US Army Special Forces Officially Recruit for "Mission for God"
by Alternet on 31-01-2015
| BRussells Tribunal |
“STOP! READ! LOOK AT SHOCKING PHOTO! You Will Just NOT Believe This Military Stupidity: U.S. Army Special Forces Officially Recruit for ‘Mission For God’
Image Copyright 2015, Military Religious Freedom Foundation. All Rights Reserved
"That the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavouring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time."
(2nd paragraph, Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, composed by Thomas Jefferson in 1777, enacted into Virginia law on January 16, 1786)
"Get this U.S. Army and get it well: The United States armed forces may surely fight and kill "for Country" and our legitimate national security interests. But our troops do NOT fight and kill for ANYONE'S "God" or related supernatural deity. In the preparation of this Op Ed, I exposed a number of senior active duty U.S. military leaders to the photo of this poster, including several active duty chaplains. To a man and woman, they were collectively ALL aghast that it was actually real and being used to lure young Americans into the Army's special forces."
C'mon, seriously? That freaking picture just says it ALL.
What an abysmal affront to "National Religious Freedom Day" which is to be celebrated tomorrow, January 16, 2015.
Having headed the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) for nearly a decade, we've been exposed to all sorts of unholy, unconstitutional cocktails inextricably mixing the intoxicating aroma of fundamentalist religion (almost always a wretched thing called "Dominion Christianity") with the dense and deep-pocketed foundations of the State. However, even WE at MRFF were hardly prepared for the stunning, unconstitutional disgrace we confirmed from client reports as recently as yesterday.
There it was; an in-your-face, proselytizing, U.S. Army officially-approved (goarmy.com) recruiting poster on prominent display at an Armed Forces Career Center in Phoenix, Arizona. That outrageously ghastly graphic encapsulates precisely that which we've been ceaselessly calling the attention of the American people to for all this time. The poster astoundingly displays the shoulder tabs of the U.S. Special Forces (i.e. Green Berets), Rangers and Airborne troopers accompanied by the seethingly sectarian slogan "ON A MISSION FOR BOTH GOD AND COUNTRY."
(Wait a damn minute. Phoenix? Arizona? Army Special Forces? "Mission For......God"? My first thoughts were of Pat Tillman.)
Excuse me? "GOD and country?" Ahem, well, just WHOSE "god" might that be, U.S. Army?
Let me fairly go out on a limb here and gamble that it is neither the god of Islam nor the god(s) of Hinduism? No way it's Buddhist, Sikh, Shinto, Native American Spiritualist or The Flying Spaghetti Monster. I believe it's a very safe bet to presume that the Army is pretending to refer to the "Judeo-Christian" god, and by THAT worn out and duplicitously deceptive label, of course, I really mean what the Army REALLY means; only the "Christian" god, Jesus. Unfortunately, as the experts will tell you, there are literally multiple tens of thousands of distinctly separate denominations of Christianity in existence. So, once again, the question is begged as to exactly WHICH "God" the U.S. Army Special Forces are boldly, publicly and eagerly recruiting for?
The military chaplaincy's motto is "Pro Deo et Patria" (Latin, meaning "For God and Country") but, hey, that's for noncombatant chaplains. THIS revolting Army recruiting poster is VERY specifically designed for the elite Special Forces universe of Green Berets, Rangers, Delta Force, Airborne etc. These recruiting targets populate the far, far end of the Army universe, indeed light years away, from the recruitment of non-weapons carrying chaplains.
It has consistently been MRFF's experience through the many years that there is always a greater population of Constitution-breaching, fundamentalist/Dominionist Christians in the special forces of the DoD; Navy SEALs, Air Force PJs, USMC Force Recon and the Army's designated recruiting targets of this very poster. (Remember the international controversy about those VERY same words being spoken by the Navy SEAL who shot Bin Laden in conjunction with "Geronimo, Geronimo"?)
Even the Pope himself has decried on multiple occasions the reprehensible, medieval idea that one can kill in God's name – even going so far as to say that the concept, "simply, is blasphemy". Yet here we have the most lethal killing machine devised in the history of humankind proudly extolling the virtue of what can only be described as "Holy Wars."
This unconstitutional catastrophe comes at a time, no less, when world leaders as diverse as Mahmoud Abbas and Benjamin Netanyahu are marching together, arm in arm, in Paris and uniting behind the values of secular respect, religious tolerance, freedom of the press and all related basic civil rights. However, this incomprehensibly STUPID, and brazenly sectarian poster of American religious dominance at Marine Corps Recruiting Substation Paradise Valley universally destroys any credibility that the United States government is wholly devoted to these very basic democratic and human values.
