'He's in The White House Because God Put Him There'
The top soldier assigned to
track down Bin Laden and Hussein is an evangelical Christian who
speaks publicly of 'the army of God.'
by Richard T. Cooper
WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon has assigned the task of tracking down and
eliminating Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and other high-profile
targets to an Army general who sees the war on terrorism as a clash
between Judeo-Christian values and Satan.
. . . the former commander and 13-year veteran of the Army's
top-secret Delta Force is also an outspoken evangelical Christian
who appeared in dress uniform and polished jump boots before a
religious group in Oregon in June to declare that radical Islamists
hated the United States "because we're a Christian nation, because
our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christian ... and the enemy
is a guy named Satan."
Discussing the battle against a Muslim warlord in Somalia, Boykin
told another audience, "I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew
that my God was a real God and his was an idol."
"We in the army of God, in the house of God, kingdom of God have
been raised for such a time as this," Boykin said last year.
On at least one occasion, in Sandy, Ore., in June, Boykin said of
President Bush: "He's in the White House because God put him there."
[As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense,
founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of
enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as
the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any
Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising
from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony
existing between the two countries.--Treaty of Peace and Friendship
Between the United States and Bey and Subjects of Tripoli of Barbary, Art.
11, Annals of Congress, 5th Congress, June 17, 1797
[The former co-chairman of Jack Kemp's presidential campaign, LaHaye was a
member of the original board of directors of the Moral Majority and an
organizer of the Council for National Policy, which ABCNews.com has called
"the most powerful conservative organization in America you've never heard
of" and whose membership has included John Ashcroft, Tommy Thompson and
Oliver North. George W. Bush is still refusing to release a tape of a speech
he gave to the group in 1999.--Michelle Goldberg, "Fundamentally
unsound: Left Behind, the bestselling series of paranoid,
pro-Israel end-time thrillers, may sound kooky, but America's right-wing
leaders really believe this stuff," Salon, July 29, 2002]
[To this aggressive extension of American power in the world, President
George W. Bush adds God - and that changes the picture dramatically. It's one
thing for a nation to assert its raw dominance in the world; it's quite
another to suggest, as this president does, that the success of American
military and foreign policy is connected to a religiously inspired
"mission," and even that his presidency may be a divine appointment for a
time such as this.--Jim Wallis, "Dangerous Religion: George W. Bush's theology of empire,"
Sojourners Magazine, September-October 2003]
[K. S. Latourette at Yale helped kick-start East Asian studies (his
1929 book is History of the Christian Missions in China); H. E.
Bolton at Berkeley pioneered Latin American Studies (his 1936 book
is The Rim of Christendom: A biography of Eusebio Francisco Kino,
Pacific Coast Pioneer); A. C. Coolidge at Harvard worked out the
contours of Slavic Studies (his big book of 1908 is entitled The
United States as a World Power). In its infancy, the Church and
Washington held sway over Area Studies. Our evangelical imperials of
today want to return to this period.--Vijay Prasad, "Confronting
the Evangelical Imperialists," CounterPunch, November 13, 2003]
[Evangelical Christian leaders expressed dismay yesterday over
President Bush's statement that Christians and Muslims worship the
same god--Alan Cooperman, " Bush's Remark About God Assailed," Washington Post,
November 22, 2003]
[Cole's lawsuit alleges that the curriculum infringes on "his
students' First Amendment rights to the free flow of information
within the classroom" and that it "constitutes an illegal
establishment of religion in violation of the First Amendment."--"Teacher sues over limits on history curriculum," Associated
Press, December 4, 2003]
[A leading evangelical Christian seminary is using federal funds to
launch a $1 million program to ease strained relations with Muslims
with an interfaith code of ethics.--"Seminary to Launch Interfaith
Ethics Code," Associated Press, December 6, 2003]
[. . . the Democrats' "tough-minded internationalism" began with Woodrow Wilson, a
Christian megalomaniac who believed that America had been chosen by God "to
show the way to the nations of this world, how they shall walk in the paths
of liberty."--John Pilger, "Choose Your
Favorite Pro-War Candidate," Antiwar.com, March 5, 2004]
[The "Constitution Restoration Act of
2004" . . . If enacted, it will effectively transform the American
republic into a theocracy,--Chris Floyd, "Pin Heads,"
Moscow Times, March, 12, 2004]
[It wore the clothing of counterterrorism and spoke the language of a holy
war between good and evil.--Karen Kwiatkowski, "The new
Pentagon papers," Salon.com, March 10, 2004]
[I was praying for strength to do the Lord's will. I'm surely not going to
justify war based upon God. Understand that. Nevertheless, in my case, I
pray that I be as good a messenger of his will as possible. And then, of
course, I pray for forgiveness."--"
Woodward Shares War Secrets," CBSNEWS.com, April 18, 2004]
["Tenet was allowed to resign 'voluntarily' and Bush informed his shocked
staff of the decision Thursday morning. One aide says the President actually
described the decision as 'God's will'. God may also be the reason Attorney General John Ashcroft, the
administration's lightning rod because of his questionable actions that
critics argue threatens freedoms granted by the Constitution, remains part
of the power elite. West Wing staffers call Bush and Ashcroft 'the Blues
Brothers' because "they're on a mission from God."--Alexander Cockburn, "Has Bush Gone Over
the Edge?," CounterPunch, June 4, 2004]
[Weyrich says if the president actually declared that America is in a war
against Islam, there might be more Muslims taking up arms against the U.S.
