andyt andyt:
Actually Bart, if you read this I'd like to get your take on it, since you were there. I found it pretty shocking.
My take is that the open door policy for queers decimated the ranks of NCOs and we're also losing recruitment figures among (Catholic) Hispanics and (Baptist) blacks because, predictably, the church-going families of young men don't want them in the company of queers.
This act to make it legal to hump
whatever will serve to fuel more resistance to recruitment in the very segments of society that the military depends upon anymore.
The core of the volunteer military (NCO staff) is principally composed of patriotic, white, Southern and mid-Western Christians followed by Catholic, family-oriented Hispanics, and then blacks who tend to run very traditional in their faiths.
Now they're going to stay away from the military.
Were it not for the recession I think numbers would be down seriously right now, but where this will hurt is in five years (maybe less) as the ranks of career military NCO staff erodes. We're also going to see effects on readiness and combat effectiveness as the balance in the military changes from people who fight for 'God and Country' to people who join the military because it's a paycheck, it comes with benefits, and you can get some college money out of it.
People in that latter group are a mother****er to motivate in combat unless you get them to buy into unit cohesion and that's hard to do because these people question all such organizations all the time.
Yes, I know this is what the world is coming to but the fact of the matter remains that open-minded, tolerant, question-authority types make sh*tty soliders when orders are given to kill people. They make great corpsmen, mind you, but crappy killers.
In sum, when I was recently offered a full bird if I'd go back for eight more years I emphatically said
no. And I am not at all unique.