As noted in an Army press release, US Army Alaska celebrated the Diwali festival with members of the Indian army during Yudh Abhyas 2010, a combined training exercise.
Diwali is significant holiday in Hinduism, Sikhism, and Jainism, for different theological reasons.
President Obama observed Diwali at the White House last year.
Despite President Obama’s continuing assurances about the pending repeal of the policy known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” there are already murmurings the repeal rider to the Defense Authorization Act is effectively dead. Now, the Supreme Court may have put another nail in the coffin of repeal, and it wasn’t their recent decision to uphold the appellate court’s stay, which allows DADT to be enforced while the trial continues.
It was Justice Kagan’s non-participation in the ruling: Read more
An Associated Press article on the recent back-and-forth over the policy known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” contained little new on the subject, save a heretofore untold observation by the Obama administration:
Officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because the administration’s path is still uncertain said the administration has never fully acknowledged that while a majority of Americans may want the ban lifted, a majority of the uniformed military might not. (emphasis added)
This supposition that members of the military may oppose open homosexual service — despite how the civilian society may feel — may have been the fear Read more
President Obama’s religious faith continues to be a topic of discussion in the mainstream press. A recent article discussed an interview in which he said he is a “Christian by choice.”
Interestingly, at the end of the article, Obama said this:
“This is a country that is still predominantly Christian. But we have Jews, Muslims, Hindus, atheists, agnostics, Buddhists and that their own path to grace is one that we have to revere and respect as much as our own.”
The perspective is interesting; Americans United for the Separation of Church and State made a point of saying that Obama “got it:” Read more
Michael Weinstein, head of his own non-profit Military Religious Freedom Foundation, says ChristianFighterPilot.com is a “Christian supremacist” site containing “outright lies” and “falsehoods.”
This most recent attack finds its source in a letter written by Weinstein and addressed to the Secretary of Defense — and copied to everyone from the Joint Chiefs to President Obama. In it, Weinstein says a “catalyst” to a complaint from an Air Force Academy cadet was:
The inclusion by the Air Force Academy Public Affairs Office in the daily Academy-wide “Falcon Clips” email of a sectarian Christian-themed blog post…
The “Falcon Clips” are a compilation of public references to goings-on at the Air Force Academy. They are emailed out daily, and, according to these reports, included a reference to “Bat Signal Busted, Weinstein Declares War Back On.” It would appear Weinstein Read more
The Alliance Defense Fund previously wrote a letter to President Obama in which 41 retired Chaplains, speaking freely since they are outside military service, opposed the repeal of the policy known as “Don’t ask, don’t tell” on religious freedom grounds.
Last Friday they added to that number, with 25 new signatories. As noted at the ADF,
The letter states, “By raising homosexual behavior to the same protected class as innate, innocuous characteristics like race and gender, the armed forces will cast the sincerely held religious beliefs of many chaplains and Service members as rank bigotry comparable to racism.”
The release of the letter nearly coincided with Read more
In the wake of the announcements that the combat mission in Iraq has “ended,” the US military took some pains to acknowledge that its troops still serve in a combat zone, and their combat and incentive pays will continue:
Servicemembers deployed to Iraq will still receive hostile fire/imminent danger pay, hardship-duty pay, and incidental expenses. Some troops will qualify for family separation allowances. Also, all pay for warrant officers and enlisted members is tax exempt, while officers are exempt from taxes for up to $7,611.30 each month they serve in an eligible area.
“These pays compensate a member for the arduous conditions and additional burdens and dangers associated with being deployed to a combat zone,” Eileen Lainez said.
According to the article, the special pays and tax-exclusion are in effect due to the region’s status as a “combat zone,” which is declared by virtue of Presidential executive order. Of course, the fact that combat continues in Iraq isn’t lost on most people.)
In that regard, despite the “end” of the combat mission, servicemembers will continue to receive combat pay until President Obama alters the status of Iraq as a combat zone.
First Lady Michelle Obama christened the US Coast Guard Cutter Stratton last Friday. There was a slight groan from the crowd when the first swing failed to break the bottle; the second was successful. Maritime tradition considers the failure of the bottle to break on christening “bad luck.” In one recent example, the Queen Victoria was reported to be a victim of the “Camilla curse” when a virus broke out on the cruise ship’s maiden voyage after the Duchess of Cornwall failed to break the bottle on the ship’s christening.
Maritime superstition notwithstanding, of course, it is laudable the First Lady would take the time to support the Coast Guard and the longstanding tradition of christening sea-going vessels.
Perhaps someday such celebrations will be overcome by events. After all, ship christening has a long and historied spiritual connection, and even the term christening is ripe with religious connotation. (See the US Navy’s official history on ship christening.) Those who want to strip any vestige of religious association from the US military will undoubtedly claim the blessing or christening of military equipment violates the Constitution and endangers American servicemembers fighting in our nation’s wars. Such a critique would be ridiculous, of course, but that hasn’t stopped similar ones made to date.