Though Cowards Flinch

Socialisation, liberalisation, unionisation, social engineering. These policies, in the Dutch army, led to the inability of the Dutch to defend Srebrenica against the invading forces of the Republic of Srpska.

For retired General John Sheehan, formerly Supreme Allied Commander Europe, this is a fancy way of saying that allowing gays to serve in the military is a Bad Thing. Part of his testimony can be seen below.

Leaving la-la land for a moment, I’ve no idea how 400 Dutch soldiers were expected to fight off the invasion by 15,000 soldiers of the Drina Corps, without serious air and artillery support – which wasn’t forthcoming.

That’s the military reality of Srebrenica.

Sheehan says that the end of the Cold War saw Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg decide that they would no longer be called on to pursue “active combat” operations. This led to the policies I quoted from his testimony at the start of the article.

Except there’s a few problems: the unionisation of the Dutch armed forces took places in 1966. The removal of all discrimination against gays in the Dutch military occurred in 1974. Nothing to do with the Cold War, nothing to do with Europe going soft.

In fact, had the Soviets come pouring across the Elbe, there would have been gay men and women under the command of SACEUR General John Sheehan, fully anticipating active combat operations and not peacekeeping.

How inconvenient it is when you can’t find the facts to fit your bigotry. Ah never mind, just make them up!