic terrorist attack, an economic meltdown or a series
of environmental disasters, these paramilitary forces, protected and
assisted by fellow ideologues in the police and military, could swiftly
abolish what is left of our eroding democracy. War, with the huge
profits it hands to businesses and right-wing interests that often help
bankroll the Christian right, could become a permanent condition. And
the thugs with automatic weapons, black uniforms and wraparound
sunglasses who appeared on street corners in Baghdad and New Orleans
could appear on streets across the U.S. Such a presence could paralyze
us with fear, leaving us unable to question or protest the closed system
and secrecy of an emergent totalitarian state and unable to voice dissent.
"The Bush administration has already come close to painting our current
wars as wars against Islam - many in the Christian right apparently have
this belief," Ratner said. "If these wars, bad enough as imperial
wars,
are fought as religious wars, we are facing a very dark age that could
go on for a hundred years and that will be very bloody."
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