I was hoping ya might be able to produce even one specific incident where the United States directly condoned any atrocity 'in the name of God" ... whereas we are not a theocracy and our system of law specifically prohibits the establishment of an official national religion, the US cannot and does not do anything "in the name of God."
When Christians want to inject their religion, morals or beliefs into public policy and laws, they quickly and vociferously point to all those ancillary documents penned by the Founding Fathers, that go on and on about God and religion, as clear evidence that we are a nation founded on Christianity and we are a Christian Nation, despite the Constitution prohibiting us from officially establishing that fact.
"We have no state sponsored religion, but we are a Christian Nation nonetheless." That's what Christians say.
On the other hand, when the whole,
"We are a Christian Nation" thing doesn't exactly put Christians in a positive light, when it's not convenient or it doesn't serve their purpose from a PR perspective, Christians beat you over the head with the First Amendment saying we have no official national religion, distancing themselves and their religion from the things they don't want to accept responsibility for, at least publicly.
To ask for a specific example of where someone stood up and officially proclaimed,
"Here ye, here ye! To all who can hear my voice! We, the Government and the People of the United States do hereby officially condone the following atrocities we are about to commit, and we do so In The Name Of God," is an absurd straw man premise that I will not be sucked in to.
No political leader (and few religious ones) will publicly state we are in a Holy War and are fighting Islam in the Name of God. However, on the eve of the war in Iraq, President George W. Bush used the word "crusade" to describe the events to come. Thaaaaat's pretty close to an official declaration.
Then we have the 10th Special Forces Group, who emblazoned their Bradley Fighting Vehicles with Arabic lettering (so the locals could clearly read and understand it) the phrase:
A Special Forces Iraqi interpreter took to the roof, bullhorn in hand. The sun was setting. The Islamic call to prayer could be heard, then the crackle of the bullhorn with the interpreter answering the prayer call — in Arabic, then in English for the troops, insulting the prophet.
“Jesus kill Mohammed!” chanted the interpreter. “Jesus kill Mohammed!”
A head emerged from a window to answer, somebody fired on the roof, and the Special Forces man directed a response from an MK-19 grenade launcher. “Boom”. The head and the window and the wall around it disappeared.
“Jesus kill Mohammed!” Another head, another shot. Boom.
“Jesus kill Mohammed!” Boom.
In the distance, the static of AK fire and the thud of RPGs can be heard. He saw a rolling rattle of light that looked like a firefight on wheels. “Each time I go into combat I get closer to God.”
The Arabic writing on the vehicles?
JESUS KILL MOHAMMED
If that's not
"in God's name," I don't know what is.
Jesus killed Mohammed: The crusade for a Christian military
By Jeff Sharlet (Harper's Magazine, May 2009)
When an individual soldier commits a criminal act, that's on him. No reason to indict the entire Christian faith or the military as a whole.
When an individual US soldier commits a crime on US soil or against another US citizen, then it's on him. But when he commits a criminal act on foreign soil against a foreign national, and does so under the blanket representation of the People of the United States as a member of the US Military, then it's on us.
And because Christians lives their lives by the Word of God and everything they do is in God's name, when Christianity is infused into the military from the lowest grunt to
commanding officers at the highest levels so thoroughly that it becomes
a part of everything they do in their
daily military lives, then Christian faith and the military are absolutely culpable and should be indicted for perpetrating and perpetuating a Holy War.
Impugning the US military seems to be great sport amongst liberal Americans who enjoy full protection from that very same military. We owe a great debt of gratitude to all whom have served honorably. If one cannot acknowledge that, one lacks understanding.
A debt of gratitude doesn't give atrocities a free pass. Too many innocent civilians, Muslims in particular, have died where too many members of the military either killed them on purpose, or couldn't care less about it. That's an atrocity of Biblical proportions.
Christian fundamentalism, like all fundamentalisms, is a narcissistic faith, concerned most of all with the wrongs suffered by the righteous and the purification of their ranks. “Under the rubric of free speech and the twisted idea of separation of church and state,” reads a promotion for a book called Under Orders: A Spiritual Handbook for Military Personnel, by Air Force Lieutenant Colonel William McCoy, “there has evolved more and more an anti-Christian bias in this country.” In Under Orders, McCoy seeks to counter that alleged bias by making the case for the necessity of religion—preferably Christian—for a properly functioning military unit. Lack of belief or the wrong beliefs, he writes, will “bring havoc to what needs cohesion and team confidence.”
McCoy’s manifesto comes with an impressive endorsement: “_Under Orders _should be in every rucksack for those moments when Soldiers need spiritual energy,” reads a blurb from General David Petraeus, the senior U.S. commander in Iraq until last September, after which he moved to the top spot at U.S. Central Command, in which position he now runs U.S. operations from Egypt to Pakistan.
The U.S. Military is barred from enacting or supporting policies that advance, promote or endorse religion. Yet officer after officer ignores this directive. Don't get me started on the official proselytizing at the US Air Force Academy where
41% Of Non-Christian Air Force Cadets Cite Proselytizing despite the Air Force saying it no longer allows it, and at Lackland AFB and other military installations. Back in August of 2010 the
LA Times ran a story on the Pacific Ocean baptism of 29 Marines from Camp Pendleton. The story, titled
“Marines headed for Afghanistan baptized in ocean off Camp Pendleton,” which described a mass-baptism of marines from
Lt. Col. Lawrence Kaifesh’s 3rd Battalion unit as “part of
Operation Sword of the Spirit, a program meant to prepare the battalion for duty in the Taliban stronghold of Helmand province,” was immediately republished by the leading Jihadist website Ansar Al-Mujahideen, under the heading
“Crusaders Baptized Before Leaving For Afghanistan.”
The US government, its leaders and its military are made up of
We The People, and
We The People are doing things, both good and bad, in the name of God every day, often without an explicit declaration. To think the military (and by extension
We The People) isn't committing atrocities in the name of god, is astoundingly naive, especially when you consider that it's right there in front of you. The only way someone could consider the atrocities to be something other than atrocities, or to believe they aren't being carried out in God's name, would be those who think it is the
right,
just, and
proper thing to do, and that doing it in God's name is perfectly fine.
History indicates a large segment of the latter. When you have God on your side, you can justify, with extreme confidence, an awful lot.
