{"id":20758,"date":"2012-12-26T03:35:57","date_gmt":"2012-12-26T06:35:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=20758"},"modified":"2012-12-26T03:35:57","modified_gmt":"2012-12-26T06:35:57","slug":"lawyers-claim-vindication-in-army-firing-over-islam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2012\/12\/26\/lawyers-claim-vindication-in-army-firing-over-islam\/","title":{"rendered":"Lawyers Claim Vindication in Army Firing over Islam"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Thomas More Law Center represents LtCol Matthew Dooley, the Joint Services Staff College instructor who was removed from his position following complaints about a class he taught entitled &#8220;Perspectives on Islam and Islamic Radicalism.&#8221;\u00a0 Richard Thompson, president of the TMLC, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.onenewsnow.com\/legal-courts\/2012\/12\/17\/document-vindicates-army-officer%E2%80%99s-teaching-on-islam\">now says it has<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>obtained an official communication that vindicates their client.\u00a0 <!--more--><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In December 2011, the vice president of the National Defense University, a Dr. Brenda Roth, officially confirmed in writing to the Pentagon that all the course materials that were being taught at the National Defense University were vetted and approved by the university and its military command&#8230;&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is &#8220;proof&#8221; of what was already posited <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2012\/10\/16\/congressmen-question-treatment-of-us-soldier-over-islam-class\/\">when the issue first came to light<\/a>:\u00a0 LtCol Dooley&#8217;s course was not some rogue, left-field\u00a0venture by a deranged bigot.\u00a0 For better or worse, it\u00a0was an official curriculum event &#8220;vetted and approved&#8221; by his chain of command (or, at least someone <em>claimed <\/em>they&#8217;d vetted all their courses).<\/p>\n<p>The situation does seem a bit odd, then, since LtCol Dooley was publicly (and specifically) berated by the Secretary of Defense, removed &#8220;for cause,&#8221; and received a negative evaluation &#8212; treatment apparently only he received.\u00a0 While every individual bears responsibility for their own actions, if an individual&#8217;s conduct has been either explicitly or implicitly approved by his leadership, then that individual could reasonably conclude his conduct was consistent with military guidelines &#8212; or, at least, he wouldn&#8217;t be the only one to hang if it <em>wasn&#8217;t<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, it seems the TMLC isn&#8217;t content to focus on the merits of LtCol Dooley&#8217;s treatment:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Thompson says the bottom line is that President Barack Obama, the commander-in-chief, is pro-Islam.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The Pentagon is now doing his bidding,&#8221; he points out. &#8220;And his bidding is there is to be no negative aspect of the religion of Islam or the political ideology of Islam that he is not ready to embrace or which is a concern of national security.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That&#8217;s not helpful.\u00a0 Even if it were <em>true<\/em>, the TMLC would still have to prove the actions taken against LtCol Dooley were somehow improper, which should be demonstrable on the merits alone.\u00a0 For example, the TMLC has said the National Defense University violated its own policies when it dismissed LtCol Dooley, something that can be articulated stoically.\u00a0\u00a0Indicting the President in an apparent conspiracy theory only undermines their credibility.<\/p>\n<p>For his part, LtCol Dooley has stayed silent, as is likely required by his status.<\/p>\n<p>For their part, Michael Weinstein and his MRFF have gleefully gloated over their role in essentially <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/dangerroom\/2012\/11\/dooley\/\">ending the LtCol&#8217;s career<\/a>.\u00a0 Dooley&#8217;s firing does not serve religious freedom, of course, but Weinstein pinned the event on Christianity, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org\/2012\/05\/051012-mrff-blasts-joint-forces-staff-college-material-advocating-total-war-against-islam\/\">calling for Dooley&#8217;s dismissal<\/a> and saying the US military needs to<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>purg[e] itself of exceptionalist, Christian supremacist, and sociopathic ideologies&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That the general public has no idea what Dooley&#8217;s religious faith may be, or if he even <em>has<\/em> one, is irrelevant to Weinstein &#8212; who has made a living <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2010\/03\/05\/weinstein-defines-religions-assigns-followers\/\">assigning religious titles<\/a> to those with whom he disagrees.\u00a0\u00a0That he was\u00a0potentially fired\u00a0over a caricature, and not <em>truth<\/em>, is also irrelevant to Weinstein.\u00a0 Michael Weinstein doesn&#8217;t care about the specifics of who said what, nor does he care about religious liberty.<\/p>\n<p>Weinstein\u00a0is just reveling in the thought that, from his perspective,\u00a0he said &#8220;jump&#8221; and someone in the US government asked, &#8220;how high?&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Thomas More Law Center represents LtCol Matthew Dooley, the Joint Services Staff College instructor who was removed from his position following complaints about a class he taught entitled &#8220;Perspectives on Islam and Islamic Radicalism.&#8221;\u00a0 Richard Thompson, president of the TMLC, now says it has obtained an official communication that vindicates their client.\u00a0<\/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":[88,3759,331,78,1365,44,1958,3637,85,2,43,63,10,2885,1748,3638,1747],"class_list":["post-20758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-army","tag-brenda-roth","tag-cair","tag-congress","tag-duncan-hunter","tag-islam","tag-marty-dempsey","tag-matthew-dooley","tag-mikey-weinstein","tag-military","tag-obama","tag-pentagon","tag-religion","tag-richard-thompson","tag-thomas-more","tag-thomas-rooney","tag-tmlc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20758","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=20758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20758\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}