{"id":45696,"date":"2021-03-25T12:17:10","date_gmt":"2021-03-25T15:17:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/?p=45696"},"modified":"2021-03-25T12:22:53","modified_gmt":"2021-03-25T15:22:53","slug":"us-military-attacks-the-press-and-no-one-notices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2021\/03\/25\/us-military-attacks-the-press-and-no-one-notices\/","title":{"rendered":"US Military Attacks the Press, and No One Notices"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"In which Mikey Weinstein learns he doesn\u2019t rise to the level of Tucker Carlson.<\/em><\/p>\n

If Donald Trump were the current President of the United States \u2013 a man who at one point declared the media to be the \u201cenemy of the people<\/a>\u201d \u2013 perhaps the US military\u2019s verbal attacks of FoxNews would have garnered more pushback.<\/p>\n

Last week, FoxNews commentator Tucker Carlson lambasted the \u2018woke\u2019 military after President Biden chose to highlight \u2013 of all the things he could have mentioned \u2013 \u201cmaternity flight suits<\/a>\u201d:<\/p>\n

Perhaps maternity flight suits have been around for a while. We\u2019ve never heard of them. But here was the President of the United States promoting them at a press conference. That phrase stuck out not because we have some hateful bias against pregnant women flying military jets. We\u2019re pro-pregnancy, as we often say. We\u2019re also open-minded. Maybe pregnant women make the best pilots. The Department of Defense measures everything, so there has to be extensive research on this question. If the Pentagon can show that pregnant pilots are the best, we will be the first to demand an entire Air Force of pregnant pilots.<\/p>\n

The problem is, we\u2019re pretty confident that Joe Biden hasn\u2019t asked to see those numbers. We\u2019d bet money he never even thought to ask.<\/p>\n

The rest of us depend on the U.S. military to protect our families and to protect the country itself. Joe Biden doesn\u2019t see it that way. Finding the most effective military pilots \u2014 or infantry officers, or SEAL teams \u2014 is not his priority. It\u2019s not even close to his priority. Identity politics is Joe Biden\u2019s priority. It\u2019s all that matters.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s obvious to the casual observer that Carlson wasn\u2019t mocking members of the military, but rather the President for his focus on appearance and identity over merit and value. This is consistent with what Carlson’s drumbeat has been for some time<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Still, members of the military leadership apparently took umbrage<\/a> and came out on offense<\/a> and spoke out in defense of female troops. That\u2019s fair enough, and military leaders should<\/em> speak out on the value of their troops. The problem is those military leaders didn\u2019t just defend their troops \u2013 they personally attacked<\/a><\/em> Tucker Carlson:<\/p>\n

Multiple military leaders have tweeted video of themselves, while in uniform, as they attack Carlson, including the Command Senior Enlisted Leader of U.S. Space Command<\/a>, the Sgt. Major of the Army<\/a>, the Commanding General of the U.S. Army Maneuver Center of Excellence<\/a>, and the commanding officer of the II Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF) Information Group (IG).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Throughout this campaign, military leaders have suggested and insinuated that it is out of bounds for civilians to criticize the military unless they’ve served.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(It appears the II MEF backed down and deleted their tweet<\/a> with an apology.)<\/p>\n

The great irony, of course, is that their commander in chief, Joe Biden, never served, either.<\/p>\n

Whether you agree with Carlson or not, it is highly inappropriate for the uniformed military \u2013 an armed, apolitical body of the Executive Branch of government \u2013 to be personally attacking a private US citizen over his political commentary. Can you imagine what the response would have been if a General officer during the Trump administration had gone after Rachel Maddow or Jim Acosta? Consider how the media did respond when Trump alone attacked the press \u2013 using only Twitter and a microphone. Why is it acceptable now for the military to go after those same people?<\/p>\n

Except it\u2019s not the same people, is it? Their ideology is different, which seems to make it ok.<\/p>\n

For years, the US military has stayed tight lipped as its service members were attacked for their religious faith by critics like Mikey Weinstein. The military defended \u201cmaternity flight suits\u201d far more quickly, vocally, and strongly than it ever has troops exercising their constitutional right of religious exercise. That defense generally warranted little more than a standardized statement that the US military \u201cvalues the rights of troops to their faith, or no faith at all.\u201d (Apparently, the military did not consider Mikey Weinstein as significant as Tucker Carlson, which is undoubtedly a blow to Mikey’s ego.)<\/p>\n

The worrisome thing is that in going beyond merely defending their troops, the military is taking an undeniably political tone.<\/p>\n

Multiple members of Congress<\/a> have demanded that the DoD rein itself in. It remains to be seen whether it will do so, or if it will become just the latest tool of political and social advocacy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In which Mikey Weinstein learns he doesn\u2019t rise to the level of Tucker Carlson. If Donald Trump were the current President of the United States \u2013 a man who at one point declared the media to be the \u201cenemy of the people\u201d \u2013 perhaps the US military\u2019s verbal attacks of FoxNews would have garnered more pushback. Last week, FoxNews commentator […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45725,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,3546,85,2,5218,17,171,6911],"class_list":["post-45696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-christian","tag-donald-trump","tag-mikey-weinstein","tag-military","tag-military-religious-freedom-foundation","tag-religious-expression","tag-religious-freedom","tag-tucker-carlson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45696","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=45696"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45726,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45696\/revisions\/45726"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}