Precisely 70 years ago the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into World War II. It was the beginning of four long years of American involvement in the war that had already engulfed the rest of the world for some years.
In his famous speech on December 8th, President Franklin D. Roosevelt called Read more
Jason Torpy of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers was recently interviewed by NPR on the topic of atheist chaplains. At one point he said he felt “excluded…because of his beliefs” while he was in the Army. His unit was preparing for a convoy:
Going on a military mission, for example, we were getting ready to roll out…So as the commander of this convoy (said), ‘Everybody come in and we’re going to do a prayer first together.’ We’re not going to talk about communications, we’re not going to talk about route planning, we’re not going to talk about first aid, we’re not going to talk about maintenance.
So I had to opt myself out of that situation, to ‘out’ myself because this commander took it upon himself to have a personal religious activity in the midst of a military mission.
CNS News caught that, and later asked Torpy to clarify. Torpy ultimately admitted the unit had prepared for the mission, despite his implication Read more
Yonathan Melaku, accused of firing shots at the Pentagon in October and November of 2010, has made his initial court appearance to face federal charges for the attacks. The federal case had been on hold while his unrelated larceny case was resolved; it was that case that led to his dismissal from the Marines days after he was arrested.
Melaku was arrested and charged in June after he was spotted in Arlington National Cemetery after dark in an incident that sparked a massive security scare in and around Read more
Update: Members of the joint Congressional committee “blasted” the Department of Defense for downplaying talk of terrorism and referring to the Fort Hood massacre as “workplace violence.” The DoD was accused of being “politically correct” in avoiding association of the terrorist attacks with Islam — the same thing it was found at fault for in the months leading up to the Fort Hood shooting.
US Representative Peter King (R-NY), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, is holding another hearing on “homegrown terrorism.” While he was criticized for his earlier hearings on the subject for the implied negativity toward American Muslims, these new hearings are a joint meeting between the House and Senate committees, showing “threat is legitimate,” according to King.
King and Senator Joe Lieberman, his Senate counterpart from Connecticut, both agreed that US military soft targets are “increasingly in the terrorists’ scope.”
There is growing evidence that homegrown terrorists see military personnel and bases as legitimate, high-value targets, lawmakers Read more
Update: More than 20,000 people signed a petition in less than 24 hours to “help end the ban” on Bibles at Walter Reed.
A US Army officer “in disbelief” forwarded a Walter Reed National Military Medical Center memorandum regarding patient visitation to the Family Research Council. The memorandum said:
f. No religious items (i.e. Bibles, reading material, and/or artifacts) are allowed to be given away or used during a visit.
The ban was so broadly written it would prevent even families from providing Bibles to their wounded family members, and it banned priests from bringing the eucharist or providing last rites. Notably, while the policy banned all religious items, the Bible was the only religious text specifically mentioned.
The FRC circulated the memorandum at Capitol Hill, and Rep Steve King (R-Iowa) took to the House floor and “blasted” the policy:
Mr. Speaker, these military men and women who are recovering at Walter Reed and Bethesda have given their all for America…They’ve Read more
Rabbi Menachem Stern previously sued the US Army for accepting him as a chaplain candidate — and then unaccepting him when they realized he intended to keep his beard.
The Aleph Institute, a Chabad-Lubavitch organization that assists Jewish military personnel, Jewish inmates and their families, and Sens. Charles E. Schumer, Kristen Gillibrand and Joseph Lieberman sought to persuade top brass that the rabbi should be able to keep his beard.
As have many others, they cited Chaplain Goldstein Read more
Yesterday the American Center for Law and Justice’s David French wrote a scathing (and accurate) critique of Michael Weinstein’s Military Religious Freedom Foundation (though it never mentions Weinstein by name). The piece is entitled “The Campaign Against the Cross is Not About “Freedom,”” and its genesis is the current controversy over the cross at a memorial on Camp Pendleton.
French minces no words:
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) is perhaps the most deceptively-named organization in the United States. Its tone is hysterical (it actually calls those who complain about religious influence “spiritual rape victims/tormentees”) and its methods Orwellian.
French also noted an example of the MRFF’s practice of publishing letters from those who claim to be active servicemembers, with their names redacted. Chris Rodda published a letter from a Marine senior NCO that French called “incredibly profane and unprofessional.” The redacted writer even said would probably be “kicked out” of the Read more
The widow of US Air Force Capt Eric Ziegler, killed in June in a crash due to G-LOC, has demonstrated a calm reliance on her faith. When asked about knowing the circumstances of her husband’s death, Sarah Ziegler said she found them “kind of irrelevant.”
“I’ve always believed, and still do, that everything happens for a reason and a purpose, and so I didn’t need a source or object to blame or anything like that,” she said.
While there is still grief, faith can help people deal with such loss. Why? Knowing there is an ultimate purpose, and the grief is temporary. Sarah understands the fact that she and her husband had — and still have — a platform for Christ: Read more