{"id":18162,"date":"2010-03-23T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-23T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=18162"},"modified":"2010-03-23T16:01:40","modified_gmt":"2010-03-23T21:01:40","slug":"first-sikh-officer-in-26-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=18162","title":{"rendered":"First Sikh officer in 26 years"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/s-sikh-army-captain-tejdeep-singh-rattan-large.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-18164 aligncenter\" title=\"s-sikh-army-captain-tejdeep-singh-rattan-large\" src=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/s-sikh-army-captain-tejdeep-singh-rattan-large.jpg\" alt=\"s-sikh-army-captain-tejdeep-singh-rattan-large\" width=\"260\" height=\"190\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I remember during the Cold War ,when we thought it was inevitable that we would face the Soviets and the chemical weapons at the Fulda Gap, when the Army gave Sikhs the option of shaving their beards and wearing Army headgear or leaving the service. Well, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2010\/03\/23\/sikh-army-captain-graduat_n_509294.html\">the first Sikh since the ban has completed his Officer Basic Course<\/a>;<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Capt. Tejdeep Singh Rattan, a 31-year-old dentist, graduated Monday at Fort Sam Houston after the Army made an exemption to a uniform policy that has effectively prevented Sikhs from enlisting since 1984.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m feeling very humbled. I&#8217;m a soldier,&#8221; he said, grinning after the ceremony as other members of the Sikh community milled about nearby. &#8220;This has been my dream.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>I wonder how long it takes him to put his protective mask on over the beard and turban. I guess Common Task Training now has religious exceptions for the standards.<\/p>\n<p>I have no objection to Sikhs serving in the military, but unless they&#8217;re serving in a chaplain capacity, they should adhere to common sense standards.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks to one of our vigilant LEO readers <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I remember during the Cold War ,when we thought it was inevitable that we would face &hellip; <a title=\"First Sikh officer in 26 years\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=18162\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">First Sikh officer in 26 years<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18162\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}