Should religious beliefs determine military duties?

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the actions of a US Army colonel who refuses to fulfill his military duties unless provided with proof of Barack Obama's birthplace. Participants explore the implications of this refusal, questioning the motivations behind it and its relation to broader themes of political belief and military conduct.

Discussion Character

  • Debate/contested
  • Conceptual clarification
  • Meta-discussion

Main Points Raised

  • Some participants express confusion over the colonel's refusal, suggesting it may be a manifestation of xenophobia or a publicity stunt.
  • Others argue that the colonel's actions could be seen as insubordination rather than treason, with potential consequences including dishonorable discharge.
  • A few participants speculate on the colonel's motivations, suggesting he may be seeking attention for the "birther" movement or attempting to position himself for a future political career.
  • There is discussion about the implications of questioning Obama's eligibility, with some noting it could suggest a larger conspiracy theory regarding US governance.
  • Participants debate whether the colonel's stance is principled or politically motivated, with differing views on the nature of his beliefs and the risks he is taking.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants do not reach a consensus on the motivations behind the colonel's actions or the implications of his refusal to deploy. Multiple competing views remain regarding the nature of his beliefs and the broader context of the "birther" movement.

Contextual Notes

Some participants reference historical instances of military personnel refusing orders based on personal beliefs, indicating a complex relationship between military duty and personal conviction. The discussion also touches on the potential consequences of such refusals, but does not resolve the underlying assumptions about the motivations and implications of the colonel's actions.

  • #91
arildno said:
I didn't know that!

Fascinating..

Do you know what I find stunning? You, who have never been to the US, have asked within 3 or 4 pages every relevant question in regards to the Birther issue. You have discussed them civily, and accepted reality when it was presented, and remained skeptical without being dismissive. So, what can be accomplished by a person without massive notions in their mind before the discussion, in 3 pages online, cannot be done by an army colonel with a medical doctorate. I know, you are not xenophobic and you do not believe this, so maybe that is the key, but it makes me wonder how much of "Birther" is honest, or just rabble rousing.
 
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  • #92
Evo said:
To me that sounds completely bogus. Why would a routine birth be something of importance to bring up? And why on Earth would she remember something so trivial that had nothing to do with her about someone she didn't know? Bogus.

Mixed race child, father from Kenya, and a white mother, in Hawaii in the 60's? I don't claim this is instantly memorable, but there cannot have been many such births in this person's personal experience.
 
  • #93
IcedEcliptic said:
Mixed race child, father from Kenya, and a white mother, in Hawaii in the 60's? I don't claim this is instantly memorable, but there cannot have been many such births in this person's personal experience.
The key was the name Stanley - her father's name. Combined with the mixed-race angle, that would have stuck in her mind. I don't know any women named Stanley.
 
  • #94
Evo said:
To me that sounds completely bogus. Why would a routine birth be something of importance to bring up? And why on Earth would she remember something so trivial that had nothing to do with her about someone she didn't know? Bogus.

Methinks the old lady could have self-censored the ensuing dinner chat about cross-racial love affairs..

SUCH a conversation would very well be remembered by her, although she'd never admit today to have partaken in it. :smile:
 
  • #95
arildno said:
Methinks the old lady could have self-censored the ensuing dinner chat about cross-racial love affairs..

SUCH a conversation would very well be remembered by her, although she'd never admit today to have partaken in it. :smile:
In 1961, such a conversation would almost certainly ensued. Anywhere in the deep south and many places in the northern states, such a marriage would have been quite problematic, and perhaps fatal.
 
  • #96
IcedEcliptic said:
Do you know what I find stunning? You, who have never been to the US, have asked within 3 or 4 pages every relevant question in regards to the Birther issue. You have discussed them civily, and accepted reality when it was presented, and remained skeptical without being dismissive. So, what can be accomplished by a person without massive notions in their mind before the discussion, in 3 pages online, cannot be done by an army colonel with a medical doctorate. I know, you are not xenophobic and you do not believe this, so maybe that is the key, but it makes me wonder how much of "Birther" is honest, or just rabble rousing.

Well, as IvanSeeking and yourself has indicated, if we look at the motivation for taking the position of a birther, it might very well be due to "wishful thinking" and "grasping at straws".
 
