From 9/11 to Iraq, is God on our side?

By Nina Kilbride

From the eerie Christ-like Abu Ghraib silhouette on the cover to the last paragraph, Faith Based War: From 9/11 to Catastrophic Success in Iraq is provocative. The category listing of “Religion and Violence” sounds sexy to me. And it is.

Faith-Based War’s thesis is that citizen ignorance of American geopolitical actions plus an irrational faith in U.S. as the chosen nation equals a “blind spot” that sends us reeling when things like 9/11 happen to us, the good guys. This blind spot allows citizen complicity in unreasonable and sometimes atrocious acts.

"Faith-Based War: From 9/11 to Catastrophic Success in Iraq," by T. Walter Herbert; 176 pages, 2009 Equinox Publishing, London

Americans are shocked at international aggression against U.S. interests because we believe our national religion as expressed by president George W. Bush on Sept. 20, 2001: “Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them.”

We all know which side God is on, right? Continued triumph of white Christians reinforced Americans’ delusion that we are God’s chosen.

Author T. Walter Herbert shows us where President Bush’s words echo through American history, justifying bloodthirsty expansion from 1630 until the present, from Massachusetts Bay settlers slaughtering Pequots for arable land to modern bumper stickers reading “What’s Our Oil Doing Underneath Their Sand?”

Time and again, American Christian warriors almost lovingly refer to their slaughter of nonbelieving men, women and children as a “Sacrifice to God.” Certainly God would not let people suffer if it were undeserved. This sacrifice must have been necessary and proper, else why would God keep bringing American Christians triumph?

These continued triumphs, along with “[r]eligious authoritarians (offering comfort) by pretending to certainties they do not possess” keep an America ignorant of its own history in thrall. Our history is full of these examples, as Herbert details, from genocide in the name of Manifest Destiny to Dirty Harry as avenging angel.

Comments from Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh make Faith-Based War directly on point as we think about what we expect from Haiti in return for the aid we are going to give. Robertson and Limbaugh perpetuate the demeaning notion of a Haitian “curse” because they are the deacons of our national theocracy. From their respective pulpits, Robertson and Limbaugh perpetuate the notion that just because enslaved, non-white people overthrew their white masters, they must have been in league with the devil.

So what’s a person of conscience to do? The last sentence gives me a good idea: learn and speak up.

“With whom do you stand in the presence of this atrocity: the innocent crucified to serve the citizens of a political order for which all of us, as citizens of a democracy, are answerable? “

Our history is full of both terrible and wondrous things that don’t fit into the national theology adopted and dispensed by many of our schools. Learn and talk about it. Faith-Based War is well-documented and surprisingly readable given the density of ideas. You should read it. I would lend you my copy but I’m reading it again. Soon.

This review originally appeared on Nina Kilbride’s blog, The Lucky Grasshopper.