Nefaria.com

I’ve already spoken at length about my experience with religious fanaticism while I served in the Army; and then I saw the following on reddit this morning:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1184546/Donald-Rumsfelds-holy-war-How-President-Bushs-Iraq-briefings-came-quotes-Bible.html

For me, this conjures memories of many a Battle Update Brief; opened with a prayer, closed with a prayer, and full of questionable religious content (e.g. slides such as these) in between. Many of these briefs focused on how we were going to deal with the Islamic fundamentalists who were resisting the Iraq occupation… I often wondered whether I was the only one who realized the irony.

I’m surprised that Faux “News” hasn’t given this much coverage at all. Here’s what Lou Dobbs had to say about it:

And here’s a copy of the treaty.

Now my two cents…

I’m always wary of any legislation that removes rights or places restrictions because in my opinion, once you start along the path of taking rights away from the populace, there’s really no limit to the number of rights that could be potentially taken away. The people making the rules seem to believe that the rules somehow do not apply to them, or, they view the rights that they’re crusading against with such contempt that they have convinced themselves that only “bad” people would complain about them being taken away. I hate to frame this in such simplistic terms, but this probably fits the mentality of the majority of people who would push a “prohibitionist” agenda. With respect to gun rights; I have a particular problem with people who crusade against gun ownership—in all it’s forms, while not realizing that it was private gun ownership on behalf of the colonists who fought for the freedom of this nation, that has given them the right to bitch about guns. These very same people also ignore the fact that private gun ownership is first and foremost a matter of self defense—not recreational activity. Highlighting this point is the following line in the text of the SIFTA treaty:

If they actually understood the reason the Second Amendment exists, then the words “self defense” or something to that effect, would appear in this paragraph. But they do not. Instead, we’re left with the ambiguous statement: “and other forms of lawful ownership and use recognized by the States Parties;”

The Second Amendment exists because our forefathers realized that as time goes on, the probability that the government would stop serving the people and serve only itself, approaches one. They also realized that should this ever happen, the people should have the right to rise up and replace the government with one that better suits them—which is exactly what just took place a few years before the Second Amendment was conceived. The prohibitionists also like to argue that such a rebellion would likely not be successful. This completely misses the point. During the Revolutionary War, the greatest military force at the time (the British) were defeated by a rag-tag force of under-gunned and outnumbered farmers. But the revolutionaries had one thing on their side: they were fed up with the oppression that they were experiencing at the hands of their current government, and they were willing to die fighting against it.

The prohibitionists always like to point out crime statistics as a reason for banning weapons. This is a flawed approach, because it’s obvious that if you are going to commit a crime then you don’t care much about the law. If alcohol prohibition and the war on drugs has taught us anything, it’s that you can’t outlaw something and expect it to just go away. You also can’t make the law-abiding population safe by taking away their ability to defend themselves… and aside from the impractical concerns involved with the police force protecting every single citizen; it’s not really the job of the police to defend you from criminals anyway.

Their definitions are all wrong too. For instance, “assault weapons” … what an ambiguous term! Damn near anything can be used as a weapon to assault someone with. Ignoring this, the anti-gun crowd has effectively defined “assault weapons” to include weapons that are only cosmetically similar to military style weapons. To me, this is just ignorant fear.

I’ll end this rant with a plea; if you feel the same way that I do, please contact your Representatives and/or Senators to express your opposition.

While waiting to pick up my lunch at the K-Town grill, I happened upon the following book at my friend Ellie’s book store (which is right next door):

This book is a collection of toasts/poems, compiled in 1904 (105 years old as of this writing!) by Ambrose Bierce and George Sterling; published under the pseudonym: “Clotho”. According to the handwriting on the inside, it was given as a Christmas gift in 1910 to someone named (or nicknamed hopefully) ‘Butts’. Just thinking about the story it could tell if it could talk is overwhelming… this book has “lived” my lifetime 3.6 times over! What a serendipidious discovery for a brewer

So last night I get this e-mail:

> > SOCIAL SECURITY CHANGES
> >
> > It does not matter if you personally like or dislike Obama. You
> > need to sign this petition and flood his e-mail box with e-mails
> > that tell him that, even if the House passes this bill, he needs to
> > veto it. It is already impossible to live on Social Security alone.
> > If the government gives benefits to 'illegal' aliens who have never
> > contributed, where does that leave those of us who have paid into
> > Social Security all our working lives?
> >
> > As stated below, the Senate voted this week to allow 'illegal'
> > aliens access to Social Security benefits.
> > Attached is an opportunity to sign a petition that requires
> > citizenship for eligibility to that social service.
> > Instructions are below. If you don't forward the petition and just
> > stop it, we will lose all these names.
> >
> > If you do not want to sign it, please just forward it to everyone
> > you know.
> >
> > Thank you!
> >
> > To add your name, click on 'forward'. Address it to all of your
> > email correspondents, add your name to the list and end it on.
> >
> > When the petition hits 1,000, send it to comment@whitehouse.gov
> >
> > PETITION for President Obama:
> >
> > Dear Mr. President:
> > We, the undersigned, protest the bill that the Senate voted on
> > recently which would allow illegal aliens to access ur Social
> > Security. We demand that you and all Congressional representatives
> > require citizenship as a pre-requisite for social services in the
> > United States .
> >
> > We further demand that there not be any amnesty give n to illegal
> > aliens, NO free services, no funding, no payments to and for illegal
> > immigrants

E-mail petitions always crack me the fuck up. Who the hell do they think they are petitioning to hm? Who gets the petition once all 1,000 “signatures” have been collected? I understand that to a lot of people, the internet is some big magical thing and these questions need not be asked, but to those of us who know how the damn thing works, how can this not be annoying as all hell? Maybe they’re smarter than I give them credit; maybe they are depending on the NSA to track this and forward it to the president as soon as the required amount of signatures have been collected… but I digress.