Get this U.S. Army and get it well: The United States armed forces may surely fight and kill "for Country" and our legitimate national security interests. But our troops do NOT fight and kill for ANYONE'S "God" or related supernatural deity. In the preparation of this Op Ed, I exposed a number of senior active duty U.S. military leaders to the photo of this poster, including several active duty chaplains. To a man and woman, they were collectively ALL aghast that it was actually real and being used to lure young Americans into the Army's special forces.
In fact, this Poster of Shame lends incredible and irrefutable credence to what MRFF has been insisting from our very inception, which is that there exists a brutal, sectarian, Christian fundamentalist reign exercised within the United States Armed Forces, constituting a de factoDominionist fifth column. In fact, it's often so brazen that it's not even very "fifth columny" anymore. Facts have borne out this assertion, in absolute spades. For example, we've seen the distribution of millenarian Left Behind video games to active-duty troops serving in Iraq. We've heard the anguished cries of servicemembers forced to attend hokey "Christian Rock" concerts on pain of "lockdown" and other forms of military retribution. We've seen the so-called "Jesus Rifles" which MRFF blew the whistle on, where Trijicon riflescopes were inscribed with specific New Testament Bible references engraved into the metal casings on nearly a million high-powered rifle sights. Oh, and if "Jesus Rifles" isn't enough of a bafflingly bizarre and contemptible example, there was the "Jesus Loves Nukes" mandatory indoctrination coursethat was used to train USAF nuclear missile launch officers at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Time and time again, we've been forced to go toe-to-toe with the United States Air Force Academy administration over its practically countless, savage offenses against the United States Constitution. Likewise, a recurring battle of ours has been one waged against the persistent usage of "Crusader" symbolism,evoking the brutal Western Christian colonization and merciless subjugation of Muslim nations during the Middle Ages. Our foundation submitted a very comprehensive accompanying document when I testified before the House Armed Services Committee in the United States Congress this past November. Our MRFF testimony unequivocally shows that all of the unconstitutional wickedness above is just a mere taste, indeed only the nuanced tip of a very large and exceedingly precarious iceberg of colossal, national security dangers.
Does our aggressive fight against fundamentalist Christian extremism, triumphalism and supremacy in our nation's armed forces, as so vividly displayed in this official Army recruiting poster, infuriate those who promote such bloody rancor and discord? Always and of course. Comes with the territory. You can decide whether it's worth it because we at MRFF already have decided that it most assuredly IS.
Yet here we find ourselves, ignominiously once again, faced with a disgracefully sectarian message of religious exceptionalism bearing the official U.S. Army stamp of approval. This painfully pathetic poster will no doubt serve, generally, as a red flag of limitless propaganda and, more specifically, as a recruiting bonanza of unbridled proportions for precisely those villains whom the world has united against in Paris, i.e. the Salafi-Jihadists such as Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Islamic State, and myriad other backwards fundamentalists. As if immeasurably emboldening our Islamic enemies wasn't bad enough, this deplorable poster will enrage our Islamic allies and eviscerate our own service members' unit cohesion, good order, morale, discipline and military readiness.
Long story short, the poster at the Phoenix armed forces recruitment hub is an absolutely abominable slap in the face of everyone who's ever taken the time to digest, understand, and swear the servicemembers' sacred oath to protect and defend the United States Constitution, let alone those who made the ultimate sacrifice for the values, rights, and protections contained therein.
And speaking of "ultimate sacrifice," I wonder what Pat Tillman would have said about that stinking poster of unconstitutional malfeasance in his beloved city and state of Phoenix, Arizona? Somehow, I don't think he'd agree that he was on a "Mission For God" when he courageously gave his life for his country in combat as a proud member of the U.S. Army's Special Forces.
Unfortunately, on the other hand, what might another Arizonan do about this; Senator John McCain, the brand new Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee? Don't hold your breath for him to lift a finger of even tepid protest against this recruiting poster. If anything, he'd likely applaud.
The world trembles in shock over the horrific crimes of murderous, fundamentalist, Islamic religiosity in one part of the globe. What of our own House here in America? Here in the States, we should spare no effort to aggressively investigate and ferociously uproot the vast legions of fundamentalist (Dominionist), Christian extremists who seek to smother our OWN secular, constitutional, American republic in the blood-drenched, theocratic "Crusader" memes of a once dark and distant era.
Sadly today, given our enormous arsenal of WMDs, even darker. And not so "distant" anymore.
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