A Sad Day for Our Military

As expected, the Senate today passed a bill revoking the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, thereby removing the last vestige of dignity to those who oppose homosexual practice within our military, once and for all. For proponents of repeal, there are high fives all around, and a certain smirkiness, realizing that the incoming Congress would never have taken this action. To put it as simply as possible, the advocates of repealing DADT, which have now become practically the entire Democratic Party - got away with it. Social conservatives and tea partiers might ask themselves, "Was this worth keeping our tax cuts ?" Seldom if ever has Washington's sellout to Mammon been more obvious. And many of us have little right to complain. Where is the energy in politics ? Certainly not in keeping America's moral position defensible. Truth to tell, we're becoming no better than Europeans, or what's worse, we're no better than Canada.

So, now it is left to our military leaders to clean up after the party, and to deal with the consequences. There are really two issues here, one is operational, the other is existential. Let me take the easy way out and deal with the operational question first. When Gates and company were going around forming the justification for repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell, the question they asked our servicemen and servicewomen was, in essence, "What difference will it make to you if this policy is repealed". Although there was obviously some command influence to the effect that this change is inevitable and our troops were somewhat extorted to "deal with it", the answers that came back in the report, particularly in the qualitative assessment section were interesting and apparently candid. As one might expect from a large and diverse organization, opinions varied widely, but most of the respondents took the matter seriously and provided mostly thoughtful, sometimes emotional responses. To make a long story short, the surveys indicate that there will be problems adjusting to the repeal of DADT, mostly among combat troops (which are really an important segment of our military) - but also among single women in uniform, who already targets of unwanted advances and sometimes sexual harassment from men, and are deeply concerned about similar treatment from women. This is not at all difficult to understand and it ought to remind us that the US military, progressive as it is, represents a complex subculture within our complex society. One should not assume that things work the same way in the military as they did in high school or college, much less adult society in, say, Washington DC or Los Angeles.

Reflecting back on my first military law class, I remember the instructor going over the administrative discharge proceedings for homosexuality...this was in 1976, right before we graduated from ROTC and got our commissions. Well before DADT went into force. Our instructor in that class was Lieutenant Colonel Robert Plant, a veteran armor officer and a very good man. One the lessons Plant taught us in that class was that it did not matter whether we agreed with the law or not. Speaking mostly about drugs rather than sex, Plant made the very strong point that as officers, our job was to enforce the law firmly and fairly, irrespective of our personal feelings. And, oh, by the way, if WE were the ones breaking the law, we needed to remember that it is not possible to live a lie, and so we'd better cut that stuff out before we went under the authority of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. It was great advice, and I took it to heart. And I can honestly say that, for the time I served in positions of command authority, my soldiers always got justice at my hands. As a company commander, I found it necessary to subject three of my men to administrative discharge, and two were court martialed in what we called a BCD Special - a court martial that strips the soldier of all rank, and ends with a bad conduct discharge. Some would say I was "too fair", that I should have thrown the bums out earlier and quicker, saving myself and my unit a lot of trouble. Perhaps so, but unlike others, who failed because they refused to take the time to apply due process, I always got my man. The wheel of justice may turn slowly, but it grinds exceedingly fine.

This in fact is the conundrum that repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell places our military commanders and leaders from now on. Because the "equal rights" crowd only follows its own ideology, rather than examining how it applies in real life to real people. Obviously, the military is not a democracy, and cannot be a democracy. But no leader can assert influence simply by citing the letter of the law, and expecting his or her subordinates to follow the rules. Frankly, I am appalled by some of the statements made by senior members of the Obama Administration and senior military leadership on this subject. Yesterday, the rule said one thing, tomorrow it will say something else. Like the ROTC cadets in Colonel Plant's class, our officers and NCOs are expected to enforce the law without partiality or favor. They will do so, if they are men and women of integrity. But there will be pressures on them to compromise their integrity, to give a little bit here to get a compliance and support there. Out of all the survey material, no one has ever claimed that homosexuality, openly practiced, is a positive benefit to unit morale. At best it is neutral and at worst it is a problem to be overcome. What has not changed is the duty of commanders and small unit leaders to look to the health and well-being of the men and women placed under their charge. When problems arise, they MUST intervene and they MUST take action. Letting morale problems simmer is one sure path to breeding worse problems.

