Hostile Takeover: Holy Warriors Peddle New 'Protocols,' Seek Military Dominion

What if he was ordered to bomb a building in which terrorists were hiding, even though there were civilians in the way?

He shook his head. "Who are you to question why God builds up nations just to destroy them, so that those who are in grace can see that they're in grace?" A smile lit up half his face, an expression that might be taken for sarcastic if Hrabak wasn't a man committed to being in earnest at all times. What he'd just said-a paraphrase from Romans-might be something like a Word of Knowledge, a gift of wisdom from God. It blew his mind so much he had to repeat it, his voice picking up a speed and enthusiasm that bordered on joy. "He"-the Lord-"builds up an entire nation"-Iraq or Vietnam, Afghanistan or Pakistan, who are you to question why?-"just to destroy them! To show somebody else"-America, a young man guided to college by God, distrustful of his own choices-"that they're in grace."

In this, the cadet was echoing one of his comrades quoted earlier:

"How," he asked, "in the midst of pulling a trigger and watching somebody die, in that instant are you going to be confident that that's something God told you to do?" His answer was stark. "In this world, there are forces of good and evil. There's angels and there's demons, you know? And Satan hates what's holy."

The armies of the world are being filled up with soldiers -- and even more so, with officers -- on fire with the deranged certitudes of violent fundamentalism. Their enemies -- both heathenish foreigners and the "spiritual terrorists" among their own ranks, their own families and fellow citizens -- are agents of absolute evil. And there is no such thing as "collateral damage," no killing of innocents in their holy war -- for God Himself has targeted them for destruction, just to prove how righteous His warriors are.

Of course, militarism is itself a virulent cult; without any need for divine sanction, a vast war machine will seek to follow the logic of its construction and do what it was created for: make war. It takes a tremendous -- and ever-failing -- effort to restrain the machine even under the best circumstances. Stoking it with religious extremists committed to blind obedience and violence in the name of God is an unbelievably dangerous and stupid thing to do; yet, as Sharlet and others make clear, the Pentagon's top brass -- including the generals appointed or "continued" by Obama, such as David Petraeus, are deliberately choosing this course, giving their implicit -- and sometimes explicit -- approval to the growth of fanaticism in the ranks. Why not? It's easier to fight wars of imperial domination with soldiers who, in their slavish, unthinking submission, identify their superiors' agenda with God's will.

But our cynical generals are meddling with a volatile material that they cannot control in the long run -- just as they and our security apparatchiks did in cultivating violent Islamic extremists to fight the West's secular agenda in Afghanistan. The "blowback" from the unholy marriage of militarism and militant fundamentalism is certain to bring forth monstrous fruit.

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