You can’t have a religious war with an irreligious nation 

The last time the United States was preparing to invade a Middle Eastern country, there was a lot of angst around the idea that the United States was leading some kind of religious war against Islam.

When then-President George W. Bush stumbled in remarks about what was being called the Global War on Terror and used the word “crusade” to describe the mission, it set off a wave of outrage and a great deal of damage control by the White House. The narrative quickly formed among his critics that Bush, an evangelical Christian, was leading a holy war, not a strategic one. The result, they said, would be to unite the Muslim world in a holy war of their own against us.

“It doesn‘t look like we are spreading democracy,” commentator Bill Maher said of the effort in Iraq. “It looks like we are spreading theocracy.”

This time around, as tens of thousands of American troops appear poised for ground combat in Iran — a nation far larger and more religiously extreme than secularly governed Iraq — the whole “American crusade” narrative is pretty muted.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is certainly trying to help it along. His Pentagon prayer for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy” or that “wicked souls” be “delivered to the eternal damnation” echo the rhetoric of the actual crusades, as do a couple of his tattoos. 

Hegseth has drawn rebukes from Christians ranging from Pope Leo XIV to conservative evangelicals, but the arguments about a “clash of civilizations” and a “new crusade” common 20 years ago when Hegseth was serving in Iraq aren’t much to be found.

There are a lot of reasons why that might be so. First, America is fighting with the encouragement of several Sunni Muslim nations against the Shias of Iran. So while there might be concerns about America picking a side in the 1,400-year holy war within Islam, it can’t be said that........

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