W.J. Astore
I grew up in the Catholic Church, where I professed my faith weekly at every mass I attended. I also grew up a fan of the U.S. military, even as I read many books critical of its performance in the Vietnam War. Thankfully, I didn’t have to profess my faith in that military, but if I had, what would such a “profession” have looked like? This is the subject of my latest article at TomDispatch.com, which you can read about here.
Here’s what I believe America’s profession of faith would look like at this moment in our militarized history:
* We believe in wars. We may no longer believe in formal declarations of war (not since December 1941 has Congress made one in our name), but that sure hasn’t stopped us from waging them. From Korea to Vietnam, Afghanistan to Iraq, the Cold War to the War on Terror, and so many military interventions in between, including Grenada, Panama, and Somalia, Americans are always fighting somewhere as if we saw great utility in thumbing our noses at the Prince of Peace. (That’s Jesus Christ, if I remember my Catholic catechism correctly.)
* We believe in weaponry, the more expensive the better. The underperforming F-35 stealth fighter may cost $1.45 trillion over its lifetime. An updated nuclear triad (land-based missiles, nuclear submarines, and strategic bombers) may cost that already mentioned $1.7 trillion. New (and malfunctioning) aircraft carriers cost us more than $10 billion each. And all such weaponry requests get funded, with few questions asked, despite a history of their redundancy, ridiculously high price, regular cost overruns, and mediocre performance. Meanwhile, Americans squabble bitterly over a few hundred million dollars for the arts and humanities.
* We believe in weapons of mass destruction. We believe in them so strongly that we’re jealous of anyone nibbling at our near monopoly. As a result, we work overtime to ensure that infidels and atheists (that is, the Iranians and North Koreans, among others) don’t get them. In historical terms, no country has devoted more research or money to deadly nuclear, biological, and chemical weaponry than the United States. In that sense, we’ve truly put our money where our mouths are (and where a devastating future might be).
* We believe with missionary zeal in our military and seek to establish our “faith” everywhere. Hence, our global network of perhaps 800 overseas military bases. We don’t hesitate to deploy our elite missionaries, our equivalent to the Jesuits, the Special Operations forces to more than 130 countries annually. Similarly, the foundation for what we like to call foreign assistance is often military training and foreign military sales. Our present supreme leader, Pope Trump I, boasts of military sales across the globe, most notably to the infidel Saudis. Even when Congress makes what, until recently, was the rarest of attempts to rein in this deadly trade in arms, Pope Trump vetoes it. His rationale: weapons and profits should rule all.
* We believe in our college of cardinals, otherwise known as America’s generals and admirals. We sometimes appoint them (or anoint them?) to the highest positions in the land. While Trump’s generals — Michael Flynn, James Mattis, H.R. McMaster, and John Kelly — have fallen from grace at the White House, America’s generals and admirals continue to rule globally. They inhabit proconsul-like positions in sweeping geographical commands that (at least theoretically) cover the planet and similarly lead commands aimed at dominating the digital-computer realm and special operations. One of them will head a new force meant to dominate space through time eternal. A “strategic” command (the successor to the Strategic Air Command, or SAC, so memorably satirized in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove) continues to ensure that, at some future moment, the U.S. will be able to commit mass genocide by quite literally destroying the world with nuclear weapons. Indeed, Pope Trump recently boasted that he could end America’s Afghan War in a week, apparently through the mass nuclear genocide of (his figure) 10 million Afghans. Even as he then blandly dismissed the idea of wiping that country “off the face of the earth,” he openly reflected the more private megalomania of those military professionals funded by the rest of us to think about “the unthinkable.” In sum, everything is — theoretically at least — under the thumbs of our unelected college of cardinals. Their overblown term for it is “full-spectrum dominance,” which, in translation, means they grant themselves god-like powers over our lives and that of our planet (though the largely undefeated enemies in their various wars don’t seem to have acknowledged this reality).
* We believe that freedom comes through obedience. Those who break ranks from our militarized church and protest, like Chelsea Manning, are treated as heretics and literally tortured.
* We believe military spending brings wealth and jobs galore, even when it measurably doesn’t. Military production is both increasingly automated and increasingly outsourced, leading to far fewer good-paying American jobs compared to spending on education, infrastructure repairs of and improvements in roads, bridges, levees, and the like, or just about anything else for that matter.
* We believe, and our most senior leaders profess to believe, that our military represents the very best of us, that we have the “finest” one in human history.
* We believe in planning for a future marked by endless wars, whether against terrorism or “godless” states like China and Russia, which means our military church must be forever strengthened in the cause of winning ultimate victory.
