At War With the Military
The motive behind the proposed repeal of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy is, hmmm ... what, exactly?
A stronger military? Better projection of American might in tight corners like Afghanistan and South Korea?
Well, not precisely any of that. The whole idea of opening military enlistment to professed gays is the furtherance of the gay rights cause. It is what you might call an odd motive indeed for adoption of a military policy with mainly cultural implications.
That Congress has no clear idea how such a policy would work seems not to matter to its liberal promoters, clustered behind shoulder-boarded military brass who say with varying degrees of confidence and enthusiasm, yes, the thing can be done. Can be done isn't—alas—the same thing as ought to be done: least of all in a time of war.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in Senate Armed Services Committee hearings, did not stunningly reassure Sen. John McCain, a third generation Naval man known to have acquired some insights into the ways of fighting men.
Gates was brandishing poll results purporting to show that 70 percent of military personnel thought that the insertion of gays into military units could likely work out. Oh? said McCain. What about the 58 percent of Marines and 48 percent of Army personnel otherwise minded?
"With time and adequate preparation," said Gates, "we can mitigate their concerns."
"Well, I couldn't disagree more," said McCain: pulling, if you like, moral rank.
Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was no more persuasive than Gates. He noted that, yes, particular heterosexuals in the service might have a hard time with repeal of "don't ask, don't tell." "Some may ask for different berthing," he related. "Some may even quit the service."
With what net gain for the military, and for the security Americans claim as an entitlement? As it happens, that's the $64 trillion question: to which no bureaucrat or politician has an uncomplicated answer. For the sake of furthering an essentially political cause, Congress and the president are invited to throw open barrack gates to advocates for a political cause not guaranteed, shall we say, to perfect unity in battle.
Well, now, as everybody presumably knows, gays in the barracks wouldn't be an innovation. The military has always had such—the difference between yesterday and today being, their presence in military units was inadvertent; when it was discovered, expulsion followed. Then gayness became a cause—a standard for rallying around. Whether the military needs explicit advocates for a cultural cause is the question McCain has tried to broach, with minimal cooperation from the military bureaucrats who work for President Obama.
Nobody—Gates, Mullen or McCain—knows explicitly how matters might work out should gays be incorporated freely and openly into the ranks. That is the point—nobody knows. Inferences nevertheless abound. What if McCain's suspicions are correct, and sexual tensions—a potent enough factor with women now in the ranks—cause dissension, putting lives in danger? Are we willing to take that chance? If so, why?
Racial integration of the services following World War II was a different kettle of fish. For one thing, sex normally outranks race as a self-identifier. For another, black and white units already existed side by side; President Truman, in 1948, merely ordered their merger. A third difference: the country was at peace, and relatively unified, at the time of the merger.
Well, the liberal response is so what, in spirit if not words, to civilized objections such as McCain raises to taking chances with military security. This whole business after all isn't about a stronger, better military. The drive to repeal "don't ask, don't tell" is about political promises to the gay rights movement and the urgency, as liberals see it, of keeping their base happy and voting liberal. Just what the country needs right now—political and cultural warfare over who fights our wars and on what terms.
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This is just another step along the way for the US Government's grand social engineering project. Just as the inclusion of women into all aspects of military operations has weakened and made the costs to escalate, so the inclusion of homosexuals will weaken and raise costs yet again. Our government worships at the trough of multiculturalism and diversity -- may God help us.
I speak as an Air Force veteran.
Democrats support homosexuals in the military for three major reasons. First, Democrats need to appease the homosexual lobby. The homosexual lobby is a major source of funds for the party. Second, most Democrats drink from the toxic potion of radical egalitarianism. For the radical egalitarian, homosexuality is not a moral disorder but instead just another form of sexual self-expression, no better and or worse than the others. Third, Democrats despise all institutions that are strongly influenced by traditional cultural values. Democrats despise the military as a historically conservative institution and are very happy to corrupt it and force it to be transformed into an institution of the left. And so it has become. The US military, the last big institution to resist the left's long march through the institutions, is now operationally left-wing.
Perhaps Gates prefers that his troops close with the enemy in bed rather than battle. If so, if his military now exists for sexual satisfaction, then he should say so frankly. Maybe the enemy can be seduced into laying down his weapons. Our soldiers and soldierettes could vamp it up across noman's land and the DMZs of the world. Bordellos Not Battlefields might be our postmodern call to arms.
A congressional panel has recommended that all combat roles be opened to women. http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2010/12/military-women-combat-120710w/
It might well be in the interest of American citizens and American freedom that the military be weakened.
Yet another demonstration of the demokrat party's greatest strength: social engineering. They excel at turning utopian concepts dreamed up by Ivy educated professors, then jamming them down the throats of the so-called "uneducated masses" as though they are mere specimens in a petri dish.
Bravo, Dr. Wilson.
As an 18-yr old reserve infantry soldier brought forward in the 1944 Luzon campaign, my late father spoke of his experience with gays in the military by relating the story of his arrival at the front.
Upon unloading he was immediately approached by one of the platoon with some gay porn pictures and encouraged him to take a look. Dad's crusty, and combat experienced sergeant, pulled the bolt back on his BAR and told the offender to "leave that boy alone or I'll send you to he**." There is little that leads me to believe that anything has changed for men in combat.
Politicians will stir the pot in hopes of achieving a palpable social stew. In addition to the many problems cited thus far, awaiting the armed forces is a legal thicket of lawsuits, trials, and criminal proceeding when openly gay soldiers claim straight COs and comrades practiced discrimination by not doing enough to support them in combat situations. Sarge, call your office.
That the repeal of "Don't ask, don't tell" is being hailed as an advance in civil rights comparable to the civil rights movement of the 1960's is surely an insult to every African-American heterosexual who ever donned the uniform in service to his/her country. With the repeal, any military service man or woman detected, rightly or wrongly, with so-called "homophobia" or "insensitivity" to homosexuals, in any form and no matter how barely perceptible or imagined, will be subject to the same scrutiny and "diversity" training as their civilian counterparts for similar peccadillos in the national complex of myriad government agencies. The effect on morale will be anything but positive, not to mention to our national security.
I think this article is off base. DADT was favored more out of fear and anger than anything else. Now that is repealed, I predict it will be a huge non-event, with no adverse effects on military quality.
,i>"Just what the country needs right now—political and cultural warfare over who fights our wars and on what terms."
And you Mr. Murchinson and other war supporters have no one to blame but yourselves. Because a any student of U.S. history would know, war in the American experience is great way to advance social change. The War Between the States gave us the end of slavery, the Progressive movement emerged from the Spanish-American War; then there was women's suffrage and Prohibition after World War I; after World War II sprung for the civil rights movement, women's rights movement even the homosexual rights movement came out the "big one"; lowering the voting age came as a result of Vietnam. The Gulf War gave us women in combat and thanks to GWOT, we have the repeal of DADT because as you know, the enemy is Osama bin Laden, whose Islamic religion stones homosexuals.
After all, we in the U.S. fight for and make the ultimate sacrifice for "freedom and democracy". And we can't for those ideals abroad while denying them a home right? So while all you Texans and Scots-Irish and Southerners may well love to fight, you should see how country changes while you're away from home. You can never quite comprehend how your sacrifices are used to turn your world's upside down.