Political correctness at Army War College

Why do you, or anybody else, expect the military to be any different than any other branch of government with it comes to political correctness?

Ricks is one of the best on the business. If he thinks there is something to this, then there may well be cause for alarm. I looked at the original post concerning this on a previous thread at FP, and it concerned writings of a specific Salafist cleric who was executed under Sadat. Whether that constitutes a blanket ban on teaching radical Islam is unknowable to me, considering I have no contacts at the AWC.

In any event, Foreign Policy magazine is a fantastic read, both online and in dead tree form.

So "political correctness" no longer means "being too liberal to let people tell the truth", but now can be used for any silencing of the attempt to speak truth to power on either side of the ideological line?

Good to hear it, because the tendency to silence awkward critics extends across the political spectrum.

Please do spread this usage more widely.

Political correctness goes both ways. We recently learned that over 50 language specialists have been discharged from the military because of their sexual orientation. This in a time when the Army is struggling to recruit and train enough Arab language specialists. I'll quote you back: "Something is very wrong here."

Coughlin actually still works for the DoD. He denied any pressure to have him resign. Whole thing sounded more like inter-departmental politics.

Ricks is a bit down on AWC right now for personal reasons. There is actually a lot of study done on Islamic thinking.

Steve

Year-old one-sided allegations don't exactly prove your point that there is any problem with "political correctness" at the War College. The presenters could have been rude jerks. They could have insisted on attacking Islam as a whole instead of the radical off-shoot fueling the violence. Their "scholarship" could be a lot more sloppy than the one-sided blog posts indicate. And the posts say nothing of what's in the regular curriculum at the War College.

Blog posts often start discussions when the facts aren't fully known. That's part of the fun of the Internet, but this is an example of why you should take blog posts (and especially the comments to blog posts) with a huge grain of salt.

On another note, when conservatives try to enforce what they believe is moral and civil behavior, conservatives call it "morality." When liberals try to enforce what they believe is moral and civil behavior, they call it "political correctness." Conservatives also use the term to mean "liberal idea with which I disagree." So it's not exactly that helpful of a term when you want to have a useful and civil discussion.