In De­cem­ber, the US South­ern Com­mand’s so­cial me­dia pages post­ed an im­age of a Ma­rine wear­ing an an­cient and unique sym­bol that is not part of the US mil­i­tary uni­form.

Pat­ty Nieburg, writ­ing for the Mil­i­tary web­site Task and Pur­pose, re­port­ed: “Of­fi­cials at US South­ern Com­mand post­ed a pho­to col­lage Tues­day, il­lus­trat­ing Marines fast rop­ing from a he­li­copter and a masked in­fantry­man wear­ing his hel­met, NVGs, a plate car­ri­er, and armed with his ri­fle. But the Ma­rine, some not­ed, was out of uni­form.

“The black and white col­lage fea­tures a Ma­rine with the Jerusalem Cross patch fixed promi­nent­ly on their hel­met. The Marines ap­pear to have been as­signed to the 22nd Ma­rine Ex­pe­di­tionary Unit, which is cur­rent­ly de­ployed to the Caribbean as part of Op­er­a­tion South­ern Spear, the Pen­ta­gon’s stat­ed mis­sion to dis­man­tle drug car­tels.

“The pho­to was “re­moved from DVIDS be­cause the ser­vice mem­ber shown was not in com­pli­ance with uni­form reg­u­la­tions,” Steven Mcloud, a spokesper­son for US South­ern Com­mand, told Task & Pur­pose.”

The Jerusalem Cross con­sists of five cross­es, one large cross and four small­er ones in the four sec­tors around the main cross. This was orig­i­nal­ly used as the coat of arms of the Cru­sad­er King­dom of Jerusalem in 1099 AD, which was es­tab­lished af­ter the fi­nal bat­tle to take Jerusalem from the Fa­timid Caliphate.

The cross, how­ev­er, pre­dates the Cru­sades and was used by Chris­tians in the east some­time in the fifth or sixth cen­tu­ry. It rep­re­sents the five wounds of Christ and the four gospels ac­cord­ing to tra­di­tion.

The use of this sym­bol on of­fi­cial US mil­i­tary so­cial me­dia is not sur­pris­ing, con­sid­er­ing that Sec­re­tary of War Pe­te Hegseth has the Jerusalem Cross tat­tooed on his chest. T

his fact was the sub­ject of pre­vi­ous scruti­ny, ac­cord­ing to Fox News jour­nal­ist Pe­ter Pine­do, who wrote: “One of the tat­toos gar­ner­ing the most at­ten­tion is a sym­bol on Hegseth’s chest known as the ‘Jerusalem Cross,’ which con­sists of one large cross sur­round­ed by four small­er cross­es. Hegseth, an evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian, has said that the cross is a sym­bol of his Chris­t­ian faith, but his de­trac­tors have said the Jerusalem Cross is an in­di­ca­tor of ex­trem­ism, White su­prema­cist and Chris­t­ian na­tion­al­ist sen­ti­ment. Some have even mis­tak­en it for the Nazi swasti­ka.

“Ac­cord­ing to Hegseth, con­cern over the tat­too caused his lead­er­ship in the Dis­trict of Co­lum­bia Na­tion­al Guard to pull him from a mis­sion to guard the in­au­gu­ra­tion of Pres­i­dent Biden and ul­ti­mate­ly fac­tored in­to his de­ci­sion to re­tire from the mil­i­tary.”

Giv­en Hegseth’s per­son­al use of this sym­bol, I can on­ly as­sume his staff post­ed the pic­ture of the Ma­rine wear­ing it with his ap­proval. The use of this im­age in the con­text of the po­ten­tial mil­i­tary cam­paign against Venezuela is clear­ly de­lib­er­ate. It com­mu­ni­cates that se­nior US of­fi­cials view the re­moval of the Maduro regime as a holy war that is moral­ly cor­rect, re­gard­less of the UN Char­ter and the Uni­ver­sal De­c­la­ra­tion of Hu­man Rights, which pro­hibits ex­tra­ju­di­cial killings of drug car­tel mem­bers.

In 1095 AD, Pope Ur­ban II fa­mous­ly promised the re­mis­sion of sins to those who went on the First Cru­sade to lib­er­ate Jerusalem. This promise of the pope is con­trary to lat­er Catholic the­ol­o­gy post-Vat­i­can 2, as well as Protes­tant and Or­tho­dox the­ol­o­gy, which re­ject Catholic in­dul­gences. Hegseth may, how­ev­er, be­lieve he is on a di­vine mis­sion to re­move un­savoury el­e­ments from the halls of pow­er in Latin Amer­i­ca.

On De­cem­ber 11, 2025, Al Jazeera re­port­ed that Don­ald Trump threat­ened the Colom­bia Pres­i­dent Gus­ta­vo Petro, warn­ing that the South Amer­i­can leader could be next af­ter Maduro.

In my opin­ion, Hegseth is al­so us­ing this war on drugs to give the US Ma­rine Corps field ex­pe­ri­ence de­ploy­ing on is­lands with a trop­i­cal cli­mate. Chi­na has sig­nalled to the world that it is will­ing to go to war to re­take the is­land of Tai­wan, a coun­try where the south has a trop­i­cal cli­mate like ours in the Caribbean.

A war with Chi­na in the Pa­cif­ic will in­volve land­ing marines on is­land na­tions like Tai­wan and the Philip­pines to se­cure strate­gic ob­jec­tives. Dur­ing WWII, the Marines fight­ing the Japan­ese in the Pa­cif­ic suf­fered from dengue fever, de­hy­dra­tion and heat stroke due to their poor adap­ta­tion to trop­i­cal con­di­tions.

Med­ical re­search has shown that ath­letes and mil­i­tary per­son­nel re­lo­cat­ing from cold­er cli­mates to warmer cli­mates can un­der­go heat ac­cli­ma­ti­sa­tion, which caus­es a de­crease in rest­ing body tem­per­a­ture.

Putting all the da­ta points to­geth­er, I be­lieve Hegseth is con­duct­ing ex­er­cis­es in the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca as part of a grand strat­e­gy to pre­pare to de­ter Chi­na in the Pa­cif­ic. Chi­nese in­ter­ests in Venezuela may al­so be a tar­get of Hegseth’s cru­sade against Maduro.

Giv­en the re­cent 171 mil­lion drug bust con­nect­ed to the US radar in­stalled in To­ba­go, T&T is ben­e­fit­ing from Hegseth’s cru­sade. How­ev­er, we need to gain the ca­pa­bil­i­ty to se­cure our own bor­ders, as every cru­sad­er army even­tu­al­ly re­turns home when po­lit­i­cal winds shift.