Tag Archives: air force

Chris Rodda: US Troops Can Proselytize with this One Neat Trick

Chris Rodda has long been a “creative” writer, despite her sometimes claim to be an apparent amateur historian. While she has been quick to call out the errors of others with whom she disagrees, she ignores the errors of those who are on her side. She has also published a bevy of, to put it nicely, misleading writings. For someone so quick to call others “liars,” she has a very unique view of the truth.

With that in mind, Rodda published a blog yesterday with an attention-grabbing title:

National Defense Authorization Act to Include Military Training on How to Force Religion on Others.

Like much of what she writes, though, her title wasn’t true. (Most obviously, the NDAA hasn’t left either side of Congress yet, much less gone through conference committee or to the President. In other words, the NDAA doesn’t “include” anything yet.)

The short version of a long, meandering blog (Rodda has never been one for being succinct), is that Rodda is upset about Senate bill 4049, which was introduced in the Senate only a couple of weeks ago. Within it, the Senate requires the US military to conduct training on “Religious Accommodation” that must include:

  • Federal statutes, DoD Instructions, Service regulations regarding religious liberty and accommodation for members of the Armed Forces
  • The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993
  • Section 533 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013
  • Section 528 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016

Of that content, Rodda takes issue only with the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The RFRA is fairly short, and it says the government cannot “substantially burden” exercise of religion, with some Read more

The USAF and Race: We Can Do Better, But it’s Not My Fault

For review:

  • The US Air Force hasn’t had a male Secretary of the Air Force since 2013.
  • The outgoing Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force is African American. The incoming CMSAF is female and Asian American.
  • The incoming Chief of Staff of the Air Force is African American.
  • Of the last three Chiefs of Staff of the Air Force, two were Jewish.
  • Both the US Army and US Air Force (acting) have been led by a homosexual Service Secretary.

Every day it seems there’s an article about the first woman to do something in the Air Force (with an all-female crew), or the Army (again), or both together, or the first black woman to do something in the Air Force, or the first Sikh woman to do something in the Army, or how many different ways the Air Force can launch aircraft (or ICBMs) with only one skin color or gender on board (and the Navy does it, too).

See “Diversity: You’re Doing it Wrong.”

Yet, somehow, the US military, and the US Air Force in particular, manage to be accused of institutional racism, gender discrimination, religious extremism, and intolerance — by those very same people. In recent days, US Air Force and other military leaders have been practically tripping over themselves running to microphones, hand-wringing and expressing contrition for unclear — or imagined — affronts. Or, in other cases, those leaders are simply making direct accusations against their own Service [emphasis added, capitalization original]: Read more

The US Army Restricts Chaplains to the Chapel’s Four Walls

As the COVID-19/coronavirus pandemic increasingly restricted personal interaction, US military chaplains did what many of their civilian counterparts were doing and increased their “virtual” presence through online chapel services and videos. Chaplains who could no longer interact with their troops on the PT field, in the barracks, or in the halls — like Chaplain (Maj) Brian Minietta — found other ways to do so, including using their units’ Facebook pages.

Michael “Mikey” Weinstein did not like this, claiming that the presence of chaplains’ video messages on unit Facebook pages constituted command endorsement of the message and coercion of subordinates to those beliefs. According to Weinstein acolyte Lawrence Wilkerson, whose primary claim to fame is being the former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell, these military chaplains were actually violating the US Constitution.

While laughable on its face, it would seem the US Army Chaplain Corps ultimately agreed. It provided guidance (PDF) to its chaplains on May 26th in which it instructed chaplains to keep “specific religious” messages off unit Facebook pages:

General encouragement can be placed on a unit webpage, but specific religious support content should be on a dedicated UMT, RSO, or Chapel webpage.

In fact, as the MRFF gleefully noted, the Chaplain guidance went Read more

Congressmen Call on SecDef Esper to Defend Military Religious Freedom

Congress accuses Mikey Weinstein of “preying” on military chaplains.

Today, US Rep Doug Collins (R-GA) and 19 House colleagues wrote a letter (PDF) to Secretary of Defense Mark Esper demanding that the US military

follow federal law in protecting [chaplains’] religious liberties and ensure that the ongoing pandemic is not exploited by nefarious organizations bent on removing faith from the U.S. military.

(Collins is also an Air Force Reserve Chaplain.)

