Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
To my mind the greatest movie satire on the idiocy of the Cold War and the fear it inspired in humanity, was Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece “Dr. Strangelove, or How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”, released in 1964. The plot in brief was, “An insane general starts a process to nuclear holocaust that a war room of politicians and generals frantically try to stop”. For those unfamiliar with one of the best American movies of all time check this link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057012/
Rent the movie if you haven’t seen it, for it will bring you dark laughter and present you with much to ponder. At the time of its release, some disparaged the movie as being un-credible in its characterizations and not believable in it premises. I hadn’t thought of the movie in years until I came across this article at the website Buzzflash.com titled “The Theology of Armageddon” by Robert Koehler. http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/13024 . The article is relatively brief, but well worth your time.
The article deals with a course titled “Nuclear Ethics and Nuclear Warfare” at Vandenberg Air Force Base, given under Air Force auspices. As the Robert Koehler states:
“(I)t turns out that the point of the mandatory course, which was recently canceled by the Air Force after officers of numerous faiths complained to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation about it and Truthout published an exposé in July, was to give officers in the first week of missile-launch training a Bible-verse-studded indoctrination in faux-Just War Theory (cynically known in the ranks as the “Jesus Loves Nukes” training)”.
What got me thinking of the movie Dr. Strangelove was a quote in the article from Dr. Wehrner Von Braun, which makes credible the satiric reality of the movies title character, Dr. Strangelove, hysterically portrayed as a heavily accented former NAZI, by Peter Sellers. Seller’s character was widely denounced as being unfair to Von Braun, at the time, but seeing this quote from him makes me wonder:
“We knew that we had created a new means of warfare and the question as to what nation . . . we were willing to entrust this brainchild of ours was a moral decision more than anything else,” von Braun is quoted as saying. “We wanted to see the world spared another conflict such as Germany had just been through and we felt that only by surrendering such a weapon to people who are guided by the Bible could such an assurance to the world be best secured.”
To me this is post facto justification by von Braun of his choice of the comfort of an honored life in the U.S. mirroring his NAZI lifestyle and providing a sop to detract from the truth that he was an enthusiastic war criminal. Von Braun had developed the V (I & II) guided missiles for the NAZI’s and became the head of the United States Ballistic Missile Program. Von Braun was a NAZI Party member of distinction and it seems dedication. His missiles fell upon Great Britain in the closing days of WW II as an attempt to cause terror within the British people and were random in their destruction. That he then became an honored man in the U.S., rather than a defendant at Nuremburg, is a tribute to our own hypocrisy in prosecuting the Cold War. A similar mindset seems to have infected some in our Air Force as I will show.
The Air Force Academy is located inColorado Springs, Colorado. Not only is this a bustling city, whose primary industry is the Military/Industrial Complex, but it is also the center of a tremendous amount of Evangelical Christian activity.
Although houses of worship of almost every major religion can be found in the city, Colorado Springs has attracted a large influx of Evangelical Christians and Christian organizations in recent years. At one time Colorado Springs was counted to be the national headquarters for 81 different religious organizations, earning the city the tongue-in-cheek nickname “the Evangelical Vatican” and “The Christian Mecca.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_Springs,_Colorado
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4287106
In the past decade, the Air Force Academy was shaken by implications that it favors Evangelical Christianity in its institutions, trampling on religious freedoms of non-believers in Evangelical Christianity. http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2011-03-13-Air_Force_Academy_13_ST_N.htm
To me the idea of a military dominated by a particular religious belief is antithetical to the U.S. Constitution and dangerous to the operation of a democratic republic. This becomes especially dicey when that particular religious belief proposes that we are in the “End Times” and feels that Armageddon will be the salvation of humanity. This has nothing to do with the religious beliefs of our troops, which I imagine are overwhelmingly Christian, but with the manipulation of their beliefs by fanatical fundamentalists, given license by some of their Commanders.
The old saying, which I concede has some validity, is that “there are no atheists in foxholes”. When one’s occupation puts a responsibility for the lives of your fellow citizens upon you and concomitantly leads one into life threatening situations, many humans have the need to know that if death comes, there will be rewards in an afterlife. Then in addition, all Americans are constitutionally entitled to be free to practice their religious beliefs. At what point though does the religious beliefs of ones superiors begin to supersede the soldiers own values and become indoctrination? There is evidence as shown above in the links, that this is taking place. Beyond the unconstitutionality of this religious indoctrination, lies the reality that the religion pushed upon the troops is one longing for and that would welcome the quick arrival of Armageddon. That our nuclear arsenal lies within the purview of this branch of our Armed Forces, escalates the possibilities that “Dr. Strangelove” was less a satire and more a prescient prophecy.
My personal position is that I feel strongly that religious belief can be uplifting and positive, but I consider Fundamentalists of any religion, including my own, to be dangerous to humanity. This is because the hubris of being convinced of your own correctness of belief, leads to intolerance of differing beliefs, which ultimately leads to repression and violence. There is much in the varied religious beliefs of our fellow humans that is uplifting to us all, but once those beliefs become stultified, unquestioned by fanatical followers of narrow vision, danger ensues. It is easy to question Islamic Fanaticism in the wake of 911, but how many would put that same spotlight on their own religious leanings?
If the injection of Fundamentalism is a trend in our Armed Forces, I personally find that frightening and disturbing. What do you think?
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/27/occupy-wall-street-anthony-bologna This same police officer was involved in the 2004 Bush protest claim.
