I question your conclusion you refered to in post #15.

After responding to Wayne, I did a search on this issue and read numerous articles from various sources.

Your conclusion, in my opinion, is wrong!

I did expect him to mention it when their idiocy had severe negative impacts on morale. I did expect him to bring it up when it was impacting family life in an extremely negative way.

He caved instead. Later I learned from the RP that he was explicitly told that if he ever objected he would find a negative review in his service record the next day.

Officers use fancy schmancy words like “force multiplier” often. They do not seem to care if their idiotic, vaporous notions have any impact on the lives of their charges. In this case, it was a severe “force divider”. I was written up several times for failing to abide by the curfew while I was transiting between guard duty and my apartment.

zero tolerance policies=zero intelligence from the “leaders”.

In this case, it seems to me that the changing of chaplains from semi-independant voices of conscience to craven yes-men does nothing for the service I used to love and goes a long way toward encouraging immorality. Let me take this opportunity to mention that there were no chaplains in Abu Ghraib during the prisoner abuse, and the commander who replaced General Karpinski made it a point to bring them in.

As to the “vested power” issue, just because you have the POWER to do something does not mean that you necassarily SHOULD do it. The old adage “Absolute power corrupts absolutely” comes to mind.

Case in point:
Again, while I was on Okinawa I had to get my wife’s vehicle plates changed from “?” to “Y” so that we could drive on base. After spending two weeks, $350 in fees and endless paperwork I was told that a new order came down yesterday prohibiting it. A policy that stipulated that no “unaccompanied dependant” should be allowed to drive on base.

We were forced to have our car towed in and impounded, pay $30 a day for the honor of keeping a vehicle that my wife already paid for sit in storage and our protests to this went nowhere.

Turns out that some Maj with rocks in his skull decided that the spiffy way to reduce traffic accidents was to keep “unaccompanied dependants” from driving. Period. Zero tolerance. Even if the dependant in question was had been driving in Japan for 15 years, was fluent in Japanese, owned the Japanese car from a Japanese car dealership, and is a citizen of Japan. (my wife)

Maj Dumb*** then went on vacation-with a tidy little “Good Job Bob!” note in his service record for “working to reduce traffic incidents”. He handed over his shop (G7) to a CWO 5, who promptly changed it back and gave everyone who was caught up in this net, including me, permission in writing to get the liscense plates to drive on base. Why?

Because he had a Japanese wife who he married when he was a LCpl. And he understood the hardships we lived under with this policy, having been there himself. He did not get in trouble-he retired three months later. He tried to get Maj Dumb*** to listen to his objections, to no avail.

Maj Dumb*** REALLY wanted that promotion to LtCol. And he got it, of course.

Funny little side-note: I paid half what a Japanese citizen similar to me did for insurance because I was a Marine LCpl, not despite it. And yet I was a “danger to other drivers”. As was my wife.

Point is that the “vested power” argument does not work with me-for the simple reason that I refuse to submit to orders that impact negatively on my wife. I am no fool.

My family has served in the military for decades, male and female, in all conflicts since WW2. I know that I do not enjoy all the rights of ordinary citizens when I enlist.

But that does not mean that my WIFE ‘S life needs to be hell on Earth. She should be left the hell alone, regardless of how much pretty brass someone wears on their shiny new uniform.

I made my objections known to my command on this and many other “quality of life” issues. No joy. There were only two things left to me then. Request Mast and going to the “Chaplain”. I found a third, and transferred out of that command to III MEF headquarters, where my wife was treated like a human being instead of a “mail-order bride”. (that was precious. who says officers do not have a sense of humor? I should have killed the SOB)

Basically, you seem to want Chaplains to be like any other officer, when they are manifestly NOT. If that were so, then any flag officer could wave his little wand at some jg or lt and make him and ersatz “chaplain”. You don’t tell a pilot he can’t fly, you don’t tell a PC he can’t lead his platoon, and you shouldn’t limit the expression of Chaplains.

Why do you think I am in the Army now? I know that I am a pawn in their game, but at least they do not forcibly remind me of it every day. And they seem to give a tinker’s damn about me.

Thank you for sharing your history there. I do not want to defend the USMC policy in Okinawa—it’s not a policy I like. I would point out that the Chaplain did not make the policy; the USMC (under the authority of Congress) did. The Chaplain was powerless (as in, didn’t have the authority or ability) to change the rule, so blaming him is misdirected.

It is also not the subject of this thread.

To echo apostle:
Bottom line is that there is nothing that states that chaplains can’t use the name Jesus when praying, publicly or privately. Especially a Christian chaplain whose job is to instruct and encourage from a Christ perspective. Military men and women do not lose their right to religious expression when they enlist, nor do government officials when they swear their oath of office.

Again, it appears that Chaplain K. is being misleading at best.
Moral to the story: the liberal MSM likes to play “ain’t it awful”; sometimes conservatives fall into the same trap.

If this chaplain signed a contract stating he could not pray in Jesus’ name, then he has no one to fault but himself. But in that same token, he would not have gotten the job otherwise, which is totally un-Constitutional. The left will have to someday wake up and realize that America is a free country, and that we all have the right to religious expression no matter what our status or occupation. There is nothing in our Constitution that says otherwise, and any restriction or law that does violence to this freedom or impinges one’s right to express their faith, then it should be scrapped according to law. Label the guy whatever you want, but that doesn’t change the fact that his freedoms are being violated. If the ACLU truly defended civil liberties, they’d be all over this one. Now its true soldiers are not civillians, and do not have a lot of the same rights. But our Constitution does not stipulate that military men and women lose certain religious freedoms when they enlist, and the fact that they have been praying in Jesus’ name not only in public military assembly but also in Congress for 200 years, gives evidence to what was intended. The left have infiltrated every level of our society, including the military, in order to change America to a somewhat mild version of Soviet Russia.