Or so the caption at the DailyKos post goes, purporting to find a parallel between the U.S. Army recruits at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, and the picture below…

I make a couple observations about these two photos:

1. The recruits in Ft. Jackson are not about to strap on a bomb, walk into a market, and indiscriminately kill hundreds, as the suicide bomber will. The suicide bomber will leave the weapon she’s so brazenly holding behind in favor of a hidden suicide vest.

2. The recruits in Ft. Jackson are holding up weapons that have been assigned to them by roster-number (I would know, I’ve been to basic training). Even if they wanted to take a picture of themselves holding only their Bibles, it would be nigh impossible, for they are required to have their arms secured on their person at all times (the Army has found that even well-disciplined men have left their arms behind in battle – this is part of an effort to overcome that problem).

3. The recruits in Ft. Jackson will be taught (per the Counter Insurgency Field Manual – authored by General David Petraeus) that civilian casualties are not “collateral damage” – but serious impediments to our success in Iraq and Afghanistan. The entire premise of counter-insurgency (COIN) is that a shift from force-protection (our own) to civilian protection (their own) is necessary in order to gain the civilian trust, even if it means greater loss of life to our own soldiers in the short run.

Finally, I would note that this comes from the same far-left fringe of the blogosphere that also thought maligning General Petraeus was the cool thing to do – taking out a full page ad in the New York Times, deriding him as “General Betrayus“.

The left has long had trouble hiding their anti-military persuasion, try as they might. But to see a military recruit holding a Bible (after all, the left has an equally palpable anti-Judeo-Christian sentiment) must have been too much for this blogger to resist.

God forbid (pardon the pun) our brave men and women in uniform seek the assurance of a Higher Power (as our greatest military leaders always have) as they do battle against those who hijack airplanes, wear suicide vests, employ improvised explosive devices (IED’s), target innocents, and otherwise lie, cheat and steal their way to a world-wide Islamist theocracy.

Don’t believe me? Then ask Benazir Bhutto, who just lost her life today in the fight against global jihad.