Where Have All the Soldiers Gone?
By Sully asks and answers a great question:
If openly gay soldiers impair “unit cohesion” and destroy morale, why aren’t they kicked out in larger numbers during periods of conflict? I mean, that’s when they would logically pose the greatest threat, no? And yet, since 2000, the numbers of discharges have gone steadily down from over 1200 in 2001 to 653 last year. The reason is that gay soldiers pose absolutely no threat to any form of cohesion, and do amazing service for their country. When push comes to shove, the military recognizes this by what it doesn’t do. The rest is bigotry and irrational fear. I’m delighted that some stalwart conservatives in the Congress are now among the burgeoning numbers of people urging an end to the Clinton policy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Pejman also has a great piece on this now posted. All our key allies have done away with this nonsense and seen absolutely no negative consequences. The positive consequences are more and better troops and saving a huge amount of money spent on training people we subsequently fire for no good reason.
Not much to add. The contention that gay members of a unit reduce cohesion has never stood up to any kind of critical inquiry. Like so much else concerning military policy, most civilians have simple accepted the argument without question. Indeed, I think that anti-gay attitudes in the military have very, very little to do with concerns about effectiveness and a whole lot to do with this , this and this. In short, the evangelical Christian conservatives who increasingly dominate some, although not all, branches of our military have an ideological distate for homosexual soldiers. If American military might is about righteousness in the name of God, then homosexuals have no role to play.
Incidentally, I’m kind of curious as to why the Air Force is more dominated by these elements than the other services. I’m inclined to think it has to do with a shorter organizational history and with the location of the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, which is also the headquarters of numerous right-wing political organizations.