Salon.com > West Point

Right-wing terrorism is real

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 15:45:00 +0000

There are four revealing stories to be gleaned from the Aggrieved Conservative Backlash™ to an exhaustive and sober new West Point Combating Terrorism Center report on "Understanding America's Violent Far-Right." (For a more grass roots-y look at how hysterical and viral that backlash is, see some choice tweets here.)

At West Point, “you need to believe in God”

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 16:22:00 +0000

Blake Page, a 24-year-old cadet in his 4^th year at West Point, created a storm on November 19 when he announced he was leaving in protest over religious discrimination and church state boundary violations. In his letter of resignation he stated, “I do not wish to be in any way associated with an institution which willfully disregards the Constitution of the United States of America by enforcing policies which run counter to the same.” In an op-ed published at the Huffington Post on Monday, Page minced no words: “Countless officers here and throughout the military are guilty of blatantly violating the oaths they swore to defend the Constitution . . . through unconstitutional proselytism, discrimination against the non-religious and establishing formal policies to reward, encourage and even at times require sectarian religious participation.”

Gen. Petraeus, just another philanderer

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 17:05:00 +0000

The Petraeus affair would be ever so boring if it didn’t involve the resignation of the head of the CIA, the most celebrated general in recent history, the reputed inventor of modern warcraft, the man who got us out of Iraq, the backer of drones—need I go on?

I know people are shocked, shocked, but—maybe because national security isn’t my beat—I’m more shocked that anyone is shocked. So an extremely important (and self-important) long-married man falls into bed with a woman who is writing his biography. Ho hum! It can’t be easier to imagine.