For years there have been reports of unwanted Christian proselytizing at the Air Force Academy.
In 2005 the Washington Post reported:
A military study of the religious climate at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs found several examples of religious intolerance, insensitivity and inappropriate proselytizing on the part of Air Force officers and cadets, but a report issued yesterday at the Pentagon concluded that the school is not overtly discriminatory and has made improvements in recent months.How much improvement was made? In 2010 CBS reported that 41% of non-Christians were still being harassed with Christian proselytizing, and overall 19% were subjected to proselytizing. More than 2000 cadets (almost half) participated in the poll.
In 2013 some staff members at the Academy still think they have the right to proselytize to anyone they damn well wants to, even Jews who don't want to hear it.
So, what has the effect of Christian proselytizing been on the ethics and morals of the Air Force?
An Air Force general who oversaw three wings of ICBMs was recently fired for a drunken bender in Moscow. He was also "spending time" with two foreign women, a serious security breach.
Cheating is rampant in the Air Force Missile Corps. The men who control our nuclear arsenal give each other the answers to questions on tests that are supposed to make sure that these men don't make any mistakes. The officers complain that the standards are too high, and the penalties for failure are unreasonable.
It's sort of weird that these guys to whine about making little mistakes: they're working with nuclear missiles! The penalties for making those same mistakes with the real missiles could be instantly annihilating themselves with a nuclear detonation, starting a nuclear war with China and Russia, destroying all of civilization, and maybe even killing off humanity.
Perhaps the real problem is that the nuclear mission is obsolete, according to Bruce Blair, of Princeton. The Cold War ended 20 years ago, and these nuclear weapons seem kind of pointless, making morale in the nuclear officer corps very low. Most of our nuclear weapons are pointed at Russia and China, and the chance that we will go to war with those two countries seems increasingly remote in this highly interconnected world economy.
The only countries that want nuclear weapons are nut jobs like North Korea, and countries that want to pump up their self-image and status like Pakistan and Iran.
The rest of us would just as soon be rid of the damned things.
5 comments:
“I’ve always said that I don’t respect people who don’t proselytize. I don’t respect that at all. If you believe that there’s a heaven and hell and people could be going to hell, or not getting eternal life, or whatever, and you think “it’s not really worth telling them this because it would make it socially awkward” — and atheists who think you shouldn’t proselytize, “keep your religion to yourself” — how much do you have to hate somebody to not proselytize? How much do you have to hate somebody to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them that?
“I mean, if I believed beyond a shadow of a doubt that a truck was coming at you and you didn’t believe it, that truck was bearing down on you, there’s a certain point where I tackle you; and this is more important than that.”
— Penn Jillette, Magician, Atheist
Most of our nuclear weapons are pointed at Russia and China, and the chance that we will go to war with those two countries seems increasingly remote in this highly interconnected world economy.
If you read history you would see that some very smart people of the time were saying much the same thing about Europe less than 10 years before the start of WWI.
I certainly hope that we don't end up in such a war, but that doesn't mean it can't happen.
N: It's sort of weird that these guys to whine about making little mistakes: they're working with nuclear missiles!
You would not believe the amount of nonsense they have to put up with, not to mention the fact that they have been pretty much the ugly red-headed stepchild for almost 2 decades. It's incredibly boring duty out in the middle of nowhere, with nothing to do except for drills and tests where failure is not an option. It doesn't surprise me that morale is low. It wasn't very high when I was in, and duty at missile bases was avoided if at all possible. The then-extent SAC took the rather reasonable view that anything relate to nukes must be done as perfectly as possible. Down to the point that radios had to be aligned to ridiculous standards. If high standards are good, then crazy-high standards must be better, and it permeated everything whether it made any sense or not. IIRC, allowable distortion in the radios was 1/3 what the human ear was capable of hearing. Equipment was bolted into the racks with a fucking torque wrench to exactly 32 pounds (at least that's the number that sticks in my mind after all these years). The bolts couldn't just be tightened. Stressful inspections, and yet everyone knew that a lot of it was Mickey Mouse bullshit micro-management by a bureaucracy run amok, with paperwork to match. It's only gotten worse over the years, I've heard. Because of low re-enlistment rates of people in jobs related to missiles and their support, they were kind of a black hole of careers because your next PCS would likely be to another missile base, and another one after that. Not always, it all depended on needs of the service at any given moment, but that was the way to bet.
I also blame a declining level of honesty and broader acceptance of immoral behaviour in general. Too many young people feel about laws and regulations the same way as Markadelphia feels about his religion. They'll use what they think will work for them at the moment and ignore the rest. And what works for them will change depending upon the moment. Part of the problem is the ever-expanding set of laws and regulations that must be obeyed. Once people begin breaking silly, stupid laws, then breaking more reasonable isn't such a big step. Also, since going back to school, I've noticed a significant drop in standards from 30+ years ago. Some of the papers of classmates that I've critiqued show that they shouldn't have received their high school diploma, let alone be admitted to college. And that's after taking the remedial classes that non-community colleges weren't even offering 30+ years ago because if you needed a remedial class, you self-evidently didn't belong in university.
N: The penalties for making those same mistakes with the real missiles could be instantly annihilating themselves with a nuclear detonation, starting a nuclear war with China and Russia, destroying all of civilization, and maybe even killing off humanity.
Now you're just being silly, spouting off about a subject you know even less about than firearms. It's about as likely as the starship Enterprise travelling back in time and Spock and Scotty beaming down into your bed tonight and butt-fucking you. The real danger, as far as the missiles go, is that in a real launch situation, one of the many steps would be done wrong, in which case nothing would happen. You must understand that their are two officers in each launch control center, about 12' apart and facing different directions. But they do talk to one another. Both officers must do everything the same way and in fairly close sync for a launch to take place. Except even that's not enough. Another LCC 10-20 miles away with another two officers in the same configuration also had to carry all the procedures the same way, and in sync with each other, and fairly closely in time with the other LCC. Or a similar procedure was done by two officers in the Looking Glass airborne command center (during the Cold War, at least one was continuously in the air). I don't think that's the case any more unless strategic forces are on alert. IF everything matches up from four different officers at 2 different sites, then and only then will a launch take place. There is absolutely no way to accidentally detonate a nuclear weapon in the silo or even within a few minutes of launch. The real worry here (beyond the obvious moral problems in the officer corps, and very low morale in general at missile bases) is that in an actual launch situation, they would screw up and not launch. Also, the actual (unmanned) silos are miles away from both the LCC and each other. Also, LCCs are designed to survive all but direct hits and very near misses by large nukes. The possibility of them accidentally blowing themselves up is even less likely than Jeff Goldblum hooking into and hacking an alien mothership's computers in a few minutes using an Apple laptop and inserting a destructive virus tailored to their system.
Technically, our missiles aren't aimed at anybody. They haven't loaded with targeting and flight control data for almost 2 decades. Of course, it only takes a few minutes to download them and initialize the guidance systems, so that's mostly symbolic.
The personnel and morale problems are serious, and yet I have little confidence that the Air Force will do anything much better than declaring that, "the beatings will continue until morale improves."
Larry,
Thanks for the explanation. That's a lot of stuff I was unaware of.
It certainly helps explain why "steely eye missile man" is considered high praise.
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