Well, the title says it all, but apparently a manufacturer has been inscribing bible verses on weapons made for the US military.
For want of a better way of putting it, I’m flabbergasted. I don’t see how this can fail to further undermine attempts by the US to try to not look like they’re embarked on a holy war. However, I suspect that other opinions may exist.
I figure this thread may well find a home in the Pit, but, what the hell, let’s see if it will work as a great debate.
I am come not to bring peace, but a lightweight, 5.56 mm, air-cooled, gas-operated, magazine-fed assault rifle, with a rotating bolt, actuated by direct impingement gas operation.
And the Onion does it again! Those guys have such a genius for satire. Wait, that wasn’t from the Onion? That was real! I need aspirin (and a large amount of vodka).
I fail to see how this is any worse than the fact that the Country Bob’s Sauce which I always buy to put on steaks and ribs has a tiny Jesus fish on the label. I’m not a Christian but I don’t give a fuck if my steak sauce bottle has a tiny Christian symbol on it. But then again, that’s just the krazy, out-there, radical opinion of one guy who believes he shouldn’t get worked up into a rage about every tiny little manifestation of Christianity.
From the article:
This is just utter silliness. As if the Mujahadeen and al Qaeda’s opinion of us would be swayed by a fucking coded inscription on a rifle sight. Yeah, let’s not use it because it might make the Mujahadeen more anti-American.
The propaganda aspects are fairly obvious.
But really its just one business playing silly buggers that got caught trying to be smart in my view and it will probably cost them somehow as a result.
If they knew what they were doing was fine, you have to wonder why they did it in code after all, rather than just ‘John 5:2’ or whatever rather than JN or the like.
Otara
It’s a “hearts and minds” war, Argent. American credibility, and therefore prospects of success, in the MENA depends pretty absolutely on putting down al-Qaeda’s “Crusaders” meme. This don’t help none. Not that harmful if not noticed, of course, but now it’s out of the bag.
Off topic but it’s very weird to see a childish-sounding nickname like that, or any nickname at all - in quotes, no less - thrown into an otherwise-professional article. What is the deal with that? It’s not like Weinstein is some kind of household name and the majority of readers would be familiar with his nickname. What is up with this?
I am pretty sure that as long as America is allied with Israel, we are going to be “Crusaders” to them, and removing a coded Bible verse from a rifle sight is not going to change that. As long as America and Israel are allies, we are going to be the Great Satan allied with the Jew Devil.
Because the Crusades were fought to win back the Holy Land for the Jews, yes.
The sad part is the Jihadists actually seem to think that way.
Well there’s no doubt that the pro-Israel side and the right-wing Christian side have a lot of common ground, but the pro-Israel side also has a decent amount of overlap with the left. Realize that alliances are always shifting and though historically the Jews used to clash with the Christians during their long diaspora in Europe, they are now clashing more with the Muslims now that they have a land to call their own (Israel) and the Christians are finally letting up on them. A lot of people claim that it has to do with evangelicals wanting to fulfill prophecies and stuff like that, but really I think it has more to do with the fact that the kind of conservative, rough-neck, pro-military people who run the right-wing - the kind of people who would have been called “hard hats” back in the '60s - just respect Israel because it’s a plucky little country that can kick ass militarily, and that’s the only thing that cuts ice with such chest-thumpers. At least in my own experience, as someone who moves equally in far-left and far-right circles. You’re not going to hear burly Joe Bob and Bubba with the trucker hats and USMC tattoos at the gun range talking about how they can’t wait for the Hebrews to retake the Holy Land and trigger the Rapture, but you will hear them say the Israelis make a goddamn great rifle sling and, man, can their pilots fly.
Don’ hijack ma thread, or I’ll have to break out* ma ARmaggedon-15. 
I understand your point about not caring about every manifestation of christianity, but this isn’t “oh, you have a ‘Christmas’ tree, rather than a holiday tree”. I don’t have a knee jerk anti-christian thing going, but this gets immediately up my nose.
This is inscribing bible verses - admittedly not the whole verse, just the cite** - on weapons commonly used to kill people of another religion. You don’t think this adds a whole patina of holy war? How 'bout if we found out the tanks were all being blessed in the factory by the local rabbi***? Do we need this?
