What’s Wrong with the World

Lydia, what you are reporting here is truly a catastrophe. When our armed forces are this morally and spiritually bankrupt, well, one can only wonder what language our great-grandchildren will be speaking.

Seventeen years ago I considered joining the Navy Reserves and spent some time with the officers and recruits. The anti-Christian atmosphere was palpable, sorry to say. Abu Ghraib did not come as a surprise to me, not in the least.

The thing is, it sounds like this one military man was a good fellow. Apparently (this is how I construe the story) he was pleased and excited that his church had raised the money and sent him the Bibles. So he told about it, word got around, and his superiors confiscated them and burned them as "trash." I know that a lot of young conservative men, including especially home schoolers, have a high view of the military and dream of going into the military, but I worry that they do not know what they are getting into. It sounds like it's turning into an explicitly anti-Christian place in principle and policy, while meanwhile the likes of Nidal Hassan get their craziness covered up. The Christians are going to get hammered when they get there, I'm afraid, one way and another.

Lydia,

You've made a little slip. Somehow you and Jeff both missed it.

I'll just reproduce the quote you took from the article:
"Military officers considered sending the Bibles back to the church, he said, but they worried the church would turn around and send them to another organization in Afghanistan -- giving the impression that they had been distributed by the U.S. government."

And now here's your remark:
"The U.S. military considers it a legitimate motivation to prevent other, non-military organizations in Afghanistan from passing out Bibles in the languages of the Afghani people. This was their motive for not sending the Bibles back to the church and for burning them--to prevent their distribution in Afghanistan en toto ... Notice that they don't cite the expense of returning them as an argument. [I]t was the possibility that Christian missions would take place at all in Afghanistan that the U.S. military wanted to prevent!"

According to the thing you quoted, they were motivated by a desire to avoid giving the impression that the U.S. government was involved in the distribution of the material. That's just not the same thing as being motivated by the desire to prevent the material being distributed at all or the desire to prevent Christian missions in Afghanistan.

Now that you see your error, I'm sure you'll fix it. I'll take it as given that you're thanking me now for pointing out your mistake.

All right, Clayton, my old buddy, with whom I have had so many helpful (sic) exchanges over the years I have been blogging:

Get this: They believed that if the church "turned around" and sent the Bibles back to some unnamed other organization in Afghanistan who distributed them, the natives would get the impression (how, exactly?) that the U.S. government was involved in the distribution. So: If _some other group_, namely, the church, were to re-send the Bibles to Afghanistan, to _some other group_, presumably some _totally non-military group_ (an "organization") who then actually (gasp) distributed the Bibles to the Afghanis, the U.S. military thinks there is a sufficient chance that someone _might_ get the impression that the U.S. govt. was involved in the distribution. Hence, they preferred to destroy the material. Now, this is pretty stupid even if it is really what they thought, but for reasons related to its stupidity, it obviously means that the U.S. military _doesn't want other groups distributing Christian material in Afghanistian_, because someone _might_, _somehow_, get the idea that this had something to do with the U.S. govt.

This isn't that hard to understand. What this amounts to is that the U.S. military wants to hinder the distribution of Bibles in Afghanistan (by burning Afghani language Bibles that might otherwise be distributed by _someone else_) because they consider Christian distribution of Bibles in Afghanistan to be a *bad thing*, because (they say) the Afghanis might not like it and might blame them for some reason or other.

See? No, I'm sure you don't see, so I'll stop repeating myself now.

Lydia,

You never cease to amaze. Why do you quote the article if it's just transparently obvious that it doesn't support what you say? Just link to it so no one notices. Dishonest blogging 101, my friend.

Yep, that's right. I'm so dishonest that I actually _quote_ the thing you say doesn't support what I say. If I were a criminal, the Keystone Cops would have no trouble catching me. It's funny: If I _didn't_ quote it, of course then you'd really accuse me of dishonesty, sneakiness, and taking candy from babies. As it is, I suppose you can't just disagree with me civilly? Nah. I should have learned long ago not to expect that.

It is true-I posted this information May-2009 --
http://carolmsblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/bho-and-pentagon-burns-privately-held.html

A juxtaposition:
The Koran is handled with 'kid gloves' at GITMO..

I so enjoy coming to this site...

Carol-CS

I have a hard time being outraged when admittedly anti-christian groups behave as expected, but my blood boils at the inconsistency inherent the actual worldview. If "burning books is bad" (aka "Where books are burned in the end people will burn.") then WHY the outrage about the Koran (threatened with passion) but NOT the bible (done dispassionately??)? The distinction seems a bit fine to me.

You know, when you BURN THE BIBLES, it sends a pretty strong message that you don't want bibles in Afghanistan. Lydia's inference seems much more likely than Clayton's. But I'm sure Clayton was as outraged by the Bible burning as any of us, and thinks a Christian mission to the Afghans a good idea. He'll probably tell us so eventually.

