Off The Pace.

This has been an amazing couple of weeks in the wonderful and, often amusing world of an otherwise terrible disease. Food in Mouth Syndrome affects people from all walks of life. It is a bourdon to live with and embarrassingly impossible to live down. First their was the darling diva of the Right, Ann Coulter, using a vulgar epithet for a gay person to describe Presidential candidate John Edwards. Then we had my favorite swine, Bill “give ‘em hell” O’Reilly blaming a horrific fire in the Bronx that claimed the lives of several children on illegal immigration. And, finally, the Pentagons top General Peter Pace, while discussing the military’s long standing don’t ask, don’t tell policy, called homosexuality immoral and said that he was brought up to abhor the “gay lifestyle.” Foot in mouth indeed.
This all left me wondering about the thought processes of these supposedly intelligent people. Coulter and O’Reilly are expected to say idiotic things. They’re media whores and their fans expect them to be as controversial as possible. But what was General Pace thinking when he wedged his Marine issue desert combat boot firmly between his bulldog jaws? The U.S. military is in the middle of a major enlistment crises right now. Every branch of the service is having trouble making their recruitment quotas and an unpopular war hasn’t made things any easier. You’d think Pace would be trying desperately to entice people to “be all they can be.” Instead what Pace effectively did was announce to the world that he wanted people to “be all I was brought up to believe you should be and that means not being gay.” Just because gay people aren’t “straight shooters” doesn’t mean they can’t shoot straight!
Granted, military life probably wouldn’t be the number one choice for the flamboyantly gay lifestyle, but it’s not the number one choice for any flamboyant lifestyle. If a man or a woman, regardless of their gender preferences feels a compulsion to serve their country in active combat God bless them. It’s not like they're going to be prancing around the Green Zone in hot-pink thongs, smoking Capris by the carton and drinking Appletinis by the pool all day. When it comes to the active part of active duty I wouldn’t care who I was sharing a foxhole with as long as I knew that they had my back, no pun intended. I seriously doubt that any Marine under fire is going to be thinking about what the Sarge is wearing under his fatigues while being shot at. General Pace, with all the military discipline of Beetle Bailey just told an entire section of the population that their particular brand of patriotism isn’t wanted or needed in today’s military. I wonder if General Pace is willing to take the place of any of the Gay soldiers he just declared unfit and immoral. I doubt it. He’s been way too busy riding a desk in Washington deciding who fits in his military.
So, General Pace wants to be the arbiter of all things moral? He wants to be the one to decide what makes a good soldier? How about the scumbag guards at Abu Gharib prison. Were they moral enough for today’s military? While they were forcing Iraqi prisoners into homo-erotic positions and photographing the entire scene for later amusement were they being moral? Were they being good representatives of today’s modern military machine? How about the geniuses in charge of the war? They’ve issued a billion dollars worth of contracts to private American corporations none of whom could give a fig about Iraqi democracy. Are they moral enough to deal with the military? I would rather have one honest, brave , patriotic gay soldier that ten thousand of the corporate mercenaries who are currently wreaking havoc in the Iraqi desert. Or, is it simply that Pace and men like him have a different definition of morality then the rest of us. He who retires with the most stars wins. Follow orders, make money and pretend to be doing your job all from the safety of your own private party-line soap box. When Pace finally retires and becomes an advisor for Halliburton we’ll get to see his true definition of morality. I think we might be in serious trouble!