- a "real jihad," as he puts it. So Bush, according to Weyrich, is
soft-peddling his rhetoric in order to "tamp down" any worldwide activity
that might occur.--Chad Groening and Jody Brown, "Conservative
Attributes Bush's Pro-Islam Comments to Politics," AgapePress, July 9,
2004]
James Carroll, "Crusade:
Chronicles of an Unjust War (The American Empire Project)," Metropolitan Books (August 3, 2004)
[George W. Bush has signed on to the neocon agenda with the unshakeable
faith of the born again. At this point, we all need a reminder that Crusades
1 through 5 ended badly in the long run, not just for the Crusaders, but on
the home front.--Anonymous, "The State
Department's extreme makeover," Salon, October 4, 2004]
[He truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that
overwhelms a need for analysis.--Ron Suskind, "Without a
Doubt," New York Times, October 17, 2004]
[The 2004 election marks the rise of a quasi-clerical party for the first
time in the United States.--Sidney Blumenthal, "The
lowest ignorance takes charge," Guardian, November 11, 2004]
[. . . if the speech was to be taken literally, then clearly it would imply
commitment to some sort of a global crusade--Zbigniew Brzezinski, "News Hour with Margaret Warner," PBS, January 6, 2005]
Bill Moyers, "No
Tomorrow," ZNet, February 2, 2005
[Several former detainees at the Guantanamo and Bagram prisons have
reported instances of their handlers sitting or standing on the Koran,
throwing or kicking it in toilets, and urinating on it. Prior to the
Newsweek article, the New York Times reported a Guantanamo insider asserting
that the commander of the facility was compelled by prisoner protests to
address the problem and issue an apology.--Calgacus, "Newsweek Got Gitmo
Right," Antiwar.com, May 16, 2005]
VIDEO GAME, developed with a $4 million grant from the U.S. military,
teaches how to kill the "enemy" - in an obviously Muslim city: "Full
Spectrum Warrior," Pandemic Studios, May 24, 2005
[America and the West are at war with Islam and that this is a war like no
other in history. It will last for decades. The enemy isn't a national one
but a cultural one, consisting of cadres of religious and cultural zealots
interspersed throughout the world, including the West, and willing to die
for the sake of merely killing a few innocent Americans at a time. The
enemy's primary aims are to drive a wedge through the West, to destablize
its economies and its governments, and to seize key Muslim countries,
particularly Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.--Robert W. Merry , "Sands
of Empire: Missionary Zeal, American Foreign Policy, and the Hazards of
Global Ambition," Simon & Schuster (May 31, 2005), p. 249]
[The point is that this conflict has its origins more in "the West" than in
the House of Islam. The image of Muslims as prone to violence by virtue of
their religion was mainly constructed across centuries by Europeans seeking
to bolster their own purposes, a habit of politicized paranoia that is
masterfully continued by freaked-out leaders of post-9/11 America.--James
Carroll, "The War Against Islam," Boston
Globe, June 7, 2005]
[President George Bush has claimed he was told by God to invade Iraq and
attack Osama bin Laden's stronghold of Afghanistan as part of a divine
mission to bring peace to the Middle East, security for Israel, and a state
for the Palestinians.--Rupert Cornwell, "Bush:
God told me to invade Iraq," Independent, October 7, 2005]
[Best-selling author and evangelical leader Tim LaHaye has contacts that
extend to the White House. That could spell trouble, since his theology
espouses a bloody apocalypse in Israel . . .
According to a Time/CNN poll from 2002, 59 percent of Americans believe the
events in the book of Revelation will take place. There are as many as 70
million Evangelicals in the U.S. . . .