I was so struck by the fact that they actually considered sending them back to the church and then reasoned that they didn't want to do that lest the church send them back out to some other group for distribution. That's _really_ noticeable, because it's so obvious that if they sent them back to the church and the church, using its own money, making its own decisions, turned around and sent them back to some totally separate missions organization who distributed them, the U.S. government is _not_ distributing them. What? Did those particular Bibles have some special "glow" about them showing that they were the ones that briefly were in the hands of the military and that the military sent back? And so what, even if they had? The only thing they could be "blamed" for was not destroying them, as though they have some sort of duty to destroy any Pashtun Bibles they happen to get their hands on. It's totally stupid and creepy reasoning. The reasoning is very clearly described: The U.S. military thinks the U.S. govt. will be blamed if non-military organizations in Afghanistan, organizations they have no connection with, distribute Bibles, and they are worried about that and prepared to take very striking, active measures to prevent that. It's not like it's unclear.

DmL, the distinction is _supposedly_, "Hey, we didn't burn these Bibles as a symbol to say anything negative about Christianity. This was just carrying out our policy of not allowing our military to proselytize, and see, once we'd designated them as 'trash' we _had_ to burn them, because we always burn our trash, so it had no meaning...See?"

And since I know that that's the supposed answer, and since I have liberal (trolls) who comment here, I didn't discuss the Koran parallel in the main post. My take on that issue is that that explanation wouldn't be allowed to fly if it were a matter of preventing Korans from being distributed to a Hindu country or something like that, and that therefore they would have treated a shipment of Korans in such a situation much differently--perhaps sending them back instead of "desecrating" them by burning them.

What we have here of course is a case of the faux-neutrality of the U.S. government, according to which Christianity can be subjected to all sorts of things that other religions would not be while some silly and supposedly secular excuse is given. The flip side of that is having children in public schools recite Muslim prayers while excusing this on the grounds that they are merely engaging in make-believe for educational purposes, when of course everyone knows (though the liberals lie and refuse to admit) that having them taught, say, the Lord's Prayer or some other Christian prayer in a similar fashion would be considered an "establishment of religion."

I am so used to their stupid double standards that it seemed to me the greater cause of alarm here--greater than the obvious double standard in the treatment of the Bibles vs. Korans--is the further message that the U.S. military thinks that missions work in countries where we have a military presence is a _danger to our troops_ because somehow the U.S. government might be blamed for the distribution of Christian materials even by non-government organizations. This really ought to be sounding alarm bells, and it is disturbing and sickly ironic in all the ways I discussed in the main post.

Seventeen years ago I considered joining the Navy Reserves and spent some time with the officers and recruits. The anti-Christian atmosphere was palpable, sorry to say. Abu Ghraib did not come as a surprise to me, not in the least.

A Christian friend of mine just got out of the Army. From his description, it was probably the most profoundly anti-Christ environment he'd ever been exposed to. For perspective, our university was rated as one of the top party schools in the country or something like that by Playboy not long before we got there.

Why didn't the soldier just spread them around Afghan motel rooms? This way Afghan muslim men could read them before beating or mutilating their female family members.
As this type of action, a nose here, an ear there, appears to escape sustained condemnation from what is hysterically referred to as our "elites", a beach head of sorts might have been established. The understandable cultural imperatives which demand our respect, masking the subversive & deleterious effects of The Book whose name passeth not our lips.
A kind of co-existence you might say.
You have to start somewhere.

I suppose a commanding officer can't simply open a subordinate's mail without just cause or due process (anyone know)? If the soldier didn't actually give the Bibles to anyone, then they were his private property. He's allowed to have as many copies of the Bible as he wants, right?

Also, since he was a proxy for the Church, they weren't his property, anyway. The U. S. Military owes the Church for cost.

The Chicken

"Lydia's inference seems much more likely than Clayton's. But I'm sure Clayton was as outraged by the Bible burning as any of us, and thinks a Christian mission to the Afghans a good idea. He'll probably tell us so eventually."

William,

You have a strange understanding of "more likely". My assertion was logically weaker than Lydia's and based on the same source. If what she said entails what I said but not vice-versa, it cannot be that it's more likely that she's right than I. Lydia would have said as much, but she's left her epistemologist hat somewhere and decided to write wearing her hat of persecuted Christian.

I don't have a problem with disposing of books, that happens. I'm against burning religious texts in order to cause offense, but that's a different matter.

Lydia wrote:
"It's funny: If I _didn't_ quote it, of course then you'd really accuse me of dishonesty, sneakiness, and taking candy from babies. As it is, I suppose you can't just disagree with me civilly? Nah. I should have learned long ago not to expect that."

