April 29, 2010
IT'S ALL CRUSADES:
Group: Army symbol is religious, should be changed (AP, 4/29/10)
The emblem says "Pro deo et humanitate" or "For God and humanity."Posted by Orrin Judd at April 29, 2010 7:58 PMFort Carson commanders will review the complaint, Lt. Col. Steve Wollman said.
He said the emblem had been approved by the Army Institute of Heraldry and has been in use since 1969.
Wollman said references to doctors serving God and humanity date to the time of Hippocrates, a pre-Christianity Greek physician.
Wollman said the cross, which has a pointed base, is both an emblem of mercy and a symbol dating to the Middle Ages, when pilgrims carried a cross with a spiked base to mark the site of a camp.
Mikey Weinstein, president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, said that's a reference to the Crusades and could embolden U.S. enemies who want to portray the war on terror as a Christian war on Islam.
