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Seymour Hersh writes a new article in The New Yorker, Moving Targets, that begins —

The Bush Administration has authorized a major escalation of the Special Forces covert war in Iraq. … [The Special Forces group’s] highest priority is the neutralization of the Baathist insurgents, by capture or assassination.

This radical Pentagon news once again juxtaposes contrasting concepts on the teleprompter in my head …

An American who has advised the civilian authority in Baghdad said, “The only way we can win is to go unconventional. We’re going to have to play their game. Guerrilla versus guerrilla. Terrorism versus terrorism. We’ve got to scare the Iraqis into submission.”

Can logic — or sanity — encompass both these beliefs? (I think not.)

One of the key planners of [this] Special Forces offensive is Lieutenant General William (Jerry) Boykin … In October, the Los Angeles Times reported that Boykin, while giving Sunday-morning talks in uniform to church groups, had repeatedly equated the Muslim world with Satan. Last June … he told a congregation in Oregon that “Satan wants to destroy this nation, he wants to destroy us as a nation, and he wants to destroy us as a Christian army.” … The Muslim world hates America, he said, “because we are a nation of believers.”

(emphasis mine)

Boykin says we are a nation of believers. But believers in whom?

“Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?”
—Jesus (Luke 6:46, NIV)

[story link via Meteor Blades at Daily Kos]

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.