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.

Soldiers’ stories can’t justify war

By Corey Friedman

Critics of the Iraq war simply don’t understand, the hawks and the Bush backers sigh. Talk to the troops — any U.S. servicemember will tell you the lumbering fiasco edited for cable news isn’t the same conflict he’s fighting.

The stories supposedly squelched by mainstream TV networks and newspapers are heartening. A soldier cradles the limp body of an Iraqi boy wounded in an insurgent rocket attack. A burly Marine hands a plush doll to an 8-year-old girl, her wide smile brightening her dirt-streaked face. Troops form a ragtag soccer team to kick a checkered ball back and forth with a group of village children.

Well, I’ve heard the cheery anecdotes. I’ve read the mass-forward e-mails loaded with photographs and stories of “what you won’t see in the news.” Working as a newspaper reporter in a military town, I’ve spoken to generals and majors and corporals and privates who fervently believe this war is necessary and their duty is sacrosanct.

And I still feel the invasion of Iraq was a mistake and the six-year occupation a towering blunder.