We'll never know, I guess, but when has that stopped you from saying something? If you want credit for showing us the evidence that shows that you weren't in position to ascribe the motives you ascribed rather than hiding the evidence that doesn't support ascribing the motives you ascribed, I'm happy to give you the credit. Nice work. As for civil discourse, that's a strange thing to request after launching into a(nother) baseless attack on someone else. I'm sorry that my comments are just so much more offensive to you than, say, Jeff's posts or Johnt's comment above (@11:37 a.m.).

Why didn't the soldier just spread them around Afghan motel rooms?

First, because he's probably not allowed to go wandering about Afghan hotel rooms. Second, because by the time the word got out that he had them, his superiors took them away for burning.

I suppose a commanding officer can't simply open a subordinate's mail without just cause or due process (anyone know)?

I don't claim to _know_, but my _guess_ would be that they can confiscate things from his mail that they say he isn't allowed to have. The way the military reasoned, since they were sent in Afghani languages, they were _intended_ for distribution (which is doubtless correct). Bibles-intended-for-distribution-to-Afghanis are, by their interpretation of their regulations, contraband and subject to confiscation and burning. Here's the first sentence of the CNN story, emphasis added:

Military personnel threw away, and ultimately burned, confiscated Bibles that were printed in the two most common Afghan languages amid concern they would be used to try to convert Afghans, a Defense Department spokesman said Tuesday.

It doesn't get much clearer than that. They were concerned that the might be used to try to convert Afghans, and we can't have that. No, sir.

If what she said entails what I said but not vice-versa, it cannot be that it's more likely that she's right than I.

Conversational implicature, Clayton. If you're going to accuse me of dishonest blogging, you apparently mean the following in such a way that it is not a strictly weaker claim than mine (emphasis added):

According to the thing you quoted, they were motivated by a desire to avoid giving the impression that the U.S. government was involved in the distribution of the material. That's just not the same thing as being motivated by the desire to prevent the material being distributed at all or the desire to prevent Christian missions in Afghanistan.

That sounds like you want us to take it that they were motivated by the desire to prevent the impression that the U.S. govt. was involved in the distribution _and not_ by the desire to prevent the material being distributed at all. Of course, the sentence I quoted from the story _says_ that they did not send the Bibles back _so that_ they couldn't be distributed by someone else. Certainly the excuse for this was that even if someone else distributed the material, there might be this "impression," but apparently according to their reasoning it was necessary that it _not be distributed at all_ to avoid that impression. That was, they claim to have reasoned, the _only way_ to avoid that impression.

So let's put it this way: The deliberate refusal to infer that they wanted to prevent these Bibles from being distributed at all, given that this is what the story says (that they were determined to avoid a situation in which they sent them back and they eventually got distributed at all, by the independent actions of others) is _irrational_. The inference that they were _not_ "motivated by the desire to prevent the material being distributed at all" is a poor inference, and the inference that they _were_ "motivated by the desire to prevent the material being distributed at all" is a well-supported inference.

(Btw, Clayton, we don't particularly like trolls around here. We've had some over the years, and we exercise our judgement about whether to keep them or not. Sometimes we're more patient than others. Even our resident leftist gadfly, Al, is careful to be more...suave than you are now being as far as personal unpleasantness toward and attribution of dishonesty to contributors. It's not like you're adding so much to our community here that we suddenly can't imagine life without you. A word to the wise should be sufficient. This isn't Right Reason. Capiche?)

"It doesn't get much clearer than that. They were concerned that the might be used to try to convert Afghans, and we can't have that. No, sir."

Agreed, General Order No. 1 makes that clear. It's bad enough that we are there without getting into mission creep.

"Even our resident leftist gadfly, Al, is careful to be more...suave than you are now being as far as personal"

Suave? Careful? Just being myself.

Clayton’s right about some of Jeff’s posts! Why so harsh today, Lydia?

Look, in your view, how likely is it that if the Bible copies were distributed in Afghanistan without U.S. government involvement, the impression would be given that the U.S. government was involved? Were copies endorsed in some way? And are there NGOs in Afghanistan legally engaged in proselytising?

It’s not clear if you’re suggesting that proselytising to Christianity would somehow promote US interests abroad: There are countries with Christian majorities far less supportive of US foreign policy than, say, Israel or Turkey.

Christmastide 2009; the CIA Station Chief slaughtered in Afghanistan was a Colby College (The Bride's school) Grad and the mother of three young children.

The Mother of three young children, 31 y.o. Elizabeth Hanson, was CIA Station Chief in that hell-hole and she was running ops that targeted men inside Pakistan.

When the America Military is not enticing young Moms of young children to serve as CIA Chiefs in Satan's Stronghold it is busy helping establish Sharia-Based Constitutions in Iraq and Afghanistan so It is little wonder they destroy Bibles.

The America Military is not in the business of protecting Christians in America. The American Military is in the business of strengthening, supplying, and succoring our Muslim mortal enemies 1000s of miles from home.

