What is the lesson from a terrorist attack?

On October 22, 2014, a recent covert to Islam decided to heed the call from ISIS to kill some people who represented the country of Canada in the name of bringing honour to Allah. Here’s the story from Wikipedia:

A series of shootings occurred on October 22, 2014, at Parliament Hill and nearby in Ottawa, Canada. Michael Zehaf-Bibeau fatally shot Corporal Nathan Cirillo, a Canadian soldier on ceremonial guard duty at the Canadian National War Memorial. He then launched an attack in the nearby Centre Block parliament building, where members of the Parliament of Canada were attending caucuses. Zehaf-Bibeau was killed inside the building in a gunfight with parliament security personnel. Following the shootings, the downtown core of Ottawa was placed on lockdown while police searched for any potential additional threats.

The shootings took place two days after an attack on military personnel in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, which also killed a Canadian soldier. Prime Minister of Canada Stephen Harper said both of these attacks serve as a “grim reminder that Canada is not immune to the types of terrorist attacks we have seen elsewhere around the world.”

Yes these attacks were a reminder that we are a part of the world. But these attacks allowed Canadians to demonstrate to the rest of the world what secular values of nationhood mean in action:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is a typical overpass of a four lane divided highway running along a populated corridor between Windsor, Ontario and Quebec City in Canada. The Corporal body was driven from where he was killed in Ottawa to his home town of Hamilton. The journey along this section of highway is about 350 Km and has about 50 overpasses. When Corporal Cirillo’s body was repatriated to his home town, this was a typical image that greeted the small convoy.

The point is that our national anthem includes the words “We stand on guard for thee.’ Cirillo was ceremonially doing exactly that at the National War Memorial when he was shot and killed… not for who he was but for what he represented, what he was defending. That cannot be killed. It can, however, be a value reinvigorated in our hearts and minds. And this is exactly what such attacks do. They remind all of us -again – what it is that is worth defending: the rights and freedoms all of us share. What you’re seeing in this picture is the average Canadian and local municipal forces repaying that same debt all of us share and taking our turn… to stand on guard for him.

In case one might be tempted to see this event as some kind of media circus, let me assure you that it happened spontaneously. Across the country the same sentiment was expressed time and again at every local cenotaph. Poppies appeared. Hand written notes were left. Flowers set out by the anonymous. Even 3500 Km away in the recesses of the mountains of British Columbia, we find the same sentiment on display:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is what it means to be Canadian – different in all ways imaginable yet each a part of the whole by what we share: our values of freedom, equality rights, and the dignity of personhood that resides within the living heart of each person who wears a uniform. And even though the military brass was quick to order our men and women out of uniform to avoid being targets, I saw a common and spontaneous response to that: hundreds of local cadets and retired military people don their uniforms in the following days not just to make a statement of support but remind the military itself that we are not separate groups and organizations and institutions … but one people who share in the active defense of our values. This is the lesson from a terrorist attack and one that more terrorists themselves should heed because since our inception, Canada has been and shall remain a warrior nation first and a peacekeeper only second. We really do stand on guard for thee.

Is the US military riddled with traitors?

Yes.

And all in the name of Jesus.

John 8:12…

Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall nor walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. (King James ver.)

Check out these pictures here and here and here of the Trijicon ACOG gunsight standard US military issue for attachment to the M4 and M16 rifles used by US forces. The verse reference is at the end of the ACOG magnification line, which reads ACOG 4X32JN8:12.

So what? Well, almost nothing…. except for a little thing called committing and/or supporting TREASON.

Two reasons to define it as such:

For starters, stamping standard issue military hardware with religious slogans and references is not allowed under the First Amendment because it deliberately crosses the church/state divide. The military is a branch of the government and to favour one set of religious beliefs implies that the government favours that one set of religious beliefs, which is unconstitutional.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But America is a christian nation! Or so we are assured by those refuse to understand that freedom of religion is a right that depends entirely on freedom FROM government favoured religion. That’s why the Constitution has the entitlement clause. To stamp standard military issue with a favoured religious belief set undermines exactly this amendment. That’s an act of treason.

The second reason has to do with the oaths of military service:

(enlistment oath)

I, (name), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.

(oath for officers)

I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

True faith and allegiance to what? To the Constitution, without any mental reservations by its leaders specifically, which means without any other personal superior allegiance to, for example, a religious affiliation or social sect or political party or whatever greater than or even equal to the allegiance to the Constitution.

By supporting and/or accepting the religious stamping of standard military issue, not only are these non-commissioned service personnel breaking their oath of allegiance to uphold the primacy of the Constitution, their officers who do so are doubly guilty who have sworn that they will gain this commission if and only if they have no mental reservations that might affect their allegiance to the Constitution. These officers have lied in their oath and they have broken their oath.

Any US military officer who has knowingly tolerated this religiously inspired attack against the Constitution of the United States is a domestic enemy.

That’s treason.

At the very least these officers who lie under oath and then intentionally break it should be dismissed from service with a dishonorable discharge. Upholding a personal belief in Jesus as the son of god is no excuse for treason.

Are the US military’s christian commanders intentionally subverting the Constitution’s First Ammendment?

The short answer is yes.

From the Hitch:

As I was making ready to depart, and checking my e-mail, I found I had been sent a near-incredible video clip from the Al Jazeera network. It had been shot at Bagram Air Force Base last year, and it showed a borderline-hysterical address by one Lieutenant Colonel Gary Hensley, chief of the United States’ military chaplains in Afghanistan. He was telling his evangelical audience, all of them wearing uniforms supplied by the taxpayer, that as followers of Jesus Christ they had a collective responsibility “to be witnesses for him.” Heating up this theme, Lieutenant Colonel Hensley went on: “The Special Forces guys, they hunt men, basically. We do the same things, as Christians. We hunt people for Jesus. We do, we hunt them down. Get the hound of heaven after them, so we get them in the kingdom. Right? That’s what we do, that’s our business.”

Stacks of Bibles are on display, in the Dari and Pashto tongues that are the main languages in Afghanistan. A certain Sergeant James Watt, a candidate for a military chaplaincy, is shown giving thanks for the work of his back-home church, which subscribed the dough. “I also want to praise God because my church collected some money to get Bibles for Afghanistan. In another segment, those present show quite clearly that they understand they are in danger of violating General Order Number One of the U.S. Central Command, which explicitly prohibits “proselytizing of any religion, faith, or practice.”

And there is ever stronger reason to think that, at the Pentagon, the fish rots from the head. More alarming still is a book called Under Orders: A Spiritual Handbook for Military Personnel, by an air-force lieutenant colonel named William McCoy, publicity for which describes the separation of church and state as a “twisted idea.” Nor is this the book’s only publicity: it comes—with its direct call for a religion-based military—with an endorsement from General David Petraeus.

James Madison was the co-author with Thomas Jefferson of the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom, which became the basis of the First Amendment to the Constitution. Not accidentally the first clause of our Bill of Rights, this amendment unambiguously forbids any “establishment of religion” in or by these United States. In his “Detached Memoranda,” not published until after his death, Madison even wrote that the appointment of chaplains in the armed forces, and indeed in Congress, was “inconsistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principles of religious freedom.” He could never have foreseen a time when state-subsidized chaplains would be working to subvert the Constitution, and violating their sacred oath to uphold it. Let us be highly thankful that we have young soldiers and sailors and air-force personnel who, busy and devoted as they already are, show themselves brave enough to fight back on this front too.

From the Vanity Fair article here.