* Finally, we believe our religion is the one true faith. (Just as I used to be taught that the Catholic Church was the one true church and that salvation outside it was unattainable.) More pacific “religions” are dismissed as weak, misguided, and exploitative. Consider, for example, the denunciation of NATO countries that refuse to spend more money on their militaries. Such a path to the future is heretical; therefore, they must be punished.
Please read the rest of my article here at TomDispatch.com. And please comment. Did I miss anything in my version of America’s militarized profession of faith?
Bracing Views 
Personally, I don’t think the bulk of the American public cares.
The cries of outrage come from the same sectors, year after year, and are largely ignored. Yes, there is always some media coverage, but news cycles flash by and celebrities and athletes are much more interesting, certainly more entertaining. As are where they live, what they wear, and who they had lunch with yesterday.
We love and believe in the military and the NFL, and in the ultimate infallibility of the rich and corporate leadership (they didn’t get rich by being stupid and making mistakes – present occupant of 1600 Pennsylania Avenue excepted) as a Jesuit believes in The One True Church.
As far as the cost of such blind obedience in dollars & cents goes, I paraphrase Charles Portis’ character, Norwood Pratt: “I never even see that tax money.”
Now, from one seriously lapsed Catholic to another, say ten “Hail, Marys,” a good “Act of Contrition” and go in peace.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Spot on! And the greatest test of faith imposed by the hawks is to believe government is the enemy of the people (Reagan: government is the problem) but yet the military is the answer to all our problems. Ironic too that conservatives took out the fiscal knives to virtually neuter and gut NASA a couple decades ago but now they’re moving fast to weaponize, privatize and fully fund the space program in a new race to … to… to what? To legitimize and validate Mike Pence for starters.
LikeLike
We have militarized socialism to protect privatized corporate capitalism. What a combination!
LikeLike
I believe that Fr. you speak of was none other than Father Daly– am I right? Who was Defrocked for child abuse and hiding it behind his clerical garb during that time period when you were a boy…. Serving quite a span of years in St. Pat’s. Parish! I still attend Mass regularly but espousing my own views of same in pvt. Being more or less a “Cafeteria Cath.” in the process. Good analogy to the M.I.C. My own experience as a Buck Sgt. for the Strategic Air Command an Acolyte at best…:/ :o)
LikeLike
Yes. Consider the irony: in CCD he tried to teach us the meaning of love. Good god, what a hypocrite.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Militant Monks are not new. I first heard this phrase in History Class back in College, when we were learning about the Medieval Period and the Crusades. The instructor laughed and smirked when he told us about the Clerics of that day, cleaving, slashing and cutting down the “others”. The others could be Muslims, Jews or Byzantines.
No exact version of the speech by Pope Urban II who called the First Crusade is known. One version “All who die by the way, whether by land or by sea, or in battle against the pagans, shall have immediate remission of sins. This I grant them through the power of God with which I am invested.”
I also found this: The First Crusade was an important episode in the history of martyrdom. While some of the crusaders were martyrs in the old style, giving up their lives rather than renounce Christ, the expedition established in the consciousness of Western Europeans the idea of a new route to the status of martyr, which could be earned by those who fell in battle against the unbeliever, fighting for Christ and for his people. From this time onwards crusading preachers regularly offered the stole of martyrdom to those who served in Palestine, Spain, and elsewhere, in the war against the Muslims.
I hear from people I talk to, warn me about how the Muslims of today are willing to die because they believe they will go to their heaven. They seem to be unaware that the Medieval Christian Church promised the same thing.
Today, we have a secular version of Crusades all over the world. The Stars and Stripes and the National Anthem have taken on a Secular Sacred symbol and a Hymn. Sadly IMHO, the National Anthem has come to mean America Über Alles.
LikeLike
Hard to reconcile the Prince of Peace with constant war, but never underestimate the power of churches.
LikeLike
You forgot the Holy Orders who (like the Jesuits, Christian Brothers, etc.) spread the Gospel of the War State by staffing the pro-war think-tanks, preaching as pundits on cable channels, and providing self-serving commentary as MSM columnists and op-ed writers who spew the propaganda that underpins the Militarized Profession of Faith. Also the merchants of war who enrich themselves selling the Pentagon its lethal weapons for which they must pay penitence in the form of donations (bribes) to member of Congress who in turn use their parishioners’ fund (US tax dollars) to fund the war merchants’ works of evil. This scheme of power and control of the masses is as old as organized religion.
LikeLike
Good point about the media, always eager to appear “patriotic,” meaning they never met a war they didn’t like.
And yes — the merchants of death — I’ve written a lot about them at this site.
Thanks for writing in.
