{"id":74087,"date":"2017-08-19T08:23:19","date_gmt":"2017-08-19T12:23:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=74087"},"modified":"2017-08-19T10:34:10","modified_gmt":"2017-08-19T14:34:10","slug":"washington-post-after-charlottesville-the-u-s-military-grapples-with-its-history-of-racism-and-extremism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=74087","title":{"rendered":"Washington Post: After Charlottesville, the U.S. military grapples with its history of racism and extremism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dan Lamothe who currently works at the Washington Post wrote an article today entitled “After Charlottesville, the U.S. military grapples with its history of racism and extremism<\/a>” which really doesn’t say much of anything about the military grappling with racism or extremism.<\/p>\n

Speaking from my two decades of service in the military, I’d have to say that the military community is the least<\/del> most color-blind segment of American society. But Lamothe drags out four examples to make his case – Tim McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, James A. Fields Jr., the fellow who mowed down several demonstrators last weekend in Charlottesville, Dillon Ulysses Hopper, a leader of some white supremacist group and Nathan Damigo, another founder of some racist group.<\/p>\n

Four people out of how many millions of veterans, active duty and reservist servicemembers? Lamothe admits that the number is small;<\/p>\n

To be sure, the percentage of veterans who subscribe to extremist views is tiny.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So tiny that it’s hardly worth mentioning, but here it is. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s an ugly return to the past for the Pentagon, which took steps to stamp out extremism in the 1990s, especially after the Oklahoma City bombing and the 1995 murder of a black couple near Fort Bragg, N.C. In that case, two soldiers \u2014 Malcolm Wright Jr. and James N. Burmeister \u2014 were found with a Nazi flag and white supremacist pamphlets. They were eventually convicted.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Left loves Tim McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing – it gave them an example of “right wing extremism” that they can point to and say “See? Veterans are dangerous right wing terrorists.” Except that there are millions of veterans who go to work everyday, raise their families, pay their bills and not one of them knows how to wire up a bomb in a rental truck. <\/p>\n

I’m disappointed that Dan Lamothe would stoop so low as to refer to McVeigh in the first paragraph of this piece.<\/p>\n

And using James Fields as an example of “extremist veterans” is equally vacuous – Fields’ military career can be measured in weeks before he was booted, for whatever reason. It would be more reasonable to blame his high school education for his actions that day in Charlottesville.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the services are still grappling with what to do with the incorporation of Confederate history into military culture. Ten Army bases are named after generals who fought for the South during the Civil War, including Fort Bragg, Fort Hood, Fort Polk and Fort Benning. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, it’s not even a topic of discussion in military circles, let alone something that they’re “grappling with”. By the way, I was stationed at all four of those bases during my career, so I guess I’m a suspected extremist, now. If having military bases with those names should be re-titled, there must be a reason to bother with the expense and the confusion that it would cause.<\/p>\n

Thanks to Chief Tango for the link.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dan Lamothe who currently works at the Washington Post wrote an article today entitled “After Charlottesville, … Washington Post: After Charlottesville, the U.S. military grapples with its history of racism and extremism<\/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":[177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dumbass-bullshit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74087","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=74087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74087\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=74087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=74087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=74087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}