Well, another one of Shirley Dobson's big National Day of Prayer shindigs has come and gone, with all the same regulation-violating military participation as last year and the year before that and the year before that. As usual, they had their Army band, military color guard, and speakers that included uniformed service members going all the way up to a major general -- all in blatant violation of the very clear military regulations prohibiting service members from participating in religious or any other "non-federal entity" events of this kind while in uniform. But, rather than go into detail about that, which would basically just be a repeat of what I wrote about last year's event, I want to focus on another aspect of Ms. Dobson's annual Capitol Hill Jesus jamboree.
In her opening remarks, Ms. Dobson, who took over as chairperson of the National Day of Prayer Task Force in 1991, recalled the difficulties that she and her husband, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, experienced when they moved their organization to Colorado Springs that same year. She also recalled what a bad year 1991 was for America in general, explaining to her audience how the lord delivered America from the First Gulf War:
"And then a more distressing thing happened. We were in a war. Saddam Hussein had invaded the tiny country of Kuwait and used poison gas on the people. America went to war in what was called Operation Desert Storm. Our president at that time was George Herbert Walker Bush, and he called for a national day of prayer. 500,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen went to war, and we went to our knees to pray. On [sic] that same year, on May 2, we came to the National Day of Prayer in Washington, D.C. asking for a victory on the battlefields of Iraq, and the lord graciously answered those prayers. The allies lost only nine planes during the conflict and most of our soldiers and airmen came home safely. We must never, never forget what the lord did for us during that time of uncertainty."