At least their not gay, that's better right?

A few weeks ago an army sergeant serving his third tour in Iraq snapped. He walked into a stress clinic near Baghdad and shot to death five other US soldiers and wounded a sixth. His father was heartbroken and insisted "The army broke him."

Just the other day an army private was convicted for murdering an Iraqi father, mother, four year old daughter, and then him and three other soldiers raped the fourteen year old daughter whom he then shot to death. The trial revealed that this psychotic young man thought it was unfair soldiers were not allowed to shoot at civilians and thought soldiers would have more freedom to use violence.

Then there is an experience from my past. One day, during my advanced training all three hundred soldiers were lined up in formation as two plain clothed policemen approached. The Drill Sergeant called a soldier forward and as the officers read him his rights we were lectured on trying to hide our past. However, a couple weeks later this soldier was back, bragging that a judge had decreed that since he was in the army they would let the charges of assault and theft slide.

These three soldiers have a lot of things in common but one absurd, irrelevant characteristic is that all three are heterosexual. But desperate times call for desperate measures. We are in need of soldiers so we will take any psychopath or criminal we can get our hands on...well, unless they are gay because that's just gross.

According to an article in Newsweek:

"to meet recruitment quotas, special waivers have been issued to allow enlistment of hundreds of convicted felons, including arsonists and burglars. One man who had repeatedly beaten his wife was accused of beating prisoners in Iraq; another, who stabbed an Iraqi private with a bayonet, had been accused of assault as a civilian."


In the meantime we have Lieutenant Dan Choi, a West Point grad and an Arabic translator, who has been ousted from the military for admitting publicly he was gay. Or how about Lieutenant Colonel Victor Fehrenbach, an Air Force pilot with nine air medals for distinguished service including one for heroism who will be relieved of duty later this year for being outed. These are just two examples of thousands of well qualified, highly trained servicemen and women that the military has spent a fortune on getting them out and training their replacements.

Does this make sense? We have two servicemen or women. One is distinguished and the best at what they do and the other...well...not so much. But the former is gay so instead of getting the hero you'll be going into battle with the second rate soldier. Insane.

There is one final scary aspect about the current policy. Many of those discharged are actually heterosexual. Many women have refused advances from their male counterparts and many men simply did not fall into that traditional masculine label. Destructive witch-hunts followed and good people who didn't even fall under this rule suffered.

If we don't want to allow gays in the military unlike those nations who do such as Australia, the UK, Canada, Israel and more than twenty other countries to answer our desperate need for more soldiers then I have another possible solution. Bring back the draft! Besides, doesn't it make you sad to only see poor people enlisting in the military? Where is the middle class and the wealthy? Don't they want to defend their country too?

What do you think? Would you like to serve next to the psycho or mentally ill man that might shoot you or the icky homosexual? Better yet, which one would you like to represent the greatest country in the world? Since I am currently in the service I'll take door number two but that's just me. How about you?