{"id":66021,"date":"2026-05-11T10:43:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T10:43:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/66021\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T10:43:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T10:43:14","slug":"what-mark-twain-could-teach-pete-hegseth-about-holy-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/66021\/","title":{"rendered":"What Mark Twain Could Teach Pete Hegseth About Holy War"},"content":{"rendered":"

The United States has long used religious rhetoric to exhort its soldiers into battle. As the current U.S.-Israeli war against Iran cycles through attacks and ceasefires, the rhetoric is disturbingly familiar. The conflict is being framed not just as a strategic necessity, but a moral imperative\u2014a righteous cause blessed from on high. \u201cSecretary of War\u201d Pete Hegseth, who in his 2020 book American Crusade<\/a> points to the Middle East and writes, \u201cwe don\u2019t want to fight, but, like our fellow Christians a thousand years ago, we must. We need an American crusade.\u201d Hegseth asked Americans to pray for her soldiers<\/a> and their victory \u201cin the name of Jesus Christ.\u201d This fusion of piety and patriotism, where God is an active combatant on America\u2019s side, is exactly what animated one of our greatest writers to pen his most devastating critique of war.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mark Twain was appalled by the jingoism surrounding the Spanish-American War\u2014the patriotic fervor that sent young men to their deaths while society celebrated the justness of the cause and God\u2019s presumed favor. \u201cThe War Prayer<\/a>\u201d was his protest, a parable so stark and accusatory that he believed it could never be published in his lifetime. As he noted, \u201cOnly dead men can tell the whole truth in this world.\u201d He understood that to pray for victory is to simultaneously pray for the ruin of one\u2019s enemy: For shattered homes, orphaned children, and fields sown with blood.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I came across \u201cThe War Prayer\u201d while working as the NBC-Radio\/Mutual News Moscow correspondent; it was a well-worn copy in the U.S. Embassy\u2019s lending library. I was traveling with the Soviet military to Afghanistan through Uzbekistan the following day, reporting a story titled \u201cHoly War Without End<\/a>\u201d for the Los Angeles Times Magazine. The occupation would end months after my visit as factions of Afghan mujahideen moved to eradicate foreign forces, claiming Allah in their corner. Hegseth reminds us that America, too, often relies on religious fervor and divine symbolism to validate war.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The United States is not the worst combatant to cloak its objectives in divinity. Iran has fought a holy war against America for nearly five decades. Since the 1979 revolution and the U.S. Embassy\u2019s seizure and hostage crisis, the Islamic Republic\u2019s foundational ideology has been one of \u201cjihad\u201d against the \u201cGreat Satan\u201d of America and its Western allies. Iranians and their proxies have killed American civilians and soldiers in Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Iraq, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. Tehran\u2019s leaders invoke Allah\u2019s name to justify their actions, promising glory in this life and paradise in the next for his warriors. The language and iconography of their holy war are different, but the appeal to sacred sanction rhymes with Hegseth\u2019s prayers<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Americans are brought up in a fervent secular belief of church-state separation and are sometimes unaware of how our religious rhetoric resonates. In the raw, emotional days following the 9\/11 attacks, President George W. Bush, always open about his deep personal faith and decent intent, stood on the White House South Lawn and declared, \u201cThis crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while.\u201d The word \u201ccrusade,\u201d with its freighted history, sent shockwaves through the Muslim world. The administration quickly walked it back, but the sentiment had been expressed. Hegseth, for his part, has no reservations about using the phrase. It comes from an impulse rooted deep in the national psyche, one that Twain recognized a century earlier.<\/p>\n

Whether called a jihad or a crusade, the language serves the same purpose: to sanctify violence and assure a citizenry that prayers for victory are righteous. It was thus in Twain\u2019s time; so too is it now. My film adaptation of \u201cThe War Prayer,\u201d embedded below, aims to strip away this veneer of glory. Twain intended for audiences to understand the second, unspoken part of his prayer\u2014the plea for suffering inextricably linked to the plea for triumph. In our age of surreal politics and televised conflict, Twain\u2019s warning has never been more urgent. His truth, once fit only for the dead, must be told to the living.<\/p>\n

\n\tRelated\n<\/p>\n

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