A former NATO commander, General John Sheehan, has left members of the wider, saner, international community perplexed recently as his contribution to a US Senate hearing on homosexuals 'openly' serving in the US military amounted to the most confused bigotry I've heard in a long while.
Gen. Sheehan
We've all heard the pointless old arguments on why gay men and women shouldn't be allowed to serve - and thankfully, since the majority of nations now allow people of any sexual preference to work in their armed forces, these arguments are generally falling of deaf ears. What the US military still lags behind on is the right for such men and women to serve 'openly', and it's policy of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' actively prevents any kind of equality for homosexuals working in this sector.
Boys on tour
Fine, so the 'Don't Ask' part is fair enough, it's not really anyone's business to know your business unless you want them to. I expect that in everyday life, not just in the workplace. The freedom from persecution or harassment, regardless of sexuality or lifestyle-choice, is a fundamental human right as far as I'm concerned.
It's the 'Don't Tell' part that I take issue with - as it really eradicates any protection that 'Don't Ask' appears to grant the individual. Put simply, anyone who is brazen enough to commit the shocking admission of homosexuality (sarcasm alert), can no longer serve and is ejected from military service. It's a kind of 'get-out' clause, quite literally, for those in charge. If you do decide to come out to your friends, as would be totally acceptable for people in any other profession, and word of this gets back to anyone in authority - they are well within their rights to tell you to leave. Even if you're a highly-skilled professional soldier, medic or pilot and your actions might mean the difference between life and death for your regiment - it's still more important to the US military to discharge you from service than to allow you to make a positive contribution to the war effort.
The final kick in the nuts is that they won't even grant you an 'honorable' discharge when you leave (regardless of service history) - instead opting for a 'neutral' or 'undesirable' discharge. Then it's up to you to restart your entire life and career with your right to freely choose your employment restricted by a system that clearly discriminates.
Madness, I know, but not quite as mad as General Sheehan's underhand efforts to disrupt progress in this area. As President Obama tries to abolish 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' - the general was called to give evidence at a Senate hearing, where he sensationally revealed that NATO forces failed to protect citizens of Srebrenica during the Balkans conflicts of the mid-nineties, because of poor morale generated by the presence of openly gay Dutch soldiers.
There are many things you could say about the Balkans conflict, from the misunderstanding by the US and NATO of the nature of entrenched tribal tensions, to the over-zealous bombing campaigns, but I'd never thought I'd hear someone blame the gays for one of the bloodiest periods of the crisis. To his limited credit though, he does try to contextualise his criticism within the wider 'problem' of a 'socialisation' process in the armies of western Europe. Here is his brilliant theory summarised for those of us less well-versed in military strategy and intelligence;
Sheehan observes that since the end of the Cold War, the various armies of Europe vastly changed in response to the reduced threat of an imminent attack on their borders. According to the General, the lack of an aggressive superpower like Germany or Russia in the late 20th century had a direct effect on European attitudes, and contributed to the admission of openly homosexual military personnel through a wider process of 'socialisation' in the military sector. Jumping forward to 1995, the UN-declared 'safe haven' of Srebrenica was under the protection of a Dutch peace-keeping force stationed in the town. By July, the town was overthrown by a Bosnian Serb paramilitary group and around 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were brutally massacred in what came to be known as the 'Srebrenica Genocide'.
Sheehan believes that the presence of openly gay Dutch soldiers, coupled with the apparently related decline of an 'active combat capability' in Europe's armies, directly contributed to this genocide - one of the bloodiest and most terrifying attacks of the Balkans conflict.
Okay, so I honestly don't understand how this man was allowed to command troops. Maybe he's blinded by prejudice, maybe he's just a bit thick, but if you don't have confidence that the recruitment process offered to UN soldiers (or any soldier) is sufficiently thorough enough to equip them with the attitude and ability to overcome any situation, whether they're gay or not, then you don't have faith in the system at all. If it were down to me (and perhaps it should be), I would ensure that the training undertaken by professional soldiers enabled them to relate to their colleagues as professionals, and not leave any room for doubt or prejudice, which are obviously products of a system like 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'.
Perhaps the Dutch forces were just overwhelmed, or perhaps they really weren't well-trained enough in combat, but it certainly wasn't because they were gay - or that they knew that somebody else was. Come on Sheehan, this is playground stuff. 'You're gay' was the stock criticism of the intellectually-challenged at school.
Apparently, some of them never grow up.
0 comments:
Post a Comment