Hate is Not an Army Core Value<\/b><\/p>\n
After General Peter Pace said in an interview a few weeks ago that homosexuality is \u201cimmoral,\u201d I posted a comment to\u00a0this post over at Lawyers, Guns and Money<\/a>\u00a0expressing my view that integrating homosexuals into military service is really a leadership problem:<\/p>\n Those who argue that some citizens should be excluded from military service because their presence would hurt \u201cunit cohesion\u201d are saying that current soldiers should be able to decide with whom they serve. This is bravo sierra\u2013the military is not a country club whose members should be able to blackball undesirables.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n As a tank platoon sergeant I faced a variety of obstacles to unit cohesion, including affairs and arguments over women, unpaid gambling debts, racism, gang membership, laziness, and simple personality conflicts. The biggest one was the constant squabble between single junior enlisted troops who lived constricted lives in the barracks (daily inspections, etc), and the married soldiers who lived off post and lived much more freely (and also got time off for things like sick family members).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The point is that conflicts will always arise among any group of people large enough to complete a destructive military mission, and leaders\u2013like General Pace\u2013have the mission of solving these problems. This turns out to be easier than one might think, since most soldiers, even when slighted, know when they are being treated fairly and when they are not, and they know good leaders when they see them. Good leaders can create cohesive, effective units from diverse raw materials. Saying that military units cannot integrate homosexuals into cohesive units is the same as saying that our armed services have too few effective leaders.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n What strikes me as most interesting is not that General Pace is comfortable classifying a non-trivial number of his own troops as immoral. It is that there is a mission that he can\u2019t or won\u2019t complete because of morality or ethics, but this mission has nothing to do with killing thousands of innocent civilians or breaking the Marine Corps he leads. It regards instead his refusal to validate sexual preferences his religion demonizes.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Who is the immoral one?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In other words, I argue that sexual orientation is simply another aspect of human behavior that unit leaders must address when integrating citizens from diverse backgrounds into military organizations of every size.\u00a0It is no different on a moral scale than disputes between single and married people or soldiers of various religious faiths or ethnic backgrounds.\u00a0Soldiers of different backgrounds will disagree with this view, as they will about whether ethnic background matters, but the state should not exclude any group from service because current members resent them.\u00a0Moreover, leaders like General Pace have more important moral conundrums to think about than some private\u2019s sexual preferences.\u00a0At any rate, Professor Lemieux at LGM thought this comment interesting enough to\u00a0post it<\/a>\u00a0on the front page of his blog.<\/p>\n This weekend I read\u00a0Kathleen Parker\u2019s take<\/a>\u00a0on recent stories about female soldiers who claimed they had been sexually harassed or raped by their own leaders and fellow soldiers while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan (the link is to\u00a0Townhall.com<\/a>, but I originally saw the column in the\u00a0local paper<\/a>\u00a0here in Richmond, Virginia).\u00a0Parker thinks the problem is resentment: \u201c\u2026male soldiers and officers have confided that many men resent women because they\u2019ve been forced to pretend that women are equals, and men know they are not.\u201d\u00a0According to Parker, \u201cthe lie breeds contempt,\u201d and develops in male soldiers a \u201csimmering rage\u201d they express in aggression toward female soldiers.\u00a0For what it\u2019s worth, I find the suggestion that sexual assault on female soldiers has its roots in anything but the failure of some men to meet minimum standards of civilized behavior beneath contempt.<\/p>\n (For more on the issue itself, see: \u201cThe Women\u2019s War<\/a>,\u201d New York Times, March 18, 2007.)<\/p>\n Leaving aside for the moment the silliness of debating the generic \u201cequality\u201d of men and women\u2014every individual has his or her own unique talents and limitations\u2014this sounds a lot like the \u201cunit cohesion\/good order and discipline\u201d complaint many have with homosexuality in the military.\u00a0In both cases, we have male soldiers resisting service with people they deem unworthy and unqualified (notice that women rarely express these views).\u00a0They resent it, and they express their resentment by behaving aggressively toward fellow soldiers whom they would prefer not to have in their units.\u00a0It makes me think of a bunch of four-year-olds crying because their parents invited that weird kid to their birthday party.\u00a0I think they should look at the sign behind the First Sergeant\u2019s desk\u2014the one that says \u201cNo Whining\u201d\u2014and learn to suck it up and do their jobs.<\/p>\n The problem here is not that some gay guy will lust after his tank commander or crew chief in the shower.\u00a0People everywhere have to deal with unwanted physical and emotional attraction, whether gay or straight\u2014men generally, and male soldiers specifically, need to learn to do the same thing.\u00a0If they are as big and bad as they say they are, they\u2019ll get over the fact that they can\u2019t control everything around them.