Other than to register complete and total disgust with such a govt, (and drinking heavily), what is one to do?

Bibles-intended-for-distribution-to-Afghanis are, by their interpretation of their regulations, contraband and subject to confiscation and burning. Here's the first sentence of the CNN story, emphasis added:

Anyone can possess a Bible or Bibles in the Afghani language. This is not contraband (since a Bible, itself is not contraband). Until he actually distributes them (which would make the material contraband by the nature of the activity), they are convicting him of proselytising under purely circumstantial evidence and that is actionable in a military court, in my opinion.

The Chicken

Overseas,

the impression would be given that the U.S. government was involved

I don't see any reason for "the impression to be given" that the U.S. government was involved in any normal sense of "involved." Not, mind you, that I think there would be anything wrong with that anyway, but it's stupid reasoning on their part to think this would be a reasonable inference.

There are two points, here. First, if some Muslim crazies concluded, "Hey! An NGO distributed Bibles. The U.S. govt. had a chance to destroy these Bibles but sent them back to the church. Now they're being distributed by some NGO. The U.S. govt. is involved in this distribution," they'd be irrational, anyway. The U.S. govt. sent them back. Somebody else is choosing on their own to distribute them. The U.S. govt. isn't distributing them and has nothing to do with it. Second, if it's really _true_ that some crazies would infer this, and if the only way to prevent that is to destroy the Bibles and make sure no such missions work takes place, and if the U.S. military is _for that reason_ destroying the Bibles, then that makes the very point in my post: The U.S. govt. is so concerned to avoid any such impression, however unreasonable, that they are determined to prevent _other people_ from distributing Bibles lest such an inference be drawn. That is a _bad thing_, in my view.

I'm sure that "proselytizing," aka missions work that actually involves teaching and spreading the word, for non-Muslim religions is "illegal" in Afghanistan. I put the word "illegal" in quotation marks, because it's not exactly like there's a terribly stable and uniform govt. throughout Afghanistan anyway, especially in remote areas. But this is all related to my point: The U.S. govt. shouldn't be all about upholding oppressive laws against Christian missions in foreign countries. That shouldn't be any part of our mission there. No doubt Afghanistan is formally under sharia, so any "proselytizing" by NGO's is "illegal." So what? It's now part of our military mission to uphold the ban in sharia against distributing Bibles by Christian missionaries? Bad, bad news.

Even if they felt they had to have a rule against letting soldiers themselves pass out Bibles (which I don't approve of anyway), they could have sent the Bibles back and let the church and the representatives of any NGO take their own chances with the anti-Christian "laws" of Afghanistan. I'm not saying the U.S. military had to personally escort missionaries around to distribute Bibles safely in Afghan villages. But America's actively aiding and abetting Muslim suppression of Christian foreign missions is something else again, is very wrong and is, in fact, what my post is about.

‘The U.S. govt. sent them back.’

Right, assuming it would not be an abuse of the postal service to do so. I don’t know precisely what would happen if, say, a US diplomat stationed in an EU country was found to have used the diplomatic bag to import a consignment of guns with the intention of distributing them to civilians locally. But if the guns were not allowed to reach their destination and no matter how they were disposed of, it would sound far-fetched to claim that the US government was thereby ‘upholding oppressive laws’ against the possession of guns by civilians.

"But America's actively aiding and abetting Muslim suppression of Christian foreign missions is something else again, is very wrong and is, in fact, what my post is about."

Which is a constructive read on the matter which ignores the standing orders for that theater which are authorized under title 10 and the UCMJ.

They could have sent them back and probably should have but they were contraband.

Lydia, do you want our military taking on the protection of missionaries? What you seem to be advocating is some version of Coulter-lite; you remember, "kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity"? Have you even considered the ramifications?

Premise: Military officers considered sending the Bibles back to the church, he said, but they worried the church would turn around and send them to another organization in Afghanistan -- giving the impression that they had been distributed by the U.S. government. [From what you quoted]]
Conclusion: [I]t was the possibility that Christian missions would take place at all in Afghanistan that the U.S. military wanted to prevent! [Quoting your response]

That's a leap of logic, Lydia. You do know that, right? I mean, you actually do work that shows technical facility. So, why can't you just concede that this was the leap of logic that it was?

Al,

They could have sent them back and probably should have but they were contraband.

You mean they were "contraband" because the "government" of Afghanistan (which we have set up and are helping to keep in place) makes "proselytizing" illegal and would have wanted them burned? Am I getting this right? So we have to help to enforce all their laws just as they would want them enforced?

Let me ask you a question, Al: You seem to think that our military _is_ required to take on police powers on behalf of the state of Afghanistan and enforce their sharia laws. My understanding is that conversion is illegal in Afghanistan under sharia. (There was already one person on trial for his life under this law, IIRC.) If a convert to Christianity escaped to a U.S. army base in Afghanistan, would he be "contraband," too? Would it be our duty to turn him in for trial and possible death for his conversion to Christianity?

