"Return to me with all your heart, with fasting, weeping and mourning"

At what point is it ridiculous to speak of "military discipline" at all? When soldiers frag officers? Or when they beat prisoners to death?

Two Afghan prisoners who died in American custody in Afghanistan in December 2002 were chained to the ceiling, kicked and beaten by American soldiers in sustained assaults that caused their deaths, according to Army criminal investigative reports that have not yet been made public.

One soldier, Pfc. Willie V. Brand, was charged with manslaughter in a closed hearing last month in Texas in connection with one of the deaths, another Army document shows. Private Brand, who acknowledged striking a detainee named Dilawar 37 times, was accused of having maimed and killed him over a five-day period by "destroying his leg muscle tissue with repeated unlawful knee strikes."

The attacks on Mr. Dilawar were so severe that "even if he had survived, both legs would have had to be amputated," the Army report said, citing a medical examiner.

The chief military intelligence officer reported that chaining prisoners to the ceiling was intended to protect interrogators. The report says it was merely intended to do harm. But wait, there's more:

John Sifton, a researcher on Afghanistan for Human Rights Watch, said the documents substantiated the group's own investigations showing that beatings and stress positions were widely used, and that "far from a few isolated cases, abuse at sites in Afghanistan was common in 2002, the rule more than the exception."

"Human Rights Watch has previously documented, through interviews with former detainees, that scores of other detainees were beaten at Bagram and Kandahar bases from early 2002 on," Mr. Sifton said in an e-mail message.

We have not reached the bottom. There is no bottom. What we have to do, is to take the shovels away, because they will not stop digging.

Odd, from an Administration that professes so much faith in the Creator. Consider these words, from Isaiah:

You, Israel, my servant,
Jacob, whom I have chosen,
the offspring of Abraham, my friend;
you whom I took from the ends of the earth,
and called from it's farthest corners,
saying to you, "You are my servant.
I have chosen you and not cast you off";
do not fear, for I am with you,
do not be afraid for I am your God;
I will strengthen you, I will help you,
I will uphold you with my victorious right hand.
Yes, all who are incensed against you
shall be ashamed and disgraced;
those who strive against you
shall be as nothing and shall perish.
You shall seek those who contend with you,
but you shall not find them;
those who war against you
shall be as nothing at all.
For I, the Lord your God,
hold your right hand,
it is I who way to you, "Do not fear,'
I will help you." (Isaiah 41:8-13)

Triumphalism? The song of God leading a nation to battle? A rallying cry for vengeance? No. Those words came to Israel through Isaiah in Babylon, when the nation of Israel no longer existed. The people of Israel had no military power left, no hope of victory on the battlefield, no means to inflict pain on their captors. This is the song of a people whose faith in their God will sustain them and provide for them. It is not the faith of George W. Bush or of most of his "faith-based" base.

True faith in God is without fear about the world, because the believer knows God is in charge. George Bush is afraid, and he leads by fear, and he projects and depends on fear. You want to understand George Bush, watch the movie "Friday Night Lights." Pay attention to the violence inherent in the structure of west Texas small town society. Pay attention to the message: winning isn't everything; it's the only thing. Pay careful attention, and you will undestand that George W. Bush could hear these words of Isaiah, and apply them to himself, and decide he was God's agent for triumph. When God is the sole agent of salvation and victory, and needs no one to act for God. The teachings of the prophets are clear: God will act, and human beings will not be needed to make God's actions manifest. God is Creator, and active in Creation. The perversion of that decree, of that kerygma, is that God needs us in order to fulfill God's promises.

That is the diminishment of God's promises that George W. Bush has turned into America's foreign policy. And we are just now seeing the results of that arrogance. The violence is not inherent in the words of the prophets, or in the actions of God. The violence is in the people who decide God needs a hand, or isn't acting quickly enough, or can't do it without them, and that is why they are here. The Christian profession is that God acting once, directly and completely, through a human being, and hasn't done so or needed to do so again. But the Christian action, too often in history, and repeated again today in this Administration, is that God acts only through us. It's convenient, and comforting, to think we can control God that way. It is also, of course, arrogant, to think we are that important, and God is helplees unless we respond.

We fail, over and over again, to understand the power of powerlessness. We fail to understand the distinction between accepting powerlessness, and being powerless. It is being powerless that tortures people. It is true impotence that beats the prisoner to death. It is complete helplessness that can only respond to an event like 9/11 with violence and more violence, and still more violence. Spain and Europe, having suffered wars and terrorists for decades, seeks answers. America seeks to turn the world upside down, and to extend the boundaries of "Fortress America" just as far as it can.

We are the weakest country on earth. We are the most helpless country on earth. We are the most frightened country on earth. People of faith are never so frightened. People of strength and resolve are never so easily turned into monsters. If we had the relationship to God of the children of Abraham the prophets today would be denouncing us for our fear and terror and destruction. Having never suffered a major war by foreign powers on our soil since our founding, we don't know how to respond, and so we respond like frightened children; but children armed to the teeth, and willing to blindly kill, secure in our one true belief: that winning isn't everything, it's the only thing.