Good Riddance to the Air Force's Religious Intolerance Enabler in Chief

POSTED: 4:15 PM, July 31, 2012 Comments

In his last agonizing days, the now-disgraced former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno lamented publicly, "I wish I had done more.” Indeed, we all wish he had. As we’ve now come to learn, the debacle of pedophilia revealed at Penn State would not have occurred if not for the clear complicity of coach Joe Paterno, who helped to orchestrate a careful cover-up of Jerry Sandusky’s reprehensible pattern of serial sexual molestation. Paterno’s concealment of Sandusky’s vile misdeeds ruined his own legacy as coach and forever stained the reputation of Penn State’s athletics program.

A similar drama has played out within the ranks of the United States Air Force (USAF). Rather than the odious offense of covering up sexual abuse, we have seen the vast cover-up of an unlawful epidemic whereby many thousands of men and women within the ranks of the USAF have been subject to serial religious abuse and molestation. The national security repercussions of this ongoing crisis are all too dire, and as was the case at Penn State, the responsibility for this scandal ultimately lies with the most senior leadership.

On August 10, 2012, the current Chief of Staff (Commander) of the USAF, General Norton A. "Norty" Schwartz, will saunter off into a plush and comfortable retirement. Schwartz has spent 39 years on active duty, with the last four of these years being spent as the singular leader in charge of the USAF. I know this man well, and he knows me well too – all too well. We first met in his lavish Pentagon office nearly three and a half years ago. The purpose of this meeting was to discuss the civil rights activism of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), the organization that I founded in 2005. Then, as now, MRFF had been in a state of perpetual conflict not only with the USAF, but the whole of the Department of Defense (DoD), regarding the out of control command-influenced proselytizing by fundamentalist Christians throughout the ranks of our armed forces. In fact, the initial meeting between Schwartz and myself was covered in an article by New York Times, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Eric Lichtblau in late February of 2009. Norty said some things in that meeting that gave me some hope that maybe (just maybe) we had finally found a senior Pentagon military official who would stand up to this tidal wave of predatory religious bigotry. The most important advice he gave me was to never lose "my vitriol" lest the Pentagon stop listening to the Constitutional civil rights battle of MRFF. Well, Norty, this Op-Ed is a testament to how seriously I took your counsel. In careful retrospect, it is likely the only truth you have ever spoken to me.

As months passed and turned into years, Norty and I spoke frequently. Sometimes we spoke numerous times each month, and occasionally we spoke numerous times a week. Indeed, I still have a plethora of voicemails left by him from when I was unable to answer his calls. When we did speak, he was always superficially courteous and disingenuously engaging. He would often prattle on about Air Force football and an array of other matters inconsequential to the epidemic of religious supremacy metastasizing at light speed throughout the Air Force under his command. When we would finally get down to brass tacks, he supposedly took attentive notes, promising to expeditiously tackle the dire matters of religious bigotry that were the subjects of our continual years of discussions.

At my urging, Schwartz and I had organized a protocol that was supposed to address, in a timely manner, the mounting, desperate calls for help that MRFF received from thousands of terribly aggrieved USAF members. Without going into specifics, let me say that in the fullness of time it became bitterly apparent that Norty never meant to embrace, support, or endorse this plan to fight the brutal religious intolerance flourishing under his command. Sure, he would commiserate with me through the course of countless phone calls, complaining that he only had "so much institutional influence" over the USAF. When I described the real-world consequences wrought upon the USAF by this maelstrom of fundamentalist Christian tyranny and provided him incontrovertible proof of same, including eyewitnesses, he would tell me that he "could not be everyone's Wing Commander.” After years of continuously promising me the opportunity to address his most senior subordinate commanders, he lamented that the "white hairs" (read: senior USAF four-star generals underneath him) were "too far gone" to change. He suggested that I instead speak to those junior officers who would be in a position to affect institutional change in, say, just a decade or two. Seriously? Right, Norty.

On September 13, 2011, I called Norty to thank him for releasing an extremely brief memo mildly promoting the virtues of "Religious Neutrality." I remember with crystal clarity that he somehow seemed startled as to how that memo ever got out of his office. Shockingly, I came to the realization that I was the first to have informed him of the public dissemination that day of this memo.

My statement to the press made clear that this command missive ought to have been released years earlier, but what the hell, "better late than never," right? Additionally, I said that while Norty's memo wasn’t a "grand slam,” it was at least a solid single into center field. Furthermore, I noted that this memo indicated that Schwartz could "talk the talk" but that time would test whether he was capable of concomitantly "walking the walk.” Time has most certainly told the tale – he didn't “walk the walk,” and he can't because he won't. That one memo which simply underscored the most glaringly obvious Constitutional mandates against conflating one's personal religious convictions with one's USAF command authority received almost zero visibility within the rank and file of the USAF under Schwartz’s command. And it is this very same "rank and file" who most often constitute the helpless victims of pernicious, predatory religious persecution in Schwartz's USAF.

MRFF subsequently received multiple thousands of desperate pleas from affected USAF airmen begging Norty to give the order to disseminate the memo throughout all levels of the USAF. Schwartz refused these pleas. Through the course of even more phone conversations with him, I expressed in ever-louder demands that he disseminate the memo. MRFF was eventually forced to spend thousands of precious dollars to place the memo he now seemed so ashamed of on a giant billboard erected in Colorado Springs near our shared alma mater, the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA). Why? Because the fundamentalist Christian Superintendent of USAFA, Lt. General Mike Gould, abjectly refused to order that Schwartz's memo be individually sent to the entirety of the USAFA personnel under his direct command. When I told Norty that I was planning on putting up more billboards at USAF bases all over the country, he pleaded with me not to do so because it would "put (him) in a dangerous and precarious position,” whatever that meant.

Excuse me, Norty? Were you afraid of receiving a few complaints from the rabid, fundamentalist lobby, or a vile, lying stooge such as David Barton? Could it be that you were afraid of a few Constitutionally derelict lawmakers from Congress writing to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta (your boss) – as was the case with me on two separate occasions, in June and July of this year respectively, when Secretary Panetta was notified regarding the supposed “undue influence” of MRFF? Of course you were. Martin Luther King, Jr. once opined, "In the end we remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. And there comes a time when silence becomes betrayal." Your time came and passed, Norty. I could easily present a literal plethora of thousands of other blatant outrages of fundamentalist Christian religious supremacy within the USAF. These were borne directly from the unconscionable malfeasance and misfeasance of Schwartz's pitiful acts of betraying omission and commission. Like myself, Norty is Jewish. Did this fact contribute, to any meaningful degree, toward his tepid timidity to stand up to these religious extremist bullies in any material or substantial way, shape, or form? Was Norty daunted by the prospect of being called a “Jesus-basher?” Maybe. I don't know. Ask him. Perhaps one day Schwartz, like Paterno, will also stare endlessly into an abyss of unbridled public outrage and woefully lament that he wishes he "had done more."

The brilliant and courageous abolitionist Frederick Douglass once rightfully asserted, "Power concedes nothing without a demand.” How very true. I demanded that Norty live up to his oath, in which he swore to support and defend the United States Constitution. Given the imperative of the obvious national security implications, this sworn oath especially includes enforcing the separation of church and state in the USAF. I was far from alone in this demand. Amidst such stomach-turning outrages as the “’Jesus Loves Nukes’ speech” and other mandatory training programs of a decidedly unlawful, sectarian nature, several thousands of Norty's fellow airmen who are MRFF clients also demanded the same thing, as did the American people. He ignored us all, and took us for chumps by mouthing and lip-syncing the words needed rather than lending his actual command voice to our wholly legitimate demands. Mere pretty words are only whimsical, gossamer echoes when recognizably solid deeds fail to back them up. Pathetically, in this case, there were none. The situation is far worse now that Schwartz has issued that one little memo and failed to manifestly stand behind it. Indeed, the memo means nothing without an accompanying directive ordering its comprehensive transmission to every airman at every "hill and dale" location in the USAF. Schwartz’s term of service as USAF Chief of Staff has epitomized a tortured, gutless legacy that’s now being left behind for the rest of us to wretchedly wallow in.

