As you may know, the reports indicate that a spokesman for the Air Force's Air Education and Training Command has said that the main purpose of the course was to enable missile launch officers to understand that "what they are embarking on is very difficult and you have to have a certain amount of ethics about what you are doing to do that job." Our military services, like our nation, are comprised of people representing all faiths. However, that fact does not preclude military chaplains from teaching a course on just war theory -- a theory that has been a part of moral philosophy and the law of war for centuries -- merely because it has historically been predicated on religious texts.
Moreover, suspending a course like this because of references to religious texts misinterprets the First Amendment. Although our Founding Fathers rightly included language in the Constitution that precludes the Federal government from establishing an official religion, this language does not, as some have argued, protect them from exposure to religious references. The First Amendment is intended to guarantee an individual's right to the free exercise of religion according to his or her conscience. The Air Force personnel who have taken this course for the past 20 years have been free to determine, according to their own consciences, whether they accept or reject the premises of just war theory.
With these concerns in mind, I strongly urge you to ensure that a correct interpretation of the First Amendment is applied in resolving this situation. Moreover, I ask that you provide me with a detailed report on any actions taken by Air Force officials in response to these complaints.
I appreciate your attention to this request. Thank you for your service to the men and women of the United States Air Force and our nation.
Let's get something straight here: This isn't about a few Bible references. It's about slide after slide of Bible verses, as well as a slide presenting former Nazi and SS officer Werhner Von Braun not as a scientist, but as a moral authority promoting the Bible (for some reason, defenders of this training like Senator Cornyn keep leaving that pesky little detail out). The training quoted Von Braun, upon surrendering to American forces in 1945, 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."
Another fact: Twenty-nine of the thirty-one Air Force officers who came to MRFF for help in getting this training stopped are Christians -- both Catholics and Protestants. Got that? The overwhelming majority of the officers who complained about so-called "free exercise of religion" are objecting to the Air Force inappropriately pushing THEIR OWN religion. In the few days since Fox News Radio released Sen. Cornyn's letter, thirty-eight more Air Force officers have contacted MRFF wanting to join the original thirty-one. Thirty-two of these thirty-eight are also Christians. (So you don't have to do the math, that's sixty-one Christian Air Force officers who completely disagree with Sen. Cornyn.)
The "Just War Theory" section of the presentation begins with a slide containing an image of Augustine of Hippo, the 4th century Catholic bishop most closely associated with this set of ethical principles, although an earlier version of these principles dates back to Cicero two centuries earlier. Ironically, immediately preceding the Just War Theory slides in this uber-religious ethics presentation, George Washington is used as an example on a slide titled "Can a Person of Faith fight in a War?," even though Washington's wartime ethics were more in line with Cicero's principles of Just War than Augustine's version. And there were also the writings of later thinkers like Hugo Grotius, whose writings were based on international and natural law, and had largely supplanted Augustine's Just War Theory by the time of the founding of our country. But, of course, presenting Washington as a religious figure is to be expected in military training promoting religion.
The next two slides simply list "Augustine's Qualifications for Just War" -- Just Cause, Just Intent, Legitimate Authority, A Reasonable Prospect for Success, and Last Resort. That's all fine. It's simply a list of criteria from Augustine's theory, which, although from an historically religious figure, are criteria still accepted by many ethicists, both religious and secular, to determine if a war is morally justified.
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