when the largest and most powerful defense contractor in Iraq and Afghanistan, Blackwater, is headed by a man, Eric Prince, who, according to a former employee, views himself as “a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe,” it is difficult to imagine how these young, pious, and “shaken” soldiers could construe their military mission, and indeed the entire War on Terror, in any way other than as part of a new crusade—a cosmic war—between the forces of good (us) and evil (them).
