(Newser)
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A course for American military officers took a position on Islam so extreme that it sounds like the invention of al-Qaeda propagandists. Future military leaders were taught that to protect America, "total war" on all the world's Muslims may be necessary, and holy cities like Mecca may have to be obliterated like Hiroshima, targeting the "civilian population wherever necessary," Wired reports. The Pentagon suspended the course after a student objected to the material, but the lecturer, Army Lt. Col. Matthew Dooley, has kept his position at the Defense Department’s Joint Forces Staff College pending an investigation.
"We have now come to understand that there is no such thing as ‘moderate Islam,’” Dooley said in a presentation last year. "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." Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey has ordered all service branches to review training to make sure there is no similar anti-Islamic material, AP reports. The Joint Forces material was counter to American "appreciation for religious freedom and cultural awareness," he says. "It was just totally objectionable, against our values."