Apparently (and, as always) nobody checks their facts. A quick search on snopes.com gives us all the information that we need to know about this. Another thing that always fascinates me about these is their ability to change over time. For example, the original e-mail mentioned President Bush, rather than President Obama (which is funny, seeing as how I never got that one… I wonder why). I wrote a response, but not before harvesting ALL of the e-mail addresses from the message body, to, and cc fields (with the help of sed and grep of course) so I could send my [intentionally provocative] response to every last one of ‘em. I know that I’m fighting an uphill battle, but at least I’m fighting

My response:

So, does everyone believe everything that hits their inbox nowadays? 

http://www.snopes.com/politics/immigration/petition.asp

DISCLAIMER: I'm about to say some offensive s**t so if you are easily
offended, stop reading.

###

I mean it. If you read any further, don't reply to me all hurt expecting
an apology; your words will fall on deaf ears.

###

Last chance.

###

Ok, I get it... hating the president is cool now that we have a black
guy in office, fine, but seriously people... where the f**k was all this
outrage when Bush was raping our constitution, involving us in illegal,
unnecessary wars based on lies (Iraq), draining the economy whilst
giving enormous kickbacks to his friends (the very people who put his
dumb a$$ in office to being with), and spying on each and every one of
us under the guise of "national security", huh? where? Nowhere. Don't
try to act like you actually care now because it's painfully clear that
you're being disingenuous.  

If you forwarded this to your friends, family, whatever, without first
checking your facts then you're an idiot. If you SIGNED YOUR NAME to it
without ever even questioning it's authenticity, then you're a bigger
idiot. One might argue that it's people like you who are to blame for
our current situation---Yes, you. You who bent over and took it straight
up the cornhole because "9/11 changed everything" ... you who let your
government run wild directly afterwards while you sat by in silent
agreement (just as long as we were killing Muslims) ... and you, who
probably still do not have a single f**king clue about the damage to our
country that the past ~8 years has wrought. Every last one of you should
be terribly ashamed of yourselves.

Terrorists aren't destroying this country; blind obedience, complacency,
anti-intellectualism, and laziness are. Do you really think that... even
if the bill mentioned in this e-mail was real, that signing your name to
an e-mail and forwarding it to other people actually constitutes some
sort of political action? Thomas Paine must be rolling in his grave.

I know that the majority will probably just delete this reply… sadly, they’re most likely the ones who really need to be reading it. Also, there were actually about ten lines above and below each ‘###’ but wordpress ate those. I know that this won’t make a difference though; hell, just a few minutes ago I got a reply (to my reply) stating: “i dont know. i just forward them. i did hear something about that recently on the news.” … two things, (1) No the hell you didn’t. (2) Thanks for proving my point.

When I look back at my time in the U.S. Army, there’s always one thing that comes to mind—the religiosity of the majority (in both the enlisted and commissioned ranks). It wasn’t diverse in the slightest; quite the contrary actually. In fact, you didn’t have to look far to see or hear someone making claims that the U.S. Army is a “Christian” army. And not just any breed of Christianity either, we’re talking about the Evangelical kind. The kind that makes a Chief Warrant Officer—supposedly the more intelligent of those serving; chastise and intimidate a junior enlisted soldier (in full view of about 20 other people) for refusing to believe that the Earth is 10,000 years old or less… the kind that keeps the onlookers in that scenario, silent.

I was that junior enlisted soldier, and if you’re reading this Chief Diefenbach, fuck you. You see, you are what’s wrong with the Army (I can’t speak for the other branches because I didn’t serve in them… but I hear that they suffer from the same problems.) The entire time I was serving, I was constantly frustrated by the fact that proselytizing to other soldiers without their consent, and/or discriminating against them on the basis of religion, was technically illegal but nonetheless an accepted practice… after all, there are no atheists in foxholes.

In fact, I can’t count the number of soldiers and officers whom I overheard speculating on the “End Times” during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq; there were many who actually believed that we were going to be fighting in a “holy war”, and to state or argue otherwise could get you into trouble. Aside from becoming a social outcast, you could find yourself the subject of a complaint to your supervisor when one of the end-timers interprets your refusal to believe their bullshit as an open attack on their religion. This very thing happened to me shortly after 9/11. Nothing ever came out of it, but it did cause some minor stress in my life for a short moment.