  • #97
IcedEcliptic said:
Mixed race child, father from Kenya, and a white mother, in Hawaii in the 60's? I don't claim this is instantly memorable, but there cannot have been many such births in this person's personal experience.

turbo-1 said:
The key was the name Stanley - her father's name. Combined with the mixed-race angle, that would have stuck in her mind. I don't know any women named Stanley.
I don't think mixed races in Hawaii would be that unsual, many dark skinned polynesians mixed with whites. Did they discuss that they were shocked by a mixed race child? I just don't see this actually coming up as anything out of the ordinary and that it would be something she would remember. False memories are much more likely. Did she remember the name of the doctor that was her father's good friend? It should be easy to check if he was working at that hospital and if he was in delivery at the time of Obama's birth. Why aren't there billing records for the delivery, that was also something that came up. Did the hospital lose those records too?

Point is, he has a valid birth certificate.
 
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  • #98
Evo said:
I don't think mixed races in Hawaii would be that unsual, many dark skinned polynesians mixed with whites. Did they discuss that they were shocked by a mixed race child?

White males with black females is one thing, white FEMALES with black males..quite a different thing in those days.

Even a racist like Strom Thurmond had a black mistress, if I'm not mistaken..
 
  • #100
turbo-1 said:
Oops! Forgot to link to the Snopes article citing the teacher at Obama's school who remembered the obstetrician talking about a woman (Stanley Obama) giving birth. Here it is is (near bottom of the page).

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/birthcertificate.asp
Two things, she didn't go by her first name, and second, she had been in Kenya for a long time up until his birth, so would have had no ongoing relationship with the obstetrician in Hawaii. I could see him saying "some white woman had a black baby". It's all anecdotal and makes a good story. Not very believable though. Certainly doesn't validate anything. And it doesn't need to. But it does allow people to blow holes in the story and give the birthers more to add to their conspiracy theory.
 
  • #101
Evo said:
I don't think mixed races in Hawaii would be that unsual, many dark skinned polynesians mixed with whites. Did they discuss that they were shocked by a mixed race child? I just don't see this actually coming up as anything out of the ordinary and that it would be something she would remember. False memories are much more likely. Did she remember the name of the doctor that was her father's good friend? It should be easy to check if he was working at that hospital and if he was in delivery at the time of Obama's birth. Why aren't there billing records for the delivery, that was also something that came up. Did the hospital lose those records too?

Point is, he has a valid birth certificate.

Mixed race is one thing, as arildno says, a black, no, an AFRICAN man with a white woman would have stood out I think. False memories are still more likely however, or just someone trying to "do good" as they see it.
 
  • #102
Evo said:
Two things, she didn't go by her first name, and second, she had been in Kenya for a long time up until his birth, so would have had no ongoing relationship with the obstetrician in Hawaii. I could see him saying "some white woman had a black baby".

1. The obstetrician would (probably) know her full name from the patient records, whether or not he knew her personally. He certainly knew his own friend's first name from before.

2. The quadruple oddness of a masculine first name, coinciding with his friend's name, the un-American surname, and the black baby out of the white womb would easily churn in the back of the brain to find a good story outlet.

3. That in a presumably all-white Canoe Club he chose to break his doctor's confidentiality standard and muse about the "musicality" of the name Barack Hussein Obama and more, doesn't sound very improbable, although the story can't be regarded as anywhere near verified.
To classify it as dismissable bogus, though, I beg to differ..
 
  • #103
IcedEcliptic said:
Mixed race is one thing, as arildno says, a black, no, an AFRICAN man with a white woman would have stood out I think. False memories are still more likely however, or just someone trying to "do good" as they see it.
Why would they know what country he was from as opposed to just being black? The more detail, the more unbelievable, if you know what I mean. She wasn't the President's mother, she was a nobody. She was some white woman that gave birth to a black baby.
 
  • #104
Evo said:
Two things, she didn't go by her first name, and second, she had been in Kenya for a long time up until his birth, so would have had no ongoing relationship with the obstetrician in Hawaii. I could see him saying "some white woman had a black baby". It's all anecdotal and makes a good story. Not very believable though. Certainly doesn't validate anything. And it doesn't need to. But it does allow people to blow holes in the story and give the birthers more to add to their conspiracy theory.
All too easy to dismiss, but if you have to sign papers to give birth, she would have given her full legal name Stanley Ann Obama. She was named after her father because he wanted a boy, not a girl. If you notice the birth announcements from Honolulu's papers, they give a street address in a residential area, not a hotel or other temporary housing, indicating that the Obamas had lived there for a bit.

Also Dr. West was chief of staff at Kapiolani Hospital and was still practicing obstetrics up into the mid-'60's at least, so that part of Ms. Nelson's story checks out fine.
 