Far from being a Prince of Peace, the Christ depicted in the "Left Behind"
series is a vengeful Messiah - so vengeful that the death and destruction he
causes to unconverted Jews, to secularists, to anyone who is not born again,
is far, far greater than the crimes committed by the most brutal dictators
in human history.--Craig Unger, "American 'Rapture'," Vanity Fair, November 28, 2005]
[A growing number of legal experts and Muslim civil rights advocates say
that U.S. prosecutors are using jurors' ignorance of Islam as a way to get
convictions in terrorism cases.--Paolo Pontoniere, "Islam Put on Trial in
Terrorism Cases, U.S. Muslims Say," New America Media, December 1, 2005]
[He said: "I think if you have faith about these things, then you realise
that that judgement is made by other people... and if you believe in God,
it's made by God as well.--"PM attacked on
Iraq 'God' remarks," BBC News, March 4, 2006]
[One is the role of oil in defining and, as Phillips sees it, distorting
American foreign and domestic policy. The second is the ominous intrusion of
radical Christianity into politics and government. And the third is the
astonishing levels of debt--Alan Brinkley, "Clear and Present Dangers," New York Times, March 19, 2006]
[Observers describe Bush as "messianic" in his conviction that he is
fulfilling the divine purpose. . . . There is no more dangerous thing for a
democracy than a foreign policy based on presidential preventive
war.--Arthur Schlesinger Jr., "Bush's Thousand Days," Washington Post,
April 24, 2006]
[. . . it was only during Muslim rule that Palestine enjoyed uninterrupted
peace and harmony among Muslims, Christians and Jews. . . . Throughout
Muslim lands, the Jews lived in peace and freedom in sharp contrast to the
Christian world's unabashed persecution of the Jewish minority for 2,000
years.--Muhammad Ali Siddiqi, "'Awkward' truths about
Palestine," Daily Dawn, July 21, 2006]
[Benedict quoted from a book recounting a conversation between 14th
century Byzantine Christian Emperor Manuel Paleologos II and a Persian
scholar on the truths of Christianity and Islam.
"The emperor comes to speak about the issue of jihad,
holy war," the pope said. "He said, I quote, 'Show me just what Mohammed
brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman,
such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.'"--"Religious
leaders across Mideast rage against pope's comments on
Islam," USA Today, September 15, 2006]
[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. military. . . . 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.--Chris Hedges, "America's Holy Warriors,"
truthdig.com, December 31, 2006]
[Erik Prince, who is a neo-crusader, a Christian supremacist, who has been
given over a half a billion dollars in federal contracts, and that's not to
mention his black contracts, his secret contracts, his contracts with
foreign friendly governments like Jordan.--Jeremy Scahill, "Our
Mercenaries in Iraq: Blackwater Inc and Bush's Undeclared Surge,"
democracynow.org, January 26, 2007]
[Weinstein, a 1977 graduate of the Academy and former assistant general
counsel in the Reagan administration, and a lifelong Republican, has devoted
the last several years of his life to battling what he has come to regard as
a fundamentalist takeover of the Academy, turning it, in effect, into a
taxpayer-supported Evangelical institution.--Robert Koehler, "The Christian
Taliban Is Running the Department of Defense," Common Wonders, May
3, 2007]
[ . . . after an investigation spurred by the Military Religious Freedom
Foundation, the Pentagon abruptly announced that it would not be delivering
"freedom packages" to our soldiers in Iraq, as it had originally intended.
. . . the packages . . . held Bibles, proselytizing material in English and
Arabic and the apocalyptic computer game "Left Behind: Eternal Forces"
(derived from the series of post-Rapture novels), in which "soldiers for
Christ" hunt down enemies who look suspiciously like U.N.
peacekeepers.--Michael L. Weinstein and Reza Aslan, "Not so fast,
Christian soldiers," Los Angeles Times, August 22, 2007]
[Bothwell documents that there wasn't a war the U.S. was involved in that
Rev. Graham couldn't bless.--William Hughes, "The Dark Side of
Rev. Billy Graham," counterpunch.org, September 27, 2007]
[The controversy over the coins that Iraqis said some Marines are passing
out comes on the heels of a tempest triggered by a U.S. sniper who used the
Quran, Islam's holy book, for target practice.--Jamal Naji and Leila Fadel,
"Iraqis claim
Marines are pushing Christianity in Fallujah," McClatchy Newspapers,
May 29, 2008]
Constitution Restoration Act of 2004
(H. R. 3799 and S. 2082): Notwithstanding any other provision of this
chapter, the Supreme Court shall not have jurisdiction to review, by appeal,
writ of certiorari, or otherwise, any matter to the extent that relief is
sought against an element of Federal, State, or local government, or against
an officer of Federal, State, or local government (whether or not acting in
official personal capacity), by reason of that element's or officer's
acknowledgement of God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or
government.
