U.S. military cites “institutional failures” over course teaching about a war with Islam

by The TIM Team

The U.S. military relieved Army Lt. Col. Matthew A. Dooley of his teaching duties and ordered that his course be redesigned after months of investigation into complaints that he told his class that the U.S. was at war with Islam. The course at the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Va., “Perspectives on Islam and Islamic Radicalism,” had been offered since 2004, initially as a look at the roots of violent extremism. But “institutional failures in oversight and judgment” led to changes in the course content two years ago, in which Islam was portrayed “almost entirely in a negative way,” said Col. Dave Lapan, spokesman for the chairman of the U.S. military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff. He said there were no plans to retrain the officers who took the class. A second military officer will receive administrative counseling over the matter, Lapan said. Among Dooley’s lessons was to ask students to apply the lessons of Hiroshima in planning for the war on Islam’s next phase, in which civilian populations would be targeted where required and whole cities could be destroyed at one time.

Wired.com, by Spencer Ackerman and Noah Shachtman, 6/20/2012
Reuters.com, by David Alexander, 6/20/2012