ROTC Students Disciplined Over Statements Supporting Program

A scoop by Ryan Alexander at the Campus Tavern blog:

Several Marquette ROTC students have been disciplined over their responses to an anti-ROTC opinion piece in the Marquette Tribune.

According to Alexander:

Apparently this is where several cadets got into trouble with their respective programs, as several cadets wrote viewpoints to the Marquette Tribune in opposition to Robert Graf and many cadets joined an anti-Graf group on thefacebook.com.

A search of the Tribune archives shows that, of the four responses to the anti-ROTC article, three were entirely civil, and one was a bit testy, but certainly not terribly abusive.

Facebook responses were mostly civil, but with a couple that did seem to us to be “out of bounds.” We do not know whether the responses we considered inappropriate came from the ROTC cadets who were disciplined.

This affair is ironic given the following:

In a protest with an unusual number of high-level signatures, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and each of its five members have fired off a letter assailing a Washington Post cartoon as “beyond tasteless.”

The Tom Toles cartoon, published Sunday, depicts a heavily bandaged soldier in a hospital bed as having lost his arms and legs, while Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, in the guise of a doctor, says: “I’m listing your condition as ‘battle hardened.’” Toles said he meant no offense toward American soldiers.

The letter to The Post, signed by Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the vice chairman and the service chiefs of the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force, said: “We believe you and Mr. Toles have done a disservice to your readers and your paper’s reputation by using such a callous depiction of those who have volunteered to defend this nation, and as a result, have suffered traumatic and life-altering wounds . . .

“While you or some of your readers may not agree with the war or its conduct, we believe you owe the men and women and their families who so selflessly serve our country the decency to not make light of their tremendous physical sacrifices.” The letter, which a reporter obtained from the Pentagon, is being published today.

Is this an example of “do as we say, not as we do” from the military? We have difficulty seeing the difference between objecting to an Op-Ed piece in the Tribune, and to a cartoon in the Washington Post.