Peace Messenger

A Righteous Nation Goes to War in the Armor of God!

Bible verses adorned the covers of the Pentagon's Worldwide Intelligence Updates during the early days of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, a report by Robert Draper, published in the June issue of GQ, has revealed.

The cover of the March 31 update pictured a tank in the desert, with Ephesians 6:13 printed above: "Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything to stand."

Another, dated April 3, shows tanks roaring through a majestic arch of swords, with the text "Open the gates that the righteous nation may enter, the nation that keeps faith" (Isaiah 26:2)

In his "On Faith" blog for Washington Post, David Gibson contemplates the equally rephrehensible possibilties that either Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon were trying the manipulate the religious beliefs of President Bush or that covers were the work of a dedicated corps of Christian military officers who see themselves as "spiritual warriors" and "government paid missionaries."

See these covers and several more samples at the GQ site.

The Taliban's Best Recruiting Weapon

From: Chris Hedges, "Becoming What We Seek to Destroy," Truthdig, 10 May 2009

 

The bodies of dozens, perhaps well over a hundred, women, children and men, their corpses blown into bits of human flesh by iron fragmentation bombs dropped by U.S. warplanes in a village in the western province of Farah, illustrates the futility of the Afghan war. We are not delivering democracy or liberation or development....

 

We are delivering massive, sophisticated forms of industrial slaughter. And because we have employed the blunt and horrible instrument of war in a land we know little about and are incapable of reading, we embody the barbarism we claim to be seeking to defeat. We are the best recruiting weapon the Taliban possesses. We have enabled it to rise from the ashes seven years ago to openly control over half the country and carry out daylight attacks in the capital Kabul. And the war we wage is being exported like a virus to Pakistan in the form of drones that bomb Pakistani villages and increased clashes between the inept Pakistani military and a restive internal insurgency....  full column

Easter, Baptism and Empire

From: Jonathan Bartley, "Easter and Anarchy," Guardian, 7 April 2009

Easter was also the time when baptisms would happen – that Christians too were 'raised with Christ'. It was the clearest symbol that the allegiance of early Christians did not lie with the state. This was the point at which a new citizenship of God's Kingdom was embraced, one which challenged all other forms of citizenship, and most notably that of Rome. It committed them to a set of values and behaviours, and a way of living which was often at odds with the social and political norms of the Empire. Christians called it 'the Way.'

But in the Fourth century, this presented a problem for the emperor Constantine who was intent on marrying Christianity with the power

Romans Disarmed

How Close to Presidential Dictatorship?

Analysis and commentary on the Bush-era memos made public on Monday, March 2:

David G. Savage, "Bush Memos on Presidential Power Shock Legal Experts," Chicago Tribune, 4 March 2009: Legal experts said Tuesday they were taken aback by the claim in the latest batch of secret Bush-era memos that the president alone had the power to set the rules during the war on terrorism.

Yale law professor Jack Balkin called this a "theory of presidential dictatorship. They say the battlefield is everywhere. And the president can do anything he wants, so long as it involves the military and the enemy."...