Reflections on a Crusade Gone Wrong: Bush's Iraq War 2003-2010

The United States decries the forces of Islamic radicalism. Conservative Christians in this country rail against “Islamofascism” and “Sharia Law” and claim that Islam is an enemy of everything America stands for. But American crusading spirit is far from spent. Activities of church groups and more shockingly, of the US Military, give jihadist all the fodder they need to rally their own base to the threat.

Because of how Bush packaged what was and very much remains “his” war.

It’s a serious problem: The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) on August 11, 2010 called on Defense Secretary Gates to end “unconstitutional proselytizing” in the US Military. Bruce Wilson of Alternet reported(http://www.alternet.org/world/147803/mass_baptism_of_marines_exploited_by_jihadi...) on August 10 that “the Jihadists are observing unrestricted, unlawful Christian activity within the military and interpreting it as irrefutable proof of a Christian Crusade that justifies jihad.” And it does. One can’t wage a crusade, after all, and expect the other side not to crusade right back. The Jihadists are dancing to a tune we called.

Are we our own worst enemy in the war on terror?

The L.A. Times Blog(http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/08/marines-headed-for-afghanistan-und...) reported a few days before Wilson wrote for Alternet of “a mass baptism of marines from Lt. Col. Lawrence Kaifesh’s 3rd Battalion unit as “part of Operation Sword of the Spirit, a program meant to prepare the battalion for duty in the Taliban stronghold of Helmand province.””

Operation Sword of the Spirit.

Does an operational plan with a title like that belong in the US Military? Sword of the Spirit? How is this different from, say, the “Sword of Allah”?

This is not a war between Christianity and Islam. We cannot allow it to be packaged as such, and we cannot allow such a lie to be perpetrated and sustained.

President Bush set the tone when on September 16, 2001 he called for a global “crusade” against terrorism. With a call like that, it’s no wonder his later assurances that the US was not at war with Islam fell flat, or went unheard. And after all, he told French President Chirac that “This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.”