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Atheist Captain In Iraq Has A Point
Captain Jason Torpy about the incident he described, which he said occurred in Iraq when he was with the Army's 1st Armored Division.Going on a military mission, for example, we were getting ready to roll out. And Everybody come in. So as the commander of this convoy (said), Everybody come in and were going to do a prayer first together. Were not going to talk about communications, were not going to talk about route planning, were not going to talk about first aid, were not going to talk about maintenance. So I had to opt myself out of that situation, to out myself because this commander took it upon himself to have a personal religious activity in the midst of a military mission. Well, as a captain, theres a lot fewer people that can tell me what to do. Now the person that was in command was a major so I was still stepping outside he was extremely unhappy about it. He said. Why are you creating trouble? And I said, Why are you creating trouble? Why are you excluding me from this activity? This is a military mission, and I support your right to pray, but right this second we have a military mission, and for to use your power to pull everyone in to do a Christian prayer is wrong. Well, it was the assumption on the part of the military officer that was in charge of me for that time that everybody was Christian and this his role as the commander--he could use his power to impose his personal religion on the unit. I was being excluded from the team; put in a bad position that made it more difficult to be a part of that military team--he was putting that religious wedge, which was bad for the team in general. So he was sort of dishonoring his military command which was putting a wedge in the team, and for the purpose of that mission, he was distracting from the main point at a critical time. He reiterated that there were a lot of things we could have been doing at the time besides prayer. Theres a lot better time that people can engage in prayer--and at that particular point, emphasizing the purposes of the mission, the preparation for the mission and the important focuses to ensure the success of that mission from a military perspective--from a command perspective--is what he should have been doing. And he chose instead to put his personal religious practices. I believe the Captain was correct as far as this goes, but he also made some unsubstantiated and debatable arguments about religious exclusion and the purposes of military Chaplains. Posted by: Anonymoose 2011-12-06 |
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