Good God

Folks don’t like the truth. That’s the point. It’s easier lyin’.
Stops us havin’ to face up to trouble when it comes along;
to do wrong insteada right.”

--Jesse Custer, The Preacher
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The quote is spoken by fictitious Texan Preacher Jesse Custer, protagonist of the eponymous graphic novel series.

Jesse is a believer, but he's been pretty screwed up by his upbringing in a dysfunctional pious American family. So he becomes a warfighter, of sorts. It is an altogether uneasy feeling.

Now look at all these happy campers on the cover of this month's VFW magazine. Since the front and center person is a chaplain, then God is surely smiling on the forces of goodness and democracy, yes?

I wonder, however, why Chaplain Morris is wearing a Combat Action Badge.

The last time Ranger checked into the net chaplains were non-combatants, per the Geneva Conventions. How would a chaplain be part of a military operation as a functioning member and still maintain non-combatant status?

Chaplains have earned every award for valor that exists in the U.S. military and this is just, fair and equitable, as they often provide spiritual comfort in some pretty dicey environments. Ranger salutes this service and their valor, but putting a CAB on their chest is totally inappropriate. These personnel are not war fighters.

Awarding chaplains the CAB is a militarization of a spiritual function. Medics must be exposed to combat to perform their duties, but this is not true of chaplains.

If chaplains are forward during operations, it is to do God's work; they should not be participants. Putting CAB's on chaplains strikes Ranger as fascistic in all senses of the word.