Lydia, do you want our military taking on the protection of missionaries?

Did I already _explicitly_ address this question, in anticipation, or not? Come on, Al. Go back and read my recent comments.

Let's put it this way, Al: If our military's burning shipments of foreign-language Bibles is the only alternative to forcibly converting citizens of foreign countries to Christianity, we have a problem. But surely you can see that that's a false dichotomy.

Overseas, how in the world could it possibly be an "abuse of the postal system" to send the Bibles back to the church? Maybe I shouldn't ask the question. I use the term "abuse" in a normative sense, so I'll just answer it myself: It can't. If there is some law in Afghanistan against Bibles that doesn't make it an "abuse" of anything for our military to send Bibles from Afghanistan to a U.S. church rather than burning them! And, yes, if we destroyed the guns in your scenario (though of course Bibles _aren't_ like guns, so it's a poor analogy) and expressly said that our reason for doing so was lest some _entirely independent group_ should later try to get them into the country and that we wanted to prevent that, then we would be joining the local government in enforcing laws against guns. How bad a thing that is, of course, depends on the justice or degree of injustice of the laws. Laws against Bibles are something we _definitely_ shouldn't be helping to enforce in any way, shape, or form.

Overseas, I would point out, too, that our military on their own bases in an occupied country is far more the master of and responsible for its own actions and decisions than civilian ambassadorial staff in an otherwise unoccupied country. And my major criticism here is not directed against their "refusal to allow the Bibles to reach their destination"--though I do in fact think it is unreasonable not to allow soldiers to distribute Bibles if they wish--but against their destroying the Bibles and explicitly doing so to make sure that not even anyone else can distribute them. That is the most disturbing part of this entire story.

Clayton, I'm not going to continue wasting a lot of time on you, but here's one more, last try:

In the context, the sentence you quote ("It was the possibility that Christian missions would take place at all in Afghanistan that the U.S. military wanted to prevent!") should be interpreted in light of the paragraph of which it is a part. The "Christian missions" in question in that paragraph which they wanted to prevent is the distribution of the Bibles, which--as I have argued is clearly indicated in the story--the U.S. military burned to prevent them from being distributed at all, even by anyone else. That is explicit and clear in the story. In a later paragraph, I say this:

Of course, if that is their attitude, it hardly seems a long step to the active prevention, by the U.S. military, of all non-Muslim "proselytizing" in Afghanistan.

And here's how that reasoning goes: The U.S. military has indicated that they think it would "endanger our troops" if some totally independent group distributed Bibles when all that the U.S. military did was to send the Bibles back, away from Afghanistan, to a church which then independently chose to send the Bibles back to Afghanistan again to some non-military group, some group having nothing to do with the U.S. government. The U.S. military has taken active steps to prevent this from happening--the drastic active step of burning all the Bibles so that there is no remaining possibility of anyone's distributing them in Afghanistan. The U.S. military therefore is obviously hyper-sensitive to worries that the "proselytizing" activities of _totally different groups_ other than themselves might be blamed upon the U.S. government and willing to take strong measures as a result of those worries. It therefore does not seem implausible that they would take further steps, such as warning and stopping separate organizations in Afghanistan from "proselytizing," on the basis of the same worries and reasoning: "The U.S. government may be blamed if these people do this, and that would endanger our troops." So, no, I don't think that is a "leap of logic," but it is a separate inference. It is, in any event, not what I was (yet) talking about in the sentence you quote.

Lydia,

Are you sure the church in the US used ordinary international post to send the Bibles to its member serving in Afghanistan? That the consignment had cleared Afghan customs and was delivered by the Post Office in those ‘remote areas’ where the government doesn’t reach? If not, the diplomatic bag analogy may not be as poor after all and the term ‘abuse’ may be exactly right. Diplomats enjoy immunity in the country they’re accredited; not vis-à-vis the country they represent.

I didn’t say the guns would go to any particular group or other: Just picture ordinary EU civilians who would be eligible to carry them were they US citizens, which they’re not. I claim that if the US Embassy chose to destroy the consignment, we wouldn’t be entitled to make an inference as to what the US government thinks about EU civilians being barred from carrying guns; certainly not that the US is ‘actively aiding and abetting’ the prohibition. Indeed, the US government might lobby the EU to lift such prohibitions anticipating, say, a European market for US-manufactured weapons. But that would be official government policy; not a diplomat on a hobby-horse abusing official channels.

If you think that current US policy on proselytising is flawed because non-Christian people who now object to US foreign policy will change their mind about the US once they convert to Christianity, I’ve already argued why I think that’s wrong. If you think US diplomats or military personnel stationed abroad should have a right to ‘pass out’ stuff to the local population, I tried to show why that would be unprofessional.

"Am I getting this right?"

