Ask no questions, get no lies
The above idiom is, of course, very well known and basically espouses the rather sage principle of letting things be, minding ones own business and letting sleeping dogs lie…and the world would certainly be a much better place if most people embraced this ethos. In a recent report for the US military though, it seems that breeches of a similar policy currently in force, known as “don’t ask, don’t tell”, have lead to the sacking of over 58 specialist Arabic and Farsi translators as well as 12,500 other service personnel, from various branches of the forces.
The “don’t ask, don’t tell” principle in the US forces actually specifically relates to the principle that service personnel who openly express a gay orientation are not permitted to serve within the forces; as long as no such orientation is professed though, it is not permitted to investigate or discriminate against the said service personnel…a sort of ‘elephant in the sitting room’ scenario.
Lately, however, increasing numbers of gay personnel have been admitting to being gay and also a growing number of ‘straight’ personnel have been telling on ‘gay suspects’, resulting in the dismissal amongst others, of the 58 specialist interpreters.
This has turned out to be a bit of an ‘own goal’ by the US forces, who are actually chronically short of Arabic and Farsi translators and are having a real ongoing recruiting problem to find any volunteers. As part of a wider picture, because of likely service in Iraq, recruitment is generally in such a dire state that minimum entry levels have had to be drastically lowered too keep recruitment numbers up.
Still…it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good. I guess that for all personnel, gay or not; when the time comes that they decide that they have had enough of being shot at every day in Iraq or Afghanistan, they can profess to being gay and get a ticket home…now if only that option had been there for the hero’s of the Joseph Heller book; Catch 22!