Important Military Affairs

by Wayne Besen

The death toll for U.S. forces in Iraq has surpassed 1,800, nearly 14,000 soldiers have been injured, there is no exit strategy and for all of our nation’s bloody sacrifice we have accomplished little more than transforming a secular Iraq into another Iran. With all things swell in sweltering Babylon, it is comforting to know that the Pentagon is paying close attention to military affairs.

Just this week, for example, four-star general Kevin P. Byrnes was relieved of his command as head of Training and Doctrine for cheating on his wife with a civilian. In a time when our armed forces can’t drum up enough warm bodies, they are drumming out decorated warriors because they are decadent womanizers.

Not too long ago, our macho military men were encouraged, if not expected, to dock their ships in different ports. It may not have been moral, but it did often lift morale. Those days are long gone, as Neo-Puritan prudes supplant frolicking dudes and hard-nosed soldiers are replaced by blue-nosed ninnies. In today’s military ethos, an empty foxhole is better than filling it with a soldier who shacked up with a fox.

Think about this for a moment. President Bush says we are in a life and death struggle. The war has cost us billions of dollars and put our economy at risk. Yet, we somehow have the time and treasure for pious prigs to fill the brigs with sinners who signed up for the military, only to find it had become a monastery.

In Byrne’s case, we are using taxpayer’s money to have the inspector general investigate the adulterous affair, even though it was consensual and did not disrupt military command. We even had Army chief of staff Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker take time away from war planning to upbraid Byrne and order him to drop his paramour.

"He was told to knock it off, and he ignored it and continued the affair," a senior Army official told The New York Times. Good thing our military brass isn’t doing important things like replacing ineffective body armor or training Iraqi security forces.

The creeping affect of fundamentalist culture on the armed forces has manifested itself in a plethora of equally devastating ways. The most obvious is how they have put their prejudice of homosexuals ahead of protecting the American people.

Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, a group that advocates ending the miserably failed Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell policy, recently unveiled a study that showed the military could woo as many as 41,000 new recruits if the ban on gay personnel were abolished. In the report, Gary J. Gates, Senior Research Fellow at the Williams Project, UCLA School of Law, analyzed census data that indicates the armed forces could close its recruiting gap by allowing gay soldiers. Clearly, this could be the difference of winning or losing in Iraq.

With more than 14,000 jihad websites, one of the largest impediments to stopping terrorist attacks is finding fluent Arabic translators. Yet, a recent Government Accountability Office report showed that between 1998 and 2004, the military kicked out 20 hard-to-find Arabic speakers and six Farsi speakers simply because they were gay.

While Neo Puritans are certainly not the only group who oppose gay and lesbian soldiers serving openly, they are undoubtedly the driving political force behind such illogical policy. Given the choice of pursuing Al Qaeda or punishing gay people, the right wing is on record choosing the latter. Their obsession with sex is putting us all at risk.

When not going after adulterers and gays, parts of the military are making it uncomfortable for anyone to serve who is not a fundamentalist. The Air Force Academy, for example, has become an out-of-control hotbed of Anti-Semitism and also hostile to other mainstream religions. Jewish cadets have been called "filthy Jew" and a chaplain who complained about the Biblical abuse was demoted.

The dangerous infiltration of our military by aggressive, proselytizing fundamentalists is best illustrated by comments made by Lieutenant General Jerry Boykin, deputy undersecretary of Defense for intelligence. At a time when America’s diplomatic corps was working overtime to convince Muslims that we were not on a Crusade, Boykin confirmed their worst fears. Speaking to a religious group in June 2003, Boykin said radical Muslims hate us "because we’re a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christian . . . and the enemy is a guy called Satan."

It is time the military bring back adults who care more about winning wars than declaring a self-righteous war on adultery. We might be doing better in Iraq if the Pentagon started paying more attention to the military affairs of our country than the private affairs of our countrymen.

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