Ostensibly, our troops are in Iraq to promote Democracy, stabilize the region, and depending on to whom you listen, lower the price of crude oil. But they’re not there to kill Muslims just because they’re Muslim.
Yet the Pentagon is allowing a right-wing Christian evangelical “entertainment troupe” to distribute copies of Left Behind: Eternal Forces to U.S. troops in Iraq.
Operation Straight Up (OSU), an official part of the Defense Department’s America Supports You program, plans to distribute copies of the controversial real-time strategy game with government sanction.
The game depicts urban warfare in the wake of the “Rapture,” an event predicted by some Christian groups, in which all “saved” persons are teleported magically to heaven. Afterward, the “unsaved” will battle against one another. In the game, the player controls “good” characters who hunt down and kill “Satanists,” Jews, Muslims, and other non-Christians, plus gays.
The Anti-Defamation League, the Conference on American Islamic Relations, and Christian Alliance for Progress all condemned the game.
Fundamentalist pro-censorship lawyer Jack Thompson was initially involved in the creation of Left Behind: Eternal Forces, but quit when he learned players could control the “evil side” as well.
The game is based on a popular series of Christian fantasy novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins.
The OSU is a project of Biodome actor-turned-evangelist Stephen Baldwin.
There are two issues involved here: (1) the U.S. government promoting a specific religious view, and (2) the military possibly undermining the mission in Iraq.