LikeLike
I keep this link around on my own website for ready reference, since it seems timeless in its recurring applicability, especially in the “Christian” West: In Praise of the New Knighthood. Otherwise, with the “knighthood” grown rather long-in-the-tooth and increasingly diseased after eight centuries of pitiless slaughter, I see in my own country’s “leadership” little more than a tacky parade of Tricky Dick Nixons and Henry Kissingers promising:
Peace With Horror
A leper knight rode into view
Astride his mangy steed
A harbinger of violence
A plague without a need
An apparition of discord
Upon which fear would feed
His unannounced arrival meant
He’d lost his leper’s bell
And yet his ugly innocence
Could not conceal the smell
His good intentions only paved
Another road to Hell
With mace and lance and sword deployed
He vowed in peace to live
Through rotting lips he promised not
To take, but only give
He swore to only kill the ones
Whom he said shouldn’t live
He did not speak the language and
He did not know the land
So why the healthy shrank from him
He could not understand
Why did they want the water when
He’d offered them the sand?
Committing to commitments he
Committed crimes galore
As steadfast in his loyalties
As any purchased whore
A mercenary madman like
His slogan: “Peace through War”
His slaying for salvation masked
An inner, grasping greed
A lust for living good and well
While looking past his deed
A dead man walking wakefully;
A graveyard gone to seed
He planned to leave in “phases,” so
He said to those back home
Who’d heard some nasty rumors rife
From Babylon to Rome
Of murders in their name meant to
Exalt their sacred tome
But still he needed to “protect”
Some pilgrims on the road
Who for “protection” glumly paid
A portion of their load:
For this decaying derelict,
An object episode
When asked to give a summary
Of what he had achieved
He shifted to the future tense
The gains that he perceived
And spoke in the subjunctive mood
To those he had aggrieved
“The future life to come portends
More suffering than now.
Through me alone can you avoid
What I will disavow:
The promises I never made
While making, anyhow.”
“I unsay things that I have said
And say I never did;
Then say them once again to pound
The meaning deeply hid,
Down where the lizard lives between
The ego and the id.”
“I’ve given you catastrophe
And called it a success;
If you want other outcomes then
Step forward and confess
That you believed a pack of lies
With no strain, sweat, or stress.”
“You know the meaning of my words
Lasts only just as long
As sound takes to decay in air
So that you take them wrong
If you assign significance
To my sly siren song.”
“A ‘propaganda catapult’
I’ve called myself, in fact;
A damning human document
Which I myself redact
At every opportunity
With no concern for tact.”
“If you think what I’ve done before
Has caused me to repent
Or dream that I, in any way,
Might let up or relent
Then I’ve got wars for you to buy,
Or maybe just to rent.”
“I’ve little time to live on earth,
So why should I reflect
Upon the dead and dying souls
Whose lives I’ve robbed and wrecked?
I care not if they hate, just that
They know to genuflect.”
Thus did the ruin of a world
Continue in its curse;
The great man on his horse relieved
The faithful of their purse
And gave them bad to save them from
What they feared even worse
So onward to Jerusalem
He staggered as he slew
In train with sack and booty that
He only thought his due
For spreading freedom’s germs among
The last surviving few
Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright 2008
LikeLike
Totally awesome and totally true Mr. Astore. You now have preached the true faith brother. Peace.
LikeLike
Right on, in this ex-Catholic’s opinion.
LikeLike
I can appreciate expatriate curmudgeon Fred Reed’s term for the Pentagram. He calls it “the five-sided black hole on the Potomac.” Speaking of expatriate curmudgeons contemplating the voracious vacuum at the eroding epicenter of the “New Versailles,” I’d call the bloated building a …
“Spitting Image”
Expatriate ex-patriots expectorate
When REMFs proceed to hide behind the troops
Extolling tales of better men who met their fate
In service to a penis pride that droops
Each time a petty presidential potentate
Ignites a war — and in his panties poops.
Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright © 2019
Getting stuck inside the house during the daily downpour of the last few weeks hasn’t helped my miserable mood much. I think that Global Warming means that places usually receiving little rain now don’t get any, while those places that usually get a fair amount get excessively much. Or something like that. Anyway, stir crazy confinement does have its psycho-therapeutic (or psychiatric) side effects. Like:
Sovereign Eunuchs
Useful Idiot
Star Chamber, Incorporated
and
A Parody of Product-Placement Propaganda
Oh, shit. Now it has begun to rain even harder. Perhaps it doesn’t pay to piss off the Atmosphere Angels …
LikeLike
Great article and I agree with everything with one exception – I don’t think any of Trump’s generals will ever fight Russia. Or Iran for that matter. It’s just saber rattling to confuse the masses.
LikeLike