As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. [Matthew 13: 40-42].

Iraqis caught up in Abu Ghraib are also caught up in this same mindset. The Religious Right believe that they saved Iraqis through shedding their blood, therefore they own the Iraqis, and their torment is fitting punishment for their failure to actively and fully submit to their saviors. There can be no neutral Iraqis - they must either actively submit to their American saviors by explicitly cooperating, or they deserve punishment. It is the failure to submit, not specific bad acts on the part of Iraqis (or sinners in general), that justifies punishment. An omniscient God does not need to torture to obtain information, and neither do they. Torture as just and moral punishment for failure to submit is the heart of all evangelical "hellfire and brimstone" beliefs.

Anyone familiar with James Dobson's writings about raising children can see the conservative Christian view on beating people into submission. In addition, the usefulness of pain to `break' nonbelievers and make them open to conversion can also be seen in the evangelical conservatives' reaction to the Indonesian tsunami (scroll down a bit), a situation where everyone believes innocent people suffered and thus cannot be dismissed as merely punishing `terrorists'. They saw it as an opportunity for converting Muslims. After all, "The sacrifices of God are [a] a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise" [Psalm 51:17]. This mindset can also been seen in the popularity of the Left Behind series of books, which delights in descriptions of God punishing those who did not submit, without regard to any specific sins on their part, and in Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ (see this for an explicit comparison with Abu Ghraib). That film is being reenacted in Abu Ghraib, where one victim was asphyxiated in a crucifixion-like pose.

That was not the only example of faux Christianity showing up in Abu Ghraib. One victim was told to curse his Muslim religion and thank Jesus he was alive (scroll to the end). One guard told another prisoner that he beat him "because I'm Christian." One guard is reported to have told another regarding torture: "The Christian in me says it's wrong, but the correction officer in me says, 'I love to make a grown man piss himself.' " Billmon finds one pro-life protester during the Terri Schiavo affair, Bill Tierney, talking about torture being `fun'. Tierney was an interrogator in Iraq.

The responsibility of the Religious Right for Abu Ghraib goes up the chain of command from there. According to Christianity Today, they "were significantly involved in drafting policy memos that created the permissive climate in which the abuse of prisoners occurred". Billmon writes that the team of lawyers who wrote the Pentagon's treatise on presidential torture powers was led by Mary L. Walker, a "devout Christian" and co-founder of Professional Women's Fellowship, an offshoot of Campus Crusade for Christ. Walker also worked to "shield Air Force headquarters from public criticism" for failing to control an epidemic of sexual assaults at the Air Force Academy. Note that some of the torture at Abu Ghraib qualifies as sexual assault. This is the same military institution that faced complaints about preferential treatment for conservative evangelical Christians, where cadets faced "a heavy and sometimes offensive emphasis on evangelical Christianity". The Air Force is currently being sued over a recruiter in New Mexico being instructed to use Jesus Christ as a recruiting tool.

Lt. General William G. "Jerry" Boykin, deputy of Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone, is "the same general almost fired ... for describing the war on terror as a clash between Judeo-Christian values and Satan" and was "a main strategist for Cambone, who [oversaw] a secret program with the goal of capturing and interrogating terrorism targets". Conservative Christians have defended Boykin despite the Abu Ghraib scandal (the Christian Coalition had an online petition in support of Boykin on its homepage), and James Dobson called Boykin's statements "consistent with mainstream evangelical beliefs".

Then there is the man on top of the chain of command, George W. Bush, who received 78% of white evangelical Protestant votes in 2004. Evangelicals also strongly supported Bush and the war in Iraq in the first place. Even today:

Overall, 45 percent of Protestants and 47 percent of "other Christians" thought the war was a mistake. The figure was 52 percent among Catholics, 58 percent among other religions and 62 percent among those who had no religion.

Frequency of church attendance also held sway. Overall, among those who never went to church, 62 percent said the war was a mistake. Among those who attended services once a week, the figure was 44 percent.

Their support makes them responsible for the results. Remember how they demanded this war?

