{"id":185683,"date":"2014-09-07T20:06:00","date_gmt":"2014-09-08T01:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/09\/07\/the-talibaptists-have-seized-the-usaf\/"},"modified":"2014-09-07T20:06:00","modified_gmt":"2014-09-08T01:06:00","slug":"the-talibaptists-have-seized-the-usaf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/09\/07\/the-talibaptists-have-seized-the-usaf\/","title":{"rendered":"The Talibaptists Have Seized the USAF"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Airforce is refusing to allow an athiest airman to reenlist unless he includes “Under God” in his oath<\/a>:<\/p>\n

An unnamed airman in the United States Air Force wants to continue to serve his country. Yet, the Air Force reportedly told him that his service is unwanted unless he swears an oath that concludes with the religious affirmation \u201cso help me God.\u201d According to the Air Force Times, the airman crossed out the words \u201cso help me God\u201d when he signed his reenlistment contract. He was subsequently told that he must either swear this religious oath or leave the service.<\/span>

<\/span> In justifying this decision, an Air Force spokesperson pointed to a federal law, which requires \u201c[e]ach person enlisting in an armed force\u201d to take an oath that concludes with the four words this airman finds objectionable. He did agree to the other portions of the oath, which includes a promise to \u201csupport and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic,\u201d and to \u201cobey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is clearly unconstitutional, as there is exhaustive judicial precedent saying that the government cannot coerce a person to profess belief, but this does not matter to the Air Force.<\/p>\n

The US military in general, and USAF in particular, have been infiltrated by right wing Evangelicals looking to create an “Army of God”, and this is just an early consequence.<\/p>\n

Here is the Military Religious Freedom Foundation’s take on this is well worth reading as well<\/a>.  In particular, they note that the legislation in question which the Air Force is siting to exclude this airman allows for a simple affirmation:<\/p>\n

Regrettably, this truly horrific scenario is indeed the case within the United States Air Force (USAF). Just the other day, the USAF public affairs office at the Pentagon informed the world that \u201cReciting \u2018So help me God\u2019 in its official reenlistment and commissioning oaths is a statutory requirement under 10 U.S.C. \u00a7502\u201c. In short, you had better repent and swear your oath to \u201cGod\u201d or be gone. Interestingly, that just cited U.S. Code provision (which the Air Force is pathetically using to support its \u201csorry, our hands are tied\u201d position of abject cowardice here) also makes it clear that armed forces members may \u201caffirm\u201d, in lieu of swearing, this enlistment or commissioning oath. When one \u201caffirms\u201d such an oath of office, there is NO need to \u201cswear\u201d to \u201cGod\u201d to do so. Such is the very distinction between \u201cswearing and affirming.\u201d 10 U.S.C. \u00a7502 allows either to be done by the enlisting or commissioning Air Force member. The USAF\u2019s transparent duplicity and specious motivations for basing its new decision to force service members to swear to God are dangerous, disingenuous and despicable.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Your mouth to \u2026\u2026\u2026 Well, you get the idea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Airforce is refusing to allow an athiest airman to reenlist unless he includes “Under God” in his oath: An unnamed airman in the United States Air Force wants to continue to serve his country. Yet, the Air Force reportedly told him that his service is unwanted unless he swears an oath that concludes with …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[971,970,1006,1021],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-rights","category-corruption","category-military","category-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185683"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185683\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}