U.S. soldiers instructed to evangelize for Jesus in Afghanistan

It seems the job description just grew a bit longer for U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. No longer are they merely responsible for maintaining order, keeping the Taliban and al-Qaeda in check, and rebuilding the country (as if any of that ever got very far anyway).

Now they have a new instruction to follow: "hunt people for Jesus ... so we can get them into the kingdom." So they're also Christian missionaries now.

Needless to say, this is hardly the way to win hearts and minds and demonstrate that we're not engaged in a holy war against Islam.

Jeremy Scahill provides the details in a blog post at RebelReports.com:

New video evidence has surfaced showing that US military forces in Afghanistan have been instructed by the military's top chaplain in the country to "hunt people for Jesus" as they spread Christianity to the overwhelmingly Muslim population. Soldiers also have imported bibles translated into Pashto and Dari, the two dominant languages of Afghanistan. What's more, the center of this evangelical operation is at the huge US base at Bagram, one of the main sites used by the US military to torture and indefinitely detain prisoners.

In a video obtained by Al Jazeera and broadcast Monday, Lieutenant-Colonel Gary Hensley, the chief of the US military chaplains in Afghanistan, is seen telling soldiers that as followers of Jesus Christ, they all have a responsibility "to be witnesses for him."

"The special forces guys - they hunt men basically. We do the same things as Christians, we hunt people for Jesus. We do, we hunt them down," he says.

"Get the hound of heaven after them, so we get them into the kingdom. That’s what we do, that’s our business."

By the way, trying to convert Muslims to any other faith is a crime in Afghanistan.

And it's not supposed to be the American way.