In an interview given to the press a few days ago, Schwartz was asked about the religious intolerance scandals within the USAF that plagued his time as Chief of Staff. Schwartz, brazenly lying through his teeth, answered with those same pretty words he thought we all wanted so badly to hear. He told the reporter that he thought that the Air Force has "sensitized our commanders to their obligations in this regard." Alfred Tennyson said, "A lie that is a half-truth is the darkest of all lies." Norty, you’re not just a liar. You’re a damned liar.

Norty Schwartz, you were the Air Force, just as Joe Paterno was Penn State. It was your solemn duty to protect the men and women under your command from unconstitutional religious bigotry, denigration, marginalization, dehumanization, hectoring proselytization, and spiritual molestation at the hands of the myriad “Jerry Sanduskys” among your hundreds of thousands of compliant subordinates. Enjoy your retirement in the full knowledge that, having failed to protect countless USAF men and women from the fundamentalist religious predators within USAF ranks, they will forever remember you as their very own Joe Paterno. Your lack of any cognizable semblance of empathy for the innocent victims of this ubiquitous, unconstitutional scourge of "Old School" prejudice enabled and empowered this conflagration of scandals to occur. Your wanton attempts to whitewash these civil rights crimes have trumpeted a clear message that the USAF will abide, aid, and abet these systemic violations of the precious Constitutional rights of its personnel.

We had trusted you. You betrayed that trust. Et tu, Norty?

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation is up against well-funded extremist religious organizations. Your donations allow us to continue our fight in the courts and in the media to fight for separation of church and state in the U.S. military. Please make a fully tax-deductible donation today at helpbuildthewall.org.

Michael L. "Mikey" Weinstein is president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation and an honor graduate of the Air Force Academy. He previously served as White House Counsel in the Reagan administration and general counsel to H. Ross Perot and Perot Systems Corp. He is the author of the recently released book, "No Snowflake in an Avalanche: The Military Religious Freedom Foundation, Its Battle to Defend the Constitution and One Family's Courageous War Against Religious Extremism in High Places" (2012, Vireo).

michaelweinstein

Consequences of Not Seeing The Chains That Oppress

POSTED: 9:39 AM, July 20, 2012 Comments

Mikey Weinstein

Oh, what a strange and complex world we live in. The good guys and bad guys sometimes appear to say the same thing – that they only want the best for us all. How do we distinguish between what’s genuinely "good" and what’s genuinely "bad”? A cold, hard look at the facts is always most helpful. Let's take a perfect example to briefly analyze this dichotomy. Proponents of Christian evangelical fundamentalism, or Dominionism, are keen to disingenuously drape their putrid extremism in the false flags of “defending religious liberty” and “upholding family values.” Astute observers can easily discern these “all-American” buzzwords as dog-whistles meant to incite those multitudes of cretins who reside both inside and outside the closet of violent bigotry. However, the recent appointment of retired Army Lt. Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin as the new Executive Vice President of the putrescent Family Research Council (FRC) should leave no shadow of a doubt regarding the fundamentalists’ open embrace of a most dangerous and wholly anti-constitutional brand of religious militancy. While the morbid spectacle of Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church carrying “God Hates Fags” placards may be one of the most recognizable memes conveying the face of modern Christian fundamentalism, the well-funded and influential Family Research Council are the “A-Team” of the malignant and malodorous Christian extremist lobby. The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch blog aptly characterized FRC as an “anti-gay hate group.” FRC’s slogan? “Advancing freedom, family, and faith.” The armed forces’ long-awaited repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) lifted a burden of repression from the backs of countless servicemembers. To most of us, it was a clear question of simple justice. Despite this basic fact, FRC’s reaction to the repeal can only be described as mentally deranged:

Expect to see celebrations from homosexual groups… [but] there will be no press releases from the new victims of sexual harassment or assault, the soldiers exposed to HIV-tainted blood, the thousands of servicemembers who choose not to reenlist rather than forfeit their freedom of speech and religion, and the untold number of citizens who choose never to join the military.

Boykin’s advocacy on behalf of inequality within the ranks of the armed services had no less a crackpot vibe of unbridled lunacy. Boykin went so far as to prophetically suggest that the lifting of discriminatory practices against lesbian, gay, and bisexual servicemembers would hasten the eschatological “End of Days”:

Jesus tells us in Luke 21 that before all the signs of His return ultimately are completed that they will take us before kings and rulers and persecute us in His name. And that is, just scripture, that’s prophesy, and I think we’re seeing that persecution now of Christians, particularly of Christians in uniform, Christians that are prominent Christians, Christians that are in the public eye. That persecution is going to increase as we come closer to the time of Jesus’ return.

The “marriage” of FRC and Boykin should be “a match made in fundamentalist heaven,” at least as far as these wretchedly bigoted parties are concerned. FRC’s fervent anti-gay hysteria is matched only by Boykin’s paranoid Islamophobic mania. As for the rest of us, we should be acutely vigilant regarding the hellfire and brimstone that this diabolical union can potentially invoke. Those who are familiar with the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), the civil rights organization which I head, may be aware that Boykin has been one of the more despicable opponents that we’ve encountered in the course of our years of aggressive advocacy in support of the foundational civil rights of American military personnel. Our sole purpose has been the maintenance of the fast-crumbling (if not utterly destroyed) wall separating church and state in the United States Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps. Our guiding light in this battle is the Constitution of the United States of America, which prohibits the establishment of an official religion by Congress, among other critical safeguards. At the press conference announcing Boykin’s new position at FRC, the retired Lt. General cynically stated, “I realize how important it is that I do my part to restore the values that made America a great nation." Boykin has long acted as an astonishingly ignorant human battering ram dedicated to razing the wall separating church and state. Indeed, since the outbreak of the “Global War on Terror” or “Long War,” Boykin has taken it upon himself to dangerously depict the United States’ fight as one against Satan himself. Infamously appearing before packed congregations of vapid fundamentalists while in uniform, Boykin has luridly described the battlegrounds of Mogadishu, Somalia as “principalities of darkness,” echoing the racist, colonial-era designation of Africa as “the Dark Continent.” Boykin continued, depicting Islamist fighters as “a demonic presence… that God revealed to me as the enemy.” During the Iraq war, Boykin told an Oregon church, "Ladies and gentlemen I want to impress upon you that the battle that we're in is a spiritual battle… Satan wants to destroy this nation, he wants to destroy us as a nation, and he wants to destroy us as a Christian army." As I’ve stated before, it is absolutely no exaggeration to say that the evangelical, fundamentalist Christian fanaticism that Boykin represents mirrors the militant Wahhabi-jihadist extremism of those whom the U.S. military is fighting in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. It is precisely this modern-day Crusader language that enrages our Muslim allies, emboldens our enemies within the Islamic world, eviscerates the morale, good order and discipline of our U.S. troops, and significantly endangers the lives of our soldiers on the battlefield. After all, who in their right mind can take the United States’ comprehensive diplomatic PR efforts regarding “democracy” and “universal values” seriously when such high-ranking figures in the military openly utter such sickening sentiments, literally demonizing each and every one of the 1.8 billion adherents of one of the Planet Earth's largest religions? Perhaps this has contributed to the regional opinion that the despotic Saudi Arabian monarchy is more pro-democratic than the United States itself, as a recent poll by the Pew Global Attitudes Project suggests. This travesty of literally Jovian proportion is precisely why Boykin and his fundamentalist religious predator ilk represent such a grave and formidable national security threat. Most alarming are Boykin’s dictatorial Christian-militarist domestic appetites. Boykin’s unabashed hatred of all Muslims be they boys or girls, men or women, knows no cognizable borders. Such vicious, genocidal hatred was made scandalously clear when he claimed that while “every Muslim should be allowed to worship freely,” “Islam itself is not just a religion – it is a totalitarian way of life,” and thus “should not be protected under the First Amendment.” In his deranged and fearful mind, American Muslims are hell-bent on displacing the U.S. Constitution for the purpose of imposing “Sharia law” on the rest of us. Does the FRC’s new Executive VP appointment signal a new phase in the militarization of domestic Christian fundamentalist extremism? Two things are for sure: (1) The American people must understand and intrinsically internalize the extreme danger represented by these truly sick forces that cynically rally under the disingenuously transparent banners of “freedom, family, and faith”; and, (2) they must likewise be prepared to actually DO something about it. We, as a nation, can no longer afford the luxury of ambivalent paralysis in the face of malevolent, monstrous, religious supremacists like Boykin and the disgraceful FRC. Rosa Luxemburg said it best nearly a century ago: "Those who do not move, do not notice their chains." America, the time is now, the place is here. Break your chains of immobility and stagnation. Wake up. Wake the hell up!

