The Charge of the Pink Brigade

Are you are convinced by polls that say the American people are yearning to overturn DO NOT ASK AND DO NOT TELL (DADT) in the US armed services to permit gays to serve openly? Anyway, that is what you are to believe based on a Washington Post/ABC News poll last week that found 75% of Americans want this policy change. This finding is based on a telephone sampling of about 1000 souls. We do not know whether the respondents are from Fire Island or San Francisco or somewhere else.

President Obama apparently intends to pursue this policy as it was a campaign promise. His Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and his Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mullen, are openly for it. General Powell Ret. who helped conceive DADT is for it, treating the issue now as civil rights. After General Powell's deceptive performance before the UN on weapons of mass destruction, uncertain why he is taken seriously about anything. Gate's and Mullen's support is significant as their departments live with any chaos if the policy is instituted.

From my personal experience, albeit dated, command is complicated enough with disciplining drunks, drug abusers, bed wetters, thumb suckers and coping with racial conflicts. Racial issues appear to have subsided as the draft ended. But like women, gays serving openly makes the command problems even more complex.

As far as women integrated with male troops, this is still a work in progress; over 50% are reported to have been raped and another 35% have reported sexual abuse. Pregnancies continue to cause turmoil requiring unplanned replacements in combat commands; this also burdens Army medical facilities. So the cliche that the command can solve social problems through discipline so far is absurd.

Another canard promoted by gay activists is that because NATO and Israel have gays integrated in their forces, the policy would work as well in US forces. NATO forces are not much more than small parade ground troops; their combat record in Afghanistan is abysmal. The Dutch forces, one the first that permitted gays to serve openly, fled before the Bosnian Serbs in Srebrenica permitting the slaughter of most males in the city. The English Army is an exception; it completed it mission in Iraq with skill and professionalism.

Uncertain what percentage of the Israeli force is gay – it is a reserve Army, so its mobilized civilians are key to their war fighting. They do not have much choice in manpower as every healthy male and female is needed; survival of the Jewish state is always at stake. Israel Defense ground force performance, most recently in their offensive into Lebanon against Hezbollah, was mediocre

Many of the best US soldiers and NCOs usually come from south of the Mason Dixon line; aka: the Bible Belt. They are raised mostly as evangelicals and their Bible tells that them homosexuality is an abomination. There is a tradition in the Army of treating gays as undesirables; this is what the gay activists seek to change by mandate. In the process, national security could be damaged for social gain.

White southerners and blacks over the years developed a modus vivendi in the Army: professionally integrated, but tacitly, socially separated. It works and the force holds together cohesively as both groups understand the boundaries. Because it works for race, there is no indication it works for sex; failures with women in the army is a case in point.

Gays, both male and female, historically made good fighting personnel. Gays always point to Alexander the Great, Frederick the Great and WWII English Field Marshal Montgomery. And no one agues against facts that indicate gays have served honorably in American wars, but this service was discreet about sexual preference.

Admiral Mullen has declared that US service men should not lie about their status. DADT mandates shut up, not lie. With a US military justice system, military institutions are not run democratically. The service has rules; no one is compelled to join. So Mullen-the-moralist is off base. Our highest military officer in the charge, doing a chaplain's duty is a stretch. Are you serious Admiral? A Blue water navy that does not tell lies. Are your sailors altar boys too?

The Army is under stress due to involvement in Iraq and in an expanding war in the Afghanistan/Pakistan theater; suicides are up. Expensive mercenaries are filling over half the troop requirements in both combat areas. So the unknown impact of dropping DADT is high risk...a risk that puts up the necessary to gain the superfluous. No one knows for certain how this thing works out.

With gays serving openly in the Army, the mess halls could turn gourmet, day rooms would be rearranged daily, uniforms would get more snappy, there would be greater variation in haircuts and gay military parades would play to sell-out crowds. With all this anticipated Broadway, too bad we have to fight wars too. Colonel Robert E Bartos USA Ret.