i suspect there is a connection between the ongoing deaths of american soldiers in iraq and the military's don't ask don't tell policy.
ten years ago, when the gays in the military controversy first erupted, conservatives portrayed the issue as a conflict between political correctness and miliary readiness. they argued that to allow gays to openly serve in the military would risk the lives of soldiers in combat because it would ruin unit cohesion.
i think our experience in iraq shows precisely the opposite is true. the military's actions in enforcing the policy illustrate it will discharge anyone who it determines is gay regardless of their strategic importance. currently, the military is in desperate need of arabic translators. because of the shortage, u.s. troops are regularly getting into conflicts with iraqi people that are often no more than simple misunderstandings. sometimes these conflicts have resulted in fighting at the time of the misunderstanding, but other times they just breed resentment that further encourages iraqis to participate in future attacks against the u.s. the campaign to win over the hearts and minds of iraqis cannot succeed when americans cannot even communicate with the people they want to win over. although it is really impossible to say for sure, i believe that the shortage of arabists in the u.s. military is significantly contributing to the number of deaths
the military's shortage of arab translators is very real. hell, the state department apparently has only 402 arab speakers, and that includes all of the personnel in all of the embassies and consulates in 15 or so arab-speaking countries. if anything, the discharge of gay arab linguists has accelerated. meanwhile, the government's shortage has come up in every arabic class i have taken since 9/11. it even came up when i was in tashkent. while wandering one night, i met a guy who did I.T. work for the u.s. embassy. during our conversation he asked me what languages i knew and when i mentioned arabic, he tried to talk me into either joining the military or foreign service because both were facing such a dire need.
in one sense the "political correctness versus military readiness" formulation touted by the military during the original debate was accurate. but the political correctness that interfered with military readiness turned out to be the military's kowtowing to it own anti-gay culture. (see this article for an example of the wasted potential that results from this policy (via bark bark woof woof)).