michaelweinstein

Homophobic Chaplain Alliance’s Feeble, Failed Attempt to Rape Servicemembers’ Civil Rights

POSTED: 1:30 PM, July 11, 2012 Comments

Mikey Weinstein

The Chaplain Corps of the respective branches of the United States Armed Forces have long played a crucial role in the U.S. military. From its inception, the chaplaincy largely served a nonsectarian “civil gospel" catering to the needs of America's war fighters to worship, attend holiday services, and otherwise receive the spiritual counsel and guidance needed to carry out their duty with optimal morale, good order and discipline. However, the Cold War sharply accelerated the politicization of the Chaplain Corps. Department of Defense (DoD) top brass found it expedient to ally themselves with militant Christian extremists such as the Church of the Christian Crusade and the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade. Under the approving gaze of successive generations of complicit military leaders, ever more powerful sections of the chaplaincy became strongholds for those who sought to turn the Armed Forces into a bitter battleground to win the hearts, minds, and souls of service members perceived to be religiously derelict and, accordingly, branded as “unchurched.” Were blind eyes turned to the clear Constitutional provisions outlawing such DoD blasphemies? No. Not merely "blind eyes." Let's call a spade a spade here. Unconstitutional rape of armed forces member's civil rights is quite more to the point. Throughout the course of the Cold War, an extremist alliance comprised of military personnel, private and public sector civilians, and clergy used the black brush of McCarthyism to relentlessly and unconstitutionally target anyone not already to the right of Attila the Hun. Indeed, this vicious tool of dehumanization proved to have a shelf life extending far beyond that of the “Red Menace” itself. Civil rights organizations representing ethnic, national, cultural, and religious minorities, organized labor, opponents of fundamentalist (also known as Dominionist) Christian supremacy, and advocates for the continued separation of church and state were each subject to vicious attacks by this modern day inquisition. The courageous advocates of equality who fought for the basic human rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community were subject to some of the most egregious of these vituperative, unyielding attacks. The repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) and the recent judicial challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) have provided additional impetus to these bigots’ continued crusade against these most basic rubrics of human equality. Shamefully, the significant lesbian, gay, and bisexual demographic within the armed forces is once again being subjected to a withering torrent of cowardly assaults launched by the fundamentalist Christian gutter-press. The weapons? Wildly off-base predictions of mass defections within the chaplaincy, foretellings of a shattered esprit de corps across the whole of the U.S. Military, and the usual uber-fundamentalist gay-bashing tropes. For example, last November the ultra-Evangelical fundamentalist Family Research Council issued the ominous warning that “[C]haplains who uphold the Bible's teaching on homosexuality will open themselves up to disciplinary action, bad fitness reports and the denial of promotions.” The same letter demagogically goes on to ask, “how long will it be before your church can no longer preach the portions of God's word that are politically incorrect?” Meanwhile, the Huxleyesque-named Chaplain Alliance for “Religious Liberty” (CARL) endlessly fulminated about the fictitious damage to troop retention, morale, and discipline that was to be caused by the repeal of DADT. CARL is an activist organization of extremist former armed forces chaplains who claim to “speak on behalf [of] more than 2,000 chaplains.” CARL tries mightily to pose as the polar opposite of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), the constitutionalist civil rights organization of which I am founder and President. Craven posers, indeed. According to CARL Executive Director Col. Ron Crews (USAR-Ret.) “DoD is bowing to a political agenda to turn our nation’s military into a social experiment, […] It is time for the American public to say, ‘Enough!’” Col. Crews’ preference for fantastic melodrama over reality was starkly revealed in a recent press release from CARL. In Crews’ imagination, "It just seems that every time Mikey Weinstein sends an e-mail over to the Pentagon that they just cater to his every whim." The rabid fundamentalist dogs at CARL have even called for an official Congressional investigation of what they perceive to be my supposedly “unfettered access” to senior Pentagon officials. CARL will utter just about any falsehood in line with its prerogative, which is to maintain the fundamentalist Christian supremacist grip on our nation's armed forces. Thus, they can disingenuously twist, torture, and contort a phrase such as “religious liberty” into its total antithesis without batting an eyelash. Such is also the case with their horrendously alarmist forecasts of the “dire” repercussions of DADT’s repeal. Crews said in a recent statement that "Evangelical soldiers, airmen, marines, they're going to have to make some courageous stands right now to say to their commanders, 'Sir, I cannot participate in this type of ceremony because we believe this is a celebration of something that God's Word is clear about defining as wrong." Fortunately for our national security and our armed forces, Crews and his spiteful “klan” of old school, putrid bigots appear to be isolated in their pursuit of a fearful and ignorant witch-hunt of those whose oppressive burdens have been lightened by DADT's repeal. According to a recent story from Associated Press, chaplains representing a broad range of Christian denominations have reported virtually no problems following the lifting of DADT: Bishop James Magness, the coordinator for about 75 active-duty and reserve Episcopal chaplains, said he’d heard a common, positive verdict about repeal from his more conservative Catholic, Mormon and Southern Baptist colleagues. “The whole argument about religious liberty is so incredibly uninformed, and inflamed by some of the very conservative legal groups,” Magness said. “In reality, there’s been very little if any of the services forcing any ministerial activity on a chaplain against his or her will. There you have it. Once again, the specious claim of a toxic environment within the military that restricts the religious freedom of those "very conservative" (read: fundamentalist) practitioners of the Christian faith has been proven to be the stuff of desperate, outlandish lies and transparent mendacity. The Chaplain Corps deserves kudos for this rare display of professionalism, which constitutes a total refutation of CARL’s fire and brimstone-tinged prognostications. However, the ranks of the U.S. Armed Forces are still inflicted by the unchecked dry rot of theocratic religious extremism and its directly consequential ingrained bigotry. U.S. sailors, soldiers, marines and airmen are the true guardians of all of our Constitutional freedoms. Thus, quis custodiet ipsos custodes? "Who will guard the guards?" The answer is that this is our collective duty as a people, one that will require that we muster every fiber of our nation’s being. We must forever remain on guard and vigilant to eliminate the continuation of this ongoing molestation and abuse of our servicemembers’ civil rights, and the horrendous victimization and oppression of our LGBT friends, family, and neighbors. As the celebrated journalist Elmer Davis said so well; "This nation will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave."