I sometimes think that those activists who have waged this debate over months and years have a distorted view of what the military is really like. It is not as if the US military were just full of homophobes, waiting for the opportunity to cause harm to the weak and effeminate of the male gender. And while women have not had a particularly easy time in the military, no institution practices affirmative action with greater vigor. It remains to be seen if homosexuals will actually do better out of the closet than in the closet, but the one way to assuredly breed low morale and hostility towards homosexuals in the military is to actively take their side and to show favoritism towards them. Indeed, some of the measures that are being bandied about to further the acceptance of DADT repeal, particularly "education" programs designed to change attitudes, have this very flavor.

There are in fact things that both civilian and military leadership can do to make this all work. Of course, (in the context of Army regulations) the Chapter 15 discharge is going to go away. Speaking from the point of view of a commander who always got his man, what that means is that I could not discharge a person simply for saying he or she is homosexual, or legal conduct that is associated with homosexuality. As far as I'm concerned, it would still be possible to put out an order prohibiting public displays of affection. That would not be a popular order, but as long as it is fairly applied to homosexuals and heterosexuals alike, it is perfectly legal as long as the commander stays strong and enforces it. The more important issue is of course sexual harassment and fraternization. Having read the Pentagon report, I have reason to believe that a certain amount of homosexual fraternization goes on with the military, and if the truth be told, has always gone on. Some of my army colleagues will attest to this, but there was a case in Bad Kreuznach involving a group of lesbian officers back in 1982, right after I left 8th ID headquarters, a very nasty case involving command influence, coercion, and fraternization between supervisors and subordinates. In a case like that, Chapter 15 would be an honorable and less brutal way out, but one does wonder what the future portends for UMCJ 125, which forbids sodomy. As far as I can tell, Congress's vote today does not strike down UMCJ 125. What this creates is a very gray area in which a service member can openly admit to (or at least provide circumstantial evidence of) committing a crime under UCMJ and be immune to administrative discharge but not legal action for so doing. One has to wonder how the military will handle this contradiction. Speaking once again, as the commander who always got his man by following due process, my experience is that military law is supremely evidence-oriented, and that as long as charge is a valid one and the commander has sufficient evidence to prosecute, both judicial and non-judicial punishment may be applied. I also suspect that this is hardly what Barack Obama, Robert Gates, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Admiral Mike Mullen had in mind when they got together in support of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, or what Colin Powell thought when he changed his views on the subject.

Of course, those of a liberal persuasion may ask, and are entitled to ask, "What is this to you and why can't you leave this alone ?" In my own case I cannot say that I ever had a negative experience with a homosexual in uniform, and most of my own observations of the impact of homosexuals in uniform comes at second or third hand, mostly from heresay and rumor. In the old days - one hardly can imagine calling the 1980s the "old days", certain individuals might be suspected as being gay, and might even be disliked for that reason...but never really knew for sure. I will mention a few examples, without naming names. When I took over my first tank platoon, one of the tank commanders, a young buck sergeant, stood out as the most fastidiously demanding of all. His mania for having a clean tank was well known, and he never failed to work in his perfectly starched overalls. A queer eye for the straight tanker, as one might say. We never knew if this obsessive-compulsive behavior was the result of his sexual orientation or his Mormon upbringing. To say that this guy was narcissistic would be a mild understatement. I always had the feeling that he was patronizing me, and so while we had to recognize the excellence of his work, the fact was that he could teach others little and learned very little from others. The second example I'll give out was Army major who worked in public affairs. Now, I have to point out that this fellow was always kind to me, and as a staff officer, his performance was okay. But I always wonder how the heck such an obviously gay man ever made major in the infantry, for I could not imagine this fellow actually leading an infantry company in combat. Of course, there would be those who say the same about me, so perhaps one should go there...the fact is that this guy made lieutenant colonel, and no one knew or cared too much one way or the other. My last example would be a contemporary, a hard-charging woman who ended up in the acquisition corps as a program manager. She even got an award from Rumsfeld for excellence as a PM. This lady was just a torrent of action, mean, hard drinking, she had the whole crusty colonel thing down. Then I heard from one of her colleague that she led this secret life, or maybe it was a not-so-secret secret.

