That the U. S.
military was teaching its officers at the Joint
Forces Staff
College that it was necessary to
destroy the Muslim religion, including nuking Mecca
and Medina , is
horrific in its utter disregard for human life and for the unrelenting chaos it
would unleash in a world containing 1.4 billion Muslims. The fact that this was
being taught to the officers who will comprise the next generation of military
leaders evidences a military clearly out of control or conspiratorial at the
highest level.
That the recommended target was not a nation or other
political entity, but Muslims themselves and hence the Islamic religion,
demonstrates that this is a proposal for a massive, global holy war. But how
did such a proposal reach this level of advocacy in the U.S. military?
Jeff Sharlet in an article titled Christianity In the Military: Are Chaplains Becoming Increasingly
Fundamentalist? on Huffington Post describes the process of biased selection
and promotion by which the military's
chaplaincy has been taken over by Christian fundamentalists. The chaplaincy, which
for most of its existence has been apportioned to religions and their
denominations by percentage of the nation's population, is now about 80%
fundamentalist. The chaplains themselves previously had a liberal university or
college education along with their seminary training. Many chaplains now come
from bible colleges and have limited background in world and cultural history.
The chaplaincy was intended to serve the religious needs of soldiers of the
various denominations. Fundamentalist chaplains view their task as converting
soldiers to their religious views, indeed, Sharlet points out that they regard
the military as a mission field. Sharlet recounts the experience of one
chaplain who protested this Christian fundamentalist bias in the chaplaincy and
was forced from the chaplaincy.
Seymour Hersh, the highly regarded New Yorker Magazine investigative
reporter, in an article titled Seymour
Hersh Unleashed, which covers Hersh's speech to the American University campus
in Qatar, is quoted as saying "Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who
headed JSOC before briefly becoming the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and
his successor, Vice Adm. William McRaven, as well as many within JSOC,
"are all members of, or at least supporters of, Knights of Malta." The JSOC is the Joint Services Operations Command.
Hersh also said that much of the mind set among the higher echelons
of military leadership is that of the Crusades in which they are defending Christians
against Muslims.
Finally, Jeff Sharlet in a Harper's Magazine article
titled Jesus Killed Mohammed: The Crusade
for a Christian Military, records, among other things, the bizarre practice
of some Christian soldiers stationed near a small Afghanistan village of painting
"Jesus Kill Mohamed" on the
front of their Bradley Fighting Vehicles, broadcasting this taunting slogan
with a bullhorn from the roof of their compound, an erstwhile public school,
and then charging out into the night to shoot angry Muslims who fire at them
from the windows of their homes.
In all this it should not be forgotten that G. W.
Bush, when launching the war against Iraq
It is evident that a powerful group or groups of
fundamentalist Christians are intent upon taking over our government,
especially its military, and using it to further the global conquest of
Christianity. The dimensions of the holy war that will result are staggering,
especially considering the nuclear and biological weapons now available. In my judgment
the so-called "War on Terror" is but the first overt step in this
process. The gravity of the situation requires that we make a vigorous effort
to make this a public issue demanding thorough government investigation,
transparently carried out and reported. There will be a deafening cry of an attack
on religious freedom, but Christian fundamentalists have made their religious
beliefs a threat to our society and through our society to the rest of the
world. There is already a good deal of information available on the web and in books
by Susan Jacoby, Jeff Sharlet and Anne C. Loveland.
Suggested reading on this topic:
Books:
The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby.
The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of
American Power by Jeff Sharlet.
American Evangelicals and the U.S. Military, 1942-1993 by Anne C.
Loveland.
Articles:
Jesus Killed Mohammed: The Crusade for a Christian Military
by Jeff Sharlet published in Harper's Magazine
may be found at http://harpers.org/archive/2009/05/0082488
The U.S.
military's 'anti-Islam classes.' This is a video showing some of the slides Lt.
Col. Matthew A. Dooley showed in his course urging the nuking of Mecca and Medina .
It can be found on Al Jazeera at http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestoryamericas/2012/05/2012512105527585215.html
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