I've decided to pull this much of the comments from the Equivocation post up onto the main page. Ray asked some good questions about that post and I'm afraid, once again, I didn't make the subtle factors of my thoughts as clear as I should have.
While my emphasis in that post was on Bush taking the blame for a lack of clear objectives in Iraq, I didn't mean to suggest that perpetrators of criminal acts shouldn't be held accountable at all. What I meant to say is that they should share that accountability with the people who put them there with no clear direction in the first place. While the Nuremberg Trials eliminated "just following orders" as a defensefor enlisted troops, they in no way absolved commanders of responsibility.
Let's start with some of the specifics...
Regarding my plea that Bush share some of the responsibility for prisoner abuse, specifically in the case of Army dog handler Sgt. Michael Smith, Ray asked:
"Let me ask you Luth, is this sort of behavior taught in the military? Is it encouraged? Is it even spoken of? Or is military training more about honor and duty. Duty to one's country. From your experience, is there any military training that enforces this kind of inhuman behavior?"
Well, Smith was convicted of using his dog to intimidate a prisoner. Is intimidation taught in the military? Absolutely. Drill sergeants intimidate new troops. The troops themselves intimidate newer troops. From hazing to flat out criminal acts, intimidation, inhumane treatment and abuse are a de facto part of military training. My fellow horsemen and I experienced our share of it during Combat Readiness Training at Ft.Benning and in Kuwait en route to Iraq. I have some rank and 18+ years of experience, and still you run across it. There are aspects of it that make me question the whole "honor and duty" thing regularly. As far as honor and duty go, troops either have that when they join, or they have a 50/50 shot of picking it up as a result of military training. Honor and duty are no more and no less explicit than intimidation and abuse in military training.
As far as duty to one's country goes. Basic trainees are taught that folding underwear correctly is duty to one's country. Marching in step is duty to one's country. Trimming grass with scissors is a duty to one's country. Obedience seems to be the foremost duty to one's country per military training. Doing one's job in the military, from accounting to tagging bodies, is serving one's country. Sgt. Smith probably felt he was doing his job by using his guard dog to get information that would protect America. Ever heard that expression used?
We tap the phones of American citizens without a warrant in order to protect America. We record the history of library books checked out by American citizens to protect America. We look at a million randomly selected Google search histories without a warrant to protect America. We ignore treaties and the Geneva Convention to protect America. We detain civilians, including children, for years without charges, representation, or contact with their families to protect America. We invaded an extremely poor, weak country led by an impotent dictator to protect America. Why would it seem out of the realm of reasonable behavior to use a dog to intimidate a terrorist suspect into giving up information that might protect America? Sgt. Smith shows no remorse because by all accounts, he did the job he was sent to do. Perhaps his judgment was in err, but given the total absence of any clear reason for him being there in the first place, is he alone to blame for that erred judgment?
If the enlisted men and staff officers in Iraq and Gitmo are going to be publicly held accountable for carrying out their CinC's orders, shouldn't the CinC also be held accountable? A pretty historically significant court seemed to think so...
"It's common for plaintiffs in cases like this (war crimes) to lack concrete evidence against top commanders. Like Mafia dons, commanders rarely commit the crimes themselves, and they don't leave much of a paper trail—not since the Nazis' zealous documentation proved so useful to Nuremberg prosecutors. Even at Nuremberg, there wasn't enough evidence of direct control to convict all the defendants who seemed guilty, so the tribunal there developed the doctrine of command responsibility. The idea was that a commander who did little or nothing to stop his troops from committing atrocities was effectively encouraging them and should be held responsible." (Effective Command by Susan Benech http://www.legalaffairs.org/printerfriendly.msp?id=230)
American courts think so too, but that comes later...
Regarding the high school superintendent gone bad scenario: I'm not suggesting that the superintendent's behavior JUSTIFIES the bad behavior of those in his charge, but rather, that they all go down for the resulting bad behavior even if only the teachers get caught. Especially when the teachers keep getting caught doing things that superintendent exemplified or otherwise endorsed or even condoned. Those teachers are a symptom... fully accountable for their own actions to be certain, but we have to treat the cause, not just the symptoms. If in any way that superintendent's behavior, speech, or doctrine influenced the teachers' behavior, or he failed to exercise the control he was hired to exercise, then he is as responsible as they are. Note the distinction: It's not that the teachers should be given impunity, it's that ALL of them should be held accountable.
