Anti-Gay Bigotry of Don't Ask, Don't Tell Has High Price

On July 23, 2008, militant gay-haters like the delusional Elaine Donnelly testified as to why gays should be drummed out of the military before the House Armed Services Committee. Meanwhile, it has come out via the Christian Science Monitor that the military is paying $150,000 in retention bonuses to keep linguists who are fluent in Arabic from retiring from the military. Based on that figure, the military has spent perhaps in the neighborhood of $9,000,000 to retain linguists replacing the gay Arabic linguists forced out of the military due to Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Thus, homophobia on the part of those like Ms. Donnelly is costing the taxpayers plenty. I hope Ms. Donnelly's orgasmic thrill over denigrating gays and seeking to keep gays less than full citizens is worth the price. Personally, I don't think it comes anywhere near close and believe Congress should tell Ms. Donnelly to go get herself a new sex toy. Maybe Ms. Donnelly's bogus organization can make a financial donation to reimburse the rest of us taxpayers for the money being needlessly thrown away. Here are some highlights from the story:

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Washington - The Army may begin paying a retention bonus of as much as $150,000 to Arabic speaking soldiers in reflection of how critical it has become for the US military to retain native language and cultural know-how in its ranks. . . . After the invasion of Iraq and the insurgency that followed, the US military recognized its dearth of linguistic competence in the country it had just toppled, and it scrambled to identify Arabic and other linguists.

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The military's conventional language training program, the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, Calif., could not churn out enough American soldiers proficient in Arabic, Kurdish, Dari, Pashtu, and Farsi, and the military quickly turned to private contractors to fill the gap. Numerous programs have sprouted up, including one at Fort Lewis, Wash., where soldiers are given a 10-month immersion program in language and culture.

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Army personnel officials want to put the 09 Lima retention program on par with Army Special Forces, which would mean paying those linguists as much as $150,000 each to stay in the service.

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Interesting that Arabic speaking linguists are deemed critical, yet one's sexual orientation trumps all else. Here are some highlights from Steve Rall's column at Huffington Post that takes a further look at the stupidity of DADT:

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The Army is taking almost every step imaginable -- from six-figure bonuses to civilian interpreters in the warzone to recruitment campaigns targeting Arab-American communities -- to beef up its language capability. Every step, that is, except one. Army officials have yet to tell Congress to dump the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" law that has resulted in the dismissal of more than 5 dozen Arabic speakers who were otherwise qualified and ready to serve.

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During hearings on the State Department's 2008 budget request, [Congressman Gary] Ackerman noted that Secretary Rice repeatedly emphasized the importance of recruiting qualified language experts to work in the agency. Remembering that the armed forces have fired more than 300 language experts (including those 5 dozen fluent in Arabic), Ackerman wondered, "Can we marry up those two -- or maybe that's the wrong word -- can we have some kind of union of those two issues?"

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"Well, it seems that the military has gone around and fired a whole bunch of people who speak foreign languages -- Farsi and Arabic, etc.," Ackerman said. "For some reason, the military seems more afraid of gay people than they are against terrorists, but they're very brave with the terrorists. ... If the terrorists ever got a hold of this information, they'd get a platoon of lesbians to chase us out of Baghdad."

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"This absurdity can't continue," Ackerman later wrote in an August '07 Newsday op-ed. "The 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy is not only wasteful and inefficient, it's unfair and un-American. In the middle of a war we are throwing out good people who have volunteered to put their lives on the line for their country."