michaelweinstein

Hot Air and the Stench of Brimstone: Chaplains, Gutter Journalism, and 66 Lawmakers vs. Religious Freedom

POSTED: 9:40 AM, June 29, 2012 Comments

“Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing.” - Oscar Wilde, Irish novelist, poet, and gadfly

Mikey Weinstein

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), the civil rights organization that I founded and preside over, has lately been accused of holding exaggerated sway within the Pentagon. No doubt, our organization has managed to effect an ever-growing number of major changes with quite humble, yet very dear, resources at our disposal. These resources are comprised of the collective outrage of our over 28,000 clients within the armed forces, paired with the brain trust that comprises our organizational staff and the gracious donations given by our valued support base. Given our forthright nature and our unparalleled effectiveness, it makes perfect sense that we have become the target of concerted attempts to vilify, slander, and distort our cause. As the celebrated Irish icon of wit Oscar Wilde presciently inferred, our rapaciously fundamentalist Christian opponents absolutely couldn’t stand the fact that we have managed to make convincing, logical arguments upholding the civil rights of servicemembers. Hence, these cowards have despicably deployed the all to predictable, pedestrian tactics of defamatory mudslinging and outright falsification. Recently, I've been grossly mischaracterized as some “grey eminence” sitting behind the scenes at the Department of Defense (DoD), some sinister overlord with an axe to grind against religion in general and Christianity in particular. As my blatantly cynical detractors would have it, whenever I nonchalantly set foot on the grounds of the Pentagon, top brass swarm about to deferentially "kiss the ring" as if I were Capo di tutti capi at DoD. This mirage couldn’t be farther from the truth; our fight entails a bloody, daily tooth-and-nail struggle with those same top DoD officials that we supposedly hold in spellbound thrall. For example, the disgusting arch-fraud pretender to the title of "America's Historian," David Barton, recently made the ridiculous, off-base remark, "I've decided that Mikey Weinstein is now the new Secretary of the Air Force.” I thoroughly dissected this exaggerated claim in one of my last Op-Eds. Scurrilous lies coming from a career peddler of false, revisionist nationalist mythology... really, is anyone surprised? Unbeknownst to us, Barton’s lunacy was the mere opening shot in a much broader campaign to vilify our organization. In recent months, MRFF has slammed multiple line drives in our round-the-clock campaign to uphold what little remains of the wall separating church and state in the United States military. Indeed, ever more frequently now, we’re knocking “home runs” out of the ballpark. For example, MRFF pressure decisively put an end to the unconstitutional branding of Holman Bible Publishers' "Military Bibles" with the insignia of the four branches of the U.S. Armed Forces -- a veritable “Grand Slam” that was covered impeccably by journalist Kelley Vlahos. This monumental constitutional victory whipped our religious extremist opponents into an absolute frenzy, replete with disingenuous weeping and a great gnashing of teeth. No sooner had we made the announcement that “Lady Liberty is smiling,” than the various extreme Christian fundamentalists pounced for an attack. First, Fox News’ fundamentalist barking dog, Todd Starnes, intentionally mischaracterized MRFF as an “atheist” organization and purposely confused our acronym with that of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF). Our balking at such a false descriptor doesn’t mean that we at MRFF have any problems with atheists in the least, but the claim is substantively inaccurate. The Military Religious Freedom Foundation is a constitutionalist organization grounded in an alliance of both interfaith and non-faith communities. The vast majority of our staff, clients, supporters, and donors happen to be of the Christian faith. The “atheist”-baiting smear was a transparent, cold, calculated move by Fox News that was simply meant to incite. The "Faux News" salvo was followed shortly after by a drive-by hit piece on MRFF from Glenn Beck’s hideous Utah-based web tabloid, The Blaze. The Blaze article was truly vile, framing the removal of insignia from Holman Military Bibles as an action that “will surely raise eyebrows among those who have traditionally appreciated the military’s often Christian undertones.” Often Christian? As my foundation has thoroughly documented, the U.S. Military is a veritable Petri dish for what can only be described as a metastasizing “Christian Taliban” of sorts, albeit a nuclear armed, apocalyptic-Dominionist variant capable of deploying the most modern arsenal devised in the history of humankind. Officers Christian Fellowship (OCF), Cadence International, The Navigators, Cru (née Campus Crusade for Christ) Military Ministries, and many other groups or “parachurch” organizations have brazenly spoken of their worshiped goal of transforming the U.S. Military into “government-paid missionaries,” as shown by the shocking video immediately below:

This seditious, fundamentalist Christian treachery is what we’re up against. However, The Blaze maliciously mischaracterizes MRFF’s civil rights fight as “anti-theist advocacy.” No, our sole purpose is to safeguard Constitutionally guaranteed religious liberty in the truest sense of the phrase, as envisioned by those who drafted the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Of course, pernicious lies and defamatory rubbish are all that we can expect from the “anti-truth advocates” employed at the propaganda mills of these fascistic, fundamentalist Christian extremist predators. A so-called “Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty (CARL)” had its own novel take on the Military Bible issue, using it as a Trojan horse to disguise their relentless campaign against the basic human rights of the LGBT community. A recent article from this “alliance” of disgusting bigots was entitled “Bibles? Nah ... 'Gay pride'? Yep!” According to CARL, Congress has “forced a radical homosexual agenda on the military” through the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT). Offering another indicator of how far our supposedly “Christian” military has drifted from its roots, CARL spokesman Col. Ron Crews (USA-Ret.), stated that “It just seems that every time Mikey Weinstein sends an e-mail over to the Pentagon that they just cater to his every whim…This one individual has that much influence in the Pentagon. They just cave in." Crews also stated “MRFF must cease and desist their reckless assault on religious liberty. The Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty calls on Congress to investigate this frivolous threat and apparent discrimination against religious views by the DoD.” Mere days later, 66 Republican members of Congress sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta with the spurious allegation that U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz was guilty of "imposing a stringent policy with regards to religion," and that the USAF in general is guilty of creating “a culture that is hostile toward religion.” This was a reaction to the watershed memo Schwartz released last September underscoring the long-existing yet oft-ignored expectation that "chaplains, not commanders... notify Airmen of Chaplain Corps programs." According to these woefully misinformed and Constitutionally derelict lawmakers, Schwartz's simple recapitulation of long-standing rules governing the division of labor in the armed forces vis-à-vis religious programs constituted a full-frontal attack on all religious practices throughout the Air Force. Euphemistically, lawmakers accused the USAF of bowing to the pressure of “secular groups” like MRFF. Not so. The Schwartz memo was a wet-noodle, meek attempt at damage control issued amidst an especially frenetic period when the Air Force was, yet again, fully embroiled in severe controversy due to a string of breathtakingly embarrassing incidents. MRFF was even forced to erect a public billboard of the Schwartz memo in Colorado Springs in direct reaction to U.S. Air Force Academy Superintendent Lt. General Michael Gould’s abject refusal to disseminate it to cadets on campus. Admittedly, yes, many of these incidents were indeed exposed by MRFF to an absolutely thunderstruck global audience. The so-called "'Jesus Loves Nukes' Speech," a mandatory “Christian Just War” ethics training for nuclear missile launch officers, was even featured on the front page of the major Japanese daily Asahi Shimbun. Thus, two days prior to the anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, our friends and strategic allies in Japan were informed of how the USAF views their national trauma; as an “ethical” example of the waging of “Holy War.” These shameful embarrassments and self-inflicted wounds are among some of the most powerful means by which the religious predators at DoD undermine our national security, desecrate our beloved Constitution and disrupt our alliances.

