His foot, that is. After four years of conducting an illegal war in Iraq, which has killed almost one million people, maimed, wounded and dislocated millions more, tortured countless thousands, and in general brutalized and destroyed a once sovereign, secular country, wreaking havoc and disgrace in the world for his own country, the military's top general has put his finger on (or into) the problem, and his foot firmly into his trap. It's all about whose sexual organ rubs against another's. Or, "Mothers lock up your sons and daughters, the fleet's in... with other mothers' sons and daughters in the crew." How astoundingly stupid this morality lesson from our dear, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace... and at taxpayer expense.
"I believe homosexual acts between two individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts," General Peter Pace recently opined ex cathedra to the Chicago Tribune, forgetting his own long and growing rap sheet of ordering war crimes in the name of Bush-Cheney Incorporated.
General Peter Pace doesn't much like adultery either, telling the newspaper that homosexual acts were "akin to a member of the armed forces conducting an adulterous affair with the spouse of another service member." In fact, my dear, spick-and-span General Peter Pace, adultery is one of those activities that takes only one married entity to tango. So it's not at all akin to your (and the military's) tortured, credential-laden formulation. Picture Burt Lancaster rolling around in the Waikiki sand of your closed mind with Deborah Kerr. Or did you miss that film, too? If so, know that we won the war despite Sgt. Burt's hanky-panky.
My dear, deluded General Peter Pace, do you really think that your real-life military fighting persons only have extra marital shenanigans with other, card-carrying, ring-wearing spouses? Or, more particularly (morality-wise), do you think that your married fighting men and women in Iraq are only having sex with unmarried men and women, not necessarily in that order? And if so, would that make it okay? Therefore, by your standards, is your military force in Iraq a moral one? "I believe," said the proselytizing Pace, "that military members who sleep with other military members' wives are immoral in their conduct." Well maybe, but why target the wives? Ah, those desperate, temptress military member's wives. Talk about stomping through a gender minefield. Sex is confusing, isn't it?
But perhaps you are investigating this issue (with all the vigor of the usual military investigations in Iraq) in order to have a lily-white moral fighting force. No gays, no bad-bad sex. No kidding? Be serious, General Peter Pace. But then, you are. Fine, then investigate your fighting forces. Eliminate ALL the immoral apples from the barrel, and not just the gays. Get rid of the adulterers, too, that is, anyone who is married who had sex with anyone or anything other than the legal beloved. And fornicators. And criminals. And sinners in general, General. And start counting the beer consumption too.
Thinking about it, this may be the best way to bring the troops home from the overwhelming moral disaster in which they serve. Then you'd indeed have a true "army of one," and perhaps you'd be "it." Or do you, my dear, criminal accomplice General Peter Pace, like the deal your criminal