{"id":230304,"date":"2021-03-27T07:17:51","date_gmt":"2021-03-27T07:17:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=230304"},"modified":"2021-03-28T08:14:52","modified_gmt":"2021-03-28T08:14:52","slug":"marine-corps-officer-warns-congress-against-classifying-christians-in-military-as-religious-extremists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=230304","title":{"rendered":"Marine Corps Officer Warns Congress Against Classifying Christians in Military as \u2018Religious Extremists\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mark Tapscott \u2013 Epoch Times March 24, 2021<\/strong><\/h1>\n
\"\"<\/a>

Guarding Washington against the threat posed by Christians<\/p><\/div>\n

A slide used in a Department of Defense (DOD) training manual identifies Catholics<\/a> and evangelical Christians as \u201creligious extremists,\u201d along with members of the Ku Klux Klan, al-Qaeda, and Hamas, according to a Marine Corps officer.<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst Liberty also obtained a screenshot of an unclassified slide from a U.S. Army training manual. The slide is entitled \u2018Religious Extremism\u2019 and it purports to identify religious extremists,\u201d Michael Berry told the House Armed Services Committee, during a hearing<\/a>\u00a0on March 24 titled \u201cExtremism in the Military.\u201d<\/p>\n

Berry is general counsel to the First Liberty Institute<\/a> (FLI), a Plano, Texas-based public interest law firm that specializes in First Amendment and religious freedom cases. Berry is also an officer in the Marine Corps Reserves, although he presented his testimony in his capacity as a civilian.<\/p>\n

\u201cIncluded among those listed are al-Qaeda, Hamas, and the Ku Klux Klan as groups that use or advocate violence to accomplish their objectives and are therefore rightly classified as extremists,\u201d Berry told the committee.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut also included are Evangelical Christianity and Catholicism, who most assuredly do not advocate violence. Surely, the fact that Evangelical Christians and Catholics hold fast to millennia-old views on marriage and human sexuality does not make them extremists who are unfit to serve.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt a time of turmoil and instability, during which our nation faces many external threats, [this] message is inappropriate and offensive to our service members and those they defend.\u201d<\/p>\n

The training manual that Berry referred to is used in Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin<\/a>\u2019s recently ordered \u201cstand-down\u201d to identify and root out extremists in the U.S. military. Austin\u2019s order came in the wake of the Jan. 6 breach of the U.S. Capitol, in which some of the participants were military veterans.<\/p>\n

Austin said, in a DOD video<\/a> explaining his reasons for the stand-down that all military members in each of the branches are required to view, that \u201cthere is not a single doubt in my mind that you take seriously your oath to the Constitution and that you serve this country with honor and dignity and character.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even so, according to Austin in the video, the stand-down is needed because of \u201cextremism and extremist ideology, views, and conduct that runs counter to everything that we believe in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Austin claimed in the video that the presence of extremist views \u201cis not new to our country and, sadly, it\u2019s not new to our military.\u201d He didn\u2019t provide in the video any examples of such individuals.<\/p>\n

The training materials used in Austin\u2019s stand-down and presented by Berry during the hearing purported to present credible descriptions of extremist ideologies, conduct, reasoning, and identifying characteristics.<\/p>\n

Committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-Wash.) told the hearing in his opening statement: \u201cIf you serve in the military, you pledge an oath to the U.S. Constitution and to the laws of this country. If you disagree with that Constitution and you disagree with the laws of this country so strongly that you no longer think our government is legitimate, then you have no business serving in the U.S. military and you should get out now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two issues were particularly prominent in witness testimony and committee members\u2019 comments, the lack of credible data about the extent of any extremism in the ranks, and the lack of what constitutes impermissible expression of views and actions on behalf of those views.<\/p>\n

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), the panel\u2019s top Republican, told the hearing at the outset that \u201cit is important to point out that we lack any concrete evidence that violent extremism is as rife in the military as some commentators claim.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rogers said \u201cextremism was a factor\u201d in the separation of only nine soldiers from the U.S. Army in 2020, and he noted that \u201csince 2018, 17 Marines have been separated for extremism, gang or separatist activities.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s 17 out of 200,000. While I agree that this number ought to be zero, this is far from the largest military justice issue facing our armed services,\u201d Rogers said.<\/p>\n

\u201cEarlier this year, 151 overwhelmingly liberal organizations, including Human Rights Watch, the ACLU, and SPLC Action [Southern Poverty Law Center Action Fund], urged Congress not to expand domestic terrorism charges.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe organizations said, \u2018We urge you to oppose any new domestic terrorism charge, the creation of a list of designated domestic terrorist organizations, or other expansion of existing terrorism-related authorities.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The committee heard from only two other witnesses, Audrey Kurth Cronin, an American University professor of international security, and Lecia Brooks, chief of staff for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a liberal advocacy group often criticized by conservatives for defining \u201cextremism\u201d so broadly as to include conventional political groups that clearly are not.<\/p>\n

The newest Republican member of the committee, Rep. Pat Fallon of Texas, pointed out that \u201crecently the Washington Post, the New York Times, Politico, NPR, and the New Yorker magazine, just to name a few, skewered the SPLC for, among other things, corruption, harassment, racism, and a widening credibility gap.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fallon also noted that Cronin claimed 37 of those arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 breach of the U.S. Capitol were either U.S. military veterans or reservists.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are 18 million U.S. military veterans. Thirty-four were rioters. This means that 17,999,966 of us were not. That\u2019s one out of 529,000,\u201d Fallon said.<\/p>\n

Smith rejected Fallon\u2019s comments, however, as \u201clogically absurd\u201d because veterans arrested during or after the Jan. 6 riot don\u2019t represent the full scope of the problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t know how large a problem this is. That\u2019s why we\u2019re having this hearing,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n

Cronin told the committee in response to a question from Rep. Jim Langevin (D-R.I.) that recruitment efforts by extremist groups targeting active and retired military individuals \u201cis indeed becoming an increasing problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked by Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) for his view on the use of lists of prohibited organizations, Berry said: \u201cThey can be dangerous. Labeling evangelical Christians and Catholics as \u2018extremists\u2019 is opening Pandora\u2019s box.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.) expressed concern that a DOD effort against extremism will play into the hands of Chinese Communist Party efforts to damage the U.S.\u2019s image overseas.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is an active propaganda campaign being prosecuted by the Chinese Communist Party right now attempting to portray our country as an evil racist hellscape with no authority to lecture them on human rights. I worry that we may be playing into our adversary\u2019s hands, and I do worry it will undermine our ability to fight and win wars in the future,\u201d Waltz said.<\/p>\n

Smith concluded the hearing by saying \u201cthere are demagogues on both sides\u201d and that he \u201cis very concerned about over-reactions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we are targeting people and shutting them off from jobs and everything for something they said 20 years ago. There\u2019s no reference point, no structure to that and it becomes just this excuse to shove your point of view down somebody\u2019s throat,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A slide used in a Department of Defense (DOD) training manual identifies Catholics and evangelical Christians as \u201creligious extremists. You can imagine the uproar if the DOD classified Jews \u2018religious extremists\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-230304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Current_Affairs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=230304"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":230326,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230304\/revisions\/230326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=230304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=230304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=230304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}