When I saw the title of a story in today’s New York Times, “Hegseth Invokes Divine Purpose to Justify Military Might,” I knew this was a 2 for 1 blog post issue. Meaning, I could criticize two entities that I despise in a single swoop: (1) the Trump administration in general, and Defense Secretary Hegseth in particular, and (2) fundamentalist Christian dogma.
Hegseth is like a cartoon character who somehow is able to head up the United States armed forces. He prances around, trying to act all macho, yet is so vain recently he banned photographers from his briefings because he didn’t like their photos of him. He paid a woman to keep their sexual affair out of the public eye (Hegseth is married), yet he claims to be a devout Christian.
The NYT story describes how Hegseth has managed to turn the Iran war into a holy war — in his own mind, at least.
He spoke of “overwhelming force” and the U.S. military’s unmatched ability to rain “death and destruction from above” on its “apocalyptic” Iranian foes.
Then, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, standing in the Pentagon, issued a call to the American people for a specific kind of wartime prayer. He asked them to pray for victory in battle and the safety of their troops.
“Every day, on bended knee, with your family, in your schools, in your churches,” he said, “in the name of Jesus Christ.”
At a time when the U.S. and Israeli militaries are dropping thousands of bombs on a majority-Shiite Muslim nation, the explicitly Christian nature of Mr. Hegseth’s call stood out.
More than any top American military leader in recent history, Mr. Hegseth has framed U.S. military operations in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America as bigger than politics or foreign policy. Often he has imbued these actions with a Christian moral underpinning that suggests they are divinely sanctioned.
It is this view of a higher power, married to lethal American firepower, that Mr. Hegseth says gives him confidence that the United States will prevail in Iran.
“Our capabilities are better. Our will is better. Our troops are better,” he said in a recent interview with CBS News’s “60 Minutes.” “The providence of our almighty God is there protecting those troops, and we’re committed to this mission.”
This shows the absurdity of religious belief. Hegseth has no freaking knowledge of what God wants, because there’s no evidence God even exists, much less what God wants. He’s just throwing out theological blather that makes zero sense. Why would God protect United States troops when the United States started the Iran war and there was no sign of an imminent threat from Iran, aside from what Trump imagined in his addled brain?
The equally crazy rulers of Iran, who believe in a fundamentalist form of Islam, are just as convinced that God is on their side. They just like the term, Allah. This battle of crazy Christian versus crazy Muslim reminds me of baseball games where someone hits a home run and points skyward, praising God for enabling his team to come out on top.
Oh, really? This is what God is all about, sitting up in heaven, picking winners and losers in sporting events? Hegseth believes this. He just looks upon the Iran war as another example of God looking fondly upon Christians and malevolently upon people who profess a different faith, such as Islam.
Hegseth is really fond of the Crusades. Ah, those were the good old days, when Christians killed in defense of the Holy Land — you know, the place where Jesus, the “prince of peace” hung out.
Mr. Hegseth, for his part, reaches back to an earlier era of the Catholic church to support his view.
Tattooed on Mr. Hegseth’s right biceps is the Latin phrase “Deus vult,” or “God wills it,” which he has described as a “battle cry” of the Crusades, the ruthless medieval wars where Christian warriors fought to take over Jerusalem from Muslim rule. Mr. Hegseth sees those battles as perhaps the most formative moment in the history of the free world.
In his book “American Crusade,” published in 2020, he describes the Crusades as “bloody” and “full of unspeakable tragedy,” but argues that they were justified because they saved a Christian Europe from the onslaught of Islam.
“Do you enjoy Western civilization? Freedom? Equal justice? Thank a crusader,” he writes in the book. “If not for the Crusades, there would have been no Protestant Reformation or Renaissance. There would be no Europe and no America.”
Like almost everything Hegseth says, his take on the Crusades is historical B.S. My new friend, Claude, Anthropic’s AI model, says:
The Muslim world was never on the verge of conquering all of Europe. By the time the First Crusade launched in 1096, the major existential threats to Western Europe had already passed — the Umayyad advance into France was stopped at Tours/Poitiers in 732, and the Viking and Magyar invasions had subsided. The Crusades were largely an offensive enterprise, not a defensive one.
…Most historians today view the “Crusades saved Europe” framing as a retrospective myth. Europe’s survival as a predominantly Christian civilization had more to do with geography, the political fragmentation of the Islamic world, the resilience of Byzantium, and battles fought well before or after the Crusades than with the Crusading movement itself.
Well, Hegseth is carrying on the spirit of the Crusades in one sense: I find his militaristic, nationalistic form of Christianity to be even more offensive than usual Christian fundamentalism.
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No lie ,and not just that ,he looks like a punk. He’s the type of major during the Vietnam war that got shot by his own troops as he tried to take them into battle. Yeah that really happened on purpose.These people need a cause so bad that our draft dodger president’s definition of winding down will take at least 5 years. It’ll be like mission accomplished he’s so out of whack.These aren’t the masons from the Crusades. These are farm boys that can’t even line up in line correctly but they will be anyway to go to another so-called forever war for Jesus. It makes me sick and so does he. He literally was beside himself blowing up innocent boats on the water. He should have been a member of that girl’s school , not killing them. That war with Iran was won before it even started so they shouldn’t have started it. This is all too enrich Trump’s already rich friends. Patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings!