No, you aren't.

http://www.tac.usace.army.mil/deploymentcenter/tac_docs/GO-1B%20Policy.pdf

The rule against proselytizing is Central Command's. It applies to most personnel serving in the USCENTCOM AOR. I would expect that as a cultural conservative you would have an appreciation of the additional difficulties that allowing the military to proselytize would add to the mission in a culturally conservative nation. Consider how outraged you are at the thought of our military respecting the mores of an occupied nation. Remember how disgusted you were at the very thought of having to show even the most perfunctory respect to same sex couples. Now consider the effects of having folks with an occupying army doing the JW thing in their spare time amongst folks who don't have advanced degrees and who don't have centuries old notions of freedom and autonomy as part of their cultural heritage. If folks with scruffy beards and head wrappings came a knocking with the Koran while APCs were rolling through the neighborhood, you'd hit the barricades. You don't want our military to respect the local laws and customs in non-essential things? How many people are you willing to kill?

Lydia,

US missions abroad are US missions abroad. They represent the US government and implement its policies. I cannot understand why you insist that the Bibles were destroyed so nobody else could distribute them. Are there restrictions in the US over printing Bibles in certain languages?

You say you think ‘it is unreasonable not to allow soldiers to distribute Bibles if they wish’. Is it also unreasonable not to allow soldiers to distribute copies of Playboy magazine if they wish? Afghans might be more interested in those. What I claim amounts to this: The US military are under no obligation to return copies to Hugh Hefner on a US military cargo plane.

Al, we aren't talking about _respecting_ the local laws and customs, though even there it might depend on what they are. When the "local customs" are raping little boys, hell, no, we shouldn't respect them. But in this case, we are talking about _actively enforcing_ them by destroying the Bibles. I mean, how hard is this to understand? You called the Bibles "contraband" as if whatever the local law is, that meant they had to destroy the Bibles. Masked Chicken has already pointed out that the soldier hadn't even given them to anyone else at the time, so they were still among his things. They could perfectly easily have told him that he couldn't distribute them. They could, for example, have told him he would have to wait and take them home with him when his tour of duty was over. They had any of a number of options. To designate them as "trash" and immediately confiscate and burn them was *in no way* required by anything whatsoever. And refraining from doing so wouldn't have required killing anybody, so you can leave off with the drama. But they were very clear why they burned them: So the church couldn't give them to somebody else to distribute them. How many times do I have to say that, huh? That goes to _actively helping out_ the cause of preventing the Bibles from being distributed. Again, this is not hard to understand.

Overseas, obviously, when I said that "nobody else could distribute them," I meant _those Bibles_--token, not type. (Come on. Please. I had to point out what I meant by "those Bibles"? Why does a certain type of commentator seem to delight in wasting my time?)

The reason they would be justified in burning Playboy is because it's Playboy. Some discernment is perfectly legitimate to expect, and there was nothing here that required them to burn the Bibles. Everything isn't just like everything else, hard as liberals try to make it so.

'there was nothing here that required them to burn the Bibles.'

Nor anything that required giving the Bibles a free ride back on a US military cargo flight. I expect you realise that the Church secretary didn't exactly lick the stamps and put the package in the post. Pity you didn't get the reductio: Burning 'those' Bibles clearly couldn't stop other Bibles in the same language from reaching Afghanistan through different channels; same with Playboy mags. This is about dealing with abuse of official channels, not about preventing literature from being distributed.

If you want 'discernment', so that Bibles but not Playboy make it on official US army lists of stuff allowed to be carried on US cargo planes, there's no way to deny 'US government involvement' when the Bibles hit the ground while Playboy doesn't.

I don't even know what you mean about church secretaries, but in any event, I doubt they burn Playboy magazines found in soldiers' personal belongings anyway, and if they happen to have them with them when they go back home, their magazines get a "ride on a U.S. cargo plane."

As for a "reductio," to quote _The Princess Bride_, I don't think that word means what you think it means.

I think I'm done arguing with willfully dense people, here.

I think I'm done arguing with willfully dense people, here.

As you should be, IMO. Playboys and Bibles, same difference. Sharia or the Gospel, what does it matter? Exasperating. Their game, of course, is to discredit traditional moral judgments so as to replace them with utilitarian judgments, after which nothing stands in the way of the New Morality.

"Of course, if that is their attitude, it hardly seems a long step to the active prevention, by the U.S. military, of all non-Muslim "proselytizing" in Afghanistan."

You would have an impressive case if you had evidence that the military was taking steps to prevent groups for proselytizing, but that's not what you have now. What you have is a case where the military is not sending back materials to groups they think will use them to proselytize. Their decision not to distribute materials back to groups that would then use them to proselytize is not anywhere near the same thing as preventing groups from proselytizing in the first place. You said above that we ought to respect the token/type distinction and I'm just agreeing with you. I know you hate when I do that, but you can't really argue from the fact that the military is destroying token Bibles to the sweeping conclusion that they are actively preventing anyone from spreading the message in the Bible. Compare. A priest is discovered to have a stash of pornographic materials and his superiors destroy them rather than let him mail them back to the friend who let him borrow those materials. That's not the same thing as censorship. That's a far cry from the church taking active steps to prevent anyone from having pornographic materials.

