The Patriot Post - Alexander's Column 10-31-2013

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The Patriot Post - Alexander's Column 10-31-2013
From The Federalist Patriot
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Obama's AFA Oath Omissions
The End Run on Faith in the Military

By Mark Alexander

Oct. 31, 2013

“While we are zealously performing the duties of good citizens and soldiers, we certainly ought not to be inattentive to the higher duties of religion. To the distinguished character of Patriot, it should be our highest glory to add the more distinguished character of Christian.” –George Washington’s General Orders (1775)

Editor’s Note: This column is a substantial update on The Patriot Digest report last week regarding the Obama administration’s effort to remove “So help me God” from all military oaths.

I began this week as I usually do, with a Monday morning visit to my 90-year-old father, a retired naval aviator and member of the Greatest Generation1. He’s always interested in current events, especially the latest on what he accurately labels “Obama’s socialist effort to nationalize healthcare.”

In a discussion with him about my column topic, the real story behind an effort to remove “So help me God” from an oath at the Air Force Academy, he smiled and said, “I have something for you.” He disappeared for a minute and returned with a small pocket Bible, which was presented to him at his naval commissioning ceremony 70 years ago. He had come across this little New Testament while cleaning out a drawer, and he set it aside knowing I would appreciate it.

And appreciate it I do.

On a dedication page prior to the title page, there was a printed inscription from Franklin D. Roosevelt:

“As Commander-in-Chief, I take pleasure in commending the reading of the Bible to all who serve in the armed forces of the United States. Throughout the centuries men of many faiths and diverse origins have found in the Sacred Book words of wisdom, counsel and inspiration. It is a fountain of strength and now, as always, an aid in attaining the highest aspirations of the human soul.”

Indeed.

This past weekend, you may have heard news reports about the Air Force Academy2 being pressured to remove “So help me God3” from its Cadet Honor Oath.

What you have not heard is that on the page facing the Honor Oath in “Contrails,” the Academy’s official handbook, “So help me God” has already been removed from the more important Cadet and Officer oaths. (Click to View4)

As I first reported last May in “Obama’s Frontal Assault on Faith,” until 2011, the AFA handbook contained “So help me God” in bold letters after the Cadet and Officer oaths. However, under the watch of former AFA Superintendent, Lt. Gen. Mike Gould (who retired in July 2013), those words were removed from the Class of 2015 handbooks, and are absent in all subsequent year editions of Contrails. (Last we checked, the cadet and officer oaths at the Naval Academy and West Point had not been altered.)

In 2012, when I asked the AFA’s Public Affairs Office who had ordered the removal and why, the PAO dodged the question for two days, then on the third request responded tersely that I could file a “Freedom of Information Act” request if I wanted to know anything more. In other words: “Take a hike.” (An FOIA for all communications related to this omission is being processed.)

The current challenge to the Cadet Honor Oath wording was filed by ultra-leftist Michael Weinstein by way of his so-called “Military Religious Freedom Foundation” (MRFF). Ostensibly, Weinstein’s objection relates to a complaint about a poster that listed the Cadet Honor Oath with its closing words, “So help me God.”

But Weinstein’s target is much bigger than the AFA Honor Oath. Read on…

Weinstein, who was tapped by Obama earlier this year to “consult” with DoD on faith expression in the military, is little more than a proxy for the Obama regime, a surrogate doing the bidding of the most faith-intolerant administration5 in the history of our Republic. According to the Washington Post6, Weinstein claimed that Christian “proselytizing” is a “national security threat,” adding, “What is happening is a spiritual rape. … It is sedition and treason. It should be punished.” 1.

Of course, if any military officer publicly suggested that this all-out attack on religious faith was part of his commander in chief’s agenda, they would face a court-martial. However, off the record, I have spoken to many command-level officers who believe this is precisely Obama’s aim.

Weinstein, himself an AFA graduate (Class of ‘77), and author of “One Man’s War Against an Evangelical Coup in America’s Military,” has been an enemy of public faith expression for his whole career.

He first sued the Air Force in 2005 for failing to prevent “religious proselytizing,” claiming:

“What you’ve got is a lusty and thriving religious intolerance that is objectively manifesting itself in prejudice and discrimination and is obliterating the First Amendment, civil rights and the US Constitution. There are senior people that view evangelical Christianity at the Air Force Academy the way that you and I would view gravity. Pick up a pen and drop it and it falls on the desk. Well, it just exists, it’s gravity.”

But U.S. District Judge James Parker dismissed the case, noting:

“No Plaintiff claims to have personally experienced any of the things described under 'Factual Allegations’ … while at the Academy or after leaving the Academy. Not a single Plaintiff has alleged any personal factual situation that has allegedly impinged on that Plaintiff’s constitutional rights since the Plaintiff left the Academy.”

Weinstein got little traction for his faith persecutions until Obama’s election in 2008, which paved the way for him to become the primary nemesis of faith expression in the military.

Within a month of Obama’s inauguration in 2009, Weinstein met with Air Force Chief of Staff Norton A. Schwartz, who was confirmed by the Democrat-controlled Senate on August 12, 2008 (and served until August 10, 2012, when he was replaced by Gen. Mark A. Welsh). Weinstein said that Schwartz “acknowledged that there [was] a problem” regarding religious freedom in the military.

To get a sense of the depth of Weinstein’s hatred of our military’s faith traditions, later in 2009 he blamed the Fort Hood massacre by Islamist Nidal Malik Hasan7 on proselytizing by “fundamentalist Christians.”

In 2010, the year “So help me God” was removed from the AFA Officer and Cadet oaths, Weinstein said he had developed a cozy relationship with then-AFA Superintendent Lt. Gen. Mike Gould. Weinstein claimed he and Gould devised a secret codeword to ensure he could have quick access to Gould at any time.

“We have our own bat-signal,” he boasted. (For the record, I have met Mike Gould through several national security briefings and would have a difficult time believing that he and Weinstein were in collusion.)

That was also the year Weinstein applauded Obama’s repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” which significantly constrained any religious views to the contrary. 2.

In 2011, Weinstein demanded and received an apology from AFA Commandant of Cadets Brig. Gen. Richard Clark for authorizing cadet support of “Operation Christmas Child,” which assembles and fills millions of shoeboxes with toys, school supplies and other gifts for impoverished children in 130 countries. Weinstein objected because OCC places a Christian tract in those boxes.

In 2012, Weinstein pressed the Pentagon to end the sale of military-themed Holman Christian Standard Bibles, claiming they were a “national security threat.”

Clearly, Weinstein and the MRFF are dedicated to freedom from religion, not our constitutionally enshrined freedom of religion.

So, what is the Obama/MRFF strategy at the Air Force Academy?