Yes, fragging—the deliberate killing or attempted murder of superior officers by their own troops—occurred during the Vietnam War, particularly between 1969 and 1972. Hundreds of incidents were documented, resulting in nearly 100 deaths and hundreds of wounded, driven by drug use, racial tensions, and resentment of unpopular, incompetent, or reckless leaders.
Yes, Donald Trump has been widely described as a “draft dodger” by political critics, veterans, and media commentators due to his avoidance of military service during the Vietnam War.
During the Vietnam War, Trump received a total of five draft deferments. Muhammad Ali was my hero.
Over one hundred years ago Samuel Clemons (Mark Twain) wrote of the unspoken prayer for vengeance in the hearts of a hypocritical and blood thirsty mob
“When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory–must follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!
“O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle — be Thou near them! With them — in spirit — we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it — for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.”
The war prayer, Mark Twain
@ Well Spence the lord must have heard that lament by the people of Israel and their christian companions in your country ..how it looks like in de reality of everyday life can be seen in GAZA, LIBANON and IRAN
Pete Hegseth didn’t start this war. Israel did.
Or if you like, Donald Trump started this war. But Trump would never have started it had Israel not demanded that he start it.
Or if you like (and it would be fair to say), Iran had a part in starting this war. That part doesn’t by any means mean the war is justified, but it’s a part that deserves mention.
It might be good to put all these pieces together, rather than this “Hegseth Christian, want war ugh Christians and crusades bad,” rhetoric as simplistic as Hegseth’s “It takes money to kill bad guys.”
But overall, this awful war has far more to do with Israel’s machinations than Pete Hegseth’s dispensationalism.
Hilarious. God was very good to King Og of the Bashan and many others who didn’t like the Hebrews much. Seems Hesgeth is continuing god’s work.
I prefer peace but I don’t mind war so what gets me is the civilian targeting. If terrorists were hiding behind civilians well then they should have let the terrorists go. There’s more than one way to skin a chicken. If it was just soldier to soldier even the civil war would be okay. The difference between me and Trump is I signed up for the draft but the war ended as soon as I turned of age. I wouldn’t have gone anyway . I would have been a conscientious objector like our hero Muhammad Ali , the Muslim that he is , because I was already a vegetarian when I was 17 and against killing. Jesus don’t like killing no matter what the reason is for. Plus I had flat feet it would have probably kept me out. You kids today getting fat at the computer don’t know what we went through. I grew up a devout Catholic who deeply loved Jesus and all the saints. I grew up and grew a pair. 😉 Now all I have is a pillow where my baby used to lay.
While children are dying, people remark humorously about God’s will, and who is to blame. Don’t hide behind God like a misbehaving child behind the skirt of their mom.
Defending collateral damage of any kind, including a school of children, is wrong.
I liked Senator Ossef’s remarks in the senate: If Trump pleaded victory last summer (after the airstrikes he ordered) claiming he had obliterated for years Iran’s ability to build nuclear weapons, how can he now say Iran is an imminent threat?
It’s simple. Power over the lives of others, violence and tyranny are addictive.
“Violence is the refuge of incompetent”
Isaac Asimov
…And those who voted for them, and enable them with excuses.
As a simple naturalist who understands the world as it appears to the senses, I am always amazed at how religious/spiritual people who conceptualise and ardently believe in a creator God can justify how such a God tolerates human destructiveness. Particularly the destruction inflicted upon the natural world, on the environment and the seas.
Surely a creator God would be pretty miffed if one of his creations started wrecking the place he had constructed for. But I suppose apologists could wheel out the old adage that God gave us free will. And also, God would be okay about all the destruction as they are doing it in his name! And anyway, he has apparently reserved a place for them in his heaven – so that’s all right then!
Those who have formed the idea of God use many phrases to justify his lack of involvement: He works in mysterious ways, no one can know the mind of God, it is God’s will, etc. It’s also common to use words that are vague, such as spirit, soul, love, enlightened, faith, mystical – words that can be interpreted in numerous ways, which are used to express something imagined or prevalent amongst the users of such words, but in reality, can have many meanings.
It’s interesting that many religious folks know what God wants, whatever the religion. Such is the mass deception mankind has saturated his mind with, saturated by birth through family and culture. So much so that, as adults, it is extremely difficult to escape such indoctrination. We have become infected by a gigantic meme.
I re read what you wrote Ron, and laughed. It is gentle, humorous and truthful.
Brian, you should elevating this to its own post.
Q why would a naturalist conjecture about other people’s beliefs?
Even naturalists have opinions – it’s only natural!
Note to AI users: Claude (Anthropic) actively supports America and Israel’s military assault on Iran. Via Palantir’s Maven Smart System, Claude analyzes intelligence, identifies, and prioritizes targets.
Claude was partially responsible for the attack on the Iranian elementary school that killed 175 children.
Grok (xAI) does not participate in targeting, operations, or combat support. Grok stays a non-combat conversational AI.
Claude aids the Trump war effort; Grok does not. It’s one big reason why I use Grok.