West Point Cadet Quits

[Minimalist]

Because of xtian scumbags running the academy.

http://www.wtsp.com/news/national/articl...y=obinsite

West Point cadet Blake Page says there is one other unspoken pillar at the United States Military Academy: religion.

That's why, with just five months left before graduation, Page quit.

And he did it in a most public fashion - in a fiery blog post.

"The tipping point of my decision to resign was the realization that countless officers here and throughout the military are guilty of blatantly violating the oaths they swore to defend the Constitution," wrote Page, 24, in The Huffington Post.

"These men and women are criminals, complicit in light of day defiance of the Uniform Code of Military Justice through unconstitutional proselytism, discrimination against the non-religious and establishing formal policies to reward, encourage and even at times require sectarian religious participation. These transgressions are nearly always committed in the name of fundamentalist evangelical Christianity."

"We have the Christian Taliban running amok unchecked in the technologically most lethal organization ever recorded in human kind," Weinstein said about religion and the military. "There's no problem except that we have a small document called the Constitution that separates state and religion."

[Jackalope]

I don't know how widespread the practice is, but my personal experience in the US Army was that some commands at the platoon or company level encouraged participation in church services, and those that didn't go would be assigned to do work on Sunday.

It's a shitty practice, but I went along with it, because an hour napping in church beat the fuck out of cleaning latrines.

[Minimalist]

an hour napping in church beat the fuck out of cleaning latrines.

Either way - you are still dealing with shit.

[Jackalope]

an hour napping in church beat the fuck out of cleaning latrines.

Either way - you are still dealing with shit.

I don't know, Min, I nap pretty soundly.

[jonb]

In all the military circles I know your first allegiance is to your unit, not some airy fairy philosophical ideas you may personally hold, you would have to be a fat head in that environment to say I am different from all you chaps. To me this sounds more like the story of a cadet that could not cut it.

[Angrboda]

In all the military circles I know your first allegiance is to your unit, not some airy fairy philosophical ideas you may personally hold, you would have to be a fat head in that environment to say I am different from all you chaps. To me this sounds more like the story of a cadet that could not cut it.

That sounds like, from your perspective, there could never be authentic testimony of this kind. That according to your way of assessing it, it's automatically false and untrue.

[Minimalist]

In all the military circles I know your first allegiance is to your unit, not some airy fairy philosophical ideas you may personally hold, you would have to be a fat head in that environment to say I am different from all you chaps. To me this sounds more like the story of a cadet that could not cut it.

This kind of happy horseshit has been going on since reports back in 2004 at the Air Force Academy.

http://newspoodle.posterous.com/us-soldi...ing-christ

http://baltimorechronicle.com/2007/122207Leopold.shtml

http://christianfighterpilot.com/blog/tag/evangelism/

http://www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org/...ating.html

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/...MLLXndiJE4

http://www.loonwatch.com/2010/05/islamop...r-concern/

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archive...018101.php


Apparently there are a lot of people who can't "cut it" I guess.

[Tiberius]

I too have my doubts about this story, but not because of the allegiance thing. I read in one article that this guy may be footed the bill for his education, which was (at least in part) paid for by the government on the agreement that after graduating he would go into the military. It strikes me as very odd that someone would choose to get into massive amounts of debt in order to make a public statement like this.

Indeed, according to the same article, this student had been equally vocal during his time at West Point. He even says that he managed to get good feedback from some of the highly ranked members of staff:

In response to this utter nonsense, and much more, I initiated an Equal Opportunity investigation earlier this semester. I have received nothing but positive responses from the chain of command since then.

Seems to me like things were starting to go his way, albeit very slowly. His sudden decision to leave when he only had 5 months left just seems very odd, given that the punishments for it vastly outweigh the annoyances of staying. It's not like he was being physical abused because of his atheism; the worst things that seemed to happen was verbal abuse (like you don't get that in the military anyway).

So I'm highly skeptical that this is the only side of the story,

[jonb]

I personally would not cut it as a soldier. Military training is ultimately about battle readiness, the last thing you want is the trooper next to you wondering if this fighting is morally justifiable you need that soldier to act.
Because of this all the military training I know about is about breaking the individual down so much that they just view themselves as part of the team (as much as possible) and will act as such. This means whatever affiliations a cadet may have on entering the armed forces are kicked the shit out of.
Often civilians have a nice picture of war where one side shoots the other and they die. On the battlefield there are parts of people, some of them still conscious, screening for their mothers burning and dying in terrible pain which can take days. And one is your best mate, but you have got go and do your bit, and you have to go off and stab an enemy soldier in the face with your bayonet, because he won't get out your way, because he is just a kid and knows no better. All you need to get ready for that is a few goes on the playstation, and we can all keep our nice morals intact.
Yes the training leads to abuses, that you get a little clique, that will abuse their positions to force an agenda on those around them. Most military forces struggle with this in one way or another, the best can take time to identify it the worst don't bother, because the outlawing of the conditions that the cliques thrive in, are also the conditions that the military need to make the soldier battle ready.

I think this guy was probably singled out for his atheism, in fact I would be surprised if he were not, just as it would surprise me if a strong catholic or any other way of thinking was not abused in just the same way. That is what being a soldier is about.

[Minimalist]

Perhaps he does not want to be forced to interact with jesus freaks with guns every day for 20 years, Divi Tiberio?

The radical evangelism in the military is a well-documented problem.