A national defense analyst and Pentagon advisor says if those pushing for repeal of the 1993 law banning homosexuals from military service are successful, it will be difficult to maintain an all-volunteer force.
. . . Lt. Col. Bob Maginnis (USA-Ret.) was part of the military working group that helped craft the 1993 law known as Section 654, Title 10, which strictly prohibits homosexuals from serving in the military. He believes lifting the ban would alienate those people most likely to volunteer for the military.
"If you begin to erode the base -- primarily conservative, many are religious, and of course they're very patriotic... -- if you begin to erode that, guess what? You have no alternative if you want to fill the ranks than to draft," Maginnis decides.
He is convinced that President Obama could care less about how unpopular such a move would be. "The politicians don't want to vote for that, so that's really...the crux of what these people are about to do," the defense analyst explains. "Obama could care less about the military. He's paying back a political payola to the homosexual community."
And to prove this assertion, Maginnis offers . . . nothing. No studies, no proof, not even a magic show. Just his opinion. And his opinion pretty much makes up the article.
My guess is that neither Maginnis nor One News Now had anything to offer, especially in light of the fact that a vast majority of Americans actually support allowing gays to serve openly in the military:
Three-quarters of Americans say that they support openly gay people serving in the U.S. military, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, a finding that could lend momentum to the Obama administration's effort to dismantle the policy known as "don't ask, don't tell."
. . . The percentage of Americans who say they support gays openly serving is the same as a Post-ABC News poll found in July 2008; both are far above the 44 percent who said so in May 1993. In the new poll, majorities across party lines favor such a policy, with support among Democrats (82 percent) and independents (77 percent) higher than among Republicans (64 percent).
And here is some more food for thought. According to Media Matters, Bob Maginnis has a history of making outrageous statements:
Maginnis is a retired lieutenant colonel who has served as the Pentagon's inspector general and as an adviser to the Defense Department Military Working Group, set up in 1993 by the Department of Defense to address the issue of gays in the miliary. Additionally, Maginnis served as a policy adviser for the conservative Family Research Council. Maginnis has been a Fox News military analyst since at least 2002, during which time he reportedly was a member of Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld's Military Analyst Group.
In the months leading to the Iraq war, Maginnis frequently appeared on Fox News and made various misleading and baseless claims. For example, Maginnis suggested on December 19, 2002, that chemical warfare was going to be a large component of the war and claimed that the Iraqi military was "going to have ... almost booby-trapped use of some chemicals in some built-up areas where civilians are going to be casualties." Maginnis repeated this assertion -- that Iraqi leaders were booby-trapping residential areas with chemical or biological weapons -- on the January 15, 2003, edition of On the Record, stating: "[N]ot only [do] they develop them, they hide them. ... They know exactly where these things are. ... [T]hey are in residential areas, and they probably have some of the things that we've heard about," such as "smallpox material that's been weaponized." On the January 30, 2003, edition of On the Record, Maginnis responded to a Gallup poll indicating that a majority of Americans said "they expected thousands of deaths" from the war, claiming that while "we can't dismiss" the possibility that thousands of deaths would occur, "the reality is that we're not going to see that." On February 3, 2003, he suggested that the reason U.N. weapons inspections turned up empty was "because some of the information somehow got out to the wrong people, and they were able to sanitize the site before the inspectors arrived," perhaps because Iraqis "infiltrated" the inspection teams.
No surprises here. One News Now, like all religious right entities, have a habit of "creating facts" when the actual facts don't suit their agenda of homophobia.
Shorter Bob McGinnis: "People who aren't afraid of being shipped overseas and facing the possibility of getting their head blown off or watch it happen to somebody else, are deathly afraid of the possibility that somebody MIGHT look at their ass for a few seconds."
ReplyDeleteAnother thing that NEVER occurs to these people who worry about nightmare scenerios of homosexuals lusting after innocent heteros:
ReplyDeleteLGBT folk can ALSO be subjected to unwelcome advances.
Maybe we can pattern our military service after other countries who require all 18 year olds to report for duty and spend 2 years in service. That would actually be a great way to open up the eyes of the great majority of Americans to the real world, not just their own backyards. This experience would be a great way to shape the hearts and minds of our young men and women and open them up to a world of possibilities not given them by their hometowns and families. Germany does it and Israel does it. I am sure other countries have this requirement (one doesn't necessarily have to go to the front lines if there is a concientious objection, one can serve in hospitals, or some other non-combat position, or in some other organization like the Peace Corps), but everyone serves two years. Then when they come home, they can go back to school or use their experience to qualify for a real job.
ReplyDelete