Above: Panel from August 4, 2011 cover story in the Japanese edition of Asahi Shimbun showing a portion of the “Jesus Loves Nukes” PowerPoint Presentation

Following the letter to Secretary Panetta, CARL once again attacked me, this time by means of the organization’s founder, Brig. Gen. Douglas Lee (USA-Ret.). Lee once again raised the claim that "I think [Mikey Weinstein] has way more influence in the Air Force than is necessary... Certainly when he has threatened suit, the Air Force seems to have jumped very quickly. His organization claims to be concerned about religious liberty, but I personally interpret their actions as trying to denigrate religious liberty rather than celebrate it. So, yes -- he's very much involved." This rogue organization of retired activist chaplains operates under the deceptive title of an "Alliance for Religious Liberty." Clearly they have tried to position themselves as the “anti-MRFF”, an unholy alliance devoted to squelching any form of religious freedom. These theocratic clerics have shown themselves to be wholly opposed to the U.S. Constitution and shockingly, 66 members of Congress have joined the crusade. Their wretched campaign isn’t waged for the sake of "religious liberty" -- a term whose meaning they have attempted to twist and turn inside out --- but for its complete opposite. Their every move constitutes an attack on the rights of servicewomen, LGBT servicemembers, and the spiritually heterodox who refuse to be coercively absorbed by this zealous, militantly evangelical ultra-fundamentalist tumor existing in the U.S. military. We may not have 4-star generals and admirals kowtowing at our feet, but our nontrivial achievements clearly speak for themselves. The hard-fought gains we've secured are not only our pride and joy, but also a credit to those constitutional stalwarts and supporters who courageously stand at our side. Our demands for constitutional conformity across the whole of the DoD will only grow louder. MRFF will stand strong as a palisade of accountability and a bulwark of defense for those countless servicemen and women who have come to us as a result of the myriad wounds and grievances they have suffered. The Military Religious Freedom Foundation will only gain strength from the attacks by this base, unprincipled, and pathologically intolerant horde of well-funded religious extremists. Indeed, we will garner more and more victories for our clients and their civil rights, irrespective of whether our fundamentalist Christian enemies slander and assault us in the name of their perverse and twisted conception of "religious liberty," or some other fabricated excuse. As Gandhi said in regards to the universal struggle for human rights, “First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, and then you win.” Or, as a friend of mine once told me, "Life sucks when those you've been persecuting begin to return fire."

michaelweinstein

Radicalization Within the Armed Forces: DoD Losing Sight of the Forest for the Trees

POSTED: 1:05 PM, June 6, 2012 Comments

Mikey Weinstein

Peering inward, the top brass of the United States Armed Forces have dangerously lost sight of the forest for the trees. Invoking myopic, misleading drivel marinated in the "bath salts" of fundamentalist Christian predation, it has become all too clear that the Pentagon is incapable of making truly sober assessments of the profound internal threats and weaknesses it faces. Earlier this year Lt. Gen. Ronald Burgess, director of the ultra-secretive Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), testified before the Senate Armed Forces Committee with Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey notably sitting with him. It was here that Burgess offered truly startling testimony depicting the threats that he claims undermine the integrity of the armed forces, endanger American life, and compromise our overall national security. Among those threats is the menace of another WikiLeaks-style exposure. Understandably, the Department of Defense has no greater fear than another Bradley Manning-style whistleblower determined to shine a revealing light on the all too-frequent pattern of self-defeat which has become an outgrowth of a slipshod culture, rife with back-scratching favoritism and lazy pretension, which many in the Pentagon have become wedded to. The next named threat, however, particularly caught our attention: “Self-radicalization or lone wolf individuals… within our own ranks, remain an enduring concern,” noted Lt. Gen. Burgess. This line leapt out at us immediately, like a blazing meteor in the night sky. We can understand the threat posed by isolated, embittered loners such as the murderous Fort Hood shooter, Major Nidal Malik Hassan, and the recently convicted failed bomber, Pfc. Naser Jason Abdo. Indeed, what animated these two was the fact that they placed their own twisted brand of sectarian religiosity above their oath to the United States Constitution and their obedience to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Those who transgress their oaths, and their military mission, should be aggressively investigated and subject to timely trial by courts-martial as a simple matter of basic martial justice and discipline. Staff and volunteers at the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), the four-time Nobel Peace Prize-nominated civil rights organization of which I am Founder and President, immediately wondered -- why are “lone wolves” and the “self-radicalized” the only subject of “enduring concern?” Is it because the above-named examples are Muslim? This could be one reason. Or is the Pentagon losing sight of the proverbial forest for the trees, as it is most certainly wont to do, particularly in line with the dictates of political expediency? While Nidal Malik Hassan’s crimes were shockingly egregious, the radicalized, fundamentalist element within the U.S. armed forces is hardly a new or isolated phenomenon. Our organization represents just under 28,000 clients drawn from the ranks of active duty United States soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, cadets and midshipmen, veterans, Coast Guard, and National Guard reservists. As such, we have been well positioned to hear countless cries of help from thousands upon thousands of victims of such radicalization within all branches of the armed services. It is precisely this rapidly metastasizing threat of radicalized religiosity which has carved the greatest gash into the esprit de corps of our military, while also posing a concomitant enormous, ominous threat to the comprehensive national security of the United States itself. Make no mistake, this homegrown "radicalization" has a specific name: extremist, evangelical, Christian fundamentalism or "Christian Dominionism." Subscribers to this wretchedly exclusivist ideology bear more than a passing resemblance to Abdo and Hassan. Their virulent and utterly unconstitutional sectarianism is revealed in their arrogant attempts to coercively and viciously proselytize their comrades-in-arms, be they Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Wiccan, or non-believer. Many are shocked by my revelation that some of the most gut-wrenching testimonials I or our MRFF staff have personally heard have been from faithful, dyed-in-the-wool Protestants and Roman Catholics who are harassed due to their lack of fundamentalist zeal. In fact, these disaffected Christians comprise a total of 96% of MRFF's clients. Indeed, MRFF's largest client growth area is actually with evangelical Christians who, despite their "born again" beliefs, are not prepared to proselytize in a manner that violates the time, place and manner restrictions imposed by our U.S. Constitution and its construing federal and state case law. Other minority groups within the military have also borne the full brunt of this pernicious, radicalized scourge. These “radicals” have openly conspired to seek authorization for the bullying, abuse, and torment of LGBTQ service members, going so far as attempting to use the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) as a Trojan horse for their bigoted agenda. This virulent oppression has come in the form of attempts to seek amendments to NDAA that explicitly allow servicemembers to ruthlessly harass and persecute gay colleagues while also allowing chaplains the right to refuse to minister to them and carry out marriages between same-sex partners on a basis of homophobic bigotry and prejudice alone. Twisting the English language in an outright Orwellian manner, they refer to this reprehensible denial of servicemembers’ human rights as examples of their own perverted and twisted, parochial “religious freedom” and “conscience protection.” Servicewomen have also been subject to hideous torment as a result of the fundamentalist Christian cancer within the military. Hyper-patriarchal, misogynistic, and chauvinist attitudes are typically a part of the overall “package deal” of evangelical fundamentalism. Real world consequences mean altogether hellish conditions for female service members within their units. A recent VA survey has found that 30 percent of female veterans have reported sexual assault at the hands of a colleague or superior, while 20 percent have been raped more than once and 14 percent have been victims of gang rape. Eleanor J. Bader of RH Reality Check has cited the reason for the reluctance to report these sickening crimes: an unsympathetic military chaplaincy, a humongous 20 percent of whom were trained at the Rev. Jerry Falwell-funded Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary in Lynchburg, VA. These are the same chaplains who openly and brazenly agitate against, marginalize, and dehumanize gay and lesbian service members. Coincidence? Obviously not. Bader quoted Rev. John Gundlach, a respected United Church of Christ military chaplain for 27 years, who explained to her that “[s]ome super evangelicals see the military as their own government-paid mission field…They are there to proselytize; that’s their mandate. Even though proselytizing is prohibited, it takes place all the time.” This unconstitutional train of thought, which oozes the poison that military service is a taxpayer-funded missionary expedition, is systemically extant throughout the U.S. military up to and including the very highest leadership echelons of the Armed Forces. Think of it as an alloy of evil, for that is precisely what it is. The real threats to the national security of the United States are varied and multidimensional, with radical fundamentalism standing amongst them as the foremost challenge. But it isn’t the obscure threat of disaffected Muslim servicemembers that poses the greatest danger. A different type of radicalism envelops the U.S. military. It is a homegrown variety, which threatens to subsume our servicemen and women in a tsunami of intolerant, pernicious, and explicitly unconstitutional bigotry and bloody apocalyptic zeal. The magnitude of this universal, fundamentalist Christian threat is matched solely by the endless capability for malfeasance emanating from the Defense Department. The DoD is clearly high on “bath salts” of a wholly dubious composition: organizational shortsightedness mixed with the anti-Constitutional contraband of radical Christian fundamentalism. The result is the severe handicapping of the top brass’s abilities to gauge the threats that truly undermine our military’s functioning capabilities. The bottom line is that the perpetrators of this radical Evangelical threat are gnawing off the morale and integrity of the United States Armed Forces. So long as this process of cannibalization continues, our military will consistently fail to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

