Is the US up in arms over religion?

No.

But how much religious imagery have you seen in the last month being used to prepare people to support their country through whatever may come?

If you are like me, a heck of a lot.

Religion is sometimes a cause of war, sometimes not. I thin that typically when it is a cause of war, it is a cause for only some of those involved. (For instance part of bin Laden's outrage was for having infidels on holy land during the Gulf War. But for the US that was about oil, not religion. And for Saddam Hussein it was about political power.) But it stirs up powerful emotions, and so is almost always a tool that will be used to engage a population in war.

Finally I am (as I often say) someone who finds concepts like fault, blame, and cause to be useless concepts. I like thinking in terms of contributing factors. So in that language, is religion a contributing factor to war? The answer certainly has to be that it is. Religion provides a simple set of images which can be and is used to motivate people. If the people didn't have faith in religions with common images and plenty of passages which could be used to motivate people to fight, it would be harder to rouse nations and point them towards battle and death.

Cheers,
Ben