Recently, I took a few days to reread the war sermons delivered by influential evangelical ministers during the lead up to the Iraq war. That period, from the fall of 2002 through the spring of 2003, is not one I will remember fondly. Many of the most respected voices in American evangelical circles blessed the president's war plans, even when doing so required them to recast Christian doctrine.

Charles Stanley, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Atlanta, whose weekly sermons are seen by millions of television viewers, led the charge with particular fervor. "We should offer to serve the war effort in any way possible," said Mr. Stanley, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention. "God battles with people who oppose him, who fight against him and his followers." In an article carried by the convention's Baptist Press news service, a missionary wrote that "American foreign policy and military might have opened an opportunity for the Gospel in the land of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob."

As if working from a slate of evangelical talking points, both Franklin Graham, the evangelist and son of Billy Graham, and Marvin Olasky, the editor of the conservative World magazine and a former advisor to President Bush on faith-based policy, echoed these sentiments, claiming that the American invasion of Iraq would create exciting new prospects for proselytizing Muslims. Tim LaHaye, the co-author of the hugely popular "Left Behind" series, spoke of Iraq as "a focal point of end-time events," whose special role in the earth's final days will become clear after invasion, conquest and reconstruction. For his part, Jerry Falwell boasted that "God is pro-war" in the title of an essay he wrote in 2004.

The war sermons rallied the evangelical congregations behind the invasion of Iraq. An astonishing 87 percent of all white evangelical Christians in the United States supported the president's decision in April 2003. Recent polls indicate that 68 percent of white evangelicals continue to support the war. But what surprised me, looking at these sermons nearly three years later, was how little attention they paid to actual Christian moral doctrine. Some tried to square the American invasion with Christian "just war" theory, but such efforts could never quite reckon with the criterion that force must only be used as a last resort. As a result, many ministers dismissed the theory as no longer relevant.

Some preachers tried to link Saddam Hussein with wicked King Nebuchadnezzar of Biblical fame, but these arguments depended on esoteric interpretations of the Old Testament book of II Kings and could not easily be reduced to the kinds of catchy phrases that are projected onto video screens in vast evangelical churches. The single common theme among the war sermons appeared to be this: our president is a real brother in Christ, and because he has discerned that God's will is for our nation to be at war against Iraq, we shall gloriously comply....

When a minister at the church of then Majority Leader Tom Delay said that "the war between America and Iraq is the gateway to the Apocalypse" during services, DeLay responded to the congregation and to 225 Christian TV and radio stations, saying "Ladies and gentlemen, what has been spoken here tonight is the truth of God." In addition having support for his war from among them, Bush is personally a well known favorite of the Religious Right. Be sure not to miss this part:

...the sermon of Rev. Mark Craig in which he discussed Moses' calling. Bush's mother turned to George after the sermon and said, "He was talking to you." Mansfield goes on to say: "Not long after, Bush called James Robison (a prominent minister) and told him, 'I've heard the call. I believe God wants me to run for President.'" Richard Land of the Southern Bapstist convention heard Bush say something similar: "Among the things he said to us was 'I believe that God wants me to be president.'"

Billy Graham said he was coming as close as he ever will to endorsing a candidate in regard to Bush. This, of course, being the same Graham who traded anti-semitic comments with his pal President Nixon. Boykin agrees:

He told one gathering: "Why is this man in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him. He's in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this."

Bush evidently agrees:

Bush’s closest advisers have long been aware of the religious nature of his policy commitments. In recent interviews, one former senior official, who served in Bush’s first term, spoke extensively about the connection between the President’s religious faith and his view of the war in Iraq. After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the former official said, he was told that Bush felt that "God put me here" to deal with the war on terror. The President’s belief was fortified by the Republican sweep in the 2002 congressional elections; Bush saw the victory as a purposeful message from God that "he’s the man," the former official said. Publicly, Bush depicted his reelection as a referendum on the war; privately, he spoke of it as another manifestation of divine purpose.