michaelweinstein

David Barton’s latest lunacy: "I've decided that Mikey Weinstein is now the new Secretary of the Air Force"

POSTED: 8:10 AM, May 24, 2012 Comments

Mikey Weinstein

We at the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) are used to baseless, slanderous attacks. As the sole organization looking out for the constitutionally guaranteed civil rights of armed service members who suffer the horrors of religious oppression and unsolicited, aggressive proselytizing, it comes as no surprise to us that we are daily the specific target of those same perpetrators of religious zealotry who victimize our clients. Sometimes, though, we can only sit back and chuckle in amusement at the ignorant calumnies and insinuations tossed about by our Christian fundamentalist foes. Case in point: David Barton’s recent rant about yours truly. According to this foolish moron, in addition to being Founder and President of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, I am now the new Secretary of the United States Air Force (USAF). Why is that? As Barton explains, “Every stinkin’ case he files against the Air Force, the Air Force says ‘oh my Gosh, we didn’t realize we were doing that, we’ll stop that!’” Imagine that: Mikey Weinstein, the Honorable Secretary of the Air Force! While I’m flattered by such an honorific and homage, nothing Barton says can ever possibly find residence within the realm of credibility. While we at MRFF do constitute an advance guard among those who seek to restore the shattered wall separating church and state in the U.S. military, Barton gives both MRFF and USAF top brass far more credit than we deserve. Likewise, while his spin implies that there’s little more to MRFF than hues, cries, and litigious excess, the facts testify to an altogether different reality; our civil rights foundation represents well over 27,000 clients, 96% of whom are practicing Christians. What compels them to approach our humble organization to seek redress? Intolerable, wretched conditions of religious oppression against both religious minorities (and especially even fellow Protestants and Roman Catholics), fundamentalist and racist contraband embedded in training material, coerced attendance at uber-sectarian, evangelical Christian fundamentalist rock concerts, and countless other heinous examples of the widespread encroachment upon the armed forces being driven forward by Barton and his ilk. For those who may be unaware, Barton has served as vice chair of the Texas GOP and is a skilled, veteran propagandist operating under the guise of his phony self-designation as a “historian.” Barton’s "craft" consists of surpassing historical revision of the most pernicious kind. The website for his political Christian fundamentalist group, WallBuilders, is a treasure trove for those seeking a hagiography of U.S. history consisting entirely of false, Christian nationalist mythologizing. There you will discover, among myriad fabrications, that the Founding Fathers of our “modern Christian nation” were cut from the same sectarian ideological cloth as Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, and other "level-headed," freedom-loving Americans. Barton has become one of the foremost ideologues of American Christian extremist exceptionalism and Tea Party-style militant fundamentalism. This ignominy has earned him the reverence of powerful figures in the Republican Party, many of whom have clamored and lined up to “kiss the ring” and earn the endorsement of this vile, base truth assassin. He has even earned the distinguished honor of being a lecturer at the esteemed online “Beck University,” whose owner and “Dean” is the renowned pedagogue and schlock-jock "super-patriot," Glenn Beck. Our Senior Research Director here at MRFF, Ms. Chris Rodda, has done an absolutely splendid job haranguing, deconstructing, and otherwise comprehensively exposing this Dominionist tool. She even wrote a book comprised of razor-sharp refutations of Barton’s amateurish compendia of counter-factual, pseudo-theocratic lies. Indeed, Mr. Barton, you yourself are responsible for Chris Rodda joining forces with MRFF. This was back in 2007, when Rodda adeptly tore apart your tortured misrepresentation of the meaning behind Thomas Jefferson’s letters discussing the separation of church and state. The craftsmanship and skill with which she upheld the truth about our foundational values as a nation immediately caught our attention, and she soon became our top Researcher here at MRFF. For this, o exalted “Liar for Jesus,” we are truly indebted to you! The confession from Barton that he believes me to be the Head of the Department of the United States Air Force shows the extent to which this man has been bewitched by his own Dominionist hocus-pocus. To paraphrase the great English scientist and critic Sir Peter Medawar, Barton “can be excused of dishonesty only on the grounds that before deceiving others he has taken great pains to deceive himself.” If I were the Secretary of the Air Force, would our civil rights foundation have to fight tooth and nail for even the slightest shred of information from the Pentagon in the form of Freedom of Information Act disclosures? If I were Secretary of the Air Force, would Brigadier General Dana Born, Dean of Faculty at the United States Air Force Academy, be instructing her subordinates to launch counterinsurgency (COIN) operations against our four-time Nobel Peace Prize nominated civil rights organization? According to Mike Huckabee, the obnoxiously hokey Fox News personality and has-been presidential contender who never was, “All Americans [should] be forced – forced at gunpoint, no less–to listen to every David Barton message, and I think our country would be better for it. I wish it’d happen.” At the time, we thought that such a bizarre statement, once confined to the lunatic fringe of evangelical fundamentalism, starkly revealed the tyrannical aspirations of the religious right’s mainstream leaders. However, Barton’s “message” that yours truly is the Secretary of the Air Force changes things up a bit. By assigning me such an august position, perhaps Barton is actually interested, for once, in doing some good for our country and the religious freedoms enshrined by the U.S. Constitution? We trust that Mr. Huckabee, M-16 in hand, wouldn’t take exception to this latest David Barton message. From my secret desk here at the shadow Office of the Secretary of the Air Force, however, one thing is certain: Hell hath frozen over, and the pigs are flying overhead in Delta formation.