Civilian contractor interrogators have endorsed, at the very least, rough treatment of prisoners being delivered for interrogation. They have trained military guards on the local operating procedures of the prisons. Commanders who have questioned this, and detailed the abusive practices demonstrated, have been relieved of their command. Their lower ranking charges have been convicted of abuse. The contractors have continued to do their work... their duty to the nation that the Bush administration hired them to do.
Furthermore, the Bush administration has admitted to sending prisoners to countries where abusive interrogation methods are the routine. Sending prisoners in one's charge to a place where one knows they will be abused is an endorsement of the abuse. It's not just allowing it to happen, or failing to prevent it, it's an endorsement of it.
Now for the American court's take on this responsibility:
"The doctrine of 'command responsibility,' the product of an American initiative enshrined in law since the Nuremberg Statutes after World War II, affirms that civilian and military leaders may be held legally accountable for abuses committed by their subordinates -- even when these commanders did not personally order abuses, witness such abuses, have direct knowledge about them or conspire to commit them. This law recognizes the tremendous danger of abuse inherent in war and, in tribute to the awful sacrifices of the Holocaust and those who died in two world wars, it places the moral worth of each and every person at the center of our international order. Rather than permit leaders to turn a blind eye to abuse, it charges both military and civilian authorities with an affirmative duty to prevent crimes, to control their troops, to act when a crime is discovered, and to punish those found guilty of committing the actual crime – no matter how high responsibility may reach in the chain of command." (The Abuse of Power, speech by Terry Karl, http://wais.stanford.edu/General/abuseofpower.htm)
President Bush must answer for his role in the Iraqi situation from the specifics to the general. The only answers he's given so far are catchphrases and faulty intelligence backed hypotheses that have since been proven false. He must answer us since he's spending our money. We would expect no less from any other commander who authorized the rounding up of people and their detention in foreign lands. The person who authorizes that is responsible for the care and treatment of those people. Sgt. Smith did not authorize that.
I'm not blaming the system for what individuals like Smith did, I'm blaming the commander. I'm not blaming him for the acts committed by the individuals like Smith, but for creating a culture that allows or encourages the individuals to think what they did was the right thing. They answer for their actions. Bush answers for his.
And what of CW2 Birt and Maj. Klaus? They exercised field expediency to ready their convoys to meet mission demands. Some of what they were convicted of (not filling out the proper paperwork for cannabalizing vehicle parts) happened while under fire. When another unit refused to do what Klaus's unit did to prepare their equipment, they were charged with failing to perform their mission. How do you decide what the right thing to do is given that information? Right and wrong never seems to be as easy on the ground as conservatives make it sound.
Sorting all of this out is not easy here in my comfy den. Imagine what those troops in Iraq have to process when determining the right thing to do. They may have volunteered to serve, but they didn't choose to go to Iraq. Are they solely to blame for what they're asked to do there in the name of honor and duty, serving their country, and protecting America?
Saturday, March 25, 2006
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Equivocation
The convictions of enlisted persons for crimes committed during this war continue to draw notice to equivocations made by President Bush. Sgt. Michael Smith is the latest in a line of lower ranking folks guilty of carrying out this administration's work. There's a huge void between those being convicted at the bottom and the president at the top, but I don't need to start from the bottom and go up. The courts martial are doing that, and the press is covering it sufficiently.
Enlisted folk, and even staff officers have very little say in how the big picture of this war is played out. To blame them and prosecute them for these acts, and then use their convictions as examples of how our heart is in the right place... how our mission is still a noble, justified one, is, to quote Everett Ulysses McGill, "the acme of foolishness."