*mods, please note, this is not intended as an actual threat, but rather a humorous request to stay on topic, written within the context of the thread. For the record, I quite like Argent Towers, for some reason, possibly his medieval armor fetish, he’s one of my favorite posters. I would not do him harm. Also, I don’t have, nor do I intend to have, a AR-15. And no, it did not fall off my boat.
**
*** good tankers, them Israelis, I tell you what.
As point of fact, it’s not the weapons, it’s the ACOG sights made by a company named Trijicon, noted in the civilian world for their tritium night sights.
As a guy that had to carry a weapon in theater (admittedly, not with an ACOG attached, it’s a bit too big for an M9), I think this is a horrible idea and the company should get slapped about a good bit. We go out of our way to tell these guys it’s not a holy war, and a company unilaterally undermines that? Thanks for nothing.
The sights can come off, and as soon as they find sights to replace them, they should. They should all go back to Trijicon with a message that they are never to be seen again or they will get no more government business. The messages are reportedly small. They should be nonexistent.
I don’t really like Medieval armour, I like Renaissance armour. 1510-1620. Great helms, mail and tabards aren’t my thing; basically Maximilian and later.
There’s two issues here. One is, “is it wrong for a company to put Bible verses on military equipment?” In my opinion, yes, it’s wrong and stupid. If I were in charge of manufacturing rifle sights, I wouldn’t inscribe a Bible verse on them. (Maybe a line from Delany’s Hogg, a tiny little portrait of J.G. Ballard or a nude girl in profile).
The other issue is, “would removing the code from the sights actually do us any good?” In my opinion, no it would not. Al Qaeda and the Mujahadeen and all of these people hate us no matter what (unless we all adopted radical Sharia overnight) and in my opinion, if we removed the code from the rifle sights, they would find a way to spin that - they would say that Allah has weakened the infidel’s will and made him cave in to them, or that Allah magically made the inscriptions disappear from the sights, or “look at those stupid Americans, they’re trying to appease us.” We’re not going to make them fucking love us - I disagree that we can ever win their hearts and minds, or those of the populace which supports them.
Removing the code from the sights would be solely something that would be done to make us - American secularists - feel better. I think it would change the minds of the Mujahadeen not a hitch.
Next time I write a public paean about you, I’ll try to get that right. I like the nude babes inscribed on the sights, but I think there may be other problems with that. I agree with Airman Doors though: we keep saying it isn’t a holy war. If it’s not holy war, it shouldn’t look like a holy war.
Yeah WTF is with this rush to be all Christian? Our military men should be rampaging, libertine cavaliers, drinking and screwing their way through the country when not laying waste to our enemies. That is how to get things done. Like Rutger Hauer in Flesh & Blood.
I’d be very surprised if some Middle Eastern soldiers didn’t put verses from the Koran on their guns, but it is their part of the world and they were kind of running it before The Coalition showed up.
But yeah, stupid idea for this company to be putting religious verses on military armaments; especially if they’re being used in the Middle Eastern theatre. Even inscribing “Have a nice day” in small, friendly letters on the gun barrels would be in poor taste, IMHO.
I agree with you that the hardcore members of the jihadists aren’t going to be convinced by nice, secular weapons, but I think that’s beside the point. They’re not the people whose hearts and minds we need to win - it’s the boundary cases, regular people who mostly just want to get on with their lives, that we need to convince. The difference between terrorists and freedom fighters is in the minds of the locals, and anything that will make them lean towards ‘freedom fighters’ is a bad thing.
Perhaps as civilization’s shining beacon, which a few stragglers still fancy us to be, we’re big enough to realize when we’ve sponsored an idea that’s completely fucking stupid, and correct it instead of continuing on full bore?
I know, I know—I’m a radical—
And again this would entirely be a feel-good measure on our parts to reassure ourselves of both our secularism and our capacity for reassessment and self-adjustment. Fine and dandy, but my point is that it won’t matter a tinker’s damn to the guys on the other side.
*The company’s vision is described on its Web site: “Guided by our values, we endeavor to have our products used wherever precision aiming solutions are required to protect individual freedom.” *
That’s golden.