Barack Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize
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New York Times
October 10, 2009
Editorial
The Peace Prize
President Obama responded to the news of his Nobel Peace Prize the right way. He said he was humbled, acknowledged that the efforts for which he was honored are only beginning and pledged to see them through, not on his own but in concert with other nations.
There cannot have been unbridled joy in the White House early Friday. Mr. Obama’s aides had to expect a barrage of churlish reaction, and they got it. The left denounced the Nobel committee for giving the prize to a wartime president. The right proclaimed that Mr. Obama sold out the United States by engaging in diplomacy. Members of the dwindling band of George W. Bush loyalists also sneered — with absolutely no recognition of their own culpability — that Mr. Obama has not yet ended the wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq.
Certainly, the prize is a (barely) implicit condemnation of Mr. Bush’s presidency. But countering the ill will Mr. Bush created around the world is one of Mr. Obama’s great achievements in less than nine months in office. Mr. Obama’s willingness to respect and work with other nations is another.
Mr. Obama has bolstered this country’s global standing by renouncing torture, this time with credibility; by pledging to close the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba; by rejoining the effort to combat climate change and to rid the world of nuclear weapons; by recommitting himself to ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; and by offering to engage Iran while also insisting that it abandon its nuclear ambitions.
Mr. Obama did not seek the prize. It is a reminder of the extraordinarily high expectations for any American president — and does bring into sharp focus all that he has left to do to make the world, and this country, safer.
In Iraq, Mr. Obama is still a long way from managing an orderly withdrawal that does not leave a power vacuum and inflame a volatile region. He must decide, soon, on a strategy for Afghanistan that will do what Mr. Bush failed to do — defeat Al Qaeda and contain the Taliban — without miring American and allied troops in an endless unwinnable conflict.
To make real progress toward Mr. Obama’s declared goal of a world without nuclear weapons, the United States and Russia must both agree to deep cuts in their nuclear arsenals. If, as we suspect, Iran refuses to give up its illicit nuclear activities, Mr. Obama will have to press the rest of the world’s big powers to impose tough sanctions. He must come up with a more effective strategy to roll back North Korea’s nuclear program.
While he has made an excellent start on climate change with new regulations that finally begin to grapple with carbon emissions, the United States has to lead the way to a global agreement.
Mr. Obama is going to have to overcome narrow-minded opposition in Congress to keep his promise to close Guantánamo and deal with its inmates in a way consistent with the Constitution and American values. He has much more to do to erase the worst excesses of Mr. Bush in detaining prisoners without charges and flouting the Geneva Conventions.
Americans elected Mr. Obama because they wanted him to restore American values and leadership — and because they believed he could. The Nobel Prize, and the broad endorsement that followed, shows how many people around the world want the same thing.
LINK
October 10, 2009
Editorial
The Peace Prize
President Obama responded to the news of his Nobel Peace Prize the right way. He said he was humbled, acknowledged that the efforts for which he was honored are only beginning and pledged to see them through, not on his own but in concert with other nations.
There cannot have been unbridled joy in the White House early Friday. Mr. Obama’s aides had to expect a barrage of churlish reaction, and they got it. The left denounced the Nobel committee for giving the prize to a wartime president. The right proclaimed that Mr. Obama sold out the United States by engaging in diplomacy. Members of the dwindling band of George W. Bush loyalists also sneered — with absolutely no recognition of their own culpability — that Mr. Obama has not yet ended the wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq.
Certainly, the prize is a (barely) implicit condemnation of Mr. Bush’s presidency. But countering the ill will Mr. Bush created around the world is one of Mr. Obama’s great achievements in less than nine months in office. Mr. Obama’s willingness to respect and work with other nations is another.
Mr. Obama has bolstered this country’s global standing by renouncing torture, this time with credibility; by pledging to close the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba; by rejoining the effort to combat climate change and to rid the world of nuclear weapons; by recommitting himself to ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; and by offering to engage Iran while also insisting that it abandon its nuclear ambitions.
Mr. Obama did not seek the prize. It is a reminder of the extraordinarily high expectations for any American president — and does bring into sharp focus all that he has left to do to make the world, and this country, safer.