Religion is the key to the President's popularity during the torture scandals:

...The key element that binds Christianism with Bush Republicanism is fealty to patriarchal leadership. That's the institutional structure of the churches that are now the Republican base; and it's only natural that the fundamentalist psyche, which is rooted in obedience and reverence for the inerrant pastor, should be transferred to the presidency. That's why I think Bush's ratings won't go much below 25 percent; because 25 percent is about the proportion of the electorate that is fundamentalist and supports Bush for religious rather than political reasons. They are immune to empirical argument, because their thought-structure is not empirical; it is dogmatic. If the facts overwhelm them, they will simply argue that the "liberal media" is lying. Bruce poignantly thinks the GOP is still the secular, empirical, skeptical party it once was. It's not: it's a fundamentalist church with some huge bribes for business interests on the side, leveraged by massive debts. So all criticism is disloyalty; and disloyalty is heresy. The facts don't matter. Obey the pastor. Or be damned.

As far as them demanding accountability from their man goes, when asked about Bush's failure to acknowledge and apologize for his ugly and misleading tactics in the buildup to the Iraq war (and in his political campaigns), Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals said "I think [we Christian believers] are responsible not to lie [sic], but I don't think we're responsible to say everything we know." Their support for torture isn't limited to the military and executive branch. Our right wing Christian Speaker of the House also supports torture. Another prominent evangelical supporter of torture is U.S. Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-OK). One minute, the good Senator is arguing in support of Israel:

...I believe very strongly that we ought to support Israel; that it has a right to the land. This is the most important reason: Because God said so. As I said a minute ago, look it up in the book of Genesis. It is right up there on the desk….This is not a political battle at all. It is a contest over whether or not the word of God is true. The seven reasons, I am convinced, clearly establish that Israel has a right to the land.

And the next minute he is arguing in defense of torture:

SEN. INHOFE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I -- well, first of all, I regret I wasn't here on Friday. I was unable to be here. But maybe it's better that I wasn't, because as I watched the -- this outrage, this outrage everyone seems to have about the treatment of these prisoners, I was, I have to say -- and I'm probably not the only one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment. The idea that these prisoners -- you know, they're not there for traffic violations. If they're in cell block 1-A or 1-B, these prisoners, they're murderers, they're terrorists, they're insurgents. Many of them probably have American blood on their hands. And here we're so concerned about the treatment of those individuals. And I hasten to say yeah, there are seven bad guys and gals that didn't do what they should have done. They were misguided, I think maybe even perverted, and the things that they did have to be punished. And they're being punished. They're being tried right now, and that's all taking place. But I'm also outraged by the press and the politicians and the political agendas that are being served by this, and I say political agendas because that's actually what is happening....

SEN. INHOFE: I am also outraged that we have so many humanitarian do-gooders right now crawling all over these prisons, looking for human rights violations while our troops, our heroes, are fighting and dying.....

Another factor leading to religious conservatives' responsibility for abuses in Abu Ghraib, as enablers at the very least, is their militarization of American Christianity and the confusion of their beliefs (i.e. "spiritual warfare") with the real thing, which leads them to function as enablers for military wrongdoing. Andrew Bacevich argues that the conjunction of militarism and social conservatism came as a reaction to Vietnam protests and the associated political, social, and cultural changes that arose with them. A result of this, and technological advances such as smart bombs that allowed the military to do a better job of avoiding civilian casualties, was a belief in the moral superiority of the soldier.

Evangelicals are overrepresented in the military. According to NPR, "only 14 percent of the U.S. population is evangelical Christian, compared to 40 percent of the military's active duty personnel." In addition, 60 percent of military chaplains are evangelicals (and doubtfully of the Jim Wallis variety). According to The New York Times:

...Figures provided by the Air Force show that from 1994 to 2005 the number of chaplains from many evangelical and Pentecostal churches rose, some doubling. For example, chaplains from the Full Gospel Fellowship of Churches and Ministries International increased to 10 from none. The Church of the Nazarene rose to 12 from 6.

At the same time, the number of chaplains from the Roman Catholic Church declined to 94 from 167, and there were declines in more liberal, mainline Protestant churches: the United Church of Christ to 3 from 11, the United Methodist Church to 50 from 64.

Other branches of the military did not make available similar statistics, but officials say they are seeing the same trend.

The change mirrors the Air Force as a whole, where representation is rising from evangelical churches....

