Colonel’s Class on Radical Islam Leaves Career in Limbo
10.15.2012 at 02:44am
Colonel’s Class on Radical Islam Leaves Career in Limbo by Rowan Scarborough, Washington Times.
… A highly rated armor officer who saw combat in Iraq, Col. Dooley planned to instruct for several years at the Joint Forces Staff College within the National Defense University, then seek command of a combat battalion – a ticket to better postings and higher rank.
Today, Col. Dooley finds himself at a dead end while being targeted for criticism by American Islamic groups, at least two of which are linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, which advocates universal Islamic law…
At the point I reached in one of LTC Dooley’s presentations the suggestion that Mecca and Medina should be targeted ala Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, I realized this was not a matter of sensitivity, but stupidity. Given the hoops an Army course has to go through to get approved, I’d still like to know who approved the POI for this rubbish. Those folks should be hung out to dry as well for failure to exercise due diligence. If LTC Dooley was allowed to develop the course without adult supervision, then the question becomes what else is out there masquerading as education.
My issue with what little I’ve received on Islam within the Professional Military Education system is that it is usually one of two extremes- either super sensitive to offending anyone or “they want to take over the world, we need to kill them all”. I even had the latter justified with the rationale that we usually get the other version in our mass media- so they were just offering a different perspective that you wouldn’t normally get “in order to provide balance”.
No matter the extremes- I usually commented that I felt dumber afterwards. It seems to me that we don’t get any nuance from actual experts- to include people who have lived and are from Islamic countries. For instance- outside of a SOCOM-sponsored workshop- I have never heard anyone in our PME bring up the question of why fundamental Islam didn’t seem to be that big of a problem prior to (relatively) recently. There seems to have been a spike in the growth of the numbers of fundamentalist groups in the Middle East- but I haven’t heard anyone even discussing that- much less discussing possible sources. THAT issue is something I wish we paid as much attention to- if not more- as this issue.
Allcon-
I am not familiar with that school’s POI or the slide sets/context.
As a (now retired Army) instructor and currently-employed civil affairs instructor to the Navy (MCAST) I would love to see what the content looks like.
When I taught at SWCS all the students received several Islam-themed courses, from Intro to Radicalization. I have all those slides if interested.
What I find a little strange is the assertion, if true, that the instructor advocated the destruction of certain locations. In almost every student set I’ve had since 2006 there has been at least one Muslim (or sympathiser). So as a uniformed instructor, even with all my SWCS students under non-attribution disclaimers (signed by each) I would never have advocated something like that. As a matter of fact, I have pulled instructors off the podium for innapropriate delivery/content (i.e. videos shown with insufficient explanation/offensive content with no connection to TLOs and ELOs etc…).
What sounds more plausible is a mis-read or absence of context. And that says to me that this teacher was pushed onto his sword. I hope that isn’t true, but in either case it seems to be a no-win.
tom
Hi Tom,
Please can you send me the info for the SWCS course you taught on Islam and radicalisation? I am doing research into special forces in Iraq (amongst other Iraq related study.) It would be greatly appreciated.
My email is [email protected]
Best,
Bob.
I looked at the slides and it appears that they advocate a global war against Islam – which is really a terrorist ideology not a religion as we would define it – until we reach a point where the current form of Islam is eradicated around the world and replaced by a form of Islam which we find more in keeping with Western norms. This seems a little more ambitious than nation building in third world countries (sarcasm). This stuff is Frank Gaffney/Lyndon LaRouche tinfoil territory and somebody was obviously negligent in allowing this material to be disseminated as a course of study in a USG institution.
A few notable items in the slides: First Amendment protections should be dissolved for radical extremists in the USA. The Geneva Convention is not relevant in current environment. Brigades returning from Iraq/Afghanistan should be retrained and deployed to the southern U.S. border in two Division/twelve month increments.
The final paragraph from the last slide in the deck (Theoretical STRATCOM Message): “It is therefore time for the United States to make our true intentions clear. This barbaric ideology will no longer be tolerated. Islam must change or we will facilitate its self-destruction. Let it be known that the United States remains, and will forever be, a beacon of freedom, self determination, hope, and representative democracy. The American people will not be converted. We will not submit. We will not be intimidated, and we will not be driven from this earth.”
When I was a young officer, many peers and seniors proposed plans for turning North Vietnam, or even both Vietnams, into parking lots, to reduce the pain of thinking one’s way through the issues. Most were joking, of course. Looks like some of the serious ones are still around. The slides provided by Wired reflect a similar confusion of categories: (Islam with GSFI), historical events (OIF/OEF with WWII), cultures (Arab with South Asian),and much else. This confusion, often unintentional but nonetheless dumb, seems typical of the wing nut conspiricists and tin foil antennae folks at both ends of the spectrum. That these materials received an OK by senior reviewers indicts them. That LTC Dooley elected to use them, as he apparently did, rather than find a way to clarify the contradictions and polemics or rewrite the whole POI, does, in fact, IMHO, indict him on grounds of judgment, if not intelligence. I recently requested his defense at Thomas More legal center to provide the exact materials (the Wired slides would have fit the bill) he is accused of presenting, only response there was to refer me to some articles about LG Boykin’s supposed pillory. Looks like this is a continuation of that ongoing cultural struggle within the military, which in turn reflects the same struggle in civilian society. On balance, I side with Gen. Dempsey and those who seek clarity in these matters. Thomas More center and the defense will see none of my funds, will donate to SWJ, instead.
So when should we discuss radical ideals and concepts? The only three place I know of are the classroom and the barroom and here. This is not the only foolish firing I have seen lately. One only need look at the Army times in the last few months to see more.