Dehumanization & Sanctified Violence in Iraq
Részben ismétlés, ami a keresztény odaadás gyilkos hatásait illeti, de számomra ez kulcskérdés. Egyetlen mondat kifejezi az ostoba hit hatását ostoba emberekre: 'Well, I saw them bloody my buddy's nose, so I knelt down. I said a prayer. I stood up, and I shot them down.' (Well, látam, hogy vérzik a társam orra, letérdeltem. Mondtam egy imát. Felálltam és lelőttem őket. (Négy rabot.) One of the more curious aspects of Christian history is how, despite it being a religion of "love" and "peace," it has still managed to develop the means for sanctifying violence. Christians can pray to their god one minute and then attack or kill other human beings the next without missing a beat. Bob Herbert writes about the experiences of Aidan Delgado, an American soldier who was recently given conscientious objector status: He wasn't happy when, even before his unit left the states, a top officer made wisecracks about the soldiers heading off to Iraq to kill some ragheads and burn some turbans. "He laughed," Mr. Delgado said, "and everybody in the unit laughed with him." ... Mr. Delgado said he had witnessed incidents in which an Army sergeant lashed a group of children with a steel Humvee antenna, and a Marine corporal planted a vicious kick in the chest of a kid about 6 years old. There were many occasions, he said, when soldiers or marines would yell and curse and point their guns at Iraqis who had done nothing wrong. Once the Iraqis are dehumanized, it's easier to feel that violence perpetrated against them is divinely sanctified: Mr. Delgado... recalled a disturbance that occurred while he was working in the Abu Ghraib motor pool. Detainees who had been demonstrating over a variety of grievances began throwing rocks at the guards. As the disturbance grew, the Army authorized lethal force. Four detainees were shot to death. Mr. Delgado confronted a sergeant who, he said, had fired on the detainees. "I asked him," said Mr. Delgado, "if he was proud that he had shot unarmed men behind barbed wire for throwing stones. He didn't get mad at all. He was, like, 'Well, I saw them bloody my buddy's nose, so I knelt down. I said a prayer. I stood up, and I shot them down.' " This reminds me of something written by Thomas Asbridge in this book The First Crusade: A New History after describing the crusaders' actions just after slaughtering the inhabitants of Jerusalem: "In a moment that is perhaps the most vivid distillation of the crusading experience, they came, still covered in their enemies' blood, weighed down with booty, ‘rejoicing and weeping from excessive gladness to worship at the Sepulchre of our Saviour Jesus'. ... There was certainly nothing noble or praiseworthy about the Frankish sack of Jerusalem, but it demonstrates that many crusaders were driven on, not simply by bloodlust or greed, but also by an authentic and ecstatic sense of Christian devotion." [emphasis added] The Crusades were an authentic act of Christian devotion, not a violent aberration. The Crusades didn't contradict Christianity; instead, they followed logically from centuries of Christian theology and writing on war. The Crusades were a form of "positive violence" consistent with Christian doctrine. The Crusades cannot be excised from Christianity, nor can Christianity be excised from the Crusades. How much has changed? We continue to live in an age when a Christian can find it appropriate to kneel down in prayer just before shooting down people who bloodied a friend's nose. That's not a violent aberration in Christian society, it's what Christianity has been for millennia."

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