First, it should be noted that Doctors, Psychiatrists and Chaplains are, like everybody else in the services, Combatants under the Geneva Conventions. Their orders are to keep the soldiers physically and mentally and “morally” able to follow their orders, which are to Kill Other Human Beings. That’s the whole purpose of a Military Organization. Although sometimes, if the Other Human Beings grovel enough to them (like Karzhai and al Maliki do) they’ll be allowed to live, just as slaves. So when a “Mountain Post” Chaplain, Baptist Minister, got blown away in VietRaqiStan early last month, and the local news kept up the steady patter about how he volunteered for “duty” after the 9/11 Bush-ordered Mass Murder, to spread the word of Jesus. Only, Jesus never told anybody to Kill anybody. So Chaplains have to make shit up in order to justify what they’re ordered to do, keep the Soldiers and Airmen and Marines and Sailors from feelings of guilt and remorse over Killing Other Human Beings.

Preachers, religious leaders, and other propagandists for the Enemy-du-Jour are frequently targeted under legal codes naming them as accomplices. Under the Bush Doctrine, which Obama never repealed, anybody who “gives aid and comfort” even by failing to enthusiastically support Killing Other Human Beings could be determined by a Homeland Security or Military or even Mercenary Contractor Assassination Squad to be an Enemy Combatant.

Without, of course, trial, charges, any kind of Rule of Law stuff.

These are the same kinds of War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity for which first Nazis convicted at Nurnberg and many Iraqi officials were executed.

But because the U.S. Chaplains are Americans and for the most part Christian (there are also Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Native American Church, Wiccan etc Chaplains, so it’s almost an equal opportunity to sell the souls of your congregation deal), well, you do the math.

But, really, what exactly differentiates a Christian Chaplain from any other propagandist?

In Christian, Judaic and Muslim laws one of God’s Top Ten List is “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain”. I don’t know the details on Sikh or Hindu or Buddhist or whoever else, completely out of range of my experience. I’m pretty sure they’ve got laws against blasphemy and killing as well.

Fact is, the Chaplain in question wasn’t, under the definitions he was hired and commanded to propagate and reinforce, “murdered”. But that’s a technicality. He might have embraced it, in fact there’s no way to be a Military (or Paramilitary, like the Police) Chaplain and say anything at all contrary to what you’re ordered to say.

Not ordered by God to say it, but by the Empire.

That brings up another issue. The Chaplains are also commanded (and could conceivably get the death penalty under a charge of Mutiny) to tell their Congregants that GOD, Himself, tells them they must obey every order of the Emperor.

The good Chaplain might have accepted these precepts, and sold them wholesale to his flock, (Pastor means Shepherd, every pastor is a preacher but, especially in Baptist churches, not every preacher is a pastor), that Murder by an Army is different from Murder by an individual.

If he was a willing accomplice in his own murder, then, hey, “Lucy, you got some ‘splainin to do”

Religion isn’t as simple as it seems from the outside.