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“Terry York sees Christians in the United States splitting into two camps — those who want to try to re-establish Christendom and those who refuse to wrap the cross in the flag.”

Obadiah speaks to the downside of nationalistic pride.

Howard Zinn writes well on nationalism: “Nationalism is given a special virulence when it is blessed by Providence.”

Josh sums up well the Republican Convention proceedings through Wednesday night: “This whole confab has been built around militarism, the seductions of the mentality of seige and insecurity both from without and within, and the sort of no-rules-win-at-all-costs-lie-if-it-works mentality that will lead this nation to grief.”

Boston Globe: Jim Wallis: ‘The best public contribution of religion is precisely not to be ideologically predictable or a loyal partisan.’

On April 7, Tami Silicio, a civilian contract worker, captured a somber-yet-tasteful photograph of an aircraft cargo hold full of U.S. flag-draped coffins of soldiers being returned from Iraq via Kuwait (similar to the photo shown here — see update at end of this entry).

The Seattle Times published Silicio’s photo on April 19 in article The somber task of honoring the fallen (alternate photo location) —

On the April day depicted in the photograph that accompanies this story, more than 20 coffins went into a cargo plane bound for Germany [from Kuwait]. Silicio says those who lost loved ones in Iraq should understand the care and devotion that civilians and military crews dedicate to the task of returning the soldiers home.

Two days later on April 21, Tami’s employer, U.S. military contractor Maytag Aircraft Corp. fires her and her husband, as reported in the Boston Globe, Woman fired by military contractor for published photograph of flag-draped U.S. coffins.

This really bugs me. I understand (but don’t accept) the point that Maytag Aircraft Corp. is within rights firing an employee if that employee breaks a no-photos policy. And I understand the point that some families of the dead may not want media publicity, although I don’t see how the anonymity of flag-draped coffins invades anyone’s privacy. I see it more as honoring their sacrifice. (See Seattle Times, Images of war dead a sensitive subject.)

But I’m calling a spade a spade: This no-photos policy is government censorship, a hiding of the harsh realities of war from the U.S. populace, exposure to which might give the most gung-ho warhawks pause, during which pause the realization might dawn that it is failed U.S. policy that is killing these troops.

If we can’t state clearly why these sons and daughters and friends and relatives are dying and why “it’s worth it,” then we need to move heaven and earth to stop the dying. Now.

Every day we are silent means new cargo holds full of coffins, just like the one Tami photographed, returning home in secret, day after day after day.

My whole life I’ve wondered how so many German Christians in the 1930s could stand by as Nazi fascism rose to power. Now I think I know: being silent, being passive, giving tacit approval, enabled its rise. We’re enabling its rise again. If I sound like I’m overstating, see if the dictionary definition isn’t sounding eerily familiar:

fas·cism. A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.

Our U.S. “belligerent nationalism” is, sad to say, obvious to the whole world. As to the racism, it’s visible in our having killed an estimated 10,000+ Iraqi civilians, whom we’re not even bothering to count accurately. Many of these were innocents, and nearly all of them have families now bearing all the reason anyone needs to seek revenge, retaliation, retribution. Just as we’re doing, some of these victims’ friends and families will act to effect retribution. Liberation my ass. Liberating people from their bodies is not liberation. We are making the world’s terror situation incomparably worse:

“When the fighting is over in Fallujah, I will sell everything I have, even my home,” said a resistance fighter who gave his name as Abu Taif Mashhadani. He wept as he recalled his 8-year-old daughter, who he said was killed by a U.S. sniper in Fallujah a week ago. “I will send my brothers north to kill the Kurds, and I will go to America and target the civilians. Only the civilians. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. And the one who started it will be the one to be blamed.”
—Revolts in Iraq Deepen Crisis In Occupation (via Billmon)

If there’s hopeful news whispering within this deadly cacophony, I think it’s this: we’re only three requirements short of getting back on track. We need to —

Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly.
(Now this is anti-terrorism!)

A detailed plan? No — this is a new direction that affects all plans and likely leads to altogether different ends. Can we do these things? To my surprise, I believe we can. One at a time, each of us learns, each of us chooses. And I have a hunch I’m Monkey #94.

[story links via Daily Kos and The Village Gate]

2004-04-23 update: And the wall comes a-tumblin’ down? Even if in slo-mo overall, this came quickly: The New York Times runs story today, Pentagon Ban on Pictures of Dead Troops Is Broken. Bill Kick, operator of The Memory Hole, filed a Freedom of Information Act request last year asking for photos of coffins arriving from Iraq at Dover AFB in Delaware:

The Pentagon yesterday labeled the Air Force Air Mobility Command’s decision to grant the request a mistake, but news organizations quickly used a selection of the 361 images taken by Defense Department photographers.

