By Chris Hedges, 12/31/06, originally published on TruthDig.com
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.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.
military. His employees, in an act as cynical as it is deceitful, take an
oath of loyalty to the Constitution. These mercenary units in
“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
undersecretary 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.”