This reflects an evangelical goal of 'capturing' the military for its own ends:

...Parker then introduces the day's guest speaker: Bob Dees, leader of Campus Crusade for Christ Military Ministry (www.milmin.com). The theme of Dees's sermon is advertised on the screens: "Faith in the Foxhole and Hope on the Homefront: Liberty in Christ." Dees is a retired general and former Microsoft executive. ...

"We are a ministry to the armed forces of the United States, and to the armed forces of the world, seeking to win the nations of the world and the militaries of the world," begins Dees. "We have several ministries. One is to the enlisted members of all the defense forces of the United States. We touch every recruit that comes through the armed forces of the United States. And then we seek to evangelize and disciple them through their careers, making them ambassadors in uniform.

...He continues, "We have heard all about weapons of mass destruction. There's been a search for weapons of mass destruction. I'm here today to testify that we have found the weapons of mass destruction. It is Satan's artillery. Satan is a master of deceit: temptation, pride, isolation, deception, self-sufficiency, anger, and malice of all forms. Satan's weapons of mass destruction rage all about us, and these weapons are every bit as real as Saddam Hussein's scud missiles. As the North Korean artillery. Every bit as potent as Al Qaeda."

...Another soldier is now onscreen, speaking by video from an undisclosed location. He is the chaplain Lt. Carey Cash, author of A Table in the Presence: The Dramatic Account of How a U.S. Marine Battalion Experienced God's Presence Amidst the Chaos of the War in Iraq ($19.99, W. Publishing Group). He is young and eager, flush with a military crew cut and ruddy cheeks. If Dees is the grandfather of the movement, Cash is the next generation.

He reiterates all of Dees's talking points and tells his captive Grace Church audience--which includes napping adults, reverent adults, wish-I-was-onstage adults, and bored kids who look at their parents quizzically--"First we get the military, then we get the nation." ...

This atmosphere leads to specific examples of confusion between the military and the evangelical church. The previously mentioned General Boykin (scroll to the end) "planned to host a gathering of Southern Baptist pastors at Fort Bragg, where he was running the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School" (referred to as the Super FAITH Force Multiplier session) before complaints from Americans United for Separation of Church and State caused the plan to be changed. This is also apparent in organizations such as FORCE Ministries, and this well known travesty (I realize that evangelicals who support the war but fail to encourage their children to enlist are dismissed as "chickenhawks", but that does not excuse them from criticism for doing it this way). FORCE Ministries was also evidently involved in this bit of sharing the love of Christ:

...This was the letter that opened the event. Its author was George W. Bush. Yes, the president of the United States sent a letter of support, greeting, prayer and encouragement to the BattleCry event held at Wachovia Spectrum Stadium in Philadelphia on May 12. Immediately afterward, a preacher took the microphone and led the crowd in prayer. Among other things, he asked the attendees to "Thank God for giving us George Bush." ...

...After Franklin "Islam is a Wicked Religion" Graham came out to thunder against the evils of homosexuality and the Iraqi people (whom he considers to be exactly the same people as the ancient Babylonians who enslaved the tribes of Israel and deserving, one would assume, the exact same fate) we heard an explosion. Flames shot out on stage and a team of Navy Seals was shown on the big TV monitors in full camouflage creeping forward down the hallway from the locker room with their M16s....

A war is a war is a war:

...Beginning with the premise that there is a war on Christianity, conference organizers and participants were eager to issue calls to arms in response. “We are under spiritual invasion!” intoned Rod Parsley, an evangelist from Ohio. “Man your battle stations! Ready your weapons! LOCK AND LOAD!” (The audience responded to these imperatives with a raucous and exuberant standing ovation.) Parsley also claimed that those Christian churches not sharing the perspective of the Christians represented at the conference constitute “the devil’s demilitarized zone,” naïvely and fatally embracing “peace at any price.” Meanwhile, Laurence Wright, a Lutheran pastor and co-president of Vision America, announced that the time of a peaceful and contemplative Christianity is over; that Christians have been AWOL (“absent without Lord”) in the battle; and that “We must attack the evil now where it is strongest” in order to restore America, the city high on a hill....

