{"id":13456,"date":"2011-09-29T01:30:31","date_gmt":"2011-09-29T06:30:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=13456"},"modified":"2015-06-27T19:15:05","modified_gmt":"2015-06-27T22:15:05","slug":"usafa-to-weinstein-its-what-we-call-the-chain-of-command","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2011\/09\/29\/usafa-to-weinstein-its-what-we-call-the-chain-of-command\/","title":{"rendered":"USAFA to Weinstein: It&#8217;s What We Call the Chain of Command"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Commandant of Cadets at the US Air Force Academy, BrigGen Richard Clark, reportedly\u00a0distributed a memorandum to all USAFA cadets on Wednesday.\u00a0 He included the <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2011\/09\/14\/top-air-force-general-issues-order-on-religious-neutrality\/\">memorandum from the Air Force Chief of Staff<\/a>, General Norton Schwartz, as an attachment.<\/p>\n<p>As <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2011\/09\/28\/gazette-on-weinstein-miffed-usafa-critic-buys-billboard\/\">predicted<\/a>, Michael Weinstein <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gazette.com\/articles\/victory-125810-critic-memo.html\">claimed victory<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Of course,\u00a0Weinstein is claiming &#8220;victory&#8221; about something over which he had\u00a0neither\u00a0control nor influence.\u00a0 In fact, his demands were completely ignored.\u00a0 To wit, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.csindy.com\/IndyBlog\/archives\/2011\/09\/28\/its-a-sign\">Weinstein said<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>MRFF has twice demanded that Gould so [<em>sic<\/em>] distribute this directive&#8230;to all Academy personnel, staff, cadets and government contractors&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>For the record, an assessment:\u00a0 <!--more--><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Did General Gould distribute the message?\u00a0 <em>No<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li>Did it go to all Academy personnel?\u00a0\u00a0<em>No<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li>Did it go to all staff?\u00a0\u00a0<em>No<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li>Did it go to all contractors?\u00a0 <em>No<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li>All cadets?\u00a0 <em>Yes<\/em>, sort of.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The USAFA spokesman indicated <em>all <\/em>cadets &#8220;probably&#8221; <em>hadn&#8217;t <\/em>seen it, but it appears it was made <em>available <\/em>to all cadets.<\/p>\n<p>So Weinstein goes 1 for 5 (sort of), and he called it a<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>gigantic victory for the foundation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>For a one-man run &#8220;foundation&#8221; with a <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2011\/02\/10\/usafa-lawsuit-dismissed-weinstein-goes-0-for-4\/\">0-for-4 litigation record<\/a>, that 1 for 5 might actually look pretty good.\u00a0 Of course, he didn&#8217;t even earn that &#8220;1.&#8221;\u00a0 USAFA had a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gazette.com\/articles\/victory-125810-critic-memo.html\">more plausible explanation<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Academy spokesman Lt. Col. John Bryan said the memo\u2019s distribution occurred in the wake of a Monday meeting between Commandant of Cadets Brig. Gen. Richard Clark and the officers and sergeants who oversee the academy\u2019s 40 cadet squadrons&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Indeed, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gazette.com\/common\/sections\/download.php?site_id=colgazette&amp;id=ls8ytg-092811binder1.pdf\">memo from the Commandant<\/a>\u00a0&#8212; which Weinstein seems to think was bowing to his recent pressure &#8212;\u00a0was dated more than a week ago.\u00a0\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.csindy.com\/IndyBlog\/archives\/2011\/09\/28\/its-a-sign\">The Academy noted<\/a>\u00a0this wasn&#8217;t the mountain a vocal critic had made it out to be.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Gen. Clark&#8217;s approach was similar to Gen. Gould&#8217;s a few weeks ago, when he held his weekly staff meeting w\/his senior commanders and directors, passed out some copies of the CSAF memo and discussed its message with those senior USAFA commanders and directors\u2014directing them to ensure this message got out to permanent party, staff and cadets, here,&#8221; Bryan writes in an e-mail.