Holy Crap: Donald Rumsfeld's Crusade Memos

Oh Jesus. Have you seen the cover pages of the top secret Crusade Memos, authored by Donald Rumsfeld in 2003 around the start of the Iraq War, recently published in GQ?

What's shocking is that, according to HuffPo contributor Chris Rodda, the mixing of religion and military policy at the highest levels is nothing new. What's also shocking? These Crusade Memo-cover sheets are about as smart and sophisticated as your typical youth group-messaging. They used to put Scripture like this on t-shirts in my Southern Baptist youth group, to get us kids pumped about spending the first week of summer, the first taste of freedom...quietly studying the Bible while getting murdered by mosquitoes in the woods, teenage hormones on tilt because you were surrounded by beautiful people you wanted to fuck but couldn't because Jesus didn't approve, and the most you could do about it was maybe get felt up in the Prayer Garden at night, but that was only if you were really, really bad and hooked on getting saved and re-saved, which so many kids were because, hey, you had to get high somehow.

Yep, this was the sort of fist-pumpy Bible-beater stuff we kids would get brainwashed with during Wednesday night Bible study or before we went to witness to slack-jawed teens at the mall on a Friday night because, because, because...

We were responding to a higher calling? Because we had purpose? Because we were chosen and righteous?

No. It was because, frankly, we were bored. There were only so many movies you could see at one of the two local movie theaters, only so many frames you could bowl, only so many times you could sit in the Safeway parking lot after closing getting wasted on Bud and wine coolers. Going out and saving the world was a thing to do because there was kinda nothing better in our podunk town.

And to think this is the way the Bush administration ran the military and justified invading Iraq. God help us.

[GQ: Onward, Christian Soldiers! (SLIDESHOW)]
[GQ: And He Shall Be Judged]
[HuffPo: MRFF's Response to Rumsfeld Crusade Memos: We Told You So!]