‘I don't even know what you mean about church secretaries…’

‘Are you sure the church in the US used ordinary international post to send the Bibles to its member serving in Afghanistan? That the consignment had cleared Afghan customs and was delivered by the Post Office in those ‘remote areas’ where the government doesn’t reach? If not, the diplomatic bag analogy may not be as poor after all and the term ‘abuse’ may be exactly right. Diplomats enjoy immunity in the country they’re accredited; not vis-à-vis the country they represent.’

What I meant is that ‘posting’ that consignment to the Church member stationed in Afghanistan was probably in contravention of the rules; and that if destroying the consignment is what’s in the rule-book, that’s sufficient to explain why the Bibles were destroyed. Diplomatic bags and military cargo flights are privileged routes of importing stuff into a country, by-passing customs control. It’s not remarkable that there are rules intended to safeguard privilege by stamping out abuse.

‘I doubt they burn Playboy magazines found in soldiers' personal belongings anyway…’

I doubt they burn Bibles found in soldiers' personal belongings either. But multiple copies are unlikely to be for personal use. And they were not brought in by a soldier taking up post: They were sent to someone already stationed there, through the ‘official channels’ in question.

‘The reason they would be justified in burning Playboy is because it's Playboy.’

That’s from your previous post but I quote since you chose to bring up ‘density’! I claimed there would be no way for the US government to dissociate itself if there were official lists specifically exempting copies of the Bible, in exotic languages which just happen to be the languages spoken by the local population. I didn’t argue against ‘discernment’; I just pointed out the costs attached: That you may not be willing to pay up won’t make the bill disappear. If you just don’t want to play ball this time that’s of course your prerogative.

Even secular governments used to be able to recognize filth. If they were to burn multiple copies or even single copies of pornography but not of the Bible, that doesn't mean that in sending Bibles _away_ from Afghanistan they would be somehow "involved in the distribution" of the Bibles _in_ Afghanistan if, maybe, someone later sends them _back_ to someone _else_. To think so is simply to take the maxim that "thou shalt not discriminate" to new heights of illogic.

If the complaint is that the Bibles were not sent to Afghanistan later and to someone else, it ought to be addressed to the Church in the US: Presumably it was they who chose to send them when they did to one serving in the US military, rather than later and to someone else. Is the problem how best to fill empty space on cargo flights going back and forth between Afghanistan and the US? I admit I can’t see how the US government can both discriminate and deny ‘any involvement’ at the same time: It’s not a reasonable criticism of US military regulations that they fail to simultaneously satisfy inconsistent objectives.

Whether or what the US government stands to gain from proselytising to Christianity and whether current policy ought to be reversed is of course a separate question; and a more interesting one, in my view. But you may think otherwise.

Let's cut to the chase. I think most of you are missing a few key critical points:

1) The Constitution explicitly authorizes the United States Government to pass laws regulating the armed forces' conduct and this has been traditionally interpreted by the courts to imply that it can reasonably circumvent a number of their constitutional liberties as they apply to their duties assigned or implied by their position in the armed forces.

Unfortunately, this means that the military already has a constitutional basis to suppress missionary activity by its members. If the missionaries used the federal system to get their bibles into a war zone, the federal government has a constitutional prerogative to label that as an activity that falls under the regulation of the armed forces.

The fact that Afghanistan is still a combat zone only further strengthens the constitutional basis for suppressing the involvement of servicemen or federal services. However, burning the materials is still not necessary.

2) The federal government has been highly selective in regulating activity by federal employees that undermines the mission in Afghanistan. For example, the DEA has been allowed a great deal of latitude to do drug operations. Poppies are the only cash crop of Afghanistan. As a practical matter, this is as dangerous to the mission as any perception of missionary activity done under federal protection. Furthermore, if the military wanted the DEA to leave the country, it would take only a single call from the commanding general to the State Department, but they did not do that.

The fact is that the federal government's behavior does lead a reasonable person to believe that the overreaction is specifically aimed at religion, not the overarching goal of executing the mission.

3) The majority of those hostile to us and who are nearly hostile to us do believe there is a religious angle to this and will not be convinced otherwise. Anyone with personal or familial exposure to these cultures understands this.

Mike T, I think that's quite a decent summary, though I can't speak to the accuracy of your remarks about the DEA, but the selectivity point there is well-taken. Apropos of this:

However, burning the materials is still not necessary.

That has been my point throughout. Not only is it not necessary, but the fact that they did it and expressly said that they did it so that the materials couldn't be sent back later by someone else speaks volumes about what is going on here.