In Iraq, Mr. Obama is still a long way from managing an orderly withdrawal that does not leave a power vacuum and inflame a volatile region. He must decide, soon, on a strategy for Afghanistan that will do what Mr. Bush failed to do — defeat Al Qaeda and contain the Taliban — without miring American and allied troops in an endless unwinnable conflict.
To make real progress toward Mr. Obama’s declared goal of a world without nuclear weapons, the United States and Russia must both agree to deep cuts in their nuclear arsenals. If, as we suspect, Iran refuses to give up its illicit nuclear activities, Mr. Obama will have to press the rest of the world’s big powers to impose tough sanctions. He must come up with a more effective strategy to roll back North Korea’s nuclear program.
While he has made an excellent start on climate change with new regulations that finally begin to grapple with carbon emissions, the United States has to lead the way to a global agreement.
Mr. Obama is going to have to overcome narrow-minded opposition in Congress to keep his promise to close Guantánamo and deal with its inmates in a way consistent with the Constitution and American values. He has much more to do to erase the worst excesses of Mr. Bush in detaining prisoners without charges and flouting the Geneva Conventions.
Americans elected Mr. Obama because they wanted him to restore American values and leadership — and because they believed he could. The Nobel Prize, and the broad endorsement that followed, shows how many people around the world want the same thing.
LINK
- Reaction score
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- 1,160
I think the New York Times has stumbled on the answer: the Norwegian Nobel Committee is, actually, aiming the prize at the slim majority of Americans (the ones who bothered to vote) who, in Nov 08, were seeking a different direction.
Many wags suggest that Obama is getting the prize just for not being George W Bush, and I think there is a bit of that - the Norwegians have aimed a harmless, risk-free slap at former Pres, Bush for his perceived belief in American exceptionalism.
The European (and Canadian)dislike for hatred of Bush was rooted in the truths he told: Europe (and Canada) are strategically irrelevant; they (and we) have hidden, timorously, behind America's skirts for a couple of generations; we and they, the Canadian and European peoples, are unwilling and, our governments are, therefore, politically unable to be relevant. We have the ways and means but we lack the will. America doesn't. Bush told us all that; "we" hate him for it.
Obama lies. He tells us he cares. But he's an American leader so we know that he cares, as he must, only for America and we know that he lies to us when he tells us he will listen and consult. But we wish it was the truth so we will it to be true, even as we acknowledge that "if wishes were horses poor men would ride."
Many wags suggest that Obama is getting the prize just for not being George W Bush, and I think there is a bit of that - the Norwegians have aimed a harmless, risk-free slap at former Pres, Bush for his perceived belief in American exceptionalism.
The European (and Canadian)
Obama lies. He tells us he cares. But he's an American leader so we know that he cares, as he must, only for America and we know that he lies to us when he tells us he will listen and consult. But we wish it was the truth so we will it to be true, even as we acknowledge that "if wishes were horses poor men would ride."
- Reaction score
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- 430
So E.R.?
Should we all have a Jack Nicholson moment and listen to "You can't handle the truth!" as the population cowers from "the (hard, honest) truth". The truth hurts. >
Should we all have a Jack Nicholson moment and listen to "You can't handle the truth!" as the population cowers from "the (hard, honest) truth". The truth hurts. >
- Reaction score
- 4,630
- Points
- 1,160
Yes, of course, we all (Canadians and Euros alike) should look at the world with clear, unclouded eyes.
We should but we will NOT because hope and self deception are so much easier,
And we have so much hope invested in Obama; he must, we hope, make our dreams come true. And how can he not? He's black, but, of course, so is Condi Rice. He came up through the rough and tough Chicago political system ... oh, wait, we don't want to think about that. He's young, but, again, so is Sarah Palin, and do we really want her finger on the nuclear trigger? He's not George W Bush - and that, really, is about all "we" can and do say for him.
So, yet again, hope will triumph over experience.
As to the Nobel Peace Prize: why not? Look at the other laureates and tell me that his award is more of joke than many of their's.