  • #105
Evo said:
Why would they know what country he was from as opposed to just being black? The more detail, the more unbelievable, if you know what I mean. She wasn't the President's mother, she was a nobody. She was some white woman that gave birth to a black baby.

He's black, and he would have had a strong accent. Again, we both agree on the facts of this issue, but on this point, I can see it standing out. I should see if statistics of white women with black men in Hawaii say for that time.
 
  • #106
arildno said:
3. That in a presumably all-white Canoe Club he chose to break his doctor's confidentiality standard and muse about the "musicality" of the name Barack Hussein Obama
That's another thing that makes me call it bogus, the delivery doctor would not know the name of the baby, unless there was some unusually close connection between doctor and patient, especially in the 60's, she would have been given what was called "twighlight sleep", and probably not even be awake before he left. The baby's name does not come up in the delivery room. The doctor leaves immediately and the nursing staff takes over. A hospital staff person would come by within a day and ask the mother if she had decided on a name yet to put on the hospital birth record to be sent to the city records office.

Too much detail to be believable, IMO.
 
  • #107
Evo said:
That's another thing that makes me call it bogus, the delivery doctor would not know the name of the baby, unless their was some close connection between doctor and patient, the baby's name does not come up in the delivery room. The doctor leaves immediately and the nursing staff takes over. A hospital staff person would come by within a day and ask the mother if she had decided on a name yet to put on the hospital birth record to be sent to the city records office.

Too much detail to be believable, IMO.

That is a very good point, and I cannot think of a rational refutation of it.
 
  • #108
IcedEcliptic said:
That is a very good point, and I cannot think of a rational refutation of it.
The attending nurse, helping deliver a black baby from a white woman tells the obstetrician "Guess what else, Dr. West? Her first name is Stanley." Rational refutation or not, oddities stick in our minds, and the birth entailed enough rare/odd details to make it notable.

As Ivan has pointed out, if the circumstances surrounding Obama's birth were suspicious in the least, his enemies on the right (all of the GOP) and on the left (the Clintons, at least) would have been all over it. Senators, party-leaders, and former Presidents have resources that would likely leave us mundane citizens agape. The birthers are nuts. Need proof? Their "queen" is Orly Taitz. Just Google her and try (if you can) to sit through some of her over-the-top rantings on YouTube and news feeds.
 
  • #109
Evo said:
That's another thing that makes me call it bogus, the delivery doctor would not know the name of the baby, unless there was some unusually close connection between doctor and patient, especially in the 60's, she would have been given what was called "twighlight sleep", and probably not even be awake before he left. The baby's name does not come up in the delivery room. The doctor leaves immediately and the nursing staff takes over. A hospital staff person would come by within a day and ask the mother if she had decided on a name yet to put on the hospital birth record to be sent to the city records office.

Too much detail to be believable, IMO.

But he WOULD know the declared father's name from the patient records, agreed?

Now, let us stick to rationality, and just state that:

Obama jr. WAS born at that hospital.

What elements of that woman's story would necessarily be true, independent of her story?

a) That the mother's name WAS Stanley Ann Obama

b) That, most likely, the father's name was ALSO at the patient records (a name his son inherited)

c) That the baby born was black.

All these facts are highly likely to have been known to the obstetrician at the birth.

Now, if it pans out that:
d) Dr. West was the performing obstetrician
e) He knew that lady's father Stanley
f) That both he and her frequented the Canoe Club

then the lady's story is not that improbable at all.

As part of her self-censoring ways, she is re-directing (consciously or unconsciously) snide remarks on "musicality" the obstetrician made with respect to the Negro Dad onto his more famous son.
 
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  • #110
turbo-1 said:
The attending nurse, helping deliver a black baby from a white woman tells the obstetrician "Guess what else, Dr. West? Her first name is Stanley." Rational refutation or not, oddities stick in our minds, and the birth entailed enough rare/odd details to make it notable.
Too much embellishment. If she had said, "a white woman gave birth to a black baby today", that I could believe. If it was that rare, that would be sufficient.
 
  • #111
turbo-1 said:
The attending nurse, helping deliver a black baby from a white woman tells the obstetrician "Guess what else, Dr. West? Her first name is Stanley." Rational refutation or not, oddities stick in our minds, and the birth entailed enough rare/odd details to make it notable.

As Ivan has pointed out, if the circumstances surrounding Obama's birth were suspicious in the least, his enemies on the right (all of the GOP) and on the left (the Clintons, at least) would have been all over it. Senators, party-leaders, and former Presidents have resources that would likely leave us mundane citizens agape. The birthers are nuts. Need proof? Their "queen" is Orly Taitz. Just Google her and try (if you can) to sit through some of her over-the-top rantings on YouTube and news feeds.

