Military Guns for Jesus

Unfortunately, NCOs aren't always politically correct when trying to inspire troops. I feel many Christians are oblivious to diversity when it comes to religious affiliations or lack there of. I agree military leaders should not be putting a religious spin on the battle. Our enemy has changed from 30 years ago. Our society has changed from 30 years ago. Non-Christians aren't keeping silent anymore.If the verse references do endanger our soldiers if captured, then they should be filed off the sites. They should ask the company to stop. They can pray all they want, but don't endanger the soldiers. New Zealand has no problem removing the verses from the sites and requesting that the company not put it on their orders in the future. The company should have left the colon out. It might not have been as noticeable to the enemy, but I'm sure someone would have leaked that bit of company trivia.I don't feel it is a difficult fix though.

Really? Never seen it spelled like that before.

Glad to have helped. Here's the article from z.news I mentioned in the last post. For those interested - (this is for you mostly Huntard, since your country doesn't mention this much) - in what US intentions in Afghanistan are:sourceFrom the article:

quote:

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There was one way in which President Obama's escalation speech brought significant relief to the 59% of people in this country, as well as the overwhelming majorities of people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Middle East and elsewhere who oppose the U.S. war in Afghanistan: It was a pretty lousy speech. That is, it had none of the power, the lyricism, the passion for history, the capacity to engage and to persuade virtually every listener, even those who may ultimately disagree, that have characterized the president's earlier addresses.

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And for that failure, we should be very grateful.

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Because everything else in this politically and militarily defensive speech reflected accountability not to President Obama's base, the extraordinary mobilization of people who swept this anti-war and anti-racist candidate into office, but rather to the exigencies of Washington's traditional military, political, and corporate power-brokers who define "national security."

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In a speech like this, widely acknowledged to be setting the framework for the security/foreign policy/military paradigm for the bulk of Obama's still-new presidency, location matters. West Point was crucial partly for tactical reasons (nowhere but a military setting, with young cadets under tight command, could the president count on applause and a standing ovation in response to a huge escalation of an unpopular war). But it was also important for Obama to claim West Point as his own after Bush's 2002 speech there, an address that first identified preemptive war as the basis of the Bush Doctrine and a new foreign policy paradigm.

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There was an important honesty in one aspect of President Obama's speech. All claims that the U.S. war was bringing democracy to Afghanistan, modernizing a backward country, and liberating Afghan women, are off the agenda - except when the Pentagon identifies them as possible "force multipliers" to achieve the military goal. And that goal hasn't changed - "to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and to prevent its capacity to threaten America and our allies in the future." So now it's official. It's not about Afghanistan and Afghans at all - it's all about us.

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It's a good thing the White House has dropped that rhetoric as the past eight years has brought few social improvements. Afghanistan ranks second to last in the UN's Human Development Index, and just in the last few weeks UNICEF identified Afghanistan as one of the three worst places in the world for a child to be born. As for improving the lives of women, Afghanistan retains the second-highest level of maternal mortality of any country in the world - even after eight years of U.S. occupation. Is further military escalation likely to change that?

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-Furthermore-

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Near the end of his speech, Obama tried to speak to his antiwar one-time supporters, speaking to the legacy of Vietnam. It was here that the speech's internal weakness was perhaps most clear. Obama refused to respond to the actual analogy between the quagmire of Vietnam, which led to the collapse of Johnson's Great Society programs, and the threat to Obama's ambitious domestic agenda collapsing under the pressure of funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead, he created straw analogies, ignoring the massive challenge of waging an illegitimate, unpopular war at a moment of dire economic crisis.

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Obama also did not acknowledge that about 30% of all U.S. casualties in the 8-year war in Afghanistan have occurred during the 11 months of his presidency. He did not remind us that the cost of this war, with the new escalation, will be about $100 billion a year, or $2 billion every week, or more than $11 million every hour. He didn't tell us that the same one-year amount, $100 billion, could cover the cost of ALL of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals: clean water, health care, primary education and vaccinations for the people of every one of the poorest 21 countries in the world.

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He didn't ask us to consider what adding another $100 billion - let alone $500 billion, or half a TRILLION dollars over the next five years - to the already ballooning deficit will do to our chances for real health care reform.

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I believe this needs repeating, to wake up a few sleepy folk out there reading this: He didn't tell us that the same one-year amount, $100 billion, could cover the cost of ALL of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals: clean water, health care, primary education and vaccinations for the people of every one of the poorest 21 countries in the world.We can literally solve many domestic and global issues by ending that war and investing the money properly!Hope this lends weight to your position, Dronester.Also Huntard, since the news lacks in your country, you might enjoy this independent news site: Z-net.The articles are not left or right leaning, they are truth based and upfront with information.- OniEdited by onifre, : No reason given.Edited by onifre, : No reason given.

Good enough to repeat . . . again [feigned surprise and disappointment, ON] Hmmm, the best interests of the masses didn't seem they were served. It seems politicians (both repub and dem) are not forced to be accountable for their decisions to hardly ANY degree. It seems our opinions are hardly considered (oh, perhaps only enough to be subject to manipulation and disinformation.) But one shouldn't overestimate how valueless even that small concession on the part of our "rulers" is. [feigned surprise and disappointment, OFF]Seriously, thanks for finding this article Oni, it was most appropriate for Huntards and my debate.d

sourceBut they were only numbers......

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Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people
-Carl SaganFor me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
-Carl Sagan

There is a conflict of interest, so the government should pursue an inquiry with the company and threaten to dissolve the contract for any further encoded inscriptions. No, because the US Marines did not manufacture the weapon and reasonably could not have known that encoded inscriptions existed until after the fact. Had the US Marines demanded that such verses be encoded on the serial numbers then, yes, that would have been a violation.

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"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." --John Adams