We should but we will NOT because hope and self deception are so much easier,
And we have so much hope invested in Obama; he must, we hope, make our dreams come true. And how can he not? He's black, but, of course, so is Condi Rice. He came up through the rough and tough Chicago political system ... oh, wait, we don't want to think about that. He's young, but, again, so is Sarah Palin, and do we really want her finger on the nuclear trigger? He's not George W Bush - and that, really, is about all "we" can and do say for him.
So, yet again, hope will triumph over experience.
As to the Nobel Peace Prize: why not? Look at the other laureates and tell me that his award is more of joke than many of their's.
- Reaction score
- 5,085
- Points
- 1,060
E.R. Campbell said:
http://nhwatchdog.blogspot.com/2009/10/ten-worst-nobel-peace-prize-winners.html
The Ten Worst Nobel Peace Prize Winners
Barack Obama’s shocking selection as this year’s winner of the Nobel Peace Prize left some swearing, some giggling, and many simply stunned into immobility. But awarding the prize to a President who was in office less than two weeks before nominations closed isn’t the worst decision the Nobel Committee has ever made. It’s not even close. After all, Barack Obama hasn’t done much, but at least he hasn’t supervised genocide in the Philippines, impoverished the Palestinian people, or fueled the rise of Nazi Germany, so that puts him far from the bottom of the Peace Prize Barrel.
First awarded in 1901, the Nobel Peace Prize went mostly to pacifists and mediators in its early years, even as the great powers militarized and nationalized, hurtling through the bloodiest century in human history. It was only after the end of World War I, the War to End All Wars, that the Nobel Committee started giving the award to people who really made the world a more dangerous place.
10) Jimmy Carter- 2002- The worst ex-President in American history would rank higher on this list, except he deserved more credit for the 1978 prize shared by Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin for the Camp David Agreement. It was not the first step towards a broader peace in the Middle East, but Egypt and Israel haven’t gone to war since. But Carter got his trip to Oslo years later, well after he’s undermined the Clinton Administration’s efforts to stall North Korea’s nuclear program, and just about the time he started his incoherent ramblings against Israel.
9) Jody Williams- 1997- This Vermont activist headed the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which shared the prize with her. Williams urged Western powers to unilaterally ban landmines when hostile states wouldn’t agree to give them up. Like any weapon, landmines can be deployed irresponsibly, though American and Allied forces track their minefields and take other steps to prevent collateral damage. Landmines are also a defensive weapons system, which have played a large role in preventing North Korea from invading South Korea for the past fifty years. Williams took the flawed logic of the gun control movement, and expanded it to a geopolitical scale.
8) Kofi Annan- 2001- The Secretary General of the United Nations split the Prize with the U.N. itself for the U.N.’s general awesomeness at peace and stuff. Annan’s tenure was marked by widespread corruption, such as the Oil for Food scandal and a general inability and unwillingness to address the systemic flaws in a moribund bureaucracy guided as much by the wishes of tin-pot dictators as the free people of the world. On the bright side, the U.N.’s Peace Keeping troops weren’t accused of rape and robbery in several of the countries where they were deployed.
7) Elihu Root- 1912- The U.S. Secretary of State practices shuttle diplomacy before the term was coined, helping to arbitrate peace treaties around the globe. He did not ask for an arbiter following the Spanish-American War. As Secretary of War, Root oversaw the brutal American occupation of the Philippines, marked by a scorched earth campaign against rebel forces and some of the worst abuses by American troops in our history.
6) Frank Kellogg- 1929- The Kellogg-Briand Pact, also known as the Pact of Paris, outlawed war. Really. It prohibited the use of war as “an instrument of national policy.” It was signed in August of 1928. Since the deadliest war in world history had broken out yet, the Nobel Committee gave Kellogg the Peace Prize. They may have jumped the gun a little.
5) Aristide Briand- 1926- Brian was coauthor of the Kellogg-Briand Pact, but his medal was already on the mantelpiece for his work on the Locarno Treaties, a series of seven agreements designed to normalize relations with Germany. The principal treaty was an agreement by Germany, France, and Belgium not to attack each other, guaranteed by Britain and Italy. Looking back, it’s almost shocking that Neville Chamberlain never got this award.
