Category Archives: Military

Looking on the bright side of the U.S. military cuts

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From here:

WASHINGTON — Lawmakers are lining up to decry an US Army plan to cut 40,000 and shrink the size of the force from 490,000 to 450,000 by 2018.

[……]

Sen. John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called the Army’s plan a “dangerous consequence of budget-driven strategy.”

“With global instability only increasing, and with just 33 percent of the Army’s brigade combat teams ready for deployment and decisive operations, there is simply no strategic basis to cut Army force structure below the pre-9/11 level of 490,000,” McCain said.

The bright side is that, although 40,000 soldiers will be fired, none of them will be transsexuals, since the military is lifting the ban on them. So all will be well: the enemy will be laughing so hard, they’ll be much easier to shoot. And think of the financial savings in having shared toilets.

WASHINGTON — Pentagon leaders are finalizing plans aimed at lifting the ban on transgender individuals in the military, with the goal of formally ending one of the last gender- or sexuality-based barriers to military service, senior U.S. officials told The Associated Press.

Partnered homosexual Anglican priest is head chaplain in Canada’s military

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From here:

In his new job as head chaplain in the military, Brig.-Gen. John Fletcher will be overseeing the religious needs of Canada’s troops, shoring up what the Defence Department calls its chaplaincy’s “inclusive, welcoming culture.”

As an openly gay member of the military and Anglican priest for more than two decades, it’s an environment Fletcher has benefitted from firsthand.

His recent appointment is in sharp contrast to past military policy, which allowed discrimination against gays and lesbians. Fletcher said he came out not long after a landmark court decision struck down the rule in 1992, alleviating his fears about what could happen to his career if he did come out.

Fletcher acknowledges that some may find it odd, or even scandalous, that he is a career military man, a priest and homosexual.

“I equally understand that some people will be excited and encouraged by the openness of my own church, to allow me to exercise this ministry and certainly encouraged that I’m free to work within a Canadian military that simply doesn’t discriminate on (the basis of) these things,” he said.

What strikes me as odd about this article is not the presence of a homosexual Anglican priest – something whose shock value is now rather less than the increasingly rare instance of encountering a heterosexual Anglican priest – but that the Defence Department is busy cultivating a chaplaincy that emphasises an “inclusive, welcoming culture.”

I was labouring under the misapprehension that the job of the military was to train men to kill other men in defence of their country; the chaplain’s job, I thought, was to try and  prepare soldiers for a premature introduction to their Maker by encouraging them to get to know him beforehand.

This brief description of chaplains in action strikes me as more convincing than today’s  warm, mushy, welcoming culture of inclusion version:

I frequently noted in the field, how chaplains – to a man – sought out front line action. And I assume that was because, as one put it, at the time: ‘There is where the fighting man needs God most – and that’s where some of them know him for the first time. – U.S.M.C. Commandant A.A. Vandegrift, 1945

Onward Druid soldiers

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From here:

The face of the military is changing.

What used to be seen as a bastion for evangelical Christianity is now expanding its lists of faiths to include Wiccans and Druids.

At the Air Force Academy in Colorado, a prayer circle and veritable Stonehenge on the Rockies will now serve as a place of worship for the academy’s neo-Pagans.

The Colorado school has long faced criticism for only supporting evangelical Christianity.

Lt Gen Michael Gould, the academy’s superintendent, said before a ribbon cutting ceremony on the site on Tuesday: ‘This outdoor worship space is something we have created to help people of all religions.’

According to the Colorado Springs Gazette, the academy is home to about ten cadets who regularly attend ‘earth-centred’ worship groups which include New Age religion, paganism, Wicca, druids and ancient Norse beliefs……

The Rev David Oringdreff, who heads a Wiccan congregation in Texas, offered prayers at Tuesday’s ceremony and said: ‘Nowhere except for the United States of America would this be possible.’

Rowan Williams has expressed no discomfort whatsoever over this.

What should be the military be pre-occupied with while at war?

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Cross dressing, of course.

From here:

As U.S. politicians continue to debate whether to let gays serve openly in the American military, the Canadian Forces have issued a new policy detailing how the organization should accommodate transsexual and transvestite troops specifically. Soldiers, sailors and air force personnel who change their sex or sexual identity have a right to privacy and respect around that decision, but must conform to the dress code of their “target” gender, says the supplementary chapter of a military administration manual.