America Has A Lot Of Lousy Soldiers

It's old news, but the military has fired its first gay servicemember since Obama taking office.  Unfortunately, until the policy is changed, there's nothing that Obama could have done to stop it.  Obviously, the policy needs to be changed, and that is pretty much Obama's responsibility to get it moving, given his previous promises on this front.

But what really gets me about this is why Obama hasn't changed the policy:  a military suffering from profound institutional arrogance, that's undisciplined and unwilling to fulfill its proper role in our society.

Frankly put, I don't care what anyone in the military thinks about DADT.  I don't care who they want to be president.  There is simply no reason for America to care what our soldiers think about anything - not as individuals, mind you, but institutionally.

Soldiers are there to follow orders.  That's the training they get in basic and on an ongoing basis throughout their military careers.  As soldiers go up through the ranks and start giving orders, they still receive and are expected to follow orders.  In the USA, every single soldier is in a position of needing to follow orders, all the way to the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, because our military is under civilian authority.  The Commander-in-Chief, as the GOP loved to remind everyone until January 20th, is the President, and while we have elected former military officers to the presidency, the emphasis needs to be upon the word "former."

So if you're in the American military and you've decided that you can't serve along homosexuals, then fuck you.  You're a lousy soldier.  If you're in the military and you want to get out now that a Democrat is president, fuck you.  You're a lousy soldier.  If you're a general running to the press to give them anonymous quotes undermining President Obama's plans for Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea or the aforementioned DADT, fuck you.  You're a lousy soldier.

See, one of my many failings is that I want people to believe their own bullshit.  If the US military is going to pride itself on being the best trained, most disciplined fighting force in the world, then they should act like it.  And that means following the orders that come to them, even when then come from a Democrat, even when those orders are to keep their private sexual hangups and dysfunctions* out of the job.

We're spending half a trillion dollars on our military every single year, and that doesn't count the "extra" costs of Bush's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  It shouldn't be so unusual to expect good value for our money.

On a related note, there are 1.8 million federal civilian employees.  No one ever wonders who they, as a group, want to be president.  No one ever wonders whether they, as a group, want to allow homosexuals to work with them.  No one ever polls them as a group, ever bends their policies to suit their prejudices.  We need to end this country's soldier fetish, especially when so many of them, as I said above, are lousy soldiers.

*In case it isn't totally clear, I'm talking about homophobia, which I consider to be worthy of a DSM entry.

Comments

[Steve]

As a vet I would simply add that the key word in all of this is "service." We say, "I'm in the service," or, more precisely, the "armed services."

So, the point is that they are there to do what they're told, yes, but more broadly, to do whatever needs to be done in the larger interest of the nation. In the past that has included serving as sort of social guinea pigs, as when Truman ended racial segregation in the armed services, probably a good bit before the nation at large was willing to take that on.

In this instance, maybe it's true that total equality for gays is a bit ahead of the curve for the nation at large (although certainly less so every day). But if the process of full acceptance needs the legitimating kick-start that full acceptance in the military would give it, then that's a perfectly good reason to do so.

And as Stephen says, hey, it's an all-volunteer force; if you don't like it, get the fuck out of Dodge.

[litbrit]

Excellent post, Stephen--I couldn't agree more. I'm off to send it around right now.

And Steve, this: maybe it's true that total equality for gays is a bit ahead of the curve for the nation at large (although certainly less so every day). But if the process of full acceptance needs the legitimating kick-start that full acceptance in the military would give it, then that's a perfectly good reason to do so.

...is also spot-on, and added to the obvious, logical reasons--fairness and civil rights--makes the solid case for doing away with discrimination and homophobia in the military even stronger.

Come on, President Obama. Do it. Those who don't like it can get the fuck out, just as those who object to serving with female soldiers, black soldiers, or any other non-"white hetero male" group are welcome to seek work elsewhere.

