The Family Research Council wonders aloud if the recent epidemic of ethical failures in the US military is connected to the military’s own “hostility” to religion.
Recounting the list of recent moral failures by members of the military displayed through the media, the FRC’s Leanna Baumer noted the DoD’s responses: Read more
The US Air Force Academy published an article featuring cadets attending a seminar on “ethical dilemmas.”
Eight special operations captains from Kirtland and Cannon Air Force Bases, Academy active-duty Airmen and Air Force retirees shared ethical dilemmas that have occurred in their personal and professional lives with about 70 cadets, to engage in reflective conversation, focus on character and leadership, identify pressure that make ethical action challenging and how to improve them.
While the class was certainly long-scheduled, the timing of the public affairs piece is probably not coincidental, given the recent focus on ethics — more accurately, ethical failures — in the US military.
The cadets were introduced to the USAFA Center for Character Development’s ARDA model for decision-making: Awareness, Reasoning, Decision and Action. They then rotated through tables where they interacted with active duty officers who spoke to them about ethical dilemmas they had experienced.
The program certainly gained much credibility in Read more
There’s a fascinating philosophical connection between the debate of Bill Nye and Ken Ham over creationism on the one hand, and reports the US Department of Defense is becoming increasingly “troubled” over troops’ ethical problems on the other.
First, Dr. Al Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, attended the Nye/Ham debate (viewable on YouTube) and made an interesting assessment. The debate wasn’t, in the end, over facts. It was over worldview — and Bill Nye’s faith that “human reason” was an ultimate solution [emphasis added]:
Bill Nye repeatedly cited the reasonable man in making his arguments. He is a firm believer in autonomous human reason and the ability of the human intellect to solve the great problems of existence without any need of divine revelation…He sees himself as the quintessential “reasonable man,” and he repeatedly dismissed Christian Read more
After a few states recently legalized marijuana, a local paper’s article on the military and marijuana, repeated at the Stars and Stripes, raises the question of how the military will treat the active duty spouses of civilian marijuana dealers. The active duty member would be married to, federally speaking, an illegal drug dealer — though the federal government has declined to pursue such charges when the states have legalized it. (The Air Force Academy recently reminded Airmen and cadets that marijuana was still illegal for them.)
The state law [legalizing marijuana] is in direct conflict with federal law and the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which criminalize possession and distribution of pot. A service member who is found carrying drugs, or tests positive for them, may face administrative separation or worse. Security Read more
Michael “Mikey” Weinstein has frequently claimed that the public acknowledgement of Christians in the US military — as when a group of US Marines was baptized on a California beach — has provided propaganda and motivation for America’s extremist Islamic adversaries. As has been noted before, Weinstein’s claim has no basis in fact; Osama bin Laden railed against America’s support for Israel far more than he did any presence of Christianity in the US military.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay, was recently able to release a “rambling manifesto” (available here) that mentions many things, which might have given him the opportunity to indicate the motivation behind his alleged personal planning of the attack on 9/11. While the document is addressed to the “crusaders of the military commissions” and Mohammed once refers to “crusader Soldiers,” as before, this word does not seem to be a religious attribution. In fact, Mohammed seems to claim the opposite: The evil of the Western world is its atheism and immorality: Read more
there is nothing more important to the nation than the integrity and the trustworthiness of the people who defend it. r/mark
The question: How can leaders inspire integrity in the US military?
Via General Mark Welsh.
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Jeff Iorg, president of Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, recently said immorality itself is not a “final step” in a failing society; that final step is the celebration of and support for immorality — which he believes is happening now in the United States:
“The final act of an unraveling society isn’t immoral behavior; it’s canonizing immoral behavior as a ‘new normal’ and celebrating it as a ‘moral victory.'”
Importantly, however, Iorg noted that Christians should not oppose immoral behavior for behavior’s sake. Behavior is an outward expression of the condition of the heart — and the heart needs Jesus: Read more
The Stars and Stripes reports on comments by SgtMaj of the Army Raymond Chandler, who took the time in Afghanistan to tell troops that being a Soldier of character was more important than being a Soldier of competence:
Too often in the past the Army has emphasized competency over character and commitment, Sgt. Maj. of the Army Raymond Chandler told troops during town hall meetings at bases in eastern Afghanistan. “The most dangerous person in our Army today is someone who is highly competent but has little or no character,” Chandler said. “Too often we tolerate mediocrity.”
Chandler noted that it is a lack of character, not Read more