I have never said that it is unconstitutional for them not to allow soldiers to engage in "proselytizing." I have said that I think it would be perfectly fine for them to have a different rule on that and in fact might be a good thing for that rule to be changed. That, however, is a subsidiary point to my main one which is that they went far beyond any such rule in burning the Bibles and that the reasons they gave for doing so are cause for alarm as far as the military's attitude towards Christian missions even by _other groups_ in countries where we have troops.

Lydia, I assume you didn't read the GO. If you had you would have noted to whom it applied.

Speaking of zebras, this incident call to mind the saying, usually expressed in a medical context, that if one is in a place like the United States and one hears hoofs approaching, one should expect horses not zebras. This incident happened in the military, in a war zone, involved a GO item that is hyper-sensitive, and the media was involved. This is from the ABC story:

"The day of the Al Jazeera English broadcast, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Navy Adm. Mike Mullen was asked about the report."

"My reaction is twofold," Mullen said. "One is that I'm not aware of the details of this and certainly want to know more about it. Secondly, it certainly is -- from the United States military's perspective -- not our position to ever push any specific kind of religion. Period."

Sending then back would have required someone to authorize their return. You have a GO, you have contraband, and you have a procedure for dealing with it. Careers have ended over less. Following procedures/creeping Sharia, horses/zebras?

"Al, we aren't talking about _respecting_ the local laws and customs, though even there it might depend on what they are. When the "local customs" are raping little boys, hell, no, we shouldn't respect them. But in this case, we are talking about _actively enforcing_ them by destroying the Bibles. I mean, how hard is this to understand? You called the Bibles "contraband" as if whatever the local law is, that meant they had to destroy the Bibles."

Read the GO. As for your other example; this world is full of terrible things, things that we, as a nation, really can't do much about unless we are prepared to police the world and kill lots of people. There is, east of Flagstaff and just south of I40, a large hole where a largish meteor fell a few thousand years ago. The blast would have wiped out everything for many miles around. The loss of innocent non-human animal and plant life aside, one sometimes can't help but ponder the stochastic cruelties/benefits of certain events relative to time and place.

As for your other example; this world is full of terrible things, things that we, as a nation, really can't do much about unless we are prepared to police the world

Blah, blah. Speaking of not reading links, this appallingly ignorant comment makes it perfectly clear that you did not read my link on this subject in the main post. They (our "allies") are doing it on Canadian army bases, on a regular basis (Thursday being the preferred day), where the Canadian soldiers can hear the little boys scream and have to treat them medically afterwards, but they are being told not to interfere. One soldier walked in on it and has PTSD to this day.

By the way, Al, you're ignoring something: The article didn't say they were obligated by some sort of stone-set "procedure" not to return the Bibles and to burn them. It said they reasoned, explicitly, that they didn't want to return them lest the church send them back again to someone else who would distribute them. That's what they said. We report, you decide.

Lydia, there is (or perhaps was) a business saying, "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM". A news story is never going to be complete and assuming that because some story doesn't provide a complete exposition of policy and a blow by blow on how a given decision was arrived at one is free to fill in the blanks in a way that confirms ones ideological and theological biases strikes me as strange.

Capping ones career at captain or major isn't any more a normal aspiration then aspiring to adjunct status. As I believe you are familiar with the finer points of academic life, I would have expected a little more empathy here. Any anxiety in this matter was validated by the fact that as soon as AJ made this a story, it shot right to the top. It isn't a rational decision to embrace a hot potato.

I take the explanation in the story to be sufficient. This isn't just a matter of "arguing from silence." It's a matter of a perfectly clear explanation being given which accounts fully for the event, is pretty darned bad, and is not the one you are bringing forward.

Empathy? I fully "get" that burning the Bibles was considered a "cover your rear end" move. It was considered a "cover your rear end" move because in the army all the career penalties favor the side of acting as the Muslim locals would want us to act--in this case, being doggoned sure that those Bibles _never_ get passed out in Afghanistan and burning them accordingly. There are no penalties for behaving in an unnecessarily and egregiously anti-Christian fashion and destroying valuable property of Christian significance. I get that full-well. That's part of the problem, as far as I'm concerned.

Lydia,

I have never said that it is unconstitutional for them not to allow soldiers to engage in "proselytizing." I have said that I think it would be perfectly fine for them to have a different rule on that and in fact might be a good thing for that rule to be changed. That, however, is a subsidiary point to my main one which is that they went far beyond any such rule in burning the Bibles and that the reasons they gave for doing so are cause for alarm as far as the military's attitude towards Christian missions even by _other groups_ in countries where we have troops.

Exactly. It's overkill. Between Article I and the National Security Act (among other legislation), they have all the tools they need to keep the incident quiet and suppress any record on their side of the Pacific that it even happened without offending anyone.