creeping
via Washington Times.
A recent Wall Street Journal article described the U.S. Army’s
final-draft handbook, which indoctrinates our military personnel heading
to Afghanistan in how to be sensitive to and accept Muslim and Afghan
7th-century customs and values — or possibly be killed by our Afghan
partners.
Unbelievable. This is being done to prevent the so-called “green-on-blue” attacks, which have cost 63 American lives this year.
According to the Army’s Combined Arms Center at Ft. Leavenworth,
Kan., it is our military’s ignorance and lack of empathy for Muslim and
Afghan cultural norms that is the basic cause for our Afghan military
partners to react violently and kill our troops.
For example, if our military personnel hear or witness an Afghan
soldier sodomizing a young boy, the handbook tells U.S. service members
to voice no objection, accept it or ignore it, or they could be killed.
If an Afghan beats, rapes or kills a woman in the presence of a U.S.
serviceman, they are not to interfere or stand up for women’s rights or
else they might be killed.
What the Army is saying, in effect, is that if Afghan partners
conduct violence against U.S. service personnel, it is the serviceman’s
fault. This is mind-boggling. We know, according to former Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, that nine out of 10 Afghan
military personnel are illiterate and cannot be counted on in combat.
Endemic corruption is embedded in Afghan culture and certainly extends
to their military. They cannot be trusted.
Other cultural norms our professional U.S. military must accept
without reservation by our Afghan partners is desertion, drug use,
thievery, dog torture and collusion with the enemy, the Taliban. Also,
U.S. military members must not discuss Islam in any form.
All of this guidance is un-American. It is totally against our core
principles and everything we stand for as Americans. It threatens to
further diminish our military principles, stature and fighting spirit.
As columnist Diana West stated in a recent article, if this handbook
directive is implemented, we will be forcing our military to submit to
Islam and its governing Shariah law or die — exactly the choice offered
to infidels who have been vanquished by jihad. Our military’s silence
and acquiescence would be the humiliating price for their existence.
This should be seen as another attempt to undercut our professional
military and our warrior reputation that has guaranteed our freedom and
way of life for the past 236 years.
None of this humiliating guidance should come as a surprise. The
Obama administration has had a massive purge under way to remove all
training manuals, lectures and instructors who link Islamic doctrine and
its governing Shariah law in a factual way to Islamic terrorism. These
manuals are being removed from all government agencies, including the
Department of Defense and intelligence agencies. All our training
manuals have been purged of the true nature of the threat from Islam and
Shariah.
The degrading of our military’s fundamental principles should be
viewed in a much broader perspective. We cannot overlook the fact that
with or without sequestration, we are unilaterally disarming our
military force. This is happening in spite of an uncertain world
situation with the Mideast still in a state of turmoil and evolving
threats posed by China, Russia and Iran.
Separately, we see our First Amendment rights being trashed by our
secretary of state through her participation in the Istanbul Process
championed by the 57-member-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation
(OIC). The OIC is sponsoring a United Nations mandate that would make it
a crime to express anything they consider blasphemous against Islam or
the Prophet Muhammad. This same theme was expressed by President Obama
in his September speech to the U.N. General Assembly in New York.
If these attacks on America’s exceptionalism and core principles are
collectively analyzed, it appears that there is an insidious agenda at
work to fundamentally change America. All of these negative factors must
be challenged and defeated. As a first step, the Army’s draft handbook
should be trashed.
Second, Congress must take positive action to protect our First
Amendment rights and force the Obama administration to withdraw from any
further participation in the Istanbul Process. Third, the unilateral
disarmament of our military must be reversed. It’s time for members of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff to take a position that supports the oath they
took to protect and defend our Constitution.
Retired Adm. James A. Lyons was commander in chief of the U.S.
Pacific Fleet and senior U.S. military representative to the United
Nations.
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