3) Charles Dawes- 1925- Vice President Dawes shared the Prize with British Foreign Secretary Austen Chamberlain. Dawes lent his ideas and his name to the Dawes Plan, which forced Germany to pay huge annual reparations to Britain and France. The Dawes Plan completely collapsed by 1929. German resentment over punitive reparations is now seen as helping fuel the rise of the Nazi Party over the next decade.
3) Mikhail Gorbachev- 1990- For nearly a century, the Nobel Committee had been recognizing do-gooders who ignored dictators, appeased dictators, or asked dictators politely to stop killing people. In 1990, they stepped it up a notch by given the prize a dictator who wasn’t very good at being a dictator. Gorbachev’s flailing attempts to hang onto the last vestiges of Soviet power included sending KGB and military forces into the Baltic States, and he was ousted in a coup in August of 1991. But that birthmark was just so cute.
2) Al Gore- 2007- Gore clearly deserved the Nobel Peace Prize for narrating the highest profile documentary about meteorology that year. The International Panel on Climate Change, which shared the prize, if not the stage with Gore, has since revealed that the most compelling evidence for its global warming work, the Mann Hockey Stick graph, was based on faulty reading of global temperature data. In it’s own words, the Committee gave the prize to Gore and the IPCC “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change”, which quite frankly don’t have a lot to do with peace. Except that when it’s really hot out, people fight more I guess.
1) Yasser Arafat- 1994- Arafat shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Israel Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Israel Foreign Minister Shimon Peres “for their efforts to create peace in the Middle East” following the 1993 Oslo Accords. Now if you sign a peace treaty in the Committee’s backyard, that’s going to get you some Nobel love. So let’s look at the evidence for and against Arafat’s selection:
Cons
*Unrepentant terrorist.
*Kleptocrat who kept Palestinians impoverished through equal measures of corruption and incompetence
*Wanted to kill the Jews and take their land
Pros
*Hated American power as much as Nobel Committee
*Snappy dresser
*Willing to put “killing the Jews” on the backburner if he could just take their land first.
Honorable Mentions- President Obama is the third sitting President to receive the award, and the first two seemed far more deserving at the time.
Teddy Roosevelt- 1906- Roosevelt received the Prize largely for his role in mediating the Treaty of Portsmouth, which ended the Russo-Japanese War. Credit should have been given to the Japanese Navy, which effectively ended the war by sinking the Russian Navy at the Battle of Tsushima.
Woodrow Wilson- 1919- Wilson’s efforts to create the League of Nations got him the Norwegian hardware. The League was one of the most colossal failures of the 20th Century, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.
- Reaction score
- 2,635
- Points
- 940
- Reaction score
- 3
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- 430
New York Times
May 21, 2007
Gay Britons Serve in Military With Little Fuss, as Predicted Discord Does Not Occur
By SARAH LYALL
LONDON, May 20 — The officer, a squadron leader in the Royal Air Force, felt he had no choice. So he stood up in front of his squad of 30 to 40 people.
“I said, ‘Right, I’ve got something to tell you,’ ” he said. “ ‘I believe that for us to be able to work closely together and have faith in each other, we have to be honest and open and frank. And it has to be a two-way process, and it starts with me baring my soul. You may have heard some rumors, and yes, I have a long-term partner who is a he, not a she.’ ”
Far from causing problems, he said, he found that coming out to his troops actually increased the unit’s strength and cohesion. He had felt uneasy keeping the secret “that their boss was a poof,” as he put it, from people he worked with so closely.
Since the British military began allowing homosexuals to serve in the armed forces in 2000, none of its fears — about harassment, discord, blackmail, bullying or an erosion of unit cohesion or military effectiveness — have come to pass, according to the Ministry of Defense, current and former members of the services and academics specializing in the military. The biggest news about the policy, they say, is that there is no news. It has for the most part become a nonissue.
The Ministry of Defense does not compile figures on how many gay men and lesbians are openly serving, and it says that the number of people who have come out publicly in the past seven years is still relatively low. But it is clearly proud of how smoothly homosexuals have been integrated and is trying to make life easier for them.