michaelweinstein

Abu Ghraib and Hiroshima by PowerPoint and Lectern

POSTED: 9:59 AM, May 15, 2012 Comments

Mikey Weinstein

A grossly exaggerated and noxious brand of faux-patriotism has had the United States in its grips since at least September 11, 2001. The nefarious engine of this jingoistic phenomenon is uber-patriotic, religion-infused exceptionalism. Nowhere is this unconstitutional sickness clearer than on the grounds of the once-prestigious institutes of higher learning under the command of the United States Department of Defense. It is on these campuses that an insidious blend of abject racism and fundamentalist Christian supremacy, sometimes subtle and sometimes explicit, warps the minds of the servicemen and women who are being groomed to lead present and future generations of American war fighters. Indeed, by PowerPoint and by lectern, the future leaders of the U.S. military are being inculcated in a deranged martial spirit which sees the nuclear bombing of civilian populations as not only justified, but consecrated by a grotesquely distorted, weaponized version of Jesus Christ. The course material similarly commands the unquestioning application of internationally infamous Abu Ghraib-like interrogation tactics more befitting an aggressive, marauding military dictatorship than a Constitutionally-grounded democracy. “This barbaric ideology will no longer be tolerated. Islam must change or we will facilitate its self-destruction.” These vile and genocidal words were taught at the venerable Joint Forces Staff College (JFSC) in Norfolk, VA by faculty member and instructor Army Lt. Col. Matthew Dooley in a course entitled “Perspectives on Islam and Islamic Radicalism.” Dooley also taught officers from all four branches of the military that the U.S. should take “war to a civilian population wherever necessary,” applying the precedents of “Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, [and] Nagasaki” to the two foremost holy cities in the Muslim world, Mecca and Medina. Such statements from this United States military officer, under the colorable authority and aegis of the prestigious JFSC, are beyond the pale of acceptability and their consequences will be extraordinarily severe. Ominously, slide 15 of Dooley's "Counter-Jihad Op Design Model" called for the eventual “elimination” of any influence that the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) may have within the United States. CAIR, an NGO headquartered in Washington, D.C., have almost single-handedly advocated on behalf of the Muslim community in the face of widespread Islamophobic hysteria and incitement. The fact that such words as “elimination” are being spoken in regards to domestic civil liberties groups by the most lethal killing machine devised by mankind, i.e. the U.S. military, brings to mind Pastor Martin Niemöller’s prescient warning which may perhaps be updated to reflect the present climate: “First they came for the Muslims...” The course materials truly depict a sinister picture. An anonymous whistle-blowing soldier, who provided one of the two presentations to Al Jazeera, truthfully remarked that it was the work of “this bigoted conspiracy cabal [which] is both disgusting and so deeply un-American.” What comprises this bigoted conspiracy cabal? An unholy alliance of fundamentalist evangelicals, neoconservatives, and sectarian bigots imported from the Middle East. Reports indicate that the anti-Muslim curriculum at JFSC was prepared by the Arlington, Va.-based non-profit Strategic Engagement Group, Inc. (SEG), a virtual one-stop shop for modern-day “Crusaders” among the highest echelons of our military, intelligence, and civilian law enforcement bodies. SEG was formed in 2010 for what it claims is “the purpose of exposing and defeating efforts to subvert the United States Constitution and subjugate the American People," referring to what they claim is “Shariah Law.” John Guandolo, a disgraced former FBI agent and current Vice President with SEG, has spoken at Christian Fundamentalist conferences in Murfreesboro, TN, in support of local Christian extremists’ efforts to halt Muslim-Americans’ efforts to practice their constitutionally assured right to construct a mosque. Guandolo had previously told an anti-“Sharia” gathering in Nashville that “Muslims do not have a First Amendment right to do anything," and that regional mosques are front organizations for the Muslim Brotherhood. Another VP with SEG, Major Stephen Coughlin (US Army Reserve), is described on the group’s website as “the leading expert in the United States on Islamic Doctrine.” He has also personally spoken before the JFSC in his capacity as a one-time intelligence analyst for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Coughlin’s “expertise” boils down to a wildly conspiratorial world outlook wherein Muslims are hell-bent on a quest to "destroy western civilization from within." In 2008, Coughlin was let go from his position when the Pentagon caught wind of the pathologically Islamophobic paranoia evident throughout the entirety of his work. The Washington Times, the right-wing newspaper owned by Rev. Sun Myung Moon, described Coughlin as “one of the first casualties in the war of ideas with Islamism.” SEG’s President, Edward Kimball, previously served as Foreign Policy Counsel to US Congresswoman Sue Myrick (R-NC), a member of the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Myrick has in the past acted as Stephen Coughlin’s personal guardian angel following calls for the Pentagon to relieve him of his duties. Myrick gained nationwide notoriety after making the ridiculous claim that Lebanese Hezbollah and Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps agents were learning Spanish in Venezuela for the purpose of infiltrating the United States while disguised as undocumented immigrants from Mexico and Latin America (see video here). Myrick has also signed documents supporting allegations that CAIR is an extension of the Muslim Brotherhood and Palestinian Hamas. According to correspondence obtained by WikiLeaks and the Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar, Myrick has recently joined forces with James F. Smith, former director of the notorious dominionist mercenary outfit Blackwater, and Walid Phares, a shady character with a history of collaboration alongside the fascistic Israeli-backed Christian militias of the Lebanese Civil War. Phares, who frequently appeared on Fox News and the Christian Broadcasting Network as a “terrorism expert,” currently co-chairs Mitt Romney’s Middle East advisory group. “Bigoted conspiracy cabal” indeed. These characters’ bizarre concoctions make the wildest Cold War-era “Reds Under the Beds” tales seem almost like Bible truth. While Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dempsey feigns shock regarding this “news” of rabid Islamophobia emanating from the Pentagon, we at the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) don’t buy it. Gen. Dempsey could merely have switched on his television set five years ago to see the bigoted filth issued forth from the JFSC instructors’ podiums. In June 2007, Brigitte Gabriel spoke at JFSC as a guest "expert" on Islam in a lecture broadcast by C-SPAN. Gabriel, a Lebanese Maronite Christian and career sectarian, stated that the average “practicing Muslim, who believes in the teachings of the Koran, cannot be a loyal citizen to the United States of America." She also disgustingly stated, as C-SPAN cameras rolled, that the Muslim-American community is "good at nothing but complaining about every single thing instead of standing up and working with us in fighting the enemy in our country." Like her compatriot Mr. Phares, Gabriel is a professional mountebank. As such, she is a member of the Hasbara Fellowships, an Israeli propaganda and apologist front with ties to Benjamin Netanyahu's ruling Likud Party. The Hasbara Fellowships, who specialize in training street-level PR cadres on behalf of the most aggressive sections of the Israeli establishment, played a crucial role in the mass distribution of the virulently anti-Muslim DVD, Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West. "Who pays the piper, calls the tune." Throughout the media, blogosphere, and security conference circuits these figures buttress one another’s narratives, cover each other’s flanks, and add pieces of fabric to a carefully woven patchwork quilt depicting a vast Islamic plot of violent insurgency and overthrow. And so, as details emerge in this “Bigoted conspiracy cabal,” the plot of unadulterated shame grows thicker still. While 2004’s hellish photos from Abu Ghraib seem almost like ancient history, eight years later the extrajudicial detentions and incidents of torture and abuse still remain a matter of course for those held at Guantanamo Bay and at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. These outrages, among countless others, are the direct outcome of dehumanizing curricula which are produced by the Islamophobia industry and eagerly lapped up by both the military and civilian bureaucracy. This latest revelation from JFSC constitutes an open call for the genocide of over a billion and a half men, women, and children. An “elect nation” arrogance, wrought from the insuperable alloy of fundamentalist Christian extremism and American exceptionalism, systemically bathes the halls of the Pentagon, military academia, and our approximately 1,000 military installations scattered around the world in about 150 countries. Let us call it what it is: a racist, bigoted repugnance. It catalyzes a ubiquitous doctrine within the U.S. military which dictates that Muslims around the globe, be they combatant or civilian, should be viewed as simply less than human. We have been here before. Many times. We have seen the oceans of blood that flow from this abyss of base prejudice. Who or what is the source for this pernicious and criminal posture towards one of the world’s largest religions and its mosaic of men, women, and children practitioners? The answer is clear: the enormous, sinister force which is fundamentalist Christianity. What can be done to make amends? Besides the actual aggressive and expeditious trial by courts martial of Lt. Col. Dooley and all others who knew or should have known of the blood libel he was "teaching,” DoD Secretary Leon Panetta can do two more things. He must immediately issue formal written apologies to all U.S. service personnel who were forced, as students at the JFSC, to listen to Lt. Col. Dooley's vile, Islamophobic rantings. Lastly, it is his clear duty to invite them back to JFSC to be "retrained" on American-Islamic issues, absent the blood-drenched calls for genocide via PowerPoint and lectern.

michaelweinstein

 The Currency of Words, or the Coin of the Realm?

