Don't Ask (About Citizenship)

By Flickr user Charlie Dave used with a Creative Commons license

Bob Mackey had a great post over at HuffPo on allowing immigrants, illegal or otherwise, to serve in the military to gain citizenship:

Currently, there is an expedited process for naturalization of veterans and serving military personnel, under INA Section 328 and 329 (328 is the peacetime service exemption, 329 is the wartime service exemption). In general, if an immigrant serves honorably in wartime, even for a single day, they are allowed to apply for citizenship. While this does greatly speed the process, it is not enough. Service itself should bestow citizenship, not "moral character," "English proficiency" and "Knowledge of Civics" tests. Three years of honorable service in peacetime and any service in wartime should result in automatic citizenship for both the service member and their immediate families. Combat wounded and medically discharged personnel should have the same automatic citizenship.

It's worth reading the whole post to learn about a fantastic soldier who Mackey served alongside a soldier named Raul. Mackey never asked if his citizenship papers were legal or not. In the military, what usually matters is if you can do the job you are assigned to do. Raul was a valuable soldier, so it didn't much matter if his documentation was legitimate or not.

What Mackey has touched on is something that's become alarmingly clear lately given the attention on "don't ask, don't tell," the needs of the increasing number of women in the armed services, and the fairly recent decisions to issue criminal waivers: the armed services is relatively slow to change and isn't easily adapting to its changing demographics.

Mackey makes excellent points about how other countries for years have used foreign nationals to serve proudly in the military to gain citizenship. And increasingly, as we fight more wars abroad, the presence of those in the military with the knowledge to speak other languages and understand other cultures is invaluable:

France, through its Foreign Legion, has long allowed foreigners to gain citizenship with service. There is no logical reason why the United States cannot do the same. Not just Latino immigrants should be recruited. Enlist those from the Middle East, especially Iraq and Afghanistan, who have already served alongside U.S. troops. Their knowledge of the culture, sensitivity and regional expertise to the U.S. military would be invaluable. Linguists who are native speakers, civil affairs officers who understand exact tribal and local needs and norms would be priceless.

This has become the main opposition to "don't ask, don't tell," since more and more Arabic speakers are discharged from the military for being gay.

Hopefully the Department of Defense will stop dragging it's feet and begin to take a more comprehensive look at how the armed services need to change their enlistment policies to create a better and more comprehensive force.

Serving While Gay

Via Myglesias and Kdrum, a new survey of military personnel by Foreign Policy shows that fewer senior officers supported allowing gays in the military (22 percent) than were interested in reinstating the draft (38 percent). The most popular idea for increasing recruitment, however, was lowering educational standards (58 percent).

Matt said this was probably the most obvious means of increasing bodies in the military, but it sort of depends on what you want the military to do. If you think that the military's sole purpose, as it has been, is to shoot guns and stand guard, then yes, lowering educational standards will do the task for increasing troop levels. But, if you think that the military needs to be a leaner, more highly trained force to be knowledgeable about the areas where they're stationed, then lowering educational standards seems like a bad idea. I can see both sides of the argument, but I tend to think that the main problem with recruitment is that troops are becoming exhausted and we're rotating through troops and burning them out faster than we realize.

One thought about attitudes toward gays in the military: I think what the survey points to mostly is the high levels of homophobia still in the military. There's a definite emphasis on masculinity and traditional gender roles there. My good friends' sister joined the Marines after high school, and she was told she had to wear very specific shades of lipstick in dress uniform.

Cross-posted.

Code Pink Clashes with Camo

The SF Chronicle reports from a scene in Berkeley where Code Pink protesters faced off with a Marine Corps recruiting station. This is representative of a tension within the anti-Iraq War movement. Although the recruiters are probably extremely supportive of Bush's policy in Iraq, there are many military personnel who don't feel the same way.

To me, especially because the military is entirely composed of people who choose to be there, this is really significant. By tapping into that pro-military antiwar sentiment, it sort of gives a legitimacy to the movement that it hasn't previously had. In a lot of ways, I feel like the antiwar movement has matured since the 1960s. Those who favor withdrawl draw up well-thought-out plans on how it can be done and carefully weigh the consequences. The movement has acknowledged that the military serves an important role, in a way that the hippie antiwar movement of the 1960s isn't represented (at least as far as I can tell).

But Code Pink positions themselves as radical. They use inflammatory tactics like calling Donald Rumsfeld a "war criminal" (and I acknowledge that these accusations aren't groundless). They try to, as the story from Berkeley shows, shut down a military recruiting station. I've written before about my complicated feelings about Code Pink. Sometimes I find their methods irritating, and I wish they would offer up real alternatives rather than simply calling people war criminals.

Not everyone that serves in the military kills people, but some of them do. Identifying that the military serves a complicated function in our country could go a long way in legitimizing the Code Pink antiwar protesters.

Military Recruitment on Campus

Yale University restricted military recruitment in 2005, claiming a First Amendment right to exclude them based on the military's anti-gay recruitment policies. This week, an appeals court sided with the Department of Defense. They cited a law known as the Solomon amendment, upheld by the Supreme Court, which allows federal funds to be withheld from schools that refuse military recruitment on campus.

By refusing military recruitment on campus, it's a back-door way of protesting the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. It's a stance that Yale University, with such a large endowment, can perhaps afford to make, but publicly funded universities and colleges cannot even consider this method of protest. They are too dependant on federal and state dollars.

Curiously enough, a side effect of refusing to allow military recruitment on campus is that it may increase the economic divide among those who choose to serve in the military and those who don't. Overwhelmingly those that serve are poor. I'd be interested to know what others think about this.

Cross-posted on campusprogress.org/blog.