After a firestorm of controversy, the U.S. Air Force has suspended a briefing given by chaplains at Vandenberg Air Force Base that included Biblical passages intended to teach launch officers the principles of justified war.
The briefing, entitled “Christian Just War Theory,” preceded a mandatory course on Nuclear Ethics and Warfare taught to young officers at Vandenberg who might someday be called upon to launch nuclear weapons. Besides quotes from figures such as St. Augustine and ex-Nazi rocket scientist Wernher Von Braun, the PowerPoint presentation incorporated Old and New Testament scripture into a moral argument for war.
The presentation, in one form or another, had been taught at Vandenberg for roughly the past 25 years without complaint, Air Force officials said. However, that was until the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a New Mexico-based group dedicated to preserving the separation between church and state in the U.S. military, filed a complaint on behalf of 31 Air Force launch officers, claiming the briefing violates the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
Mikey Weinstein, president of the foundation, which serves more than 23,000 military clients, said 29 of the officers who came forward were either practicing Protestants or Roman Catholics. He said the whistleblowers didn’t feel safe going through the usual Air Force channels and are now living in “total fear” of repercussions.
One client, who was not named, got hold of a copy of the briefing’s slides under a Freedom of Information Act request and shared them with the group.
“I wanted to projectile vomit,” Weinstein said of seeing the slides. “These were base, evil, calculated, cold violations of the separation of church and state mandates, which is clearly a bedrock principle of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.”
Weinstein said his foundation threatened a massive federal class action lawsuit if the Air Force didn’t drop the presentation. The Air Force’s Air Education and Training Command (AETC), the agency responsible for educating all officers on their jobs following basic training, immediately suspended the course.
According to AETC spokesman Maj. Rosaire Bushey, the matter first came to the agency’s attention through the website truthout.org, in an article by reporter Jason Leopold. Leopold obtained slides of the briefing and posted his story about them on July 27.
“The story first came out on that, and when we got the slides, we showed it to our leadership here,” Bushey said. “[They] said OK, let’s take that down, let’s stop this briefing now, let’s review it and see do we need to continue it, and if so, how?”
Bushey said the Air Force is currently examining the content of the briefing to determine whether to revise the material or end the course altogether. He stressed the presentation was not a part of the actual Air Force curriculum, and was only given to officers prior to their training.
“It’s a briefing before the class starts where they’re talking about the ethics involved in the use of weapons,” he said. “They talk a little bit in that briefing about just war theory, and the briefing had citations, examples using Biblical references. That’s what brought it all up.”
Among the Bible passages quoted in the slides is Romans 13:4, “In spite of personal blemishes, God calls the emperor to be an instrument of justice.” Another slide mentions a verse from the Book of Revelation stating, “Jesus Christ is the mighty warrior.”
The presentation also quotes ex-Nazi Von Braun as saying, “We wanted to see the world spared another conflict such as Germany had just been through, and we felt that only by surrendering such a weapon to people who are guided by the Bible could such an assurance to the world be best secured.”
Those examples were just two of many the launch officers found objectionable, Weinstein said.
“What they couldn’t stand the most was the positing and the establishment of the fact that war is a natural part of the human experience, and it’s inevitable, and if it wasn’t something that was to be viewed in a positive fashion, then we wouldn’t see it in the Bible,” Weinstein said. “And by the way guys—your ultimate warrior, ladies and gentleman, [is] Jesus Christ.
“Von Braun, pursuant to the Air Force in the past quarter century, is going to be teaching us about ethics? A highly decorated Nazi SS officer?” he continued. “It was Nazis, nukes, and Jesus, man.”
Bushey said the purpose of the just war course was to prepare launch officers, some of whom may have had moral conflicts about their job requirements, to perform their duties if called upon.
“It’s ethics and morals as well, because these are guys who are going to be sitting at the control of a nuclear weapon,” he said. “They just want to make sure people are comfortable with the fact that … they have a certain job to do when given a legal order to perform that job.”
Weinstein, a graduate of Cabrillo High School in Lompoc and a former Air Force officer himself, said if leadership was concerned about ethics, it should’ve sent officers off base for consultation with their various faiths, if they’re religious.
“This is not about a political spectrum, left or right. It’s not about whether Christianity has a better message than Islam or Judaism or atheism or agnosticism. It’s about what’s constitutionally right and wrong,” he said. “There’s a large number in the military that are not faith-based, they are atheist and agnostics. Why are they forced to see this?”
AETC spokesman Bushey said the review process is ongoing, and no date has been set to reach a conclusion. Officials at Vandenberg had no comment on the briefings or their content.
Though the Air Force has taken swift action, Weinstein is less than impressed.
“Clearly, when the Air Force was faced with the embarrassment of this being splashed across the world media and having their asses dragged into federal court, I’m supposed to pat them on the back and say ‘nice job’?” he said. “They did the only thing they could do—they pulled that piece of crap.”
Staff Writer Jeremy Thomas can be contacted at jthomas@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Aug 11-18, 2011.