POSTED: 1:49 PM, May 8, 2012 Comments

Mikey Weinstein

On Tuesday, April 24th, 2012, the nation’s top soldier, Chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) General Martin Dempsey, initiated a truly seminal message. He finally generated the long-overdue, mandatory edict that all training and educational materials throughout the U.S. military must be immediately reviewed within one month's time to ensure that no anti-Muslim or anti-Islam references or content remain. Henceforth, officers and enlisted members will no longer be taught and institutionally indoctrinated that “the United States is at war with Islam and we ought to just recognize that.” According to reports, this unprecedented top-down review is the result of a belated discovery at the Joint Forces Staff College (JFSC) in Norfolk, VA. In the elective class “Perspectives on Islam and Islamic Radicalism,” officers from all four branches of the military were indoctrinated with vile Islamophobic programs masquerading as “anti-terrorist” education. In June 2007, Islamophobic extremist and shady Lebanese fundamentalist Christian, Brigitte Gabriel, delivered a lecture before the JFSC where she stated that there is no such thing as a “moderate Muslim” and that “America and the West are doomed to failure in this war unless they stand up and identify the real enemy: Islam.” According to reports, this lecture was presented “as part of the school’s Islam elective.” It is worth noting that Gabriel is a Southern Lebanese Maronite Christian expat and speaker with the pro-Israeli Likudnik Hasbara Fellowships, who has for decades made a career of grossly oversimplifying the contradictions inherent in Middle Eastern affairs as a problem of good people dominated by a monolithic Muslim threat. In February 2008, self-proclaimed “ex-terrorist,” “ex-Muslim,” fundamentalist Christian minstrels Walid Shoebat, Zachariah Anani, and Kamal Saleem were paid $13,000 to speak before the 50th Annual Academy Assembly at the U.S. Air Force Academy (USAFA) in Colorado Springs, CO on the topic of “Dismantling Terrorism: Developing Actionable Solutions for Today’s Plague of Violence.” At this USAFA conference, as confirmed by many eye witness accounts, Walid Shoebat disgustingly stated “We have to kill Islam.” Like Brigitte Gabriel, these bigoted stooges have made lucrative careers for themselves by peddling over-the-top, pathologically prejudiced perspectives on understanding the Muslim and Arab world while selling their own fabricated histories as “reformed” terrorist caricatures. Amazingly, they all claim to have abandoned Islam and embraced fundamentalist, evangelical Christianity. To call this heinous crew of dubious characters “con-artists” would be far too kind. Our civil rights foundation, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), which represents approximately 10% of all Muslim American service members, responded by demanding equal time to counter these transparent frauds. This ultimatum resulted in speaking appearances at USAFA for MRFF Advisory Board Member and renowned Islam Scholar Reza Aslan, MRFF Board member and former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, and myself, MRFF founder and President Mikey Weinstein. What JCS Chairman Gen. Dempsey seeks to investigate is a heinous curriculum of systemic, anti-Muslim hatred that has warped the cultural competence of United Staes service members, leading to grim results in combat theaters within which the U.S. has been engaged since 9/11. In 2012 alone there have been reports of bodies being urinated on by U.S. Marines, the proud and brazen display of the Nazi Waffen-SS banner by U.S. Marines, soldiers posing with corpses, and most insultingly, the burning of copies of the Qur’an at Bagram Air Field. Most recently, the Beaufort, South Carolina-based Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 122 (VMFA-122) renamed themselves the "Crusaders" (a phrase which literally means "taking up the cross") and adopted the iconography of the crusading, medieval Knights Templar. In a poor, strife-ridden nation such as Afghanistan, people have little to hold on to beyond strong familial and tribal bonds and a firm sense of national, ethnic, cultural and religious dignity. Sadly, racist and dehumanizing indoctrination by America's own war machine has transformed all too many American war fighters into arrogant, marauding crusaders. The long-overdue review of the appalling Islamophobic materials used to train our servicemen and servicewomen is a classic case of the proverbial closing of the barn door long after the farm animals have left. President Obama’s surprise visit to Afghanistan on Tuesday, May 1, 2012 starkly illustrated this fact. The ink had barely dried on the Strategic Partnership Agreement signed by himself and Afghan President Hamid Karzai before car bombs and gunfire rattled Kabul in a daring Taliban attack centered on the high-security Green Village compound. The faux triumphalism of Obama’s visit, meant to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the killing of archfiend Osama Bin Laden, was meant to prop up the illusion of impending “victory” in strife-torn Afghanistan. The foreboding warning of Rudyard Kipling presciently echoes through history and seemingly confounds present American efforts as it damned all others heretofore; “Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires.” Any casual observer with even a rudimentary understanding of modern military history understands how the Commander-in-Chief’s Kabul pep talk is in stark opposition with the gritty combat reality on the ground. Insurgent Taliban forces, in addition to wearing down the U.S. military in a steady process of attrition, are flat out winning the battle for the hearts and minds of the Afghan people. Additionally, attacks on U.S./NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) personnel by allied Afghan soldiers and police officers have been consistently on the rise despite deliberate and pernicious underreporting by NATO officials, with the deaths of 19 ISAF service members this year alone due to “fratricide-murder incidents”. In hindsight, the Department of Defense-sanctioned anti-Muslim training programs have proven to be a quintessentially formidable propaganda asset in the Taliban fight against the “Crusading” NATO forces. Indeed, they provide grist for the mill of regional resentment and strain alliances to a breaking point. Far be it from the graceful and idyllic exit strategy fabricated by the Pentagon and championed by Obama just days ago in Kabul, many of us anxiously anticipate an Afghan departure that, at best, will resemble the Soviets’ feckless abandonment of its puppet “allies” in 1988. At worst, the U.S. exit may yet resemble the humiliating, frenetic scramble to evacuate the U.S. embassy during the Fall of Saigon in 1975. Notwithstanding the foregoing, the old adage “better late then never” still applies. Those who allowed for these egregious violations of DoD-sponsored Islamophobia to take place must face stern and swift discipline for their complicity in the dissemination of bigoted disinformation that has placed American lives at dire risk. It is too late to regain lost ground on the Afghan war front. By ordering this comprehensive review for "taught hatred," General Dempsey is signaling that within the Department of Defense he is apparently and allegedly serious about defending Constitutionally-guaranteed American civil rights and values. The General so signals with the easy currency of words. It’s yet to be seen whether these mere words will be followed, as is rarely the case in these "religious" matters at the Pentagon, with the substantive and true coin of the realm; deeds.