re: Atheist airman must swear 'so help me God' or get out in November

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This is bull shite and should not be allowed at first glance of me looking at this. I hope there's more to this story.

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I will tell you what the "more to this story" piece is - the Air Force is by far the most evangelical of the services and has been that way for generations. It's also no accident that they fairly consistently are some of the biggest war hawks, if not the biggest, in the American military. The Air Force Academy is actually particularly bad about this BS.

I must have administered the oath of enlistment dozens of times, and I always very specifically asked the enlistee whether he wanted to include that phrase before I administered it. It is both common courtesy and was policy in every unit I was in in the Army (not sure if that was/is Dept of Army policy or not). I mean, I was infantry, and I - and every decent NCO and junior officer I knew - knew damn well where the line was not to be crossed with stuff like this. Ironic considering the odds of one of us getting killed was about infinite times higher than all but about 0.01% of AF personnel.

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they have to over-compensate for all their "hard work"

ETA: fine example of when people don't have enough to do they will start stirring up shite. In this case it applies to the whole damned service.

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I am in a pissing-match mood with the AF in the last few weeks after heaving finished most of Robert Gates' Duty. Gates, himself a former AF officer, absolutely excoriates some of the AF senior leadership for trying every trick in the book to divert resources and energy within the Pentagon from current conflicts to theoretical future conflicts. Not coincidentally, those often involve huge AF procurement lines and AF pet babies that they were reluctant to give up for Army and Marine grunts getting their legs and heads blown off on the daily in Baghdad and Kunar. China being the next big bogeyman, obviously, so of course we need 1,000 F-35's, nevermind that China has hardly even touched our 4th gen fighters.

I had always sort of gotten that feeling, but Gates spelling it out just confirmed it for me.

You can open a newspaper about every six months and read about some ridiculous evangelical type BS from the USAFA or the AF officer corps. I am a conservative and not an atheist, and it pisses me the frick off.

I spent my last eighteen months or so in the infantry at a unit that was under the purview of PACOM. All we were hearing from our (super) senior leadership - the generals and the Pentagon - was that it was the great return conventional warfare and that we needed to re-learn all the skills supposedly forgotten from 2001 - 2011. We did exercise after exercise with the Australians, Koreans, Japanese, Thai, Singaporeans, etc, etc anticipating some great future conflict where these idiots could win medals at NTC. Nevermind that every single Army officer at Major General and below (that I knew) thought that was complete bull crap and that we would be fighting hybrid insurgencies/state-supported forces for the next generation or two.

What happens? ISIS - the exact amalgamation of what intelligent ground force officers and NCO's - USMC, Army, and SOCOM - thought future enemies would be comes tearing out of nowhere about six months ago. In addition you have the pro-Russian Ukrainian insurgency with Russian "advisers" in the east there.

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The Air Force is run by a bunch of fundamentalists who have been trying to cram religion down the throats of the troops for decades. frick them. I'm glad to see someone calling them out.

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Pretty much.

You don't see this out of the ground forces. I had a battalion commander who was very open about his beliefs - in country, while in active combat - to the point of being nearly evangelical. The company commanders, first sergeants, platoon leaders, and platoon sergeants put an end to that ish with a quickness.

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There are no atheists in foxholes.

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I'm no military expert but I don't think there's a whole lot of airmen in foxholes either

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There are no atheists in foxholes.

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I had two in my unit in Vietnam, no foxholes - mostly a swampy bog. One of them went kia, he was a good guy.

I'm curious if he also refuses to use U.S. currency because it all has "In God We Trust" on it?

Just how deep are his convictions?

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The Air Force is run by a bunch of fundamentalists who have been trying to cram religion down the throats of the troops for decades. frick them. I'm glad to see someone calling them out.


Pretty much.

You don't see this out of the ground forces. I had a battalion commander who was very open about his beliefs - in country, while in active combat - to the point of being nearly evangelical. The company commanders, first sergeants, platoon leaders, and platoon sergeants put an end to that ish with a quickness

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.

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they have to over-compensate for all their "hard work"

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Didn't score high enough on the ASVAB to enter the Air Force, why the assholery?

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Ironic considering the odds of one of us getting killed was about infinite times higher than all but about 0.01% of AF personnel.

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Unless the big nuclear war comes.

Then your chances would have been slightly better. (more than zero is better than zero).

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There are no atheists in foxholes.

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Here is a prime example of anti-atheist bigotry.

Are you actually so arrogant as to think I would spend the last few moments of my one life converting to your beliefs? Sorry bub! If I'm on my death bed and someone tries to read me my last rites he'd better hope I can't lift a fist into the air.