Swarthmore mom,
Lawrence O’Donnell on Police Brutality at Occupy Wall Street
Lawrence O’Donnell had it on tonight.
Elaine,
Great link. The lack of main stream media attention to this protest is disgusting.
Correcting the Abysmal ‘New York Times’ Coverage of Occupy Wall Street
Allison Kilkenny on September 26, 2011
The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/blog/163626/correcting-abysmal-new-york-times-coverage-occupy-wall-street
Excerpt:
Over the weekend, my inbox exploded with angry messages from people who had just read this New York Times article (though it reads more like an op-ed) about the Occupy Wall Street protest. Ginia Bellafante gives a devastating account of the event’s attendees, depicting them as scatterbrained, sometimes borderline-psychotic transients.
Bellafante, who is not a reporter but a critic for the Times, offered a representation of the protesters that is as muddled as the amalgam of activists’ motives she presents in the span of the article. She first claims a Joni Mitchell lookalike named Zuni Tikka is a “default ambassador” of the movement. In one of the following paragraphs, she then describes the protest as “leaderless.” Either the people at Zuccotti Park have official leadership or they don’t (they don’t, by the way). So either Tikka is an official spokesperson who warrants first-paragraph favorability, or Bellafante’s own biases persuaded her to put the kooky girl dancing around in her underwear in the spotlight.
The more serious aspect of the protest—the “scores of arrests” that occurred over the weekend including the arrests of more than eighty people, several of whom the police first penned and then maced—is offered as an aside in Bellafante’s article (she doesn’t mention the macing at all). By the way, none of the young women in the following video are in their underwear.
LOL.
Mike,
Nah, he really is that annoying about it.
Gyges:
That is surprising, unless his attendance predated the current evangelical movement in the military.
Mike A,
Oddly enough, my brother-in-law got kicked out of the AFA for witnessing too much to the other cadets.
Excellent post, Mike S. I know this has been going on for some time at the Air Force Academy. Colorado Springs is a hotbed of religious fundamentalism.
So let me get this straight. Franklin graham calls muslim some bad names and thats outrageous, but the military can bomb, shoot, irradiate, detain, and torture muslim, and they have to be protected from the guy who wants to call them bad names? I completely agree with the notion of seperation of church and state, but lets not be delusional about who is doing more damage.
Army Maneuvers: Military Officials Should Leave Proselytizing To Civilians
by Rob Boston
The Wall of Separation
SEPTEMBER 27TH, 2010
http://blog.au.org/2010/09/27/army-maneuvers-military-officials-should-leave-proselytizing-to-civilians/
Excerpt:
Last week, Americans United urged Army officials to cancel an evangelistic event at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.
Unfortunately, we found out about this rather late. The complaint came in on Thursday, and “Rock The Fort” was scheduled for Saturday. AU’s Legal Department swung into gear with a strong letter to military officials, but it was not enough; they refused to cancel the event.
Lt. Gen. Frank G. Helmick, commander of Fort Bragg, insisted that the evangelical Christian concert was legal because no one was forced to attend.
Helmick misses the point. In its letter, AU asserted that the military has no business sponsoring a rally that is clearly designed to convert people to evangelical Christianity – or any other religion, for that matter. A base chaplain pitched the “Rock the Fort” to some local churches as a vehicle for helping them win new members. It’s not the job of any arm of the government to help houses of worship increase their ranks.
I tried to make these points on the Fox News Channel Saturday morning. It was a brief segment, and the hosts weren’t exactly in sympathy. You can see it here.
I have to wonder how the progressive or moderate churches in the area (not to mention the Roman Catholics, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, atheists, etc.) felt about this Army-sponsored effort to funnel people into evangelical Protestant churches. Worse yet, the event was open to the surrounding community. So the U.S. Army was aiding and abetting efforts by conservative Christian churches to engage in what some pastors call “sheep stealing” – raiding someone else’s congregation for members.
(Just to be clear: Churches have the right to reach out to anyone to spread their religious messages – but the government is not allowed to help them do it.)
And, as I pointed out on Fox, had this been a Muslim-themed event with imams preaching and rock bands singing the praises of Allah to convert soldiers and members of the community to Islam with the aid and support of the U.S. Army, we would not be having this discussion. Tilt your head and you can almost hear the deafening roar from the Islamaphobia chorus that would have shouted the event down in record time.
It’s also disturbing that this event was sponsored by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, whose CEO is Franklin Graham, bombastic son of the namesake evangelist. Franklin Graham is a highly controversial figure who has attacked Islam and other religions in negative and rude terms. (Here’s Graham on Hinduism: “No elephant with 100 arms can do anything for me. None of their 9,000 gods is going to lead me to salvation. We are fooling ourselves if we think we can have some big ‘Kumbaya’ service and all hold hands and it’s all going to get better in this world. It’s not going to get better.”)
Why is the Army working hand in glove with someone this intolerant? What sort of message does that send to the Muslims overseas (and those of other faith perspectives) whose hearts and minds we are trying to reach?
Hunting People for Jesus:
Otteray,
Why wouldnt less masters be better? Isnt the goal zero? I would consider that progress.
Well said OS.
ekeyra, i wasn’t trying to sound like a smart ass. I got distracted and didnt make my comment like I wanted to.
Puzzling, The sad thing is that it always will. As natural as drinkin’ water.
ekeyra,
yes in some cases but it is a shrinking universe as the pool of owners/masters gets smaller.
Jo, the government lied to get into wars long before “Georgie Porgie” was around.
And since.
Well yes jo, lies would work, but that was kind of my point.
oh ignore that last post please….