Often, before we'd head off into a situation that might or might not involve shooting, some soldiers in my unit would hold prayer services or prayer circles amongst themselves. And that's certainly understandable given the circumstances. Faith, or a lack thereof, often defines the entire combat experience for those participating--regardless of an individual's specific religion. Where I have a problem, however, is when fundamentalist American troops start to muck up the entire counterinsurgency operation in a country by doing things like this:

US soldiers have been encouraged to spread the message of their Christian faith among Afghanistan's predominantly Muslim population, video footage obtained by Al Jazeera appears to show. Military chaplains stationed in the US air base at Bagram were also filmed with bibles printed in the country's main Pashto and Dari languages. In one recorded sermon, 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."

You can view the four minute-long report on Al Jazeera English by clicking here. Not only is proselytizing in violation of U.S. military regulations, but, more importantly, these are the kinds of actions that directly affect numbers like, say, the percentage of Afghans who view U.S. troops favorably. And when you're in a situation where that percentage has dropped since 2005 from 83 percent, to 74, to 65, to 47 percent today, you don't have the luxury of being able to do certain things that could alienate wide swaths of the population in which you're living. This is a race against time in terms of winning hearts and minds and we're clearly losing at this point. In fact, those percentages are almost inversely proportional to the numbers of U.S. casualties in Afghanistan: As the percentages have gone down, the casualties have risen. Military leaders can't underestimate the impact of stupidity like this and they have to take steps to clamp down on this kind of carelessness. It's very easy to dismiss as an organization--and in line units--because passing out Bibles isn't such a big deal to us. But we're not the ones who count in this case. In Afghanistan, it's cause for executing someone. In response to the Al Jazeera report, the Army replied with this:

But a U.S. military spokeswoman, Major Jennifer Willis, said the comments from the sermon were taken out of context and chaplains were told to make clear to soldiers that they could not proselytise while serving. She said the bibles had been mailed to a soldier by a church back home in the United States and were never distributed. "That specific case involved a soldier who brought in a donation of translated bibles that were sent to his personal address by his home church. He showed them to the group and the chaplain explained that he cannot distribute them," she said. "The translated bibles were never distributed as far as we know, because the soldier understood that if he distributed them he would be in violaion of general order 1, and he would be subject to punishment."

The good thing here is that the Army at least publicly recognizes the significance of the story. Unfortunately, it's hard to tell what, if any, action will be taken to prevent this kind of stuff from going on in the future. Troops who try to proselytize Afghans (or Iraqis) are a direct threat to their peers, and anyone caught in possession of a Bible printed in Pashto or Arabic shouldn't be allowed outside the wire until some significant retraining has taken place.