Blaming those at the bottom is like blaming your runny nose for the flu. They are a symptom, not the cause of our problems. Granted, one bad apple, reproduced on every front page in every language around the world represents the one "aw shit" that wipes out a thousand "atta boys," but these so-called "isolated incidents" of the rotten few are no more than symptoms of the greater ills that the president's equivocations belie. I'm not saying there aren't some bad people out there who make things worse for everyone - there are, but many of the people being convicted honestly believe they're doing their jobs. With all of the equivocation, it's no wonder the job isn't so easy to figure out.
Equivocation #1: self-evident, inalienable rights - by most accounts, these words mean rights granted to all humans. We even occasionally call them civil rights, as in, the rights civil people expect to have and extend to each other. But according to the president, even American citizens held at Gitmo no longer have these rights. Let alone foreign prisoners being held there. We're not even talking about the speedy trial, representation, being charged rights of accused criminals that come later in the Bill of Rights here, we're talking basic human rights straight out of the Preamble. These are basic rights of all humans, regardless of their citizenship. We claim as a nation that we believe in this concept, but our president's equivocation of these words suggests otherwise. According to him, and the actions he endorses, some humans are less than others and are not entitled to the basic rights of humans this nation was founded upon.
#2: the Geneva Convention - prisoners at Gitmo and at other prisons are not given the rights guaranteed prisoners of war under this agreement. Who cares right? They're terrorists. (a continuation of the "lesser human" theory) But this means the enemy no longer has to extend this courtesy to our soldiers either, nor to our journalists, missionaries, contractors or other citizens. Let alone all the innocent Muslims rounded up and shipped off from their families because some informant was paid cash and threatened to give up their names. This particular equivocation is proof positive that Americans are NOT safer as a result of this war and its fallout. We're targets. But the worst part of this equivocation is its connection to the next by virtue of the presidential definition of prisoners of war. The president says these prisoners are NOT prisoners of war.
#3: Global War on Terrorism - if prisoners rounded up in this war are not prisoners of war, then it's not a war. If we are at war, and terrorists are the enemy, then captured enemies are prisoners of war. We can't have it both ways. This is equivocation defined... and biting the tail that's wagging the dog. We need to make up our minds and decide who the enemy really is and whether or not we can wage war if there is no enemy defined. Speaking of defining the enemy...
#4: The enemy are people who hate freedom - according to this equivocation, the enemy is the president and congress who, in the name of this war, which isn't a war, and the Patriot Act, and a violation of FISA rules, have shredded some basic freedoms we used to cherish, even take for granted in this country. Illegal search and seizure... not being held unless charged with a crime... the right to representation and a speedy trial? These are all time honored, codified freedoms we as a nation hold sacred. Yet in the name of this war, they've been taken away from not just the foreign humans (who aren't entitled to the rights of humans) at Gitmo and God knows what other "black sites," but from American citizens who love the country and have no ties to any terrorists. The ENEMY hates freedom? By their own actions, this administration hates at least some parts of freedom as well. Demanding millions of random records from Google is in no way "loving freedom." It's walking all over the smoking carcass of it.
Decorated and respected Marine Colonel Joe Dowdy was relieved of his command because of miscalculations on the part of war planners. He refused to sacrifice his men's safety for speed - speed that, as it turned out, wasn't even remotely necessary in the initial charge on Baghdad. His unit satisfactorily completed its mission, and Baghdad fell as planned, but he was fired for allowing his men the time to properly prepare. Dowdy didn't screw up, the war planners did, but Dowdy was blamed, tried, kicked out of an otherwise exemplary career after 24 good years. (http://djnoronha.com/archives/old_site_versions/articles/2004-04-05-Men_or_Mission.php)
Reservist CW2 Daniel Birt was court martialed for scrounging parts from abandoned vehicles in order to meet convoy deadlines. His commander, Major Cathy Klaus was relieved of duty. Around the same time, 23 other reservists, who had learned from Birt and Klaus's lesson, and refused to take unsafe vehicles on a convoy, faced charges as well for NOT doing what Birt and Klaus were charged for DOING. Birt's discharge was waived (and he was sent back to Iraq) but the charges remained.
(http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,141299,00.html) (huh, yeah, I read FoxNews!)
In every one of these situations, the system that instills the sense of duty that led to these decisions never got questioned. The absence of clear objectives was never a mitigating circumstance. Those dealing with the scraps of jumbled policy were found to blame. The charges stopped at the unit commander level. These are top down problems, not bottom up. These actions don't drive the CinC. He drives them.