\u00a0It\u2019s also not that women in military units will not be able to pull their weight.\u00a0I managed to deal with a lot of men who had that problem\u2014both wannabees without the skills and just plain shirkers.\u00a0Good leaders can deal with both of these issues.<\/p>\n The problem is not qualification or suitability for service\u2014the problem is unit leaders from the squad to the service component level who overtly or tacitly condone prejudice, bigotry, and discrimination against some members of American society.\u00a0They look the other way when subordinates express hate against gays or contempt for female soldiers.\u00a0Arguing that gays or women should not serve in the US Armed Forces\u2014or should serve only under restrictive conditions\u2014is the same as saying that prejudice, bigotry, and discrimination is sometimes appropriate.\u00a0Those who argue that we should use our military forces for national defense, and not for social engineering, should look in the mirror\u2014they are guilty of doing the same thing.<\/p>\n The fact is that American society is changing and evolving, as it has throughout our history.\u00a0Many conservatives argue that this change in unnatural, and driven by social groups with an agenda for remaking society in their image.\u00a0They complain that entertainment media, homosexual and women\u2019s groups, and even profit-making businesses generate products and services with the goal of breaking down traditional social orders.\u00a0Television, movies, games, and political organizations, they say, glorify ways of life in a purposive attack on religion, marriage, and virtue.<\/p>\n Not so.\u00a0Social changes are driven by fundamental evolution in our definitions of human dignity.\u00a0I believe that growing interaction among diverse groups is the driving force\u2014and certainly expanded portrayal of this in the media and the trend toward closer proximity with our fellow man are aspects of this interaction.\u00a0But I would argue that our society mirrors this change, it does not drive it.\u00a0\u201cWill and Grace\u201d was not popular because it forced viewers to face down their own fundamental beliefs and change them\u2014that is ridiculous on its face, if you give it more than cursory thought.\u00a0It was popular because we saw a bit of ourselves in it.<\/p>\n Some will argue that shows like \u201cWill and Grace\u201d legitimize behavior previously considered taboo\u2014it makes young people feel comfortable with a lifestyle that people with \u201ctraditional values\u201d consider shameful.\u00a0Let me say in response that television shows that become ratings leaders, and films that generate millions in box office receipts, are by definition mainstream.\u00a0We are already comfortable with it.<\/p>\n If mainstream society is changing our military forces must reflect this change.\u00a0This is true not only because every citizen shares an obligation to our political system, to both protect it from threats and change it when threatening.\u00a0It is true because if our military establishment does not reflect the social order, it becomes a threat to it.\u00a0The\u00a0United States\u00a0is either based on the idea that \u201call men (and women) are created equal,\u201d or it isn\u2019t.\u00a0Our military must either support the dignity of each citizen or it is a threat to that dignity.\u00a0Resistance to this must be seen as an effort to create a sector of society that depends on an anachronistic social structure.\u00a0By suggesting that homosexual and women\u2019s equality is not appropriate for military organizations, opponents are trying to preserve a social order they prefer.\u00a0Worse, this amounts to rejection of gays and women as stakeholders in the state itself.<\/p>\n Leaders must understand this, and military leaders instinctively do\u2014this is why they developed and teach a set of core values (Army<\/a>,\u00a0Air Force<\/a>,\u00a0Navy<\/a>,\u00a0Marines<\/a>,\u00a0Coast Guard<\/a>) rooted in the importance of responsibility to the organization and respect for the value and dignity of each\u00a0individual<\/i>\u00a0soldier, regardless of social group.\u00a0Click on the links and take a look at all the big words in these lists\u2014words like honor, integrity, commitment, and duty.\u00a0As a former Army NCO and combat unit leader, I see no place in these values for judging or hating others, holding prejudice or discriminating against others, or committing violence against compatriots or fellow citizens.<\/p>\n For good or ill, all of the social forces that interact in civilian society will express themselves no less in military organizations.\u00a0Leaders who want to avoid social engineering in military organizations should stop taking sides in these debates and think about the health of our national security infrastructure and how best to defend the nation.\u00a0Maximizing our ability to defend the\u00a0US\u00a0requires finding the best qualified citizens who want to serve and placing them where they can best do so.\u00a0Shutting out entire groups in the name of preserving a preferred social order is not the answer\u2014integrating the diverse mix of qualified recruits into cohesive military units is.\u00a0This is the job of military leaders, and we should make them complete this mission or find new leaders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hate is Not an Army Core Value After General Peter Pace said in an interview a few weeks ago that homosexuality is \u201cimmoral,\u201d I posted a comment to\u00a0this post over at Lawyers, Guns and Money\u00a0expressing my view that integrating homosexuals into military service is really a leadership problem: Those who argue that some citizens should 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