USAF Axes Nuclear Ethics Manual Because….It Mentions The Bible

So get this: the US Air Force has scrapped a nuclear ethics course manual because it….references the Bible. The course is for new recruits who will be manning the U.S. nuclear arsenal and might face ethical or moral questions about what they are doing. the course is designed to help them grapple with those questions. The USAF caved to pressure brought by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. This is absurd. How do you discuss nuclear ethics without mentioning and discussing the Judaeo-Christian tradition? Or St. Augustine? This will undermine the moral foundation of the armed services. Soldiers must grapple and deal with moral questions about what they do or might do. If you pull this out, what do you replace it with? You cannot have a moral void. You need to fill it with something.

Here’s how the Air Force Times describes the manual:

“The training material includes a 43-slide PowerPoint presentation that draws upon examples from the Bible and discusses St. Augustine’s qualifications for a just war and the Christian just-war theory. In the Old Testament, for example, “David is a warrior who is also a ‘man after God’s own heart,'” and “Hebrews 11:32-34 uses as examples of true faith those OT believers who engaged in war in a righteous way,” one slide says.

Another slide quotes German rocket scientist and former Nazi Party member Wernher von Braun after his surrender to Americans in June 1945: “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.”

The PowerPoint also cites George Washington, Union Army Gen. Joshua Chamberlain and Confederate Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson as examples of men with strong religious convictions who fought in wars.”

While much of the presentation is aimed at preparing airmen for potential internal conflicts over their faith and job responsibilities that could involve killing others, one slide notes that fewer than 20 percent of soldiers in World War II shot at the enemy.

Another slide, toward the end of the presentation, shows the “Poised for Peace” missile wing patch with a reminder underneath: “The focus is not ‘making war,’ but ‘keeping peace.'”