“What we’re hoping to do is to, over a period of time, reinforce the message that people who are gay, lesbian and the like are welcomed in the armed forces and we don’t discriminate against them in any way,” a Defense Ministry official said in an interview, speaking on condition of anonymity in accordance with the ministry’s practice.
Nonetheless, the issue is extremely delicate now. The military does not want to be seen bragging about the success of its policy when the issue can still cause so much anguished debate in the United States. This is particularly true in light of tensions between the allies after a British coroner ruled in March that a British soldier who died four years ago was unlawfully killed by an American pilot.
For this article, the Defense Ministry refused to give permission for any member of the forces to be interviewed, either on or off the record. Those who spoke did so before the ministry made its position clear.
“We’re not looking to have quotes taken out of context in a way to imply that we’re trying to influence the debate in the United States,” the British official said. “There are some sensitivities over the timing of this. We have had communications from our counterparts in the United States, and they have asked us questions about how we’ve handled it and how it’s gone on the ground. There does seem to be some debate going on over how long the current policy will be sustainable.”
The debate in the United States was rekindled in March when Gen. Peter Pace, who as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is the country’s top-ranking military official, told The Chicago Tribune that he believed that homosexuality was immoral.
In January, Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, who until his retirement in 1997 held the same post in the Clinton years, when the Pentagon adopted its “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, said in an Op-Ed article in The New York Times that he now believed that the military was ready to accept gay men and lesbians. A military already stretched thin, he said, “must welcome the service of any American who is willing and able to do the job.”
At least 24 countries — many of them allies of the United States, and some of them members of the coalition forces fighting alongside Americans — now allow gay soldiers to serve openly in their armed forces.
It is hard to avoid comparing the British and American systems, gay soldiers in the British forces say.
One major, an openly gay liaison officer in the British Territorial Army, told of an exchange he had in the southern Iraq city of Basra with an American staff sergeant, far from home and eager to confide.
“He privately let me know he was gay,” the major said in an interview. “Not in a romantic way, but in a matter-of-fact way. He found it difficult, because he clearly had a whole part of his private life that he had to keep separate and distinct and couldn’t discuss with people. He was in his mid-30s, with no girlfriend and no wife, and he had to use all these white lies.”
Some Britons said they could not understand why the United States had not changed its policy.
“I find it strange, coming from the land of the free and freedom of speech and democracy, given the changes in the world attitude,” said the gay squadron leader, who recently returned from Afghanistan. “It’s just not the issue it used to be.”
Until its policy changed, the British military had deep misgivings about allowing homosexuals to serve openly in its armed forces. But it had no choice. It was forced to by a European court, which ruled that its policy of excluding homosexuals violated the European Convention on Human Rights.
“There was a lot of apprehension among some senior personnel that there would be an increase in things like bullying and harassment based on sexual orientation, and some of them were almost predicting that the world was going to come to an end,” the Defense Ministry official said.
Similar concerns were raised when, bowing to national antidiscrimination laws, the military began allowing gay personnel who had registered for civil partnerships to live in military housing with their same-sex partners. “But all the problems the services thought were going to come to pass really haven’t materialized,” the official said.
To the extent it becomes an issue, it is usually within the context of the relentlessly rough give-and-take that characterizes military life, particularly at the lower ranks, said Nathaniel Frank, a researcher at the Michael D. Palm Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who has studied the British experience.
“The military is a proving ground, and the first thing people do is find your weakness and exploit it,” Mr. Frank said in an e-mail interview. “If you’re gay, that’s your weakness, and guys will latch on to that. But frequently this is no more significant a weakness than any other based on your accent, body type, race, religion, etc.”
The British military actively recruits gay men and lesbians and punishes any instance of intolerance or bullying. The Royal Navy advertises for recruits in gay magazines and has allowed gay sailors to hold civil partnership ceremonies on board ships and, last summer, to march in full naval uniform at a gay pride rally in London. (British Army and Royal Air Force personnel could march but had to wear civilian clothes.)