There are unlimited stories from faithful troops of interrogators abusing, if not terrorizing prisoners and asking guards to help them. The president's people have admitted to sending prisoners off to countries where not only is prisoner abuse condoned, it's endorsed. Given all of this conflicting information from above, what's a 20-something enlisted troop surrounded by frightened, disgruntled middle-eastern prisoners who don't speak the language supposed to think or do?
The trickle down theory is definitely proving successful. The equivocation is trickling down. The mixed message is trickling down. The lack of clear objectives is trickling down, and the blame is trickling down. Why do the people at the bottom of the chain have to keep answering for the guys at the top? When will we start holding the commanders, including the Commander in Chief as accountable as we are the peons at the bottom of the heap? Speaking of accountability - a word this administration uses very liberally - when will it apply to them?
Enlisted folk, and even staff officers have very little say in how the big picture of this war is played out. To blame them and prosecute them for these acts, and then use their convictions as examples of how our heart is in the right place... how our mission is still a noble, justified one, is, to quote Everett Ulysses McGill, "the acme of foolishness."
Blaming those at the bottom is like blaming your runny nose for the flu. They are a symptom, not the cause of our problems. Granted, one bad apple, reproduced on every front page in every language around the world represents the one "aw shit" that wipes out a thousand "atta boys," but these so-called "isolated incidents" of the rotten few are no more than symptoms of the greater ills that the president's equivocations belie. I'm not saying there aren't some bad people out there who make things worse for everyone - there are, but many of the people being convicted honestly believe they're doing their jobs. With all of the equivocation, it's no wonder the job isn't so easy to figure out.
Equivocation #1: self-evident, inalienable rights - by most accounts, these words mean rights granted to all humans. We even occasionally call them civil rights, as in, the rights civil people expect to have and extend to each other. But according to the president, even American citizens held at Gitmo no longer have these rights. Let alone foreign prisoners being held there. We're not even talking about the speedy trial, representation, being charged rights of accused criminals that come later in the Bill of Rights here, we're talking basic human rights straight out of the Preamble. These are basic rights of all humans, regardless of their citizenship. We claim as a nation that we believe in this concept, but our president's equivocation of these words suggests otherwise. According to him, and the actions he endorses, some humans are less than others and are not entitled to the basic rights of humans this nation was founded upon.
#2: the Geneva Convention - prisoners at Gitmo and at other prisons are not given the rights guaranteed prisoners of war under this agreement. Who cares right? They're terrorists. (a continuation of the "lesser human" theory) But this means the enemy no longer has to extend this courtesy to our soldiers either, nor to our journalists, missionaries, contractors or other citizens. Let alone all the innocent Muslims rounded up and shipped off from their families because some informant was paid cash and threatened to give up their names. This particular equivocation is proof positive that Americans are NOT safer as a result of this war and its fallout. We're targets. But the worst part of this equivocation is its connection to the next by virtue of the presidential definition of prisoners of war. The president says these prisoners are NOT prisoners of war.
#3: Global War on Terrorism - if prisoners rounded up in this war are not prisoners of war, then it's not a war. If we are at war, and terrorists are the enemy, then captured enemies are prisoners of war. We can't have it both ways. This is equivocation defined... and biting the tail that's wagging the dog. We need to make up our minds and decide who the enemy really is and whether or not we can wage war if there is no enemy defined. Speaking of defining the enemy...
#4: The enemy are people who hate freedom - according to this equivocation, the enemy is the president and congress who, in the name of this war, which isn't a war, and the Patriot Act, and a violation of FISA rules, have shredded some basic freedoms we used to cherish, even take for granted in this country. Illegal search and seizure... not being held unless charged with a crime... the right to representation and a speedy trial? These are all time honored, codified freedoms we as a nation hold sacred. Yet in the name of this war, they've been taken away from not just the foreign humans (who aren't entitled to the rights of humans) at Gitmo and God knows what other "black sites," but from American citizens who love the country and have no ties to any terrorists. The ENEMY hates freedom? By their own actions, this administration hates at least some parts of freedom as well. Demanding millions of random records from Google is in no way "loving freedom." It's walking all over the smoking carcass of it.