There were rewards for being religious—or at least pretending to be so. When I was in BCT (Basic Combat Training), the weekends usually consisted of G.I. parties, trash pickup details, cutting grass, etc. Basically, any work that the Drill Instructors could find—except for those who went to church on Sunday. On Sunday morning right after formation, you’d be separated into two groups; those going to church, and those who weren’t. For those of us who weren’t going to church, we’d usually have some mops, brooms, lawnmowers, etc. waiting for us. If you went to church, you got out of about ~3-4 hours of ass-busting manual labor. It’s funny how the chain of command didn’t see anything unfair about this. They also didn’t see anything unfair when a request that few of us non-believers asked to have our own “church” session on Sunday mornings was denied. The official reason was that we needed a chaplain; since we didn’t have one, our only other option was to participate in what was available. They reinforced this position with the logic that; since they didn’t have Catholic, Episcopalian, Methodist, Buddhist, or Jewish chaplains available either, and none of the adherents of those faiths complained about having to attend a [supposedly] non-denominational church service, why should we get special treatment? The flaws in this logic with respect to us non-believers should be immediately obvious.

Rewards for being religious weren’t just limited to boot camp either. Every month or so, our unit (along with other units) would sponsor an event called “A Duty Day With God” where, all you had to do was attend a 1 hour “meeting” in the morning with the chaplain and you’d get the rest of the day off—most of the time, they’d plan a trip to a theme park or some other recreational activity; 100% free to the participants. And if you didn’t attend? Well, I long suspected that this was just a sneaky way of sorting out the “bad apples” but I digress. If you didn’t attend, you had to go to work just like any other day.

And then there were the Chaplains with their camouflage bibles… the Brits and Aussies whom I served with in Iraq were relentless in their ridicule when it came to the habit that the U.S. Army had adopted, of opening and closing Battle Update Briefs (BUBs) with a [Christian] prayer. Oh sure, it was a non-denominational prayer… so long as your denomination recognizes Jesus Christ as it’s personal lord and savior. This, combined with the utter disrespect directed towards Muslims—by referring to them as “Hajis”, or calling them “Haji” instead of their names—by many of my fellow service members (sometimes candidly; other times, not so much) made it painfully clear that there were many who believed that we were Christian soldiers fighting in a Christian crusade. The use of the word “crusade” by then President Bush, only cemented this idea in the minds of the faithful. The idea that this was a crusade was now beyond criticism because it was endorsed by our president.

Meanwhile for the nonbelievers in the Army, the walls began closing in. After 9/11, I noticed a surge in the level of religiosity of my fellow service members, and the level of religious discrimination increased as well. Our unit started having “Chaplain’s Runs”. This consisted of troops running in formation with the chaplain in front, leading the formation. The chaplain had his own guidon too, with a great big ‘ol cross right in the middle; which was carried throughout the duration. The runs were mandatory and they were opened and/or closed with a prayer. I once had a chaplain call on me to lead the closing prayer… I suspect that this was due to my reputation (it wasn’t a secret that I was a non-believer). He couldn’t compel me to lead the prayer however; I refused (in front of the entire unit). This was just another form of harassment. There were many times, when good-intentioned Christians approached me, wanting to talk about my faith, God, Jesus, etc. And many times I had to tell them that I wasn’t interested—and most of the time I had to remind them that my position hasn’t changed since the last time I told them I wasn’t interested. The kind of reputation I had wasn’t the kind that you’d want while serving in this Army; I was pretty much considered “fair game”. I saw this very thing happen to a few other people too.

So much for the separation of church and State. The U.S. Armed forces are government entities, so this mix of religion and government is illegal, yet, when trying to argue this with your average uneducated soldier, you’ll usually run into the response “But America is a Christian Nation!”. At that point you just need to walk away… I rarely did this though, and it only caused me stress.

The purpose of this post is to inform anyone who reads it that the Army has a serious problem—it has been taken over by extremists. Overzealous Evangelicals and Dominionists who believe the literal word of the Bible—but they have no problem with picking and choosing which passages to follow and which to ignore either. Any part of the Bible that supports their goals is taken at it’s word while other parts might as well not exist. This mentality isn’t limited to just the enlisted ranks or just the commissioned ranks—it’s everywhere. From the lowest ranking private, to the highest ranking officer, you can see it’s influence; you don’t even have to look very hard.

In closing, I’d just like to say that I’m proud of my service. I had plenty of good times, plenty of bad times, and many, many weird moments that seemed defy all logic, throughout my service from 1998 – 2004. I’m just hoping that the Army can rid itself of the fundamentalists who have infiltrated it’s ranks. We claim to be fighting against extremists in our “War on Terror”, but if we are to be successful in defeating extremism elsewhere, we need to defeat it within ourselves. There is no difference between extremists killing in the name of Jesus and extremists killing in the name of Allah.

Further Reading (in no particular order):

http://donklephant.com/2009/05/04/why-religion-and-military-dont-mix/

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/05/2009542250178146.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/26/us/26atheist.html

http://www.haleyassoc.com/mrffboard/viewtopic.php?p=376&sid=6909b77832f1e4e8011b378d460b931a

http://pluralism.org/research/profiles/display.php?profile=73495