Speaking at a conference sponsored by the gay advocacy group Stonewall last year, Vice Adm. Adrian Johns, the second sea lord, said that homosexuals had always served in the military but in the past had had to do it secretly.
“That’s an unhealthy way to be, to try and keep a secret life in the armed services,” said Admiral Johns, who as the Royal Navy’s principal personnel officer is responsible for about 39,000 sailors. His speech was titled “Reaping the Rewards of a Gay-Friendly Workplace.”
“Those individuals need nurturing, so that they give of their best and are, in turn, rewarded for their effort,” he said of the Royal Navy’s gay men and lesbians. “Nurture includes the freedom to be themselves. Our mission is to break down barriers of discrimination, prejudice, fear and misunderstanding.”
Once the news is out there, the gay Royal Air Force squadron leader said, the issue gets subsumed by the job at hand and by the relentless immediacy of war.
At one point, his squad was working with a British Army unit. “I wouldn’t go into a briefing room and face them and say, ‘By the way, I’m gay,’ ” he said of his British Army counterparts. “Frankly, I don’t think they were worried, because we were all focused on doing a very, very hard job.”
He recalled something his commander had said, when advising him to come out to his squad:
“The boss said, ‘I think you will be surprised that in this day and age it will be a complete anticlimax, because as far as I’m concerned, homosexuals in the military are yesterday’s news.’ ”
LINK
May 21, 2007
Gay Britons Serve in Military With Little Fuss, as Predicted Discord Does Not Occur
By SARAH LYALL
LONDON, May 20 — The officer, a squadron leader in the Royal Air Force, felt he had no choice. So he stood up in front of his squad of 30 to 40 people.
“I said, ‘Right, I’ve got something to tell you,’ ” he said. “ ‘I believe that for us to be able to work closely together and have faith in each other, we have to be honest and open and frank. And it has to be a two-way process, and it starts with me baring my soul. You may have heard some rumors, and yes, I have a long-term partner who is a he, not a she.’ ”
Far from causing problems, he said, he found that coming out to his troops actually increased the unit’s strength and cohesion. He had felt uneasy keeping the secret “that their boss was a poof,” as he put it, from people he worked with so closely.
Since the British military began allowing homosexuals to serve in the armed forces in 2000, none of its fears — about harassment, discord, blackmail, bullying or an erosion of unit cohesion or military effectiveness — have come to pass, according to the Ministry of Defense, current and former members of the services and academics specializing in the military. The biggest news about the policy, they say, is that there is no news. It has for the most part become a nonissue.
The Ministry of Defense does not compile figures on how many gay men and lesbians are openly serving, and it says that the number of people who have come out publicly in the past seven years is still relatively low. But it is clearly proud of how smoothly homosexuals have been integrated and is trying to make life easier for them.
“What we’re hoping to do is to, over a period of time, reinforce the message that people who are gay, lesbian and the like are welcomed in the armed forces and we don’t discriminate against them in any way,” a Defense Ministry official said in an interview, speaking on condition of anonymity in accordance with the ministry’s practice.
Nonetheless, the issue is extremely delicate now. The military does not want to be seen bragging about the success of its policy when the issue can still cause so much anguished debate in the United States. This is particularly true in light of tensions between the allies after a British coroner ruled in March that a British soldier who died four years ago was unlawfully killed by an American pilot.
For this article, the Defense Ministry refused to give permission for any member of the forces to be interviewed, either on or off the record. Those who spoke did so before the ministry made its position clear.
“We’re not looking to have quotes taken out of context in a way to imply that we’re trying to influence the debate in the United States,” the British official said. “There are some sensitivities over the timing of this. We have had communications from our counterparts in the United States, and they have asked us questions about how we’ve handled it and how it’s gone on the ground. There does seem to be some debate going on over how long the current policy will be sustainable.”
The debate in the United States was rekindled in March when Gen. Peter Pace, who as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is the country’s top-ranking military official, told The Chicago Tribune that he believed that homosexuality was immoral.
In January, Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, who until his retirement in 1997 held the same post in the Clinton years, when the Pentagon adopted its “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, said in an Op-Ed article in The New York Times that he now believed that the military was ready to accept gay men and lesbians. A military already stretched thin, he said, “must welcome the service of any American who is willing and able to do the job.”
