Pentagon promotes militant Christianity to US troops in Iraq
What could possibly go wrong with a scheme to introduce tens of thousands of young, stressed out soldiers fighting a guerrilla war in a Muslim country to a particularly bloody-minded brand of aggressively evangelical apocalyptic Christianity? As Max Blumenthal reports in The Nation, the Pentagon is on a quest — one might say a crusade — to find out.
As an official arm of the Defense Department’s America Supports You program, [Operation Straight Up] plans to mail copies of the controversial apocalyptic video game, Left Behind: Eternal Forces to soldiers serving in Iraq. OSU is also scheduled to embark on a “Military Crusade in Iraq” in the near future. “We feel the forces of heaven have encouraged us to perform multiple crusades that will sweep through this war torn region,” OSU declares on its website about its planned trip to Iraq. “We’ll hold the only religious crusade of its size in the dangerous land of Iraq.”
Well, it’s just a harmless video game and a traveling ministry, right? A bit of entertainment and spiritual solace?
Not exactly.
The Left Behind videogame is a real-time strategy game that makes players commanders of a virtual evangelical army in a post-apocalyptic landscape that looks strikingly like New York City after 9/11. With tanks, helicopters and a fearsome arsenal of automatic weapons at their disposal, Left Behind players wage a violent war against United Nations-like peacekeepers who, according to LaHaye’s interpretation of Revelation, represent the armies of the Antichrist. Each time a Left Behind player kills a UN soldier, their virtual character exclaims, “Praise the Lord!” To win the game, players must kill or convert all the non-believers left behind after the rapture. They also have the option of reversing roles and commanding the forces of the Antichrist. (Video preview here).
Blumenthal also notes that the Operation Straight Up care packages for troops “include a copy of evangelical pastor Jonathan McDowell’s More Than A Carpenter — a book advertised as “one of the most powerful evangelism tools worldwide” — that is double-published in Arabic.” So along with introducing troops to “kill or convert” theology, the Pentagon, via OSU, is encouraging troops to embrace imperial evangelism among Iraqis: gunpoint conversions, just like in the video game. Hey, it worked for the Conquistadors …
