[TteFAboB]

Two problems Skybird:

Starting from the last quote:

This paper analyzes the impact of a culturally homogeneous group on strategic decision-making and policy recommendations. The United States military's organizational climate has shifted steadily to the right since the Viet Nam War. Today's Armed Forces are increasingly identified with conservative Christian and Republican values. This change in group dynamics can inhibit the decision making process by preventing a thorough review of relevant courses of action, in accordance with the Rational Decision Model. The nature of in-groups and their influence on the decision process can have a deleterious effect on sound decision making, even if only inadvertently. Today's conservative voice has a strong influence on national policy decisions. This makes it imperative that strategic leaders understand the culture shift in today's military, as well as how group dynamics can limit creativity and proper analysis of alternatives. The failure to do so can cause a divergence of opinion between military and civilian leaders and thereby widen the gap in civil military relations.

What gives your culturally homogeneous group the priviledge of exemption from the same demand? As far as I understand, you do not advocate diversity, as the author of this piece does, Christian and even Muslim groups included, as long as no group is hegemonic, but an homogeneously atheist Army, as that would be a better army in your opinion. To back my claim, I quote the author praising diversity, not homogeneity of atheism:

The military is a large and exceptionally diverse (regionally and ethnically) organization and cannot
help but have a wide range of imagined possibilities.

(...)

This paper assumes complex decisions have more varied the consequences and

possibilities and therefore require a greater diversity of thought, whether by an individual or by

the organization, to ensure all relevant possibilities are considered.
(...)

Diverse personal views ensure step two of the

rational decision model remains functional, but compatible social views provide the mechanism
for
groupthink to take hold in step three, and increase the likelihood that relevant possibilities
will be missed.

So you pretend to be on the same boat as the author, but in fact the two of you have different positions.

Secondly:

In the decades following the Viet Nam war, the U.S. military officer corps has made a
steady shift toward a conservative Protestant and Republican affiliation. The purpose of this
paper is not to analyze the validity of any individual beliefs, but to show how the rise of conservative Christian and Republican values have affected the military’s decision making, and policy recommendations. Whether right, wrong, or indifferent -- the conservative, Christian voice has impacted our military. America’s strategic thinkers, both military and civilian must be aware of this trend and its potential implications to policy formulation.

Once again the two of you diverge. You question every single one of these individual beliefs and not only is concerned but already judged them wrong, steps the author did not take.

So it seems to me that you are using this piece to suit your own agenda and preaching, putting words into the Lt.Col's mouth and using him as a shield, pretending that he backs your position and opinions while in fact he argues only against the reduced creativity existent in group dynamics in that it affects the range and filtering of imagined possibilities in the decision making process, which could be hypothetically affected by the predominance of any group, Christian or atheist. The rest is, alledgely, history.

Embrace diversity or stop hijacking the guy.