The 3 words a Trump commander just used that should keep you up at night

There is so much chaotic news coming out of this White House that it’s tough to focus on the urgency of any single story.

But nothing jolted me quite like this week’s Iran War revelation that a combat unit commander urged noncommissioned officers to motivate U.S. troops by telling them Donald Trump had been “anointed by Jesus,” and that the conflict was “all part of God’s divine plan” to bring about Armageddon and Biblical End Times.

I’d assumed the other guys were the fundamentalists here.

Thankfully, the above disclosure sparked hundreds of complaints from service members across all branches of the armed forces to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) — a group I hadn’t known existed.

Extremist Christian rhetoric is utterly incompatible with any sound judgment, much less strategic conduct of warfare. It is the precise opposite. It’s how you get kamikaze combatants eager to die for the cause and send body counts soaring. It’s how you generate fighters operating out of crazed zealotry rather than tactical reason.

It's also how you destroy any semblance of a chance for a diplomatic solution. To religion-driven radicals fighting a war framed as a defense of God’s will, negotiation itself can feel like a betrayal of the cause.

If you’re fighting for sacred dominance — for “My god is cooler than your god” belief — anything less than complete annihilation of the infidel enemy is unthinkable. You don’t attempt to converse with evil itself.

If you’re talking about Armageddon and the End Times, you’re referring to termination of the world, as cited in the Book of Revelation, and a renewed Creation while welcoming the return of Christ.

Let me add here that while I accept and appreciate everyone’s religious freedom and work hard to disparage none of it, even though it’s not my thing, I’m not terribly keen on this whole planet destruction deal. That kind of infringes on my right to continue living on earth. So, I have to push back.

Here is what I believe with all of my heart and soul: you can fight people and do battle with their beliefs and principles but you can’t effectively go to war against (or with) a spirit. It gets tricky when you start using dogma to inspire. That whole separation of church and state idea comes into play, and those who defend the division are branded as antagonists.

I’ve long believed that more monstrous behavior and immorality has been perpetrated in the name of religion than any other factor, since the dawn of time.

What’s undeniable is that a religious war is much tougher — if not outright impossible — to limit. You can use it to justify any and all atrocities, because if the war effort is framed as a holy mission, the opponent is reduced to being less than human.

How do you fight people who are attaching their virtue to the return of an immortal being, of God’s purported chosen son?

You don’t.

In this clash, the adversary isn’t merely on the other side of a theological divide but fully dehumanized. In that scenario, restraint and understanding collapse. Rivals become demonic. All bets are off.

The obvious issue here is that we have a Secretary of “War,” the execrable Pete Hegseth, who is a rabid evangelical Christian and raging alcoholic who has no understanding of limits. He proudly integrates faith into his identity, not to mention his government job. His relationship with Jesus Christ is personal. The man has a Jerusalem Cross tattooed on his chest.

Again, it wouldn’t matter what Hegseth’s beliefs were if they didn’t so profoundly impinge on the rest of us. He’s far more devoted to his concept of God than he is to the human population. He opens Pentagon events by giving “all glory to God,” which is so far over the line for a public servant that it leaves one speechless.

Hegseth appears to truly believe that any war he fights is about eternal destiny and maintains that God commands his actions. But of course, in this perception, “God” is simply what Hegseth calls his thoughts. He couldn’t go out and mow down 30 people with an AR-15 and justify it by saying, “God told me to do it” … though some have tried.

It’s simply a fact that when God enters into the military conversation, nothing anyone else insists upon can diverge from such pious certainty. Excessive brutality becomes almost inevitable because purported faith rationalizes your basest instincts and rages.

To bring it back to our soldiers being told they’re carrying out “God’s divine plan,” the biggest problem is that it plants the idea in their heads that rules of combat no longer exist, and the spiritual ends justify any means.

You can defend dishonorable conduct because you’re backed by a deeper calling that invites martyrdom, deepening conviction further. Volatility is guaranteed to ratchet up.

Referring to Armageddon with such lustful excitement is the kind of bombast that inspires thoughts of nuclear options. It has no business being used to motivate our fighting forces.

Once we cross that line of fanaticism, there’s really no turning back.

• Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.