You do not need to convince me that the Birthers are mad, I believe it. This is now about minor details, one side distorting facts can lead good people to do the same.
 
  • #112
Evo said:
Too much embellishment. If she had said, "a white woman gave birth to a black baby today", that I could believe. If it was that rare, that would be sufficient.

It's more about what the obstetrician would have said to a pretty young thing whose father's name was Stanley.

He would like to keep her attention, be the center, starting with a shocker like "Stanley gave birth today", and then drawling out a yarn about negroes being musical and such, even their names being a song.
Easily bewitching foolish, young women with all that song&dance, those negroes..



As for IvanSeeking's salient point as to why the Republicans aren't pushing the issue, it might well be that they were given an indormal confirmation from Dr. West personally that he DID deliver Obama jr. in 1961, a fact he could have given due to the unusual circumstances, and that the good doctor lived right up to the beginning of the controversy.

The chosen reticence among Republicans could be a strategical non-lie, living perfectly well with innuendoes, however baseless, against the President.
 
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  • #113
IcedEcliptic said:
You do not need to convince me that the Birthers are mad, I believe it. This is now about minor details, one side distorting facts can lead good people to do the same.
It is tough to glean the facts, against the storm of misinformation. The Internet is a powerful tool. It can be used to tease out the truth, and it can be used to flood the 'web with half-truths, speculation and lies. I was supplying IE with a plausible reason why the birth-mother's name might stick in the obstetrician's head. I have worked with a lot of doctors over the years, and they chatter with their assistants and staff, especially when the patient is absent or sedated.
 
  • #114
turbo-1 said:
It is tough to glean the facts, against the storm of misinformation. The Internet is a powerful tool. It can be used to tease out the truth, and it can be used to flood the 'web with half-truths, speculation and lies. I was supplying IE with a plausible reason why the birth-mother's name might stick in the obstetrician's head. I have worked with a lot of doctors over the years, and they chatter with their assistants and staff, especially when the patient is absent or sedated.

True, it is hard to do this, but at least we all agree that details being aside, the Birther conclusion is madness, even if some elements of their doubt can be understood a little. Xenophobia is an ugly thing, and fear damages the one who is afraid.
 
  • #115
IcedEcliptic said:
Xenophobia is an ugly thing, and fear damages the one who is afraid.
Can you please expound on your claim that this is xenophobia?
Xenophobia is a fear or hatred of the unknown or the foreign.

Surely you grant that their issue is with the Consititutional requirement that the president be a natural born American citizsen. Upholding the Constitution is not a xenophobic act.
 
  • #116
DaveC426913 said:
Can you please expound on your claim that this is xenophobia?
Xenophobia is a fear or hatred of the unknown or the foreign.

Surely you grant that their issue is with the Consititutional requirement that the president be a natural born American citizsen. Upholding the Constitution is not a xenophobic act.

He might consider them xenophobic if the constitution being upheld is xenophobic.
 
  • #117
zomgwtf said:
He might consider them xenophobic if the constitution being upheld is xenophobic.

Well, equal rights are given to CITIZENS, rather than extended to NON-citizens.

This is a perfectly moral principle by which to organize a sovereign state.
 
  • #118
arildno said:
Well, equal rights are given to CITIZENS, rather than extended to NON-citizens.
Most rights are extended to non-citizens. The particluar one being discussed here is not, but I haven't heard an argument for why this one is xenophobic.
 
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  • #119
russ_watters said:
Most rights are extended to non-citizens.
Like the right to stay on in the country after having done serious crimes?

Like the right to have your children educated at the state's expense if you can't afford private schools?

I agree with you, Russ, that however we count rights, "most rights" would be equally extended.


But there definitely exist important exceptions.

For example, are non-citizens entitled to have a lawyer appointed to them, if they cannot afford one themselves?
 
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  • #120
arildno said:
Like the right to stay on in the country after having done serious crimes?

Like the right to have your children educated at the state's expense if you can't afford private schools?

I agree with you, Russ, that however we count rights, "most rights" would be equally extended.

But there definitely exist important exceptions.
I'm not sure what your point is here... I just wanted to clarify.
For example, are non-citizens entitled to have a lawyer appointed to them, if they cannot afford one themselves?
Yes. Anyone going through our judicial system has roughly the same rights.
 

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