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Sheehan: Gays weakened European militaries

The Dutch military’s failure to intervene during a 1995 massacre in Bosnia suggests that allowing gays to serve openly — as the Dutch military does — hurts military readiness, a retired Marine Corps general said Thursday.

Gen. John “Jack” Sheehan, who commanded Atlantic-based NATO forces in the 1990s, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that European militaries — many of whom allow open service by gays — were weakened in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Nations such as Belgium, Luxembourg, Holland and others, he said, believed active combat capability was no longer needed and, as a result, those nations made conscious decisions to “socialize their military.”

The focus, Sheehan said, became peacekeeping operations.

“That led to a force that was ill-equipped to go to war,” he said.

At the 1995 massacre of 7,000 Bosnian-Muslim men at Srebrenica, he said, the Dutch battalion on station “was understrength, poorly led, and the Serbs came into town, handcuffed the soldiers to telephone poles, marched the Muslims off and executed them,” Sheehan said.

“Did the Dutch tell you it was because there were gay soldiers there?” asked Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the committee chairman.

“Yes,” Sheehan said. “They included that as part of the problem. ... A combination of the liberalization of the military — a net effect, basically, of social engineering.”

Levin waited until the end of the two-hour hearing to vigorously push back on Sheehan’s contention.

“I think we all remember Srebrenica,” Levin said. “Any effort to connect that failure on the part of the Dutch to the fact that they had homosexuals ... is totally off target. I see no suggestion of that. It’s no more on point than the fact that they may have allowed African or Dutch-African or women” to serve.

“My comment was that the liberalization ... ” Sheehan said.

Levin interrupted. “I agree with that,” he said. “They weren’t good in that respect. They were trained to be peacekeepers, not peace enforcers. ... But to slide over from that into a suggestion that it had something to do with the fact that homosexuals were allowed in the Dutch army suggests that somehow or other homosexuals are not great fighters. ... I think that is totally wrong.”

The Dutch ambassador to the United States took quick exception to Sheehan’s remarks. “I couldn't disagree more,” said Ambassador Renée Jones-Bos. “I take pride in the fact that lesbians and gays have served openly and with distinction in the Dutch military forces for decades, including in leading operational positions, such as in Afghanistan at the moment.”

The military mission of the Dutch U.N. soldiers at Srebrenica, she said, “has been exhaustively studied and evaluated, nationally and internationally. There is nothing in these reports that suggests any relationship between gays serving in the military and the mass murder of Bosnian Muslims.”

Sexual assault report

Sheehan also cited statistics from the Pentagon’s fiscal 2009 report on sexual assault that he said showed 7 percent of the 3,230 incidents recorded were male-on-male, though the actual figure in the report is closer to 5 percent. And in arguing that repeal of the military ban would undermine good order and discipline, he told the story of a male-on-male foxhole sexual assault in his unit during the Vietnam War, and its divisive impact.

Testifying in favor of repeal were two former officers who were discharged under the law and the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

Michael Almy, an Air Force major at the time, said he was kicked out despite never making a public admission of his homosexuality. A member of the unit that replaced his in Iraq did a routine search of computer files, found personal e-mails and forwarded them to his commander back in Germany.

“ ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ failed me despite the fact that I upheld my end of this law by never disclosing my private life,” Almy said. “Never once in my 13-year career did I make a statement to the military that violated ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ despite pressure from my commander to do so.”

Almy, who would like to return to active duty, said the Air Force’s decision to separate him disrupted unit cohesion — because he was replaced by a far more junior and less experienced officer.

“This had a negative effect on morale and unit cohesion, and the mission suffered as a result,” Almy said.

The other former officer, Jenny Kopfstein, decided to tell her commanding officer on the cruiser Shiloh that she was a lesbian and while he reported her, as required, he allowed her to continue serving openly.

“I expected negative responses,” said Kopfstein, a former lieutenant junior grade. “I got none. Everyone I talked to was positive, and the universal attitude was that ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ was dumb. I served openly for two years and four months.”

In a fitness report, she said that her commanding officer wrote that her sexual orientation “has not disrupted good order and discipline onboard.”

She noted wryly that the ban on open service by gays often has been defended as necessary to preserve those qualities.

“It seems to me that the captain of a ship in the United States Navy is the most qualified judge of good order and discipline among his crew,” Kopfstein said.