Help OYE Help Military Readiness

Ms. Elaine Donnelly
Center for Military Readiness

Dear Ms. Donnelly:

As one of the leading supporters of traditional military readiness, you have focused public attention on the serious and tragic consequences of politically-motivated shortcuts to training in the demanding field of carrier aviation, as well as longer-term deployability problems that result directly from politically-correct "family-friendly" policies.

You specifically cite the attractiveness of military service to single mothers, without noting that at least they aren't lesbians. You cite all of these factors as degrading the military readiness of our great nation.

You have also supported not only "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" but encouraged Congress to insist on reinstituting the pre-1994 gay ban entirely. Your only response to the continuing discharges of Arabic, Farsi and Korean linguists under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" has been to insist that the Army train only "eligible" linguists.

You have not offered a single suggestion as to where, say, heterosexuals with high language aptitude can be found (if there even are any), or how such individuals can be persuaded to serve our great country by joining our military.

The Army is likely to miss even its reduced recruiting targets for the current fiscal year ending September 30; the Marine Corps missed a monthly quota earlier this year for the first time in years. What about this effect on military readiness?

Nowhere has the Center for Military Readiness simply come forward to urge heterosexual Americans under 42 (the latest maximum enlistment age) to consider serving our country by enlisting. Last November, our country had an election and one party won the White House and both Houses of Congress. They are the leaders of our nation.

How about you? Are you, like many other Republicans, content to leave the responsibility of service to "other people?" If you really care about military readiness, why are you silent?

Don't you realize that, as in the Clinton Administration, but to a much greater degree, the current pace of deployments is hurting our servicemembers, their families, and thus our military readiness?

Don't you realize that the current high rate of re-enlistment is not truly voluntary, as those who choose not to re-enlist are threatened with stop-loss despite not getting the re-enlistment bonus?

Where are you, anyway?

Karl Olson