Reply #7: Christianist fascism in the Air Force

[seemslikeadream]

Democracy Now: American Fascists Pt. 1

Democracy Now: American Fascists Pt. 2

Chris Hedges's new book examines how Christian dominionists are seeking absolute power and a Christian state. According to Hedges, the movement bears a strong resemblance to the young fascist movements in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and '30s. Hedges is the former New York Times Middle East bureau chief and author of "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning."





http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/print_friendly.php?p=genera_tim_rile_070906_nuclear_insanity_ord.htm



http://ianmasters.org/ian_masters_021807_80.mp3 (direct link to mp3)

http://www.ianmasters.org/archives.html (site link - scroll down to Feb. 18)

Chris Hedges on the religious right in the United States. Mr. Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning veteran war correspondent, who now writes about religion and politics. He is a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and is the author of the just published "American Fascists: the Christian Right and the War on America." In this book, Hedges, who grew up in rural parishes in upstate New York where his father was a Presbyterian pastor, attacks the Christian fundamentalist movement from the point of view of a believer, as someone steeped in the Bible and Christian tradition. He points to the hundreds of members of Congress with high approval ratings from the three most influential Christian Right advocacy groups as one of many signs that the movement is burrowing deep inside the American government, in order to subvert it. The movement's call to dismantle the wall between church and state and the intolerance it preaches against all who do not conform to its warped vision of a Christian America are pumped into tens of millions of American homes through Christian television and radio stations, as well as reinforced through the curriculum in Christian schools. He shows that the movement's yearning for apocalyptic violence and its assault on dispassionate, intellectual inquiry are laying the foundation for an unrecognizable fundmentalist America. His thesis: we face an imminent threat. Chris Hedges earlier books are highly acclaimed. He is the author of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, What Every Person Should Know about War and another religiously themed book, Losing Moses on the Freeway.. He has worked for various publications including the Christian Science Monitor and the Dallas Morning News. He was part of the New York Times team that shared the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for global terrorism coverage. Hedges has written extensively about his experiences on the front lines of war. He has reported about his experiences in Sarajevo, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Colombia, the Middle East and other places around the world. He is lecturer in the Council of the Humanities and Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University. He received the 2002 Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism. (In a 2003 Commencement address at Rockford College in Rockford, Ill., Hedges raised the intense ire of audience members when he spoke out against the war in Iraq. Many regard Hedges as a "philosopher of the experience of war." According to Hedges, the experience of being in a war zone, where there is very little distinction between life and death, fills a person with a sense of "meaning" and brings him to a "high" that cannot be experienced so strongly any other way, producing a kind of addiction.)



http://ningens-blog.blogspot.com/2007/01/why-chris...

It's long and rambling, but it links to some stuff about Christianist fascism in the Air Force and also links to articles by Antipas Ministries, which is an interesting evangelical website that heavily criticizes right wing evangelicals for basically dealing with the devil.



http://militaryreligiousfreedom.org/

Michael L. Weinstein, founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, wrote "With God on Our Side: One Man's War Against an Evangelical Coup in America's Military."

click on Public Forum and you'll see this blog post from May:

Saturday, May 26, 2007
FOR MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND
FROM MICK FARREN BLOG POSTING

I’ve been aware of various news reports concerning Fundamentalist Christians making increasing efforts to turn the US Military into a “Christian” fighting force, but other things, some epic, some trivia, have been absorbing my attention, but when activists and Air Force veterans like Michael Weinstein make statements like the one below I kinda think it’s time to take notice. I mean, I don’t feel exactly comfortable with the idea that megaton loaded nuclear bombers are flying around with crews who believe the Book of Revelation is going become reality anytime.

“The Christian Taliban is running the Department of Defense, It inundates everything. Can you imagine a contingent of religious zealots, with their contempt for secular values (and such manifestations of secular order as the U.S. Constitution) — and with their zest for holy war — in control of the most potent fighting force and weaponry in human history? Is this possible? Well, said Weinstein, consider the 523rd Fighter Squadron, based at Cannon Air Force Base, N.M., which calls itself The Crusaders, and whose emblem consists of a sword, four crosses and a medieval knight’s helmet. They fly F-16s with payloads consisting of “a wide variety of conventional, precision guided and nuclear weapons.” And listen once again to Commander-in-Chief Bush, speaking in 2003 to Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz: “God told me to strike at al-Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If this is a religious war — a “clash of civilizations,” waged by competing agents of God’s will — victory may be indistinguishable from Armageddon. God help the human race.”


