Don Pendleton
Doomsday Disciples
The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.
Men never do evil so completely and so cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction.
It is not up to me to judge a man's religion. I leave that to the Universe. But when religion is perverted, twisted by the savages, it's time for man to give the gods a hand.
Prologue
Mack Bolan never had the time to adopt an organized religion. The son of church-going parents, as a youth he drifted from the rituals and trappings of the faith and sought a universal truth in his own place and time. He saw enough bigotry and persecution in his travels to recognize that demagogues habitually use religion as a cloak for their fanaticism. The cross inverted was a bloody sword, and he knew that holy wars were often the most vicious and unholy.
Not that Bolan was an atheist — far from it. He believed devoutly in the concept of Good and Evil battling for the hearts and minds of men. From adolescence he was a volunteer combatant in that ageless war, striking when and where he could against the cannibals and savages. Bolan was his brother's keeper, endlessly at war, offering his future as a sacrifice to the common, universal Good.
And in that sense, he was a deeply religious man. The holy warrior, standing guard on a grim frontier.
As a military strategist, he recognized the role of organized religion in the history of human conflict.
From the earliest Crusades to the ongoing conflict in Ireland and the Middle East, God and doctrines have provided motivation for the massacre of countless millions. No cause ever rallied men to arms with such predictable efficiency as a call to strike against the infidel, the unbeliever.