{"id":19656,"date":"2012-09-25T02:26:45","date_gmt":"2012-09-25T05:26:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=19656"},"modified":"2013-11-01T23:00:39","modified_gmt":"2013-11-02T02:00:39","slug":"us-military-downplays-impact-of-dadt-repeal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2012\/09\/25\/us-military-downplays-impact-of-dadt-repeal\/","title":{"rendered":"US Military Downplays Impact of DADT Repeal"},"content":{"rendered":"

While Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey is “worried” about the politicization of the US military<\/a>, the Department of Defense has published some starkly pointed articles praising the repeal<\/a> of the politically-charged policy known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”<\/p>\n

This largely mirrors the narrative in the mainstream press<\/a> — everybody is “cool” with homosexuals serving in the US military (and think of the children<\/a>…).\u00a0 Amazingly, little attention is given to the voices<\/a> saying its not as rose-colored<\/a> as some seem to think.\u00a0 The Stars and Stripes <\/em>pointed out one negative\u00a0finding<\/a>\u00a0otherwise unreported in the press.\u00a0 Elaine Donnelly got a single line<\/a>.\u00a0 Only the FRC has noted the Palm Center buried their own\u00a0data showing 20% of units that had a homosexual “come out” after repeal had a negative impact as a result<\/a> — data that is hardly a “non-event.”<\/p>\n

In “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Never Mattered<\/a>,” a US Marine Corporal took to the internet under an official DoD byline to say DADT repeal has done nothing — good or bad.\u00a0 Ignoring for a moment that he’s taking about federal\u00a0law<\/em>, so it certainly “mattered,” it is more interesting to see his source for such a claim:\u00a0 The agenda-based “study” performed by the Palm Center<\/a>, which Corporal Sean Dennison manages to call an “exhaustive work” while keeping a straight face.<\/p>\n

(Nathaniel Frank, one of the authors of the study, has been unabashed about his bias<\/a> and critical of the “exaggerated” claims of those whom his study was meant to undermine.)<\/p>\n

The Corporal pontificates on the greater issues:<\/p>\n

DADT always seemed like a knee-jerk reaction to me…Gay servicemen and women were getting discharged during the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns…when the last thing on anybody\u2019s mind should\u2019ve been their fellow fighter\u2019s bedfellows…<\/p>\n

Civil rights aside, DADT never made sense to me logistically. Of the thousands discharged, how many were mission-critical specialists, including linguists, infantry men, and medical aides? What difference could they have made on the front line?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A “knee jerk reaction?”\u00a0 What part of the 200-year ban on homosexual service in the US military was “knee jerk?”\u00a0 The comment about others’ “bedfellows” is likewise na\u00efve, considering the US military has always <\/em>— and still does — evaluate the behavior of its troops for acceptability.<\/p>\n

The comment on the “logistical” impact of discharging “mission critical” troops who were breaking the law <\/em>is similarly\u00a0ignorant.\u00a0 As noted here years ago, the US military discharged more people for being pregnant<\/a><\/em> or overweight<\/a><\/em> (but physically fit) than it did for being homosexual<\/em>. What of the impact\u00a0that larger<\/em> group\u00a0would have had on the mission?\u00a0 What of their “civil rights?”<\/p>\n

Dennison does say there have been some “adverse reactions” to repeal, but says<\/p>\n

uniformed professionalism usually won out in these encounters.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Therein lies the self-fulfilling prophecy that is DADT repeal. US troops could be told to fight the enemy with only a spork and an eyepatch while singing tunes by Elton John.\u00a0 There would certainly be protests prior to such a policy being put in place, but once it was, US servicemembers would do what they always do in such situations: salute smartly and carry on.<\/p>\n

Adhering to military policies does not equate to agreeing with them, nor does the implementation of such policies validate them.\u00a0 Saying there have been ‘no problems’ since DADT was repealed is no more surprising than saying there were ‘no problems’ when the Army went to the universal black beret<\/a> or space operators lost their flight suits<\/a>. Lots of people didn’t like it.\u00a0 They still did it. The US military is not the Chicago teachers’ union.\u00a0 If told to jump, troops jump.<\/p>\n

The impact of social policy changes like that of DADT can be measured in two ways: The effect on the institutional moral state and the impact to military effectiveness.\u00a0 The change to the institutional moral state is obvious; the only question is whether one considers that change “good” or “bad.” To effectiveness, short of actually ordering troops into battle without bullets there would be no immediate measurable result to almost any similar institutional change.\u00a0 In other words, only time will tell.<\/p>\n

Even so, there may not be a direct correlation between the US military’s institutional acceptance of homosexuality and military effectiveness (ie, A negative moral direction results in negative effectiveness).\u00a0 Obviously, “immoral” armies have had significant military successes throughout world history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey is “worried” about the politicization of the US military, the Department of Defense has published some starkly pointed articles praising the repeal of the politically-charged policy known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” This largely mirrors the narrative in the mainstream press — everybody is “cool” with homosexuals serving in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[1789,219,278,442,149,1958,2,3569,1788,45,1176,3598,3567],"class_list":["post-19656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-aaron-belkin","tag-dadt","tag-elaine-donnelly","tag-homosexual","tag-marines","tag-marty-dempsey","tag-military","tag-nathaniel-frank","tag-palm-center","tag-politics","tag-report","tag-sean-dennison","tag-tom-kolditz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19656\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}