Decline and Fall

Kevin Drum points to a Foreign Policy survey of U.S. military staff-level officers, and finds much to be discouraged about. For instance, only 22% would be open to allowing gays into the military in order to increase recruitment numbers, while 58% would be open to lowering education standards. This isn't what we would have liked to see from our military leaders, and fortunately, it isn't.

As one of Andrew Sullivan's readers points out,

The data from the survey clearly shows that it was heavily skewed towards a much older pool of retired officers: - 89% of respondents are over 50. 72% are over 60. 38% are over 70. - 92% are retired. 71% have been retired for more than 10 years.

If we were to try and define a typical respondent, he would be a 65 year old former colonel who entered service in the late 1960's and retired in the 1990s. Hardly representative of today's officer corps

It is generally accepted that older people are much less open to accepting gays into society than are the younger generation, so the age of the respondents plays a big role in these results. But even more than just their age, old military officers tend to be even more conservative in their outlook than those of a similar vintage in society at large. Particularly the generation polled here, shaped as they were by the polarizing Vietnam years. The guys that age I know who chose to devote their lives to the military often did so as a bulwark against the usual bugbears that degrade society, from the sexual revolution to abortion to secular humanism. Foreign Policy didn't survey a bunch of warrior-scholar David Petraeuses, they surveyed a bunch of Jack D. Rippers.

Also, one shouldn't make too much of a survey composed of staff officers only. Those guys are the furthest from the battlefield, and the furthest removed from the attitudes of the people who make up the vast majority of the military: the lower enlisted and buck sergeants who actually do the fighting. It's my earlier REMF vs. Cannon Fodder point again: the further you get from the regular troops, the more kool-aid you drink. Which is not to say that the troops are a bunch of open-minded, bleeding hearted sensitive types. It's just that they tend to care less about other peoples' personal lives. It's not so much acceptance as not caring enough to bother. Will & Grace meets the Nintendo generation in an introverted version of the leave us alone coalition.

One last point: maybe this result came about because of the way it was presented: of all the reasons for allowing gays to serve openly, "increasing recruitment" isn't a major one. It's a moral issue, not a practical one.

Labels: homosexuality, military