Here's another blog post that talks about the AF:



Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Because I love America: Reagan's Assistant General Counsel, Mikey Weinstein Speaks Out. with God on our side
By Mikey Weinstein

When I began asking questions about what I saw going on at Colorado Springs in 2004 I never expected that the inquiry would lead me to the horrifying conclusion that our country had been taken over by people who have used our own freedoms to enslave us. But that is what happened. When I began I, like most people, was focused on the personal. I believed that what was happening at the United States Air Force Academy, the harassment of cadets and staff with unwanted evangelism, was limited in scope. As the months passed, however, I found myself forced to constantly reassess my basic assumptions. The logic of events was stark and undeniable. Promises of an open inquiry were ignored; decent and courageous people like former Air Force Chaplin MeLinda Morton were intentionally muzzled to ensure the truth would not be heard and the wrongs righted.

As a Republican and an Academy graduate I find myself in head on conflict with my own oath to protect the Constitution. As a Jew I confronted a situation through ears that still hear the cries of my people walking silently into the brick buildings that would reduce them to ash. I cannot stand still and let that happen to my country.

You know about the law suit we filed; that suit took on the issue directly, based on the1st Amendment Right of members of the military to choose their own spiritual paths, unhampered by those placed in positions of authority and on the basis of the Establishment Clause and Clause Three of Article Six, which prohibit the existence of a national religion. That is what has happened. America now has a national religion whose tenets extend to a foreign policy that sees war in the Middle East as the fulfillment of its core mission . The power block responsible for the take over are now, effectively, in charge of the mightiest weapon the world has ever known, the United States Military.

My law suit was one element in the larger battle to take back America. That might seem excessive or alarmist; I only wish that was the case.

more...

http://militaryreligiousfreedom.org/events.html#4



The Cannons of Christianity
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4102638726170063607&q=The+Cannons+of+Christianity&total=29&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

Christian cannons have fired at my days
With the warning beneath the holy blaze
And bow to our authority
Say the cannons of Christianity

Oh the children will be sent to schools
Minds of clay are molded to their rules
Learn to fear all of eternity
Warn the cannons of Christianity

Holy hands will count the money raised
Like a king the Lord is richly praised
On a cross of diamond majesty
Say the cannons of Christianity

Missionaries will travel on crusades
The word is given, the heathen souls are saved
Conversions to our morality
Sigh the cannons of Christianity

Come the wars and turn the rules around
To bend your soul on the battle ground
And the Lord will march beside me
Drone the cannons of Christianity

Cathedral walls will glitter with their gold
And the sermons speak through silver robes
Building castles amidst the poverty
Say the cannons of Christianity

Worship now and wash your sins away
Drop the coins, fall to your knees and pray
Cleanse the world of all hypocrisy
Smile the cannons of Christianity

Christian cannons have fired at my days
With the warning beneath the holy blaze
And bow to our authority
Say the cannons of Christianity
By Phil Ochs


http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2004012110_floyd14.html


Blackwater: bulging biceps fueled by ideological purity
BLACKWATER, the secretive private army now emerging into public view, is a perfect hinge linking two key elements of the Republican political base: America's war machine and a muscular form of fundamentalist Christianity.

Military contractors such as Halliburton and Blackwater are the brainchild of Vice President Dick Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. A major goal of Cheney when he was secretary of defense in the first Bush administration was to privatize as much military work as possible, ostensibly to make it more efficient. He commissioned a study by Halliburton, which predictably liked the idea and wound up as America's largest military contractor. Cheney was hired as Halliburton's chief officer, awaiting the return of a Republican administration.

When that occurred, Cheney and Rumsfeld enthusiastically promoted privatization, and went so far as to include private contractors in the "Total Force" of the American military, standing never before given to contractors. When Rumsfeld left the Pentagon in 2006, there were nearly as many private contractors in Iraq (100,000) as American troops (130,000). Contractors provided food, fuel, housing and, in the case of Blackwater, heavily armed soldiers with a license to kill and an aggressive attitude.

Blackwater operated basically without oversight since proconsul Paul Bremer gave it a no-bid $27.7 million security contract in 2003, with immunity from Iraqi law. In 2004, four of its soldiers were ambushed in Fallujah and their bodies desecrated, bringing retaliation that killed hundreds of Iraqis, leveled the city and fueled the insurgency. A month ago, Blackwater guards killed 17 Iraqi civilians, in an incident that has drawn the attention of Congress and the FBI.

Blackwater soldiers, often with Navy SEAL or Army Special Operations backgrounds, are paid from $500 to $1,500 a day, far more than regular-duty troops. Their image is straight from central casting: young men, tanned biceps bulging from black T-shirts, wearing wraparound sunglasses and brandishing automatic weapons. For young veterans who loved military action but couldn't afford to stay in, Blackwater offered big money and plenty of opportunities to order people around. Blackwater's aggressive guards became the image of American cultural insensitivity, sometimes erasing the best efforts of our uniformed soldiers.

Blackwater is the private empire of billionaire Erik Prince, a major Republican fundraiser and bankroller of several fundamentalist Christian organizations. His private army employs some 2,300 active gunners and boasts a register of 21,000 ready to serve on call. He has the largest privately held arsenal in the country and the expertise and firepower to bring down a small country.

