"Don’t Ask Don’t Tell" Should Be Rescinded ASAP

"Don’t Ask Don’t Tell" Should Be Rescinded ASAP

Stop Social Experiments with the US Military!

A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

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I do not support Homosexuals serving in the US Military, at all.

I most certainly do not support the “Don’t ask. Don’t tell” policy Clinton, and the Dems, saddled the US military with over a decade ago.

If you support the current policy and you have never served in the Military, in any branch, then you are forgiven your ignorance. However, that does not give you the right not to be challenged by those of us who have served in uniform.

The first thing a new enlistee learns, upon arrival at his first military post, is… that he has zero privacy. None! Everything he does is in the open. Usually he is surrounded by others of the same sex in multiples all the time, around the clock. He showers with a crowd. He uses the toilet, without stalls, with a crowd, he eats with a crowd, and he sleeps with a crowd. He lives, breathes and has his being… with a crowd!

In order for the training to be effective the enlistees must be broken of their individuality and re-made into a cohesive unit. One way the Army does it is to give the recruits a common enemy, the drill sergeant! It works! The enlistees will hate his guts, in a few hours, and the first clues of unit cohesion begin to develop.

You hear “Unit Cohesion” tossed about a great deal. Simply put, it means that a unit of men, must all be pulling together to accomplish whatever that unit’s goals happen to be on any given day. They must function as one! If there is one recruit in that unit for which the reminder of the men cannot relate, then unit cohesion is not possible.

Now, allow me to clear up something for those of you who have never served. It is a wonderful thing to spout the words that a soldier fights for his country. That is true… but the actual fact is, each soldier fights for his fellow soldier along side him. This combined effort is combat for one’s country. Why is that important? Simply because… if that soldier is NOT fighting for his fellow soldiers beside him, they are both vulnerable… and so is their unit. So, Unit Cohesion is a must.

In the 1950’s when I reported to “Tank Hill” at the US Army’s Fort Jackson, South Carolina, for Basic Training, I vividly recall that as we were in formation, in the company street, the Platoon Sergeant told us, in no uncertain words, that if we suspected there was a man among us who was a homosexual we where bound to report that man and he would be gone in a matter of hours, sometimes even faster. We were told that if we knew of a homosexual and did not report him WE would be gone, too.

Why were we told that? For two reasons: One was to ensure that any homosexuals among us would indeed be reported and removed, and secondly, it assured each remaining man that the man he was working with, and sleeping next to, and eating with, and fighting with, was exactly who he appeared to be.

If you have never served in the Military you are not going to understand this… but the Military is so far from society, as you have known it, as to be unrecognizable to you. It is that way of necessity. The Military is in the business of killing people and breaking things. It’s what they do. Men are taught to act on command, with out thought, or question. The only order you are allowed to not obey is an unlawful order.

Social experimenting with the military is absolutely wrong! It gets good soldiers killed. It has gotten scores of female soldiers killed in Iraq.

Truman DID order the integration of black and white troops in the US military and it worked! Great! But those Blacks were men… just like the white guys! The same no homosexuals in the military applied to them as it did for the white troops. Some of the best troops I saw while in the military were black men.

The whole point of this is that if we continue to integrate homosexuals into our military, recruiting of straight troops will drop and the military will be in worse shape than it already is, today. Unit cohesion will be a thing of the past. It may have already begun.

I said from the beginning we’d be lucky to finish this war in fifty years. I still believe that. By my calculations we have 42 more years left in Iraq. Yes, American troops are coming home from Iraq. But – American troops will remain in Iraq to “assist” Iraqi troops. When their body bags begin arriving on American soil, will we still deny the war continues in Iraq?

Point is… why make it more difficult by allowing homosexuals to serve openly in the US Military. It can only harm the performance of our troops and no good can come of it. If the Commander in Chief wants to do something constructive, something that will lift our troops morale and give them confidence in their fellow soldiers, then he will make every effort to scuttle the “Don’t Ask, Don’ Tell” policy and go back to the day when homosexuals were not allowed to serve in the US Military, at all.

J. D. Longstreet

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