High Help and Proved Complicity

 Jesus Christ! That was all I could think to say to myself, when I read the AP story this morning about Pete Hegseth's latest blood-curdling "prayer" to the troops. 

Hegseth has a long history at this point of invoking God's name to defend his various wars and atrocities. ("Ye hypocrites! are these your pranks? To murder men and give God thanks!" as Robert Burns would put it.)

But this most recent Pentagon prayer service appears to have topped them all for vicious bloodlust. 

"Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation," he said. As for America's troops, he prayed: "Give them [...] overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy."

You couldn't ask for a more direct contradiction of the Sermon on the Mount. Instead of blessing and praying for one's enemies, Hegseth invokes divine aid in smiting them down. 

This business of daring to enlist the God of Peace as a co-conspirator in your pointless wars of aggression is a moral low even for this administration. 

And it calls to mind for me nothing so much as Lucifer's speech before the Court of Heaven, in Wilfrid Scawen Blunt's "Satan Absolved." 

What Scawen Blunt had to say about British imperialism seems to apply all too aptly to our leaders as well, as they continue a war of aggression that has already killed at least 165 Iranian schoolchildren in a single day: 

And the last scene is played in death’s red charnel house.

The Saxon anger flames. His ships in armament

Bear slaughter on their wings. The Earth with fire is rent,

And the poor souls misused are wiped from the world’s face

In one huge imprecation from the Saxon race,

In one huge burst of prayer and insolent praise to Thee,

Lord God, for Thy high help and proved complicity.

Nay Lord, ’tis not a lie, the thing I tell Thee thus.

Their bishops in their Churches lead, incredulous,

The public thanks profane. They sanctify the sword—

“Te Deum laudamus. Give peace in our time, O Lord.”

Hast Thou not heard their chanting? Nay, Thou dost not hear,

Or Thou hadst loosed Thy hand like lightning in the clear

To smite their ribald lips with palsy, these false priests,

These Lords who boast Thine aid at their high civic feasts[.]