Iran: The trivialisation of war

Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon recently, U.S. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth promised to bring on Iran the biggest onslaught of the war thus far. He spoke of “overwhelming force” and the U.S. military’s unrivalled ability to rain “death and destruction from above” on its “apocalyptic” Iranian enemies.

He ended his remarks by asking the American people to pray for victory in battle and the safety of American troops. “Every day, on bended knee, with your family, in your schools, in your churches,” he added, they should pray “in the name of Jesus Christ.”

As the following day’s New York Times commented: “At a time when the U.S. and Israeli militaries are dropping thousands of bombs on a majority-Shiite Muslim nation, the explicitly Christian nature of Mr. Hegseth’s call stood out.”

So how to react to what seems to be being presented – at least by Mr. Hegseth – as a Christian war against Muslims?

This raises the uncomfortable spectre of Christian nationalism as espoused by President Trump, Mr. Hegseth, and many of their MAGA supporters, aided and abetted by a significant tranche of “evangelical Christianity” in the US, a subject to which I will return in more detail in my next article.

Such attempts to link Christian virtue with an overtly militaristic campaign also sits awkwardly with the messaging coming out of the Pentagon and the White House.

Brutal vocabulary

Hegseth’s press briefings are interspersed with brutal vocabulary by which, in the view of many, human life is cheapened and death is trivialised. He uses phrases such as “maximum lethality” and “violent effect”. At the start of the war, he boasted there would be no “stupid rules of engagement” as in previous “politically-correct” wars, leaving many to worry about the possibility of international law being breached. On one occasion recently, he said of the Iranian regime – “They’ve gone underground, cowering – that’s what rats do.”

One White House social media post about the Iran war featured cartoon character Spongebob Squarepants

Added to that, the White House has been posting online meme-style videos featuring pop culture montages celebrating the U.S. strikes on Iran. It’s a melding of real war and video games. After viewing some of these, David Brooks of The Atlantic remarked on a recent edition of The NewsHour on PBS: “The White House has pastors come in. They have prayer breakfasts they go to. They talk a lot about Christianity and upholding Christian values.

“At the core of Christianity is a belief in the dignity of each person, that each person is made in the image of God . . . And I don’t care who’s dying, whether it’s good guys or bad guys, it’s death.

World War II

“The people who fought World War II, whether it was Franklin Roosevelt down to George Marshall to Omar Bradley, they understood the seriousness of this, that killing human beings is not a video game. It’s not pixels on a screen. And whatever you think of the war, the way this is being described is almost barbaric.

“There’s a great tradition of Just War theory. Sometimes, wars are just, but they’re never good. They’re never anything but horrific. It should be unnerving to everybody to see this level of triviality.”

And the trivialising of death was something that came into the minds of many when President Trump was photographed wearing a Trump merchandise USA baseball cap at the Dignified Transfer of the bodies of the first six Americans to be killed in active service during this war.

After facing criticism for such behaviour from both Republican and Democrat politicians, many were on watch to see what happened at the next Dignified Transfer. And what did happen? The President was absent – instead, choosing to attend a get-together with Republican politicians at his golf club in Florida.

Whether it’s Pete Hegseth’s vocabulary, the White House’s video game-themed war memes or Donald Trump’s behaviour, Jesus’s teaching in Matthew 7v16 remains the best way to judge the veracity of claims to Christian faith – “By their fruit you will know them.”