At least 24 countries — many of them allies of the United States, and some of them members of the coalition forces fighting alongside Americans — now allow gay soldiers to serve openly in their armed forces.
It is hard to avoid comparing the British and American systems, gay soldiers in the British forces say.
One major, an openly gay liaison officer in the British Territorial Army, told of an exchange he had in the southern Iraq city of Basra with an American staff sergeant, far from home and eager to confide.
“He privately let me know he was gay,” the major said in an interview. “Not in a romantic way, but in a matter-of-fact way. He found it difficult, because he clearly had a whole part of his private life that he had to keep separate and distinct and couldn’t discuss with people. He was in his mid-30s, with no girlfriend and no wife, and he had to use all these white lies.”
Some Britons said they could not understand why the United States had not changed its policy.
“I find it strange, coming from the land of the free and freedom of speech and democracy, given the changes in the world attitude,” said the gay squadron leader, who recently returned from Afghanistan. “It’s just not the issue it used to be.”
Until its policy changed, the British military had deep misgivings about allowing homosexuals to serve openly in its armed forces. But it had no choice. It was forced to by a European court, which ruled that its policy of excluding homosexuals violated the European Convention on Human Rights.
“There was a lot of apprehension among some senior personnel that there would be an increase in things like bullying and harassment based on sexual orientation, and some of them were almost predicting that the world was going to come to an end,” the Defense Ministry official said.
Similar concerns were raised when, bowing to national antidiscrimination laws, the military began allowing gay personnel who had registered for civil partnerships to live in military housing with their same-sex partners. “But all the problems the services thought were going to come to pass really haven’t materialized,” the official said.
To the extent it becomes an issue, it is usually within the context of the relentlessly rough give-and-take that characterizes military life, particularly at the lower ranks, said Nathaniel Frank, a researcher at the Michael D. Palm Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who has studied the British experience.
“The military is a proving ground, and the first thing people do is find your weakness and exploit it,” Mr. Frank said in an e-mail interview. “If you’re gay, that’s your weakness, and guys will latch on to that. But frequently this is no more significant a weakness than any other based on your accent, body type, race, religion, etc.”
The British military actively recruits gay men and lesbians and punishes any instance of intolerance or bullying. The Royal Navy advertises for recruits in gay magazines and has allowed gay sailors to hold civil partnership ceremonies on board ships and, last summer, to march in full naval uniform at a gay pride rally in London. (British Army and Royal Air Force personnel could march but had to wear civilian clothes.)
Speaking at a conference sponsored by the gay advocacy group Stonewall last year, Vice Adm. Adrian Johns, the second sea lord, said that homosexuals had always served in the military but in the past had had to do it secretly.
“That’s an unhealthy way to be, to try and keep a secret life in the armed services,” said Admiral Johns, who as the Royal Navy’s principal personnel officer is responsible for about 39,000 sailors. His speech was titled “Reaping the Rewards of a Gay-Friendly Workplace.”
“Those individuals need nurturing, so that they give of their best and are, in turn, rewarded for their effort,” he said of the Royal Navy’s gay men and lesbians. “Nurture includes the freedom to be themselves. Our mission is to break down barriers of discrimination, prejudice, fear and misunderstanding.”
Once the news is out there, the gay Royal Air Force squadron leader said, the issue gets subsumed by the job at hand and by the relentless immediacy of war.
At one point, his squad was working with a British Army unit. “I wouldn’t go into a briefing room and face them and say, ‘By the way, I’m gay,’ ” he said of his British Army counterparts. “Frankly, I don’t think they were worried, because we were all focused on doing a very, very hard job.”
He recalled something his commander had said, when advising him to come out to his squad:
“The boss said, ‘I think you will be surprised that in this day and age it will be a complete anticlimax, because as far as I’m concerned, homosexuals in the military are yesterday’s news.’ ”
LINK
- Reaction score
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- 940
He's also being awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.
According to the committee, "that guy's just got great chemistry."
;D
According to the committee, "that guy's just got great chemistry."
;D
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