[minstrel hussain boy]

excellent stuff stephen. very true.

the thing about the military that a lot of folks don't understand is that most of our founders agreed that a professional, standing army, was a threat to our liberty. john adams saw it first hand when, as president, he had alexander hamilton show up in a uniform of his own design to explain his scheme to march a federal army into spanish florida (which comprised much of southern georgia, alabama and mississippi) to "liberate" them and spread our revolution. then, louisiana, trans-mississipi texas, chihuahua, and on down through mexico into central and south america.

adams knew that he was looking militaristic insanity right in the face.

the arguments that are being made against our serving gay and lesbian people are the very same arguments that were made against having black, philipino, and just about any other minority serve.

did you know that until truman made his order to integrate the military that george washington was the last general to command a fully integrated armed service?

john paul jones didn't give a rat's ass what the color of a sailor's skin was, he wanted sailors who could sail fast and fight furiously.

every time they made the arguments, it was always the same. they would talk about "unit cohesion" and "force integrity" and all that usual bullshit. it's always bullshit.

when you remove the barriers to advancement, you pave the way for folks like benjamin nelson, for colin powell.

the military didn't have to institute things like affirmative action. all they had to do was take down the barriers. they did so because truman ordered them to take them down. it also took eisenhower, kennedy, lyndon johnson, and even richard nixon to follow up with truman's order. everytime the services would try to exploit a loophole or a technicality (for instance, it was nixon that ordered the navy to stop forcing blacks and philipinos to serve only as boilertechs and officer's stewards to allow them to serve anywhere in the fleet)

the just as the arguments against this are the same, so too will it be the same result.

i have caught shitloads of flack for telling people a god's honest truth. there were two gay men that i know for certain that i served with in vietnam. the only discernable difference you could find between their behavior and mine was our taste in bangkok hookers.

being gay had nothing at all to do with their patriotism, their skill, their sense of honor, and their performance.

i often wonder how much we lose when we over "civilize" ourselves. half of my heritage is from the white mountain apache. we don't care about sexual orientation. it. doesn't. matter.

it takes a lot of hard work from fundamentalist missionaries to teach us the error of that viewpoint. who knows? maybe someday we will progress as a culture to where the baptists and pentacostals are.

till then, we'll be pagan, proud, and cherish all of our tribe.

p.s. one of the things that george marshall, prior to truman's order, argued was that integrating the services would produce a "mass filings of resignation."

didn't fucking happen.

[oddjob]

adams knew that he was looking militaristic insanity right in the face.

I think today we call it neoconservatism.

[oddjob]

for colin powell.

Who then more or less told Bill Clinton that the only way faggots were going to be integrated while he was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was over his dead body. He then went on to play an instrumental role with that bigot Sam Nunn in the crafting of DADT.

[oddjob]

(No, I'm not bitter about Colin Powell. Whatever gave you that idea? ;-))

[minstrel hussain boy]

i'm not saying powell is a spotless example. fuck oddjob, ain't none of us who have fought that are anything close to spotless.

powell was also instrumental in the my lai coverup, and later in sweeping the seven month reign of terror by the army in quang ngai under many heavy rugs.

thing is, powell, because of truman's order, was able to advance as far as his talents and his performance could take him.

[oddjob]

My apologies. I knew you weren't necessarily holding him up quite the way I implied. I saw his name and went off on a rant. Thanks for confirming that bit about My Lai. I thought I'd read that before, but couldn't quite be sure. That you mention it means you've read that, too.

Yes, the nation's a hell of a lot better off when it offers everyone with leadership abilities the chance to lead than it is when it imposes barriers that are irrelevant except under the a priori assumptions of this or that dogma.

[Barry Leiba]

If the US military is going to pride itself on being the best trained, most disciplined fighting force in the world, then they should act like it.

Indeed. That includes serving with gay soldiers and not abusing them. And it also includes... note this well... learning to serve with women without raping them.

It angers the hell out of me that the military can't seem to deal with the problem they have involving the high rate of rape and other sexual assault. Maybe it's because no one has said the magic military words: "That's an order, soldier!"

[Barry Leiba]

(I'm confused, by the way, about how my comment, above, appears. I put the quote from Stephen (the first sentence) inside a blockquote and in italics, and when I previewed it, it looked just that way. The posted version, obviously, does not. Beware: the preview doesn't really preview. Sigh.)

[Barry Leiba]

(Hm. Now that I've posted another comment... the first one looks right. Maybe my browser's broken. Never mind. Stephen, feel free to delete these two now-spurious comments, please.)

[Stephen]

Barry,

It's been happening to me as well. So your comments aren't spurious, but helpful.

[ballgame]

The odd right/wrong/right comment formatting thing has been happening to me as well, FWIW.