Pete Hegseth wanted an ‘American Crusade.’ Now he’s leading a war in the Middle East

In the war the US launched on the Islamic Republic, the US secretary of war, as he prefers to be called, likes to talk about how the Christian God is on his side.

“A version of this story appeared in CNN’s What Matters newsletter”

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During an interview with CBS News that aired Sunday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Iran should not doubt US resolve because it is backed by the higher power.

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“Our capabilities are better.

Our will is better.

Our troops are better.

The providence of our almighty God is there protecting those troops, and we’re committed to this mission,” he said.

The CBS reporter, Major Garrett, asked if Hegseth views the war from a religious context.

“I mean, obviously, we’re fighting religious fanatics who seek a nuclear capability in order for some religious Armageddon.”

Troops, he later added, “need a connection with their almighty God in these moments.”

A couple of days later, not long after returning from a dignified transfer of soldiers killed in action, Hegseth quoted Psalm 144 at a Pentagon press conference: “Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle.”

Hegseth argues the US is a Christian nation Hegseth has long wanted to reprogram the country.

“A version of this story appeared in CNN’s What Matters newsletter”

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“America was founded as a Christian nation,” he said at a recent National Prayer Breakfast.

“It remains a Christian nation in our DNA, if we can keep it,” he added, splicing some religion onto a famous Benjamin Franklin quip about whether the US was a republic or a monarchy.

“Not only are we warriors armed with the arsenal of freedom, we ultimately are armed with the arsenal of faith,” he said, adapting Franklin D. Roosevelt’s idea that the US should be the arsenal of democracy to his own religious worldview.

Faith is tattooed on his chest

Hegseth says one of his tattoos — a Jerusalem Cross, a religious symbol tied to the Crusades— led him to be labeled an extremist and disinvited from his unit’s detail to President Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2021.

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The imagery has roots in the Crusades, when European Christians tried to reclaim the Holy Land from Muslims.

The term Deus Vult, “God Wills It,” is also tattooed on Hegseth’s body.

In his 2020 book “American Crusade,” he describes the term as “the rallying cry of Christian knights as they marched to Jerusalem.”