New York (MintPress)–The Pentagon is investigating one of its own after it came to light that an instructor at Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Va. was teaching that a “total war” against the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims would be necessary to protect America from Islamic terrorists.
“We have now come to understand that there is no such thing as ‘moderate Islam,” Army Lt. Col. Matthew A. Dooley said in a presentation at the college, which is for professional military members, last July. “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.”
Pentagon brass suspended the course, called “Perspectives on Islam and Islamic Radicalism,” in late April following complaints by a student. Since the war on terror began after the 9/11 attacks, U.S. officials have maintained that America is at war against Islamic extremists, not the religion itself.
Dooley, who graduated from the U.S. military academy at West Point in 1994 and has served tours of duty in Germany, Bosnia, Kuwait and Iraq, still works at the college. He is the recipient of a Bronze Star Medal, the fourth-highest combat award.
Incendiary material
In the same July lecture, which was obtained and posted online by Wired.com’s Danger Room blog, Dooley presented a four-phase plan to carry out a forced transformation of Islam. Phase three includes outcomes such as “Islam reduced to a cult status” and “Saudi Arabia threatened with starvation.”
International laws protecting civilians in wartime are “no longer relevant,” he asserted. And that opens the possibility of applying “the historical precedents of Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki” to Islam’s holiest cities, and bringing about “Mecca and Medina’s destruction.”
“Some of these actions offered for consideration here will not be seen as ‘politically correct’,” Dooley added. “Ultimately, we can do very little in the West to decide this matter, short of waging total war.”
Steady stream of guest lecturers
Dooley began the eight-week class with a two-part history of Islam delivered by a former West Point history professor, David Fatua. “Unfortunately, if we left it at that, you wouldn’t have the proper balance of points of view, nor would you have an accurate view of how Islam defines itself,” Dooley said afterwards.
So instead, he brought in like-minded lecturers to deliver their viewpoints. One, Shireen Burki, who during the 2008 presidential election said that “Obama is bin Laden’s dream candidate,” told students in Dooley’s class that “Islam is an imperialist/conquering religion.”
Another, Stephen Coughlin, a former consultant to the military’s Joint Staff, suggested that al-Qaeda was behind the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya in an attempt by Islamists to conquer the world. And former FBI employee John Guandolo said in his reference material for the class that the Crusades “were initiated after hundreds of years of Muslim incursion into Western lands.”
Widespread practice
Joint Forces Staff College spokesman Steven Williams said about Dooley, “I don’t know if I would classify him as responsible. That would be the commandant” of the school, Maj. Gen. Joseph Ward.
After the Pentagon found out about Dooley’s presentation, Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey, the country’s top military officer, issued an order to every military chief and senior commander to get rid of any similar anti-Islam instructional materials.
The White House had already instructed the federal government’s security apparatus, both military and civilian, to revamp its counterterrorism training after learning of FBI material that demonized Islam.
And the NYPD came under attack earlier this year after it was discovered that a movie about radical Islam was shown to nearly 1,500 police recruits for up to a year of their training. Police officials originally said The Third Jihad, which promoted an image of American Muslims as radicalized, had been mistakenly screened “a couple of times.”
Documents later obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show it had been shown “on a continuous loop” for up to a year of training.
In the latest scandal, a senior officer, Army Maj. Gen. Frederick Rudesheim, has been ordered to investigate how Dooley managed to get away with his presentation in an official Defense Department-sanctioned course. The results of the review are due May 24.