I have to say that the “Christian Crusade” stuff is one of the most, if not THE most creepy aspects of this war with Iran. Yes, Trump is insane, but so is this guy:
Hegseth has persisted in framing the war in Iran, which reached a temporary ceasefire on Tuesday after six weeks of fighting, as divinely sanctioned, repeatedly invoking “God’s almighty providence” and expressing surety that God is on the side of the US military. Amid boasts about the US’s superior firepower and theatrical disdain for “stupid rules of engagement”, the defense secretary has promised to give “no quarter” to the “barbaric savages” of the Iranian regime and called on the American people to pray for victory “in the name of Jesus Christ”.
Hegseth’s distinct combination of piety and bloodlust was most prominently on display at the 25 March worship service at the Pentagon, the first since the war in Iran began, when he prayed for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy”. The prayer was so shocking that it appears to have provoked a direct rebuke from Pope Leo, who preached on Palm Sunday that God ignores the prayers of those whose “hands are full of blood” from making war.
Hegseth will hardly mind harsh words from the head of the Catholic church, however. The 45-year-old US army veteran and former Fox News host is a member of an obscure, deeply Calvinist wing of evangelical Christianity – John Calvin broke from the Catholic church during the 16th-century Protestant Reformation – that rejects the pope’s authority and is rooted in a belief in predestination.
“They believe that nothing happens that isn’t in God’s will,” said Julie Ingersoll, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Florida, who researches this branch of Reformed Christianity. “They believe that God directs everything that happens.”
Even a bomb falling on an elementary school full of children?
He is a real life Christian crusader. After all:
In 1862, the future King Edward VII of England, then Prince Albert, visited Jerusalem. He recorded in his diary that he had been tattooed there by “a native.” Just 20 years later, his son, who would become King George V, repeated this experience, writing to his mother that he had been tattooed “by the same old man that tattooed Papa, and the same thing too, the five crosses.” This is the Jerusalem cross, also known as the Crusader cross: square (unlike the more usual elongated versions of the Christian symbol), and with a smaller square cross in each of the four quadrants.
This very same cross has been in the limelight recently, emblazoned — far, far larger than King Edward VII’s version — on Pete Hegseth’s chest.
Hegseth, a Fox News anchor and former member of the National Guard, is Trump’s pick for secretary of defense. It’s by no means his only tattoo. He also has a “Chi-Rho,” the first two letters of the Greek word for Christ and one of the earliest forms of a so-called Christogram (letters formed into a monogram expressing the essence of the religion). Perhaps the most contentious is the Christian expression on his bicep: “Deus Vult,” meaning “God Wills It,” believed to be a Crusader battle cry. Τhere is another cross with a sword, referencing a verse in the Gospel of Matthew reporting the following words of Jesus: “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” “Yeshua,” Jesus’ name in Hebrew, can be read across his elbow.
Cal me crazy, but if someone goes to the trouble of tattooing specific symbols on their chest, maybe it’s a sign that they’re trying to tell us something? Just saying.