In 2006, Prince expanded internationally, forming a new subsidiary in Barbados, outside American taxes and regulation, to train foreign forces, often funded by American military aid. Elite Blackwater soldiers have conducted secretive "black jobs" for the CIA or other spy agencies.

Despite its financial success, Blackwater is under fire from two sides: Democratic critics who want accountability and families of the four men killed in Fallujah in 2004. The families have sued, alleging negligence.

Blackwater's lawyers assert it cannot be sued because it is part of the "Total Force." But, while Congress demands that it be subject to American military codes and international treaties, Blackwater takes the opposite view — it is not military, it's a civilian contractor. Big money has gone into D.C. lawyers, lobbyists and public-relations spinners to sell this apparent contradiction.

There have always been mercenaries, and a case can be made for limited use of contractors, but the Bush administration has erased the line between a national military and a private war machine. Iraq is our first outsourced war, siphoning billions of taxpayer dollars into the private war machine.

Military contractors have become an integral part of the American military, allowing the White House to understate troop numbers and avoid a military draft. Unpopular wars for oil or ideology can be waged without calling on middle-class families to send their children; mercenaries will fill the jobs if volunteers don't come forth.

In Prince, the Republicans' radical Christian base is wed to the war-machine base, the one providing votes and manpower, the other providing campaign funds.

The resulting combination is one of rigid ideology and eagerness to solve any problem with overwhelming force. The Bush administration convinced itself its views on Iraq were right, pushing aside contrary evidence, then failed to think beyond "shock and awe," with resultant horrors.

In a world of nuance and gray areas, ideological purity and bulging biceps will cause as many problems as they solve. Blackwater seems to epitomize a dark side of our psyche that should be troubling to all Americans.0




http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/ChristianRight_AmerFascism.html


The Christian Right and the Rise of American Fascism

by Chris Hedges

www.theocracywatch.org, Nov 15, 2004

(This is an article by Chris Hedges that no major publication will print.)





Dr. James Luther Adams, my ethics professor at Harvard Divinity School , told us that when we were his age, he was then close to 80, we would all be fighting the "Christian fascists."

The warning, given to me 25 years ago, came at the moment Pat Robertson and other radio and televangelists began speaking about a new political religion that would direct its efforts at taking control of all institutions, including mainstream denominations and the government. Its stated goal was to use the United States to create a global, Christian empire. It was hard, at the time, to take such fantastic rhetoric seriously, especially given the buffoonish quality of those who expounded it. But Adams warned us against the blindness caused by intellectual snobbery. The Nazis, he said, were not going to return with swastikas and brown shirts. Their ideological inheritors had found a mask for fascism in the pages of the Bible.

He was not a man to use the word fascist lightly. He was in Germany in 1935 and 1936 and worked with the underground anti-Nazi church, known as The Confessing Church, led by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Adams was eventually detained and interrogated by the Gestapo, who suggested he might want to consider returning to the United States . It was a suggestion he followed. He left on a night train with framed portraits of Adolph Hitler placed over the contents inside his suitcase to hide the rolls of home movie film he took of the so-called German Christian Church, which was pro-Nazi, and the few individuals who defied them, including the theologians Karl Barth and Albert Schweitzer. The ruse worked when the border police lifted the top of the suitcases, saw the portraits of the Fuhrer and closed them up again. I watched hours of the grainy black and white films as he narrated in his apartment in Cambridge .

He saw in the Christian Right, long before we did, disturbing similarities with the German Christian Church and the Nazi Party, similarities that he said would, in the event of prolonged social instability or a national crisis, see American fascists, under the guise of religion, rise to dismantle the open society. He despaired of liberals, who he said, as in Nazi Germany, mouthed silly platitudes about dialogue and inclusiveness that made them ineffectual and impotent. Liberals, he said, did not understand the power and allure of evil nor the cold reality of how the world worked. The current hand wringing by Democrats in the wake of the election, with many asking how they can reach out to a movement whose leaders brand them "demonic" and "satanic," would not have surprised Adams . Like Bonhoeffer, he did not believe that those who would fight effectively in coming times of turmoil, a fight that for him was an integral part of the Biblical message, would come from the church or the liberal, secular elite.

His critique of the prominent research universities, along with the media, was no less withering. These institutions, self-absorbed, compromised by their close relationship with government and corporations, given enough of the pie to be complacent, were unwilling to deal with the fundamental moral questions and inequities of the age. They had no stomach for a battle that might cost them their prestige and comfort. He told me that if the Nazis took over America "60 percent of the Harvard faculty would begin their lectures with the Nazi salute." This too was not an abstraction. He had watched academics at the University of Heidelberg , including the philosopher Martin Heidegger, raise their arms stiffly to students before class.