I was talking to my wife about work and she seemed to think it odd that I said I generally try not to become friends with people at work. Now, that is not to say I don't extend social niceties and so on, but I try not to become friends with anyone on the job. The reason is simple At work, often you need to be able to give an honest appraisal of the work of a coworker, to fairly dole out work, to apply criticism and so on. Even if you are not  a manager, there are many times you need to do things concerning a coworker you could not comfortably do to a friend. As a result, I choose to keep coworkers at arm's length, so that I can continue to perform my job well without considerations of personal feelings.

And while discussing this, I was reminded of one of the best arguments against women in any military position, but especially about women in combat positions. (Though how one can realistically draw a line between "combat" and "non-combat" is beyond me. A whole lot of supposed "rear echelon" people got involved when positions were overrun in many wars, which is why the marines train everyone as if they wee front line combat troops.) Now, there are a number of good arguments related to reproduction. The fact that women were getting pregnant at an alarming rate on ships in the Persian Gulf during our first war there. Or the fact that pregnancy means that female troops have an inherently lower readiness than males. And, of course there are considerations such as the much higher risk of sexual abuse when captured. And finally there are considerations about lesser upper body strength. which even in a "high tech army" matters, as we have not eliminated hand to hand combat.

But those are not my concerns, my concern is with perceptions. You see men, especially those sort of men who join the volunteer military, tend to be somewhat protective of women. Even when those women are soldiers, even when those women tell them not to be, men still are. It may be cultural, it may be biological, I tend to favor the first, but whatever the cause, it is a reality, and one we need to recognize. Even without any fraternization, and as the first Gulf War showed us, there WILL be fraternization, but even without it, men tend to try to protect women.

And that is a bad thing in the military.

A commander has to be ready to sacrifice any one of his subordinates, a soldier has to be willing to allow any of his comrades to be sacrificed. Not only the willingness to die, but the willingness to allow others to die is essential to a military unit. When John has to be sacrificed to allow an orderly withdrawal, we cannot have Tom going out of his way to defend John, we need him to listen and allow John to die. However, once John becomes Jane, it becomes much harder for both commanders and equals, who are simply less willing to allow women to be killed than men. And so military decisions become subordinated to emotional ones.

I am sure some will reject this saying that men don't act like that, or they shouldn't, but I know men and they do. Except for some truly heartless types, men are as a group unwilling to see women harmed, and that is a very bad thing in a military situation. And yet it is one fot he few arguments one rarely hears raised, yet it is one of the most compelling I have found.

POSTSCRIPT

Actually, this same argument applies to homosexuals in the military as well. Obviously admitting openly gay soldiers could be a morale issue for those soldiers who value the macho image of the military, and as the 90's show to some degree a "gay" military may deter recruiting. And, fair or not, enlightened or not, those sort of real world concerns need to be taken into account.

But I think this issue needs to be addressed too. The fraternization of men and women can be controlled, to some degree, through segregation. Which is why women in the military was easier to allow than homosexuals. Because, there simply is no way to avoid homosexual fraternization. And that is a concern, not even for the reasons listed earlier, but because it creates the very situation I mentioned, where personal ties can get in the way of military efficiency. If two men have a personal tie that prevents them from sacrificing one another it can impair the unit's performance.

Of course, that could apply to any excessively close relationship, not just a homosexual relationship, but other relationships usually lack the emotional charge of sexual ties. And, in addition, as they are not concealed, they are more easily noticed and dealt with. On the other hand, covert homosexual relationship are often not obvious until they become a problem.

I am sure I have offended countless people with this post, but these things need to be mentioned. Yes, the response of men to homosexuality is not PC, but it is a reality. And since we recruit in the real world, we need to consider it. Military readiness cannot be sacrificed to political beliefs. If you need an argument against doing so, just recall that one of the reasons Iran defied us with impunity was that we lacked the troops to take on three third world nations at once. And we were simply occupying two of them. The US should not be cowed by a third or fourth rate power due to a lack of troops. Especially a lack of troops caused, at least in part, by social engineering in the ranks.

POSTSCRIPT II

To anyone who likes to toss out classical examples to rebut the arguments against gay soldiers in the ranks, I have two arguments. First, such claims massively overestimate the amount of exclusive homosexuality in the classical world, and even overestimate the amount of homosexuality of any type. Not all Spartan pairings were sexual, any more than every heterosexual arranged marriage throughout history. A number of formal arrangements were political and had token, if any, physical contact. However, to the degree there was homosexuality within the ranks, men were discouraged form forming relationships with one another (excepting "sacred bands", whose supposed superiority is belied by the transience of Theban domination of Greece -- ask Alexander or Philip how good the idea was), and, more importantly, the culture was less critical of homosexuality. As we are not those classical cultures, we cannot use them as models. Ancient Greeks may not have had morale problems because of gay soldiers, we do. We have to deal with reality, not the ideal some imagine existed in classical times.

And to rebut one specific example, Gaius Julius Caesar, it is false to say that he was "gay", at least gay in the sense of exclusively homosexual throughout his life, and that he was not harmed by sexual matters. Yes, he did carry on an affair with the King of Bythnia, or was assumed to have done so, so he was at one time at least bisexual. However, after being lampooned by his men for having done so, there is no record of similarly indiscreet affairs. So, it seems clear, he did think being seen as "the Queen of Bythnia" DID impair his leadership, and so he decided to exercise discretion. In other words, he is actually an argument against open homosexuals in the military, not for them.