"Don't Ask, Don't Tell": A Matter Of Pride?

You should read this op-ed piece from last Friday's New York Times. It was written by Stephen Benjamin, a former petty officer second class in the Navy-- he was kicked out of the Navy under the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. As he puts it:

My story begins almost a year ago when my roommate, who is also gay, was deployed to Falluja. We communicated the only way we could: using the military’s instant-messaging system on monitored government computers. These electronic conversations are lifelines, keeping soldiers sane while mortars land meters away.

Then, last October the annual inspection of my base, Fort Gordon, Ga., included a perusal of the government computer chat system; inspectors identified 70 service members whose use violated policy. The range of violations was broad: people were flagged for everything from profanity to outright discussions of explicit sexual activity. Among those charged were my former roommate and me. Our messages had included references to our social lives — comments that were otherwise unremarkable, except that they indicated we were both gay.

I could have written a statement denying that I was homosexual, but lying did not seem like the right thing to do. My roommate made the same decision, though he was allowed to remain in Iraq until the scheduled end of his tour.

The result was the termination of our careers, and the loss to the military of two more Arabic translators. The 68 other — heterosexual — service members remained on active duty, despite many having committed violations far more egregious than ours; the Pentagon apparently doesn’t consider hate speech, derogatory comments about women or sexual misconduct grounds for dismissal.

If the recruitment effort is getting so desperate, why are we excluding people who are willing to serve? In April, the Pentagon announced that their annual budget for recruitment bonuses had exceeded $1 billion dollars-- a six-fold increase since 2003. The reason for the increase is not because there are more soldiers eligible for reinlistment. It's because DOD simply cannot recruit enough new soldiers, and it has to resort to out-and-out bribery to keep existing soldiers from quitting. As Benjamin writes in his editorial, DOD shouldn't be kicking out folks who have skills critical to the intelligence effort:

The lack of qualified translators has been a pressing issue for some time — the Army had filled only half its authorized positions for Arabic translators in 2001. Cables went untranslated on Sept. 10 that might have prevented the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11. Today, the American Embassy in Baghdad has nearly 1,000 personnel, but only a handful of fluent Arabic speakers.

According to the Benjamin, more than 58 Arabic linguists have been kicked out since “don’t ask, don’t tell” was instituted. In response to difficult recruiting prospects, the Army has already taken a number of steps-- lengthening soldiers’ deployments from 12 to 15 months, enlisting felons and extending the age limit to 42.

I don't know about you all-- but if I was a soldier in Iraq, I wouldn't want to put my life in the hands of a felon.