...Perhaps the most explicit call to arms came from Ron Luce, the president and founder of Teen Mania, a Christian revivalist youth ministry, and the author of Battle Cry for a Generation, a multimedia campaign that deploys military images and language to recruit soldiers in Christ’s army. Toward the end of his speech, Luce invoked the biblical story of the Levite’s concubine in Judges 19. (In the story, the Levite’s concubine is gang-raped by men who wanted to do sexual violence to the Levite. When the Levite’s host refuses to deliver the Levite to the assailants, he offers them his own virgin daughter and the Levite’s concubine instead. When the assailants reject such an exchange, the Levite simply expels the concubine from his host's house, leaving her to be raped repeatedly throughout the night. The following morning, upon finding the concubine’s dead body on his host’s doorstep, the Levite dismembers her and sends her body parts out to the twelve tribes of Israel as a provocation to revenge.) “I kind of feel like the Levite,” Ron Luce confessed. And then he uttered a battle cry of his own: “CUT UP THE CONCUBINE! CUT UP THE CONCUBINE! CUT UP THE CONCUBINE!” ...

Another enabling factor is the belief that the United States was founded as a "Christian Nation". The end of Left Behind has an American Evangelical asking, now that the apocalypse is over, can 'we' now "start rebuilding the country as, finally for real, a Christian nation?" One can see how American conservative evangelicals would have difficulty facing wrongdoing by the government of the United States while they are in power, as that would reflect poorly on both their nation and their religion (and on them). This belief is encouraged by the Republicans. According to BeliefNet, the Republican National Committee hired David Barton, the founder of an organization called Wallbuilders and the author of "The Myth of Separation," to speak at roughly 300 RNC-sponsored lunches for local evangelical pastors. Barton also earned $12,000 from the RNC for "political consulting."

The `enabler' argument (for both the military and the nation) is simply that wrongdoing that is never acknowledged will never be stopped, and the Religious Right have put themselves in a position not to want to acknowledge this wrongdoing.

Another conservative (particularly among Biblical literalists) belief that would enable torture is the belief that genocide is acceptable when it benefits "God's people", such as the conquest of "The Holy Land" (which the literalists consider to be absolute fact and morally justified). Once they've accepted the morality of genocide against nonbelievers, what will stop them from torture? Once a war has been deemed a literal Crusade, all bets are off. Historian C. Vann Woodward describes the mindset:

The true American mission … is a moral crusade on a worldwide scale. Such people are likely to concede no validity whatever and grant no hearing to the opposing point of view, and to appeal to a higher law to justify bloody and revolting means in the name of a noble end. For what end could be nobler, they ask, than the liberation of man…. The irony of the moralistic approach, when exploited by nationalism, is that the high motive to end injustice and immorality actually results in making war more amoral and horrible than ever and in shattering the foundation of the political and moral order upon which peace has to be built.

Jon Basil Utley quotes Senator Jesse Helms telling members of the UN Security Council "states, above all the United States, that are democratic, and act in the cause of liberty, possess unlimited authority, subject to no external control, to carry out military interventions." Utley goes on to quote Anatol Lieven, who gets to the moral and religious root of the matter by describing a "belief in American innocence, of 'original sinlessness,' is both very old and very powerful. … [It] contributes greatly to America's crowning sin of Pride – the first deadly sin and, in medieval theology, the one from which all other sins originally stem." This connects back to the militarization of Christianity, because that had an additional result: "endtimes doctrines converged eschatology with national security. Prophecies merged America’s fate with Israel’s. Islam inherited the role of godless communism and became the target of the war against evil."

Illustrating another evangelical behavior that enables torture, Christianity Today states that Coach Bill McCartney, the founder of Promise Keepers, believes that a major reason attendance dropped dramatically in their stadium events was their stand on racial reconciliation. EthicsDaily gives the history of Southern Baptist resistance to the Civil Rights movement, including the part played by W.A. Criswell, who went on to become SBC president and spiritual father of the "conservative resurgence." Look at the ethnic makeup of the inmates at Abu Ghraib and draw your own conclusions.

So who would Jesus torture?