(RNS) — In a Christmas Day post on the Department of War’s X account, President Donald Trump  announced, “Tonight, at my direction as Commander in Chief, the United States launched a powerful and deadly strike against ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria, who have been targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians, at levels not seen for many years, and even Centuries!”  

OK, so the state that was hit has no Christians to speak of, and ISIS’ existence there is questionable. But the president wanted to play Santa. “They were going to do it earlier,” Trump told Politico. “And I said, ‘nope, let’s give a Christmas present.'”

On X, the president duly signed the holiday card: “May God Bless our Military, and MERRY CHRISTMAS to all, including the dead Terrorists, of which there will be many more if their slaughter of Christians continues.”

Here’s how The Washington Post, now giving the administration the benefit of every doubt, put lipstick on this pig: “Egregious sectarian language aside, Washington responsibly conducted the operation in coordination with the Nigerian government.” Translation: This business of claiming you’re helping Christians is outrageous nonsense, but getting militarily involved in stopping jihadist groups in Africa is a good thing.

So what, according to the Post, was the real object of the exercise?

The U.S. strikes in Nigeria targeted the Islamic State’s Sahel Province branch, which has clashed violently in recent years for territory with JNIM, an al-Qaeda affiliate that is currently trying to seize control of Mali by blocking fuel from entering the capital city of Bamako. If Mali falls, it would mark the first takeover of a country by an anti-Western Islamic terrorist group since the Taliban took Afghanistan. (Links in original.)

So, the strikes were directed against one jihadist group that is trying to take down another jihadist group that is trying to take over a different country from the one we bombed, and that takeover would be the worst thing to happen on the anti-jihadist front since the Biden administration lost Afghanistan in 2021.

Say what?

For folks with memories as old as mine, this resembles nothing more than the tortured justifications for military involvement in Africa and other parts of the world to stop Communism during the Cold War. To say nothing of Richard Nixon’s infamous Christmas bombing of North Vietnam in 1972, the recollection of which was doubtless lodged somewhere in Trump’s brain when he ordered the Nigerian strikes.

In the half-century since Nixon’s Christmas bombing, economic ideologies like Communism have lost their punch as reasons for international conflict. Nowadays we construe conflict to be about religious identity and control. From the former Yugoslavia to Israel-Palestine to Myanmar, religious ideologies have been the spur for unspeakable violence. Russian President Vladimir Putin identifies his war on Ukraine as sacredly attached to the Russian Orthodox Church. And the list goes on.

What has happened involves a shift toward a religious conception of the world. There’s precedent for such a shift in what has been called “the long late antiquity,” which lasted from roughly 250 to 800 CE.

As Israeli comparative religion scholar Guy Stroumsa puts it in a brilliant new book on the period, which saw the rise of Islam, “In the new ethos, dialogue morphs into polemics and reflects the passage of pagans and Christians alike from a world of politics to one of religion, and from pluralism to fundamentalism.” 

The secularization of the West in the modern world was intended to reverse the passage, establishing citizenship in a country as crucial — and crucially independent of religious identity. As per the U.S. Constitution, there would be no religious tests for public office, no religious establishment and a guarantee of religious free exercise for all. What we are now seeing in the U.S., as in many other places, is a regression from that ideal.

In a word, and pace the Post, Trump’s “egregious sectarian language” was precisely the point. We go to war to protect our kind, and by our kind we mean other Christians.

The language of the official Christmas wishes sent by members of the administration say as much: “Today we celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ,” wrote Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. “The joyous message of Christmas is the hope of Eternal Life through Christ,” said Secretary of State Marco Rubio. And from the Labor Department: “Let Earth Receive Her King.”