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| Slide - U.S. Air Force Power Point presentation |
Fast forward to July of this year. Jason Leopold wrote another great article for Truthout that exposed more shenanigans entitled Air Force Cites New Testament, Ex-Nazi, to Train Officers on Ethics of Launching Nuclear Weapons. This article discusses Air Force officer training that used the old and new testament as primers for justifying the use of nuclear weapons. For instance, a power point presentation had a slide that contains a passage from the Book of Revelation that says "Jesus Christ is the mighty warrior."
The presentation and training had much curriculum that seems to run over any notion of a separation of church and state or a non denominational military for that matter.
A few more slides I glean from the Truthout article:
For example, in the Old Testament, "Abraham organized an army to rescue [his nephew] Lot," God motivated "judges (Samson, Deborah, Barak) to fight and deliver Israel from foreign oppressors," and "David is a warrior who is also a 'man after God's own heart.'"
In the New Testament, citing Timothy 2:3, according to the PowerPoint, "Paul chooses three illustrations to show what it means to be a good disciple of Christ":
Farmer--work hard and be patient
Athlete--be self-disciplined, train
Soldier--be willing to put up with hardship
Moreover, in Romans 13:4, the PowerPoint notes, "In spite of personal blemishes, God calls the emperor to be an instrument of justice."
"One of the slides quotes Wernher Von Braun, a former member of the Nazi Party and SS officer. Von Braun, regarded as the father of the US space program, is not being cited as a scientific expert, rather he's specifically being referenced as a moral authority, which is remarkable considering that the Nazi scientist used Jews imprisoned in concentration camps and captured French anti-Nazi partisans and civilians to help build the V-2 rocket, a weapon responsible for the death of thousands of British civilians.
"We knew that we had created a new means of warfare and the question as to what nation, to what victorious nation we were willing to entrust this brainchild of ours was a moral decision [emphasis in document] more than anything else," Von Braun said upon surrendering to American forces in May 1945. "We wanted to see the world spared another conflict such as Germany had just been through and we felt that only by surrendering such a weapon to people who are guided by the Bible could such an assurance to the world be best secured."
After Leopold's article was written, and an investigation was launched by the Military Religious Freedon Foundation (MRFF) the Air Force shut down the fundamentalist ethics training. Thirty-one Air Force officers decided to take a stand against what they called the “Jesus Loves Nukes speech,” part of the Air Force’s missile launch officer training. These Air Force officers approached the MRFF for help with getting the overtly Christian “ethics” training removed from the “Nuclear Ethics and Nuclear Warfare” class, a mandatory part of the first week of training for all officers in missile launch training at Vandenberg Air Force Base.
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Fast forward to this week. Texas Senator John Cornyn (R -TX) has written a letter to the Secretary of the Air Force, Michael Donley, protesting the decision:
The Honorable Michael B. Donley
Department of the Air Force
1670 Air Force Pentagon
Washington, DC 20330
Dear Secretary Donley:
I write to express my concern regarding recent reports that the Department of the Air Force has suspended a course entitled “Christian Just War Theory.” It is my understanding that this course, taught by chaplains at Vandenberg Air Force Base, was suspended and is currently under review by Air Force officials after complaints were made that the curriculum referenced passages from the Bible.
As you may know, the reports indicate that a spokesman for the Air Force’s Air Education and Training Command has said that the main purpose of the course was to enable missile launch officers to understand that “what they are embarking on is very difficult and you have to have a certain amount of ethics about what you are doing to do that job.” Our military services, like our nation, are comprised of people representing all faiths. However, that fact does not preclude military chaplains from teaching a course on just war theory — a theory that has been a part of moral philosophy and the law of war for centuries — merely because it has historically been predicated on religious texts.
Moreover, suspending a course like this because of references to religious texts misinterprets the First Amendment. Although our Founding Fathers rightly included language in the Constitution that precludes the Federal government from establishing an official religion, this language does not, as some have argued, protect them from exposure to religious references. The First Amendment is intended to guarantee an individual’s right to the free exercise of religion according to his or her conscience. The Air Force personnel who have taken this course for the past 20 years have been free to determine, according to their own consciences, whether they accept or reject the premises of just war theory.
With these concerns in mind, I strongly urge you to ensure that a correct interpretation of the First Amendment is applied in resolving this situation. Moreover, I ask that you provide me with a detailed report on any actions taken by Air Force officials in response to these complaints.I appreciate your attention to this request. Thank you for your service to the men and women of the
United States Air Force and our nation.
Senator Cornyn thinks that the officers need to hear the christian evangelization and then they can reject it if they wish. The Sharlat article shows the enormous pressure on military officers to toe the party line. Non believers have a hard time getting promoted and it is easier to fall in than appear to be a "bad apple"or heretic. I hope that the Air Force will resist pressure from this Senator and not go back to this type of religious proselytizing and brainwashing.
And guess what? According to an excellent article by Chris Rodda in AlterNet (Sept 8) , the malcontents are not jewish this time - 29 out of the 31 protesting officers were christian or catholic.
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