With God on Our Side One Man's War Against an Evangelical Coup in America's Military

Chapter One A Family Tradition On July 29, 2004, Mikey Weinstein took advantage of an unpatrolled stretch of I-25 just outside of Santa Fe to open up his fire-engine-red, five-hundred-horsepower Viper GTS, punching through a glorious desert panorama bathed in bright sunlight. Dense and compact, his shorn, bullet-shaped head fit snugly on his shoulders and his warm brown eyes set on stun, Weinstein radiated an unsettling mix of composure and coiled spring tension that fit well with his choice in automobiles. He'd bought the car specifically for its prowling, muscular profile, a conspicuous symbol, not of midlife angst, but of a decision he'd made back in 1998 when his wife, Bonnie, was first diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. "That changed everything," he recounts. "In a heartbeat. We decided right then that we had to live for the moment. The focus wasn't going to be about growing old together and dandling grandchildren on our knees. We wanted to get as much out of each day, every day, as we could, to enjoy our lives now, because neither one of us really knew how much time we had left together. We didn't want to take a single minute for granted." Not that Weinstein is in the habit of letting much of anything slip by. With a taste for plum wine, chocolate pancakes, hard-core punk and metal rock, and profanity, he fueled himself on outsize emotions and unassailable convictions. His practiced ease with the perquisites of power echoes in his resonant baritone, which, no matter how impassioned, is restrained, measured. A quintessential soldier; a high-profile attorney; a self-starting entrepreneurfor all the high points of his skill set, what he seems most palpably to relish is his role as a rogue operative, a dangerous underdog who describes himself as "unpredictable, mercurial, and peripatetic." A man who habitually led with his jaw, feeling deeply, without reserve and sometimes to his detriment, Weinstein had a lifetime allegiance to honor, duty, and service, shot through with a rebellious streak, a fierce integrity, and the impressive ability to balance all the contradictions that define him. There is, for starters, the incongruity of his nickname, stuck to him since his teenage years because of a resemblance to the stocky, pugnacious toddler in the famous Life cereal commercial, that, even now at fifty-one, five feet eight inches, and 178 pounds, still lingers. But the dissonances and disconnects of the man reach down further. "There's only a couple of things I've tried to do in my life that I've completely failed at," he will say with a laugh. "One was being a Grateful Dead fan. I thought it would be cool and I gave it my best shot, but I had to face the fact that, to me, they sucked. The other was being an atheist." In fact, Weinstein's almost primal Jewish identity runs up hard and often against any comforting spiritual certainty. "When I look at these mountains all around me or into the faces of my wife, sons, and daughter-in-law, I can't shake the unflagging sense that there must be, in a very Jewish sense, a Supreme Being. That's why I pray twice a day, every day, even though I'm still waiting to get an answer about how a supposedly loving God allows the murder of children in the millions in the Holocaust. I identify absolutely with my people and my culture, but I'm not always sure where I stand on the absolutes of my faith." The paradox of an assiduously secular Jew who regularly prays is echoed by Weinstein's counterintuitive patriotism, a belief in America predicated on an obdurate appeal to its highest ideals. It's a stance all the more remarkable giWeinstein, Michael L. is the author of 'With God on Our Side One Man's War Against an Evangelical Coup in America's Military', published 2006 under ISBN 9780312361433 and ISBN 0312361432.