#US #military leaders have long understood the power & perils of invoking faith — especially in #wartime.
Facing the Germans in WWII, Gen. George Patton ordered a chaplain to write an #interfaith prayer for #troops to say on the battlefield.
It took just a week in September 2001 for #Defense Sec #DonaldRumsfeld to change the name of the campaign against terrorism from Operation Infinite Justice to Operation Enduring Freedom — a switch meant to clarify that the US was not in a #religious #war.