The release of the photographs came one day after a contractor working for the Pentagon fired a woman who had taken photographs of coffins being loaded onto a transport plane in Kuwait. …

The firing underscored the strictness with which the Pentagon and the Bush administration have pursued a policy of forbidding news organizations to showing images of the homecomings of the war dead at military bases. …

A New York Times/CBS News poll taken in December found that 62 percent of Americans said the public should be allowed to see pictures of the military honor guard receiving the coffins of soldiers killed in Iraq as they are returned to the United States. Twenty-seven percent said the public should not be.

Allen at The Right Christians alerts me to Rev. Jim Wallis’ Backward Christian soldier: An open letter to the Christian General, Lt. General William “Holy War” Boykin, in response to Boykin’s remarks as noted, for example, at MSNBC and in the LA Times —

General, your theology bears no resemblance to biblical teaching. You utterly confuse the body of Christ with the American nation. The kingdom of God doesn’t endorse the principalities and powers of nation-states, armies, and the ideologies of empire; but rather calls them all into question. …

Brother Boykin, … Why were you never taught in Sunday school about the real meaning of the kingdom of God, and the universality of the body of Christ? And why have you never heard that only peacemaking, not war-making, can be done “in the name of Jesus?” …

When a high-ranking military officer espouses a zealous religious nationalism that claims the name “Christian” for both his nation and his army, and when he invokes the name of Jesus — not to love our enemies as he instructed, but rather to target them for destruction — the church must discipline that errant brother and name his public statements for what they are, not mere political incorrectness, but idolatry.

It occurs to me that if I, too, could do forcible truth-telling like this to brethren who’ve conflated flag and cross, nationalism and religion into an unholy, idolatrous mess as General Boykin has, I’d be doing what I’m called to do. I wouldn’t be in my present predicament of wondering if I can ever return to church.

Thanks for setting a good example, Brother Wallis.

The Rockford Register Star reported earlier this week — Speaker disrupts RC graduation, via AlterNet — that invited speaker Chris Hedges was booed off the stage for giving an antiwar speech at the Rockford College graduation (speech text).

Look, Chris is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist whose most recent book is War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. The book is about exploding the false myth of heroic war, written by a journalist who’s been immersed in the blood and guts of war around the world for many years. (I’m reading it now.) What the hell else did they expect him to talk about?

“War in the end is always about betrayal. Betrayal of the young by the old, of soldiers by politicians and idealists by cynics,” Hedges said in lecture fashion as jeers and “God Bless Americas” could be heard in the background.

Observation #1: People who won’t learn the lessons of history aren’t well educated, no matter how many years they’ve spent in college.

Observation #2: People who say “God bless America” as they jeer what is essentially the New Testament message of peace discredit themselves. And they discredit God in the eyes of others by misusing his name in a prideful way. In this context it’s like saying to God, “Bless us because we think we deserve it — even though we won’t heed your message, we won’t try to love our neighbors as ourselves, and we won’t tolerate anyone who reminds us otherwise.”

We in the United States have let nationalism get out of control; we’ve made it our golden calf. At the feet of this nationalism we’ve put our treasure, and our hearts also. Bloodlust and sanctimoniousness, mingled together. This isn’t like us. Why are we doing it?

We … can … do … better … than … this.

Today I see a follow-up interview with Chris, The Silencing of Dissent on Graduation Day. Unlike me, Chris speaks with courage, understanding — and yes, compassion — in the face of this sputtering crowd who (ironically) makes his case for him:

You know, as I looked out on the crowd, that is exactly what my book is about. It is about the suspension of individual conscience, and probably consciousness, for the contagion of the crowd for that euphoria that comes with patriotism. The tragedy is that — and I’ve seen it in conflict after conflict or society after society that plunges into war — with that kind of rabid nationalism comes racism and intolerance and a dehumanization of the other. It’s an emotional response. People find a kind of ecstasy, a kind of belonging, a kind of obliteration of their alienation in that patriotic fervor that always does come in war time.  …

People chanted the kind of cliches and aphorisms and jingoes that are handed to you by the state. “God Bless America” or people were chanting “send him to France” — this kind of stuff and that kind of contagion leads ultimately to tyranny, it’s very dangerous and it has to be stopped.

I’ve seen it in effect and take over countries. But of course, it breaks my heart when I see it in my country. That’s essentially what I was looking at was in some ways a mirror of what I was trying to speak about. I think I managed to touch upon it somewhat when I talked upon this notion of comradeship as a suppression of self awareness and self-possession to sort of follow along, locked in the embrace of a nation, or of a group, or of a national group unthinkingly, blindly.

I will never give up on us, but God, I’ve come close.

2003-05-27 update: See also Steve Gilliard’s thoughtful review of Hedges’ book as it relates to Al Qaeda.

Steve Gilliard: “Our inability to respond to Al Qaeda in a meaningful way comes from this impulse to bolster the state in time of war, to embrace the myths of heroic violence.”