Decorated and respected Marine Colonel Joe Dowdy was relieved of his command because of miscalculations on the part of war planners. He refused to sacrifice his men's safety for speed - speed that, as it turned out, wasn't even remotely necessary in the initial charge on Baghdad. His unit satisfactorily completed its mission, and Baghdad fell as planned, but he was fired for allowing his men the time to properly prepare. Dowdy didn't screw up, the war planners did, but Dowdy was blamed, tried, kicked out of an otherwise exemplary career after 24 good years. (http://djnoronha.com/archives/old_site_versions/articles/2004-04-05-Men_or_Mission.php)
Reservist CW2 Daniel Birt was court martialed for scrounging parts from abandoned vehicles in order to meet convoy deadlines. His commander, Major Cathy Klaus was relieved of duty. Around the same time, 23 other reservists, who had learned from Birt and Klaus's lesson, and refused to take unsafe vehicles on a convoy, faced charges as well for NOT doing what Birt and Klaus were charged for DOING. Birt's discharge was waived (and he was sent back to Iraq) but the charges remained.
(http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,141299,00.html) (huh, yeah, I read FoxNews!)
In every one of these situations, the system that instills the sense of duty that led to these decisions never got questioned. The absence of clear objectives was never a mitigating circumstance. Those dealing with the scraps of jumbled policy were found to blame. The charges stopped at the unit commander level. These are top down problems, not bottom up. These actions don't drive the CinC. He drives them.
There are unlimited stories from faithful troops of interrogators abusing, if not terrorizing prisoners and asking guards to help them. The president's people have admitted to sending prisoners off to countries where not only is prisoner abuse condoned, it's endorsed. Given all of this conflicting information from above, what's a 20-something enlisted troop surrounded by frightened, disgruntled middle-eastern prisoners who don't speak the language supposed to think or do?
The trickle down theory is definitely proving successful. The equivocation is trickling down. The mixed message is trickling down. The lack of clear objectives is trickling down, and the blame is trickling down. Why do the people at the bottom of the chain have to keep answering for the guys at the top? When will we start holding the commanders, including the Commander in Chief as accountable as we are the peons at the bottom of the heap? Speaking of accountability - a word this administration uses very liberally - when will it apply to them?
Thursday, March 09, 2006
Burke's Perspective and Coming Soon out of The Heart of Darkness
James Lee Burke, gulf-cost native, old-timer, detective novelist and current part-time Louisiana resident / man of the world has this to say about presidents and hurricanes:
"When New Orleans was hit by a hurricane in '65, Lyndon Johnson walked into a shelter and said, 'The people of this country are behind you.' By God, he cared about people. How could the current administration not order troops, hospital personnel, trucks with water and food in to this city?"
I just ran across that in a magazine and thought it was interesting. Burke's got a little history in the area, and a little fame, a perspective you'd think we'd hear more of, but I never heard that little tale on the nightly news. The liberal media must not want us to hear stuff like that. All they want to tell us is how well everyone is recovering and how great Mardi Gras is this year. Yet when reporters actually take the time to talk to someone who is trying to rebuild, they tell of federal obstacles. Apparently the liberal media doesn't want us to hear too much of that either, 'cuz you sure don't see many of those stories on the nightly news anymore. Just smile and ignore it... it'll go away, at least at the polls.
Speaking of interesting perspectives, the House voted today to block the U.A.E. port security contract. U.A.E. Arabs are folks who have hosted thousands of U.S. troops since before OPERATION ENDURING FREEDOM. We trust the U.A.E. enough to send young soldiers, sailors and airmen to live in their country, but not, apparently, enough to do business with them? I'm not quite sure I understand the House's perspective. Their vote says that U.A.E. Arabs aren't worth doing business with, but Iraqi Arabs are worth $370 billion and counting, over 2,300 troops' lives, and over 33,000 total lives? How do I make sense of that little paradox?