The letter specifically calls out Michael “Mikey” Weinstein’s MRFF and its recent attacks on Chaplain Kim in Korea, the removal of chaplain videos from Facebook, and the demand that LtCol David McGraw be punished for singing and preaching from his home’s balcony in Stuttgart, Germany: Read more

Military Religious Freedom in a Stay At Home World

A few years ago, it seemed issues of religion in the military – scandals, some might say – dominated the news cycle for weeks out of the year. Every December the “top ten” religion media stories of the year included several regarding the US military. More recently, however, such “scandals” have fallen out of the news. To be sure, issues of religion in the military still pop up every now and then, but now those stories tend to involve actual issues of religion in the military, not manufactured outrage. Media stories are now far more likely to be about the changes that allow a Sikh to wear a turban or beard than about some random member of the military saying “have a blessed day” or having a Bible on their desk.

Part of the reason for this change has been the rise of religious liberty organizations who have defended the religious rights of US troops. The Becket Fund, First Liberty Institute, the ACLJ and others like them have become prominent and public defenders of religious freedom in the US military. While they were available to troops as a resource for many years, these organizations have gradually become more proactive, to the point that recent changes in US law and military policy have been proposed – and successfully passed – because of these groups. These laws and policies have dampened some of the prior years’ flail because they unified and standardized the military’s response to faith and free exercise. Rather than a cycle of military bases having repeats of the same kerfuffle, overarching policies govern the reaction of the entire DoD. (Sometimes.)

The end result is Read more

US Military Celebrates Diversity through Segregation

Celebrating “Diversity”…You’re Doing it Wrong.

Documented histories of the Tuskegee Airmen indicate the famed World War II aviators “overcame segregation” to become some of the best combat units of the war, and that their continued excellence in service ultimately contributed to the de-segregation of the US military long before the rest of American society.

In a twist of apparently unintended irony, the US military has repeatedly chosen to celebrate the Tuskegee triumph over segregation by…instituting segregation [emphasis added]:

The aircraft was a C-5M Super Galaxy assigned to the 22nd Airlift Squadron, and its 11-person crew was all African-American. This historic mission was created to honor the heritage of the Tuskegee Airmen…

This flight was historic since it was the first time an all African-American C-5M crew was formed to honor the heritage of the Tuskegee Airmen and highlight the diversity of the Air Force…

“It is important that the Air Force is diverse enough to have an all African-American crew…”

To make the crew work, they needed to de-conflict schedules…“The barriers to making this happen were just coordinating a time when everyone could be available between other training events, leave and other obligations.”

In other words, a US Air Force unit went out of its way to coordinate the schedules of personnel and aircraft to make sure it could man a mission with an entire crew of one particular skin color.

That was 2018, but it continued in 2019 and the trend continues today, with US Air Force units bending Read more

The Air Force Song Gets a Gender-Neutral Update

US Air Force Chief of Staff General Dave Goldfein has announced that the third verse of the Air Force Song — most often sung alone, during memorials or at the end of Service Academy games — is now officially gender neutral:

At the Air Force Association’s conference in Orlando, Florida, Thursday, Goldfein recalled attending a women’s volleyball tournament at the Pentagon last year, when the U.S. Air Force Academy thoroughly beat the other service academy teams.

As Goldfein sang the Air Force Song with the female cadets, it was apparent that the lyrics left them out…

So, Goldfein said, he’s ordered the song to be tweaked slightly, to reflect that fact that women serve in the Air Force.

“These are the women we will ask to go into combat and fight, just as women have done for a generation…Yet this version of the song, their alma mater, was not about them…It is time for us to change.”

This is far from the first time the Air Force has neutralized Read more

US Military Continues to Promote Eastern Religious Practices

The US military often gets accused of promoting or endorsing religion — particularly when it has the gall to associate religion with the uniform. The vast majority of the time, such complaints are baseless, as the mere presence of religious content and the military context does not constitute anything impermissible. In fact, it is often virtually required.

One religious practice that gets a pass is yoga. A product of eastern religions — which military articles on the topic sometimes, but not always, avoid — the military proudly publishes articles on Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines endorsing the practice.

And the same people who complain about associations between Christians and the military seem to have no problem associating Buddha and the military.

A recent article documents US Air Force Master Sergeant Kathleen Myhre’s 30-day journey to India to become a certified yoga instructor. Now, MSgt Myhre occupies a space in the Airman and Family Readiness Center, where she evangelizes those who enter on the value of her ‘spiritual’ endeavors: Read more

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