Too Gay for Freedom

Apart from any individual feelings about the legitimacy of our war in Iraq, there are certain behaviors exhibited by our Military that are beyond cruel, beyond stupid and go right into the realms of the inane.

Take this story for example.

Now, let's place this particular bit of news in its context. From the beginning, we have had a serious lack in personnel properly trained (or trained at all) in arabic languages and culture. It's been a huge problem from day one. It's recently come out that the U.S. owned and operated television network in Iraq gave air time to terrorists because the executive staff didn't understand the language. That's right, we've got a 68 million dollar program set up to broacast pro-democracy messages to Iraq and it's broadcasting exhortations to committ acts of violence on Jews. There's also no assignment desk, essentially meaning that the reporting and broadcasting is being done by contractors... who the executives can't understand.

Now, this isn't a military operation, but as a governent based propganda program that works hand in hand with the military, I think it servest to illustrate the point.

So, given that things are not going well over there, and that at every turn we find ourselves sinking deeper and deeper into chaos with a culture that (no matter what Bush wants to believe) is fundamentally opposed to our presence and a population that for most part wants us out and dead (in no particular order), how is it that we're so concerned that our soldiers are emailing their boyfriends? How is the homophobia of our military of greater importance than having people who actually SPEAK THE LANGUAGE of the people that we're dealing with in a desparate situation?

That, of course, continues to make the assumption that we have any concern at all about working WITH the Iraqi people. If, indeed, we are only concerned with occupation and subjegation, then it makes perfect sense that we would fire 58 people who are vital to our operations because they happen to like the meeting of glans to sphincter.

So, what's the priority here? And the Pentagon saying that gay people can serve their countries as contractors doesn't address the issue even remotely.