Mistakenly Burned Korans? — Two U.S. Soldiers Are Dead, Probably because of this Incomprehensible Stupidity — an Essay on the Dangers Posed by an Actively Proselytizing Christian U.S. Military

24 February 2012

The facts — Koran burning at Bagram Air Base

If you missed it:

As thousands of angry Afghans flung rocks at NATO’s largest military base in Afghanistan on Tuesday, American officials sought to quell a widening furor over what they said was the accidental incineration by U.S. military personnel of copies of the Islamic holy book.

President Obama apologized — using “error” as an excuse

According to Australian news:

President Barack Obama has been forced to apologise over the burning of Korans at a US airbase in Afghanistan, where three days of protests have killed 14 people, including two American soldiers.

Violent anti-US protests have seen furious Afghans attack French, Norwegian and US bases, shouting 'death to America' after the Taliban exhorted their countrymen to kill foreign troops to avenge the incident at a US-run base.

In a letter of apology to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Obama expressed 'deep regret' over the incident that he said was unintentional, and pledged that those responsible would be held accountable, Kabul said.

'The error was inadvertent; I assure you that we will take the appropriate steps to avoid any recurrence, to include holding accountable those responsible.'

Karzai said a US officer was responsible - 'out of ignorance' - for the Koran burning at Bagram and the US government had admitted the mistake, his office said.

Why this incident matters

The most unforgivable aspect of this demented act was that it arguably got, and will continue to get, more of our troops killed. This result is similar to shooting one’s own squad members.

Burning Korans in this context was unlikely to have been a mistake

From the perspective of the offended religion, only an imperialistic “infidel” burns holy books inside the nation that revers them. The Bagram Air Base Koran-burning was so obviously contextually offensive that the probability that it was done on purpose arguably exceeds the likelihood that it was a mistake.

Bibles and Korans are usually distinctively marked and treated. It is not statistically probable that someone serving in an American war zone in an Islamic country would be unaware of the holy meaning of the Koran to that nation’s people(s).

Step-by-step reasoning

(i) Burning holy books is guaranteed to provoke the adversaries who treasure them.

(ii) From a strategic perspective, unnecessarily enraging one’s enemies is generally unwise — it escalates the likelihood that they will be even more determined to kill one’s troops.

(iii) Therefore, prominent policy safeguards would almost certainly have been in place in Afghanistan, which would prevent such a foreseeably self-defeating error.

(iv) Consequently, violating the policy was probably a deliberate act on the part of the Koran-burner(s).

(v) One of the few motivations sufficient to provoke such mission-damaging insubordination would be a religious one — righteousness gives psychological strength, even when exercised in the wrong directions.

Points 1, 2, and 3 — as a matter of military strategy, we usually avoid giving an adversary more motivation to kill us than he already has

Giving the enemy the idea that “we” are there to stamp out his very being is clearly insane strategy. With nothing left to lose, increased ferocity is the residue.

Commander-in-Chief Obama is unlikely to convince knowledgeable people that American military command is so ineffectual that it cannot prohibit troops from doing such blatantly self-defeating things.

Point 4 — something else was (and is) going on at Bagram Air Base

It smells more like medieval Crusades mentality than simple error.

I also doubt that just one miscreant was at fault. How many intelligent commanders in a war zone would turn over a pile of their adversaries’ most holy books to just anyone and say, “Hey, get rid of these in any way you think appropriate.”

Point 5 — what probably really happened at Bagram?

My guess is that the idea of turning Christianity into America’s state religion has expanded much too far up the ranks of American military command. Aggressive Christian evangelism has come to obscure the military’s more limited national interest objectives.

This is something that began concerning military analysts in 2005. Some of the more prominent recent publications on the subject are listed below. Speaking as someone peripherally associated with the military, I can say that the concerns expressed are accurately founded.

If you look through the titles listed below, you will notice that the Koran-burning at Bagram is not the first instance of problems with mission-defeating evangelical insubordination at the Air Base.

Citations — regarding mission-defeating Christian fundamentalism in the American armed forces

Perhaps the two most concise video overviews of this subject are:

Fault Lines, Evangelism in the military (Part 1), Al Jazeera via YouTube.com (25 June 2009)

Fault Lines, Evangelism in the Military (Part 2), Al Jazeera via YouTube.com (25 June 2009)

An eye-opening bit of video proof about insubordinate Christian proselytizing at Bagram Air Base (up through the rank of Lt. Colonel) is here:

James Bays, US troops urged to share faith in Afghanistan, Al Jazeera (April-May 2009) (video clip)

Editor, ‘Witness for Jesus’ in Afghanistan: US troops urged to share faith and filmed with local Bibles despite anti-proselytising rules, Al Jazeera (04 May 2009) (includes a link to the above video clip)

Other written publications include:

Jonathan Liscombe, Evangelism in the Profession of Arms: An Evaluation of Evangelical Christian: Proselytizing in the Professional Journal of the United States Air Force, Harvard University via MilitaryReligiousFreedom.org (March 2011)

Note

Military Religious Freedom kept the authorship of the above paper confidential. However, its author is named at Harvard University’s log of master’s theses, here.

Extracts from Liscombe’s paper are posted, here.

W. D. Noble, ‘Who Teacheth My Hands To War’ – Christian Fundamentalism in the American Military, subversify.com (19 February 2010)

Jeff Sharlet, Jesus killed Mohammed: The crusade for a Christian military, Harpers (May 2009)

Dave Belden, Backward Christian Soldiers, New Humanist 123(1) (January-February 2008)

It is psychologically easy to take evangelical religious beliefs farther than is good for sound military strategy and the national interest

Separation of Church and State remains an important (and increasingly violated) American principle.

The national interest is constitutionally not identical with serving Christ — even though the American public is predominantly Christian. The United States is not a theocracy.

Proselytizing, military-embraced Christianity creates and fuels enemies that the United States does not need. It sows resentment even among our own multiple-religion armed forces.

Forgetting to remember how other people(s) see us

There is no provable, principled ethical difference between killing to benefit American fundamentalists’ Christian God, than there is in doing the same thing to aid the Islamic world’s Allah.

Though our Christian rectitude may be clear to our narrowly-focused selves, it is not clear to people of other faiths.

We would arguably be wise (and certainly more spiritually humble) to see the mote in our own eyes before detecting the same in others’.

The moral? — The source of “error” at Bagram is most probably American military command’s failure to mandate and supervise the separation of personal religiosity from organizational purpose

People concerned about the American military’s increasing propensity to become a violent arm of proselytizing Christianity have good reason to be concerned.

I doubt that Christ would have envisioned the Crusades as good spiritual policy. And proselytizing through the implied force of arms is very bad American strategic policy.

Note

I doubt that the truth about Bagram’s Koran burning will emerge. Too many people have self-righteous, holier-than-thou command behinds to cover.

The people least likely to live Christ’s teachings are the ones most likely to spread their misinterpretations of his Word by force of self-righteous intimidation.

Spiritual humility is a lesson lost on most fundamentalists, be they Christian or Muslim.

PeteFree.com

Mistakenly Burned Korans? — Two U.S. Soldiers Are Dead, Probably because of this Incomprehensible Stupidity — an Essay on the Dangers Posed by an Actively Proselytizing Christian U.S. Military