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s what we call the Chain of Command and how we communicate quite often.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Weinstein&#8217;s ignorance of the chain of command showed up even in his original demands, where he wanted USAFA to send out the memo that came<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>from the Commander of the most powerful air force on planet earth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>For those that aren&#8217;t in the military, it may not be obvious.\u00a0 Every new officer, however, receives training on US military history and the Goldwater-Nichols Act, which passed around the time Weinstein says he was threatening to sue the Air Force if it didn&#8217;t let him resign.<\/p>\n<p>Goldwater-Nichols <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jcs.mil\/page.aspx?id=2\">revamped the military chain of command<\/a>, and it removed the Chiefs of the Services entirely from the combatant chain of command.\u00a0 The chain of command flows from the Commander in Chief, President Obama, to the Secretary of Defense, now the Honorable Leon Panetta, directly to the Combatant Commanders.\u00a0 (Most people remember Norman Schwarzkopf, who was the Central Command Combatant Commander when Desert Storm kicked off.)\u00a0 The title\u00a0of &#8220;AF\/CC&#8221; may occasionally\u00a0be technically accurate, though you may note the Chief signed the memo with &#8220;Chief of Staff,&#8221; not &#8220;Commander.&#8221;\u00a0 It is misleading to portray it as Weinstein does.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps Weinstein needs to hire a military liaison or research assistant so his &#8220;charity&#8221; can avoid such embarrassment when its president speaks out of school.<\/p>\n<p>He may need more help than that.\u00a0 Weinstein, synonymous with &#8220;hyperbole,&#8221; said in his accusation that<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Gould&#8217;s willful, abject failure to do that which is clearly right here can perhaps best be characterized by the observation that I have never known a more vulgar expression of betrayal and deceit.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It&#8217;s patently ridiculous, to pair some descriptors, to assert General Gould&#8217;s decision to work with his staff in the manner he did was <em>any<\/em> kind of betrayal or deceit, never mind &#8220;vulgar.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Its fairly evident\u00a0Michael Weinstein created a controversial connection of this memo to USAFA where none actually existed, apparently in an\u00a0effort to invigorate\u00a0his waning notoriety.\u00a0 As with some of his other <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2010\/10\/20\/michael-weinstein-opposes-bible-supports-koran-in-military\/\">publicity grabs<\/a>, even some who publicly agree with him in principle disagreed with his accusations against General Gould.\u00a0 (They read the memo.\u00a0 It didn&#8217;t say what he implied.)\u00a0 If this is what it takes for Weinstein to get in the news and claim &#8220;victory&#8221; and so little comes of it, he may be approaching his nadir.<\/p>\n<p>There may be a more subtle indication of Weinstein&#8217;s fade into irrelevancy, even among\u00a0his supporters.\u00a0 Weinstein used to be called a &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.gazette.com\/articles\/denver-104327-donate-group.html\">watchdog<\/a>.&#8221;\u00a0 Now, he&#8217;s merely a &#8220;critic.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Commandant of Cadets at the US Air Force Academy, BrigGen Richard Clark, reportedly\u00a0distributed a memorandum to all USAFA cadets on Wednesday.\u00a0 He included the memorandum from the Air Force Chief of Staff, General Norton Schwartz, as an attachment. As predicted, Michael Weinstein claimed victory. Of course,\u00a0Weinstein is claiming &#8220;victory&#8221; about something over which he had\u00a0neither\u00a0control nor influence.\u00a0 In fact, [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[134,2260,1384,1977,189,85,2,5218,7,2261,497,43,10,171,2259,65],"class_list":["post-13456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-air-force","tag-goldwater-nichols","tag-john-bryan","tag-leon-panetta","tag-michael-gould","tag-mikey-weinstein","tag-military","tag-military-religious-freedom-foundation","tag-mrff","tag-norman-schwarzkopf","tag-norton-schwartz","tag-obama","tag-religion","tag-religious-freedom","tag-richard-clark","tag-usafa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13456\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}