All these are very human examples, of people who repressed their sexual orientation and their sexuality and served with honor and in some cases with distinction. What we don't know is what we don't know - what Nicholas Talib calls "hidden evidence". Would these same people do as well if their sexual preferences or (we really don't know this) their sexual behavior became more publicly known ? Would this be problematic, or not. Would the sergeant go from more subtle abuses of power, from simply being disliked by his men to hitting on his men ? Would the major marry his partner and demand government housing instead of living quietly off post. Would the colonel's parties go from drinking bouts to orgies ? We don't know, really we don't. What we do know is that this administration is willing to make this experiment, and that the leadership of the Pentagon did not have the guts to oppose them hard enough to stop it. What we do know is that it will fall to the junior and mid-level leaders to make this work. As if they did not have other things to worry about.

That - for what it is worth - is the easy part, the operational question I posed earlier. The deeper and more problematic issue is, "What does this mean for where we are heading as a nation, for what we represent in the world, for who we are as a people ?" Before delving into this subject, I must start with a confession. If there is one aspect of my own military service that I do in fact regret, it is the fact that I did not live out the Christian principles and values I learned and internalized as a young person as well as I should while I wore the uniform. Indeed, I think that hurt my performance as an officer, made me less sensitive towards others and more prone to compromise than should have been the case. In those days, I was more Stoic than Christian, and while stoicism is an honorable world view, it lacks the hope and freedom that we enjoy as Christians - these are virtues that the military needs, always and often.

But even though I may have missed the boat, others did not. What I have observed in the US military over the past 20 to 30 years is a real resurrection of faith, a more vibrant Christianity than we experienced back in the 70s and early 80s. I think it is a great benefit to our men and women in uniform and I would hate to see our military backslide into the secular philistinism that once formed its culture. Although our military is, by definition, a reflection of our society, it is not simply our society looking back at itself. So much of our military culture is formed by its primary purpose - to fight and win wars on our nation's behalf. The very deepest ideals of our civic culture, of liberty and equality, are made secondary to that purpose. Military service is not a right, it is a privilege, one that can be gained or lost, not on the basis of one's own virtues, or one's dignity, or even hard work - as long as the military needs us, we can serve. And not one minute more. Any deviation from this principle leads to a kind of favoritism, a tribalism and respect of persons that has no place in the American military tradition. Either all are expendable, or our military becomes a club, a kind of feudal aristocracy that we overthrew in 1781.

In other nations and cultures, homosexuals have borne arms, sometimes to devastating effect. The Spartans practiced a form of homosexual rape in which boys submitted themselves to their elders, who sodomized them brutally. This was all part of a horrifying training regime that dehumanized the Spartan soldier and turned him into a fighting animal, who was made both physically and psychologically subservient to his partner. The Theban Sacred Band was an extension of this idea, the first and (to my knowledge only) unit formed of homosexual "couples". The Thebans dealt the Spartans their first defeat ever at the battle of Leuctra, in 378 BC.

This does remind me of a conversation I once had with an Israeli officer, Avner Ben- Ari. Ben-Ari's father had commanded a tank brigade that participated in the capture of East Jerusalem and the West Bank in the Six Days War, and he himself had commanded a tank company in Operation Peace for Galilee. Avner was dogmatic and argued with us over what we taught at Fort Knox. One evening, after one of these sessions, we had a long conversation up in my office. Turns out that Avner's company was special, recruited from the slums of Tel Aviv, they put Avner, who stood about 6'5", much taller than the average Israeli, in charge on account of his rather intimidating persona. During the operation itself, this unit was given the job of guarding the Syrian prisoners the Israelis had captured. Avner spoke with some disgust of the Syrians in the camp who regularly sodomized one another. Then Avner said something profound to me about his own soldiers:

"Most men must be taught to kill," he said. "It does not come naturally to them. Others are natural killers, and you must teach them to be a human being."

I thought so well of Avner's dictum that I insert what he had said as a quote on a field manual that I was drafting, in the section on "leadership".

Plato wrote the Republic two years before the Sacred Band slaughter the Spartans at Leuctra. Discussing the training of the Hoplite class, the Guardians, Plato writes this passage, from which we derive the concept of "Platonic love":

And the man who has the spirit of harmony will be most in love with the
loveliest; but he will not love him who is of an inharmonious soul?

That is true, he replied, if the deficiency be in his soul; but if there be any merely bodily defect in another he will be patient of it, and will love all the same. I perceive, I said, that you have or have had experiences of this sort, and I agree. But let me ask you another question: Has excess of pleasure any affinity to temperance? How can that be? he replied; pleasure deprives a man of the use of his faculties quite as much as pain.

Or any affinity to virtue in general?

None whatever.

Any affinity to wantonness and intemperance?

Yes, the greatest.

And is there any greater or keener pleasure than that of sensual love?

No, nor a madder.

Whereas true love is a love of beauty and order — temperate and harmonious?

Quite true, he said.

Then no intemperance or madness should be allowed to approach true love?

Certainly not.

Then mad or intemperate pleasure must never be allowed to come near the lover and his beloved; neither of them can have any part in it if their love is of the right sort?

No, indeed, Socrates, it must never come near them.

Then I suppose that in the city which we are founding you would make a law to the effect that a friend should use no other familiarity to his love than a father would use to his son, and then only for a noble purpose, and he must first have the other's consent; and this rule is to limit him in all his intercourse, and he is never to be seen going further, or, if he exceeds, he is to be deemed guilty of coarseness and bad taste.

No saint he, Socrates sublimates the whole gruesome ordeal by which Greek youths were abused to make them fierce warriors into something - almost admirable, and he reduces the psychotic abuse dealt out by the Hoplite veterans to something noble, representing breaches of this new code as bad manners.

Much of our society resides in a self-indulgent sensuality that occasionally approaches barbarism. Our young men and women in uniform are acutely aware of the difference between the culture in which they have grown up and the ascetic, sensually deprived environment which characterizes all military service. Some of them embrace the latter, making it their own subculture - others put up with it and seek ways to escape from it as often as they can. There can be no greater difference between this military subculture, one that emphasizes discipline, depersonalizati0n, and self-sacrifice - and that subculture which calls itself by an acronym - LGBT - and embraces the opposite values - self-indulgence, self-assertion, and introspection to the point of obsession. For those of us who tend towards political conservatism and cultural pessimism, today's vote is nothing other than an exposure of our armed services to the barbaric counterculture that threatens our identity and our heritage as a society. No doubt there are many homosexuals who live differently from this stereotype. One wonders whether they are not feeling a bit conflicted at the moment.

Needless to say that as Christians, we shall be placed on the defensive here, as we have been on the defensive for some time. Our own motives and our own ethic of self-sacrifice will be challenged more and more, as Christian values are gradually eroded from America's civic culture. As I experienced and as other Christians experience in uniform, we will be faced with more complex moral and ethical choices than before, and we may be faced with less pleasant alternatives in the future. The ultimate question we have to face - and it is a hard one - is whether we can continue to reconcile the demands of our faith with the demands of military service. It is one thing to go about minding one's business, as we are frequently admonished to do. It is another thing to provide aid and comfort to evil. I would expect some people to quit the service over this. And if this is so, I would urge them not to go quietly into the night, but to make their departure as loud as they possibly can.