"Send Me"?

 A recent article in the Intercept reports that the Pentagon has begun to use overt references to scripture in its online recruiting. One recent ad from the U.S. military prominently features the phrase "Send Me" over images of soldiers gearing up for battle. 

And if this sounds ambiguous to most of us, a Pentagon spokesperson went on to quote a full passage from Isaiah that uses the phrase; and the official "Department of War" accounts reportedly re-shared that post in turn. 

Leave it to the Trump administration to eliminate any shade of subtlety. 

Coupled with Hegseth's crusader tattoo and his ties to Christian Nationalism, it sounds like our current Pentagon leadership really does see their ongoing attack on Iran as a kind of "holy war" to smite the infidel. 

Given that this is how Iran's Shia theocracy also sees the matter, except with the roles reversed, it appears that we really are in the midst here of a "clash of fundamentalisms." It's Mahdi on Mahdi violence. 

As a character in William Gaddis once said of the Christian extremists of the "Moral Majority" era—the direct ancestors of today's "warfighting" Christian nationalists: "These guys are hell bent on a self fulfilling prophecy." 

The Biblical passage that the Pentagon spokesperson quoted runs as follows: "Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, 'Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?' And I said, 'Here am I. Send me.'" 

In other words, the Trump administration is once again implying that its illegal attack on Iran in violation of the UN Charter is a divine mission from God. 

I recall once again that passage from Moncure Conway's My Pilgrimage to the Wise Men of the East, when he describes reading General Gordon's diaries from the time of the English raid on Sudan, and finds the word "Armageddon."

"One need only read the passage in Revelation [...] to realize the fatal fanaticism of that word 'Armageddon' in such a crisis," Conway writes, "It was Mahdi meeting Mahdi." 

"I reached the conclusion," he goes on, "that if one scratches an Englishman with a Moslem spear he will find a crusader." 

Let us recall as well Ernest Crosby's words about the same conflict (i.e., the British occupation of the Sudan)—from his prose poem "War is Hell" (in Swords and Plowshares)—which seem, alas, all too relevant to our own "Christian" leaders' invasion of Iran today:

White Christian soldiers, three thousand miles from home, in the pay of white Christian bond-holders, bayonetting black Mohammedans for defending their native land, and setting the example of bloodshed to brown Mohammedans whom they had already trained to slaughter!

[...]

We look back with pity, contempt, and detestation on the times of the rack and wheel and fagot—we, who are still in the thick of the Dark Ages ourselves!

A thousandfold better to be a true Mussulman dervish fighting for his home, than one of these Christian hypocrites emphasizing their barbarian butcheries with chaplains and crosses and Te Deums and every kind of shameless lie and blasphemy!

[...]

How they buzzed round the fires at Smithfield,

The black, perverse, froward, reverend clergy (Like June beetles round the hall lamp),

Teaching the Gospel and knowing not the first word of it—

More cruel, revengeful, bloodthirsty than the ignorant mob they instructed—

Blind, malignant, pompous leaders of the blind!

And so to-day round the fires of war—the flash of artillery and glance of bayonets

(But at safe distance, impotent),

Again the dismal brood swarms—hysterical, smirking, grimacing—

Still as oblivious of all their Master taught,

Still going further than the thoughtless populace in their lust and frenzy,

Still impious, blasphemous, sacrilegious, profane—

Gloating like harpies over the nation's sins.