What's really weird is I've caught myself wondering lately, what if this whole mess works out in the end? Especially when the president endorsed the U.A.E deal. To me, that was the first sign that he actually bought into the crap he's spewed about partnership in the Middle East. It was the first move consistent with all the rhetoric that supposedly justifies this war. So then I think what if Bush's cowboy craziness actually does what previous presidents knew was necessary but believed impossible?
Then I watch the news.
Sure, only the "bad" stuff gets reported, but what's good about war? I know first hand that the majority of the bad stuff goes unreported as well. A death here, a permanent disability there aren't news anymore to anyone outside of that poor troop's family. That's happening every day and we don't hear about more than a tenth of it. Nor do we hear about the massive amounts of squandered resources, corruption, and cash being thrown away, projects 75% completed and then abandoned because some other commander has a different priority. We may not hear many victory stories from over there, but it's not the result of a conspiracy by the media. In my humble opinion, our media portrayal of the war in Iraq is more accurate than most of us would like to admit.
Tangentially speaking...
Talk about failing to learn from the lessons of history. I just finished re-reading Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness. Check it out if you haven't. It's short. If you absolutely oppose books, watch the movie version, Apocalypse Now (which is not, by the way, an accurate or objective documentary about Vietnam). Both are stories about how one's values begin to erode when subjected to ambiguous and contradictory leadership that plops one into dangerous and unfamiliar environments. H of D could have been a diary of my experience in Iraq, but that's another post.
"When New Orleans was hit by a hurricane in '65, Lyndon Johnson walked into a shelter and said, 'The people of this country are behind you.' By God, he cared about people. How could the current administration not order troops, hospital personnel, trucks with water and food in to this city?"
I just ran across that in a magazine and thought it was interesting. Burke's got a little history in the area, and a little fame, a perspective you'd think we'd hear more of, but I never heard that little tale on the nightly news. The liberal media must not want us to hear stuff like that. All they want to tell us is how well everyone is recovering and how great Mardi Gras is this year. Yet when reporters actually take the time to talk to someone who is trying to rebuild, they tell of federal obstacles. Apparently the liberal media doesn't want us to hear too much of that either, 'cuz you sure don't see many of those stories on the nightly news anymore. Just smile and ignore it... it'll go away, at least at the polls.
Speaking of interesting perspectives, the House voted today to block the U.A.E. port security contract. U.A.E. Arabs are folks who have hosted thousands of U.S. troops since before OPERATION ENDURING FREEDOM. We trust the U.A.E. enough to send young soldiers, sailors and airmen to live in their country, but not, apparently, enough to do business with them? I'm not quite sure I understand the House's perspective. Their vote says that U.A.E. Arabs aren't worth doing business with, but Iraqi Arabs are worth $370 billion and counting, over 2,300 troops' lives, and over 33,000 total lives? How do I make sense of that little paradox?
What's really weird is I've caught myself wondering lately, what if this whole mess works out in the end? Especially when the president endorsed the U.A.E deal. To me, that was the first sign that he actually bought into the crap he's spewed about partnership in the Middle East. It was the first move consistent with all the rhetoric that supposedly justifies this war. So then I think what if Bush's cowboy craziness actually does what previous presidents knew was necessary but believed impossible?
Then I watch the news.
Sure, only the "bad" stuff gets reported, but what's good about war? I know first hand that the majority of the bad stuff goes unreported as well. A death here, a permanent disability there aren't news anymore to anyone outside of that poor troop's family. That's happening every day and we don't hear about more than a tenth of it. Nor do we hear about the massive amounts of squandered resources, corruption, and cash being thrown away, projects 75% completed and then abandoned because some other commander has a different priority. We may not hear many victory stories from over there, but it's not the result of a conspiracy by the media. In my humble opinion, our media portrayal of the war in Iraq is more accurate than most of us would like to admit.
Tangentially speaking...
Talk about failing to learn from the lessons of history. I just finished re-reading Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness. Check it out if you haven't. It's short. If you absolutely oppose books, watch the movie version, Apocalypse Now (which is not, by the way, an accurate or objective documentary about Vietnam). Both are stories about how one's values begin to erode when subjected to ambiguous and contradictory leadership that plops one into dangerous and unfamiliar environments. H of D could have been a diary of my experience in Iraq, but that's another post.
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Conduct, speech, an interesting distinction & more Grace
Anyone else find odd the Supreme Court's ruling that as long as colleges want to receive federal funding they'll have to allow military recruiters all the access they give other recruiters? It's not really the ruling that's odd. That actually makes sense. If you want federal money, you have to play nice with the feds. Military recruiters are feds... simple enough, eh?
What's odd about it is the point of contention colleges raised - the military's don't ask, don't tell policy, and the logical ramifications of the court's explanation on the people that policy affects. The court went out of its way to distinguish between conduct, namely allowing the recruiters on campus, providing them with student email addresses, administrative aid, etc. and speech. The court pointed out that colleges were still free to speak as they please about military recruiters and the policies they represent, even suggesting a college can put up an anti-war poster next to the recruiter's office, but that their conduct toward military recruiters must be the same as their conduct toward other recruiters.
Interestingly enough, don't ask, don't tell requires just the opposite. The policy suggests that conduct is tolerated, but that telling about it is prohibited. In spite of this, servicemembers with documented good conduct who have complied with the policy by not telling about their homosexuality have been kicked out of the military because someone else observed conduct like holding hands off-duty and off-post and told for them.
If the court is going to distinguish between conduct and speech, will it also apply such application of the terms to the don't ask, don't tell policy itself? Will they reinstate the otherwise productive careers of gay servicemembers who have complied with the policy but still been thrown out even though they didn't tell? I'm not holding my breath.
On a lighter note, our school's Winter Band Concert was tonight and it was another example of Grace in our world. A tiny school's tiny band filled a tiny gym with the sound of an orchestra in a concert hall. They dedicated their last song, And the Angels Called, albeit predictably, to a fallen student (see "Kyle" in the May archive). Between the memories, the beauty of the song, and their performance of it, I had to wipe away a couple of tears. I'd never heard it before and it just created one of those horribly cheesy, but extremely powerful moments that made me question how I could possibly deserve to have been sitting there, for free, and experiencing the richness of that moment. It was simply amazing, moving, worth living for. My oldest daughter attended with me, but I don't think she was as impressed. For what it's worth, we listened to Frank Zappa on the way home. I can't even begin to understand how God worked all that, but I'm glad anyway.
What's odd about it is the point of contention colleges raised - the military's don't ask, don't tell policy, and the logical ramifications of the court's explanation on the people that policy affects. The court went out of its way to distinguish between conduct, namely allowing the recruiters on campus, providing them with student email addresses, administrative aid, etc. and speech. The court pointed out that colleges were still free to speak as they please about military recruiters and the policies they represent, even suggesting a college can put up an anti-war poster next to the recruiter's office, but that their conduct toward military recruiters must be the same as their conduct toward other recruiters.
Interestingly enough, don't ask, don't tell requires just the opposite. The policy suggests that conduct is tolerated, but that telling about it is prohibited. In spite of this, servicemembers with documented good conduct who have complied with the policy by not telling about their homosexuality have been kicked out of the military because someone else observed conduct like holding hands off-duty and off-post and told for them.
If the court is going to distinguish between conduct and speech, will it also apply such application of the terms to the don't ask, don't tell policy itself? Will they reinstate the otherwise productive careers of gay servicemembers who have complied with the policy but still been thrown out even though they didn't tell? I'm not holding my breath.
On a lighter note, our school's Winter Band Concert was tonight and it was another example of Grace in our world. A tiny school's tiny band filled a tiny gym with the sound of an orchestra in a concert hall. They dedicated their last song, And the Angels Called, albeit predictably, to a fallen student (see "Kyle" in the May archive). Between the memories, the beauty of the song, and their performance of it, I had to wipe away a couple of tears. I'd never heard it before and it just created one of those horribly cheesy, but extremely powerful moments that made me question how I could possibly deserve to have been sitting there, for free, and experiencing the richness of that moment. It was simply amazing, moving, worth living for. My oldest daughter attended with me, but I don't think she was as impressed. For what it's worth, we listened to Frank Zappa on the way home. I can't even begin to understand how God worked all that, but I'm glad anyway.
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