Not Your Father’s Army
A Compromised Military’s Uncertain Future
Four generations of Webster men have served in the Army. Before he emigrated to the United States in 1922, my grandfather Charles was a color sergeant for a Scottish regiment in the United Kingdom from 1912 to 1918, including the last three years of World War I on the Western Front. My father, Frederick, was an enlisted radio operator on B-17s with the U.S. Army Air Corps based in the Panama Canal Zone from 1942 to 1945. My son Andrew served as an enlisted combat engineer with the U.S. Army, on active duty from 2010 to 2012, including an assignment in Germany. And I served as a U.S. Army chaplain on active duty or the reserve component from 1985 until my retirement in 2010, which included twelve one-month deployments to Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait, and Qatar.
None of us could have imagined, much less anticipated, the steady radical politicization and moral degeneracy that have afflicted all five original American military branches during the last three decades. Nor is the newest branch, the U.S. Space Force, immune from this trend.
Numerous Betrayals
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Alexander F. C. Webster (Archpriest), Ph.D., is Dean & Professor of Moral Theology Emeritus at Holy Trinity Orthodox Seminary in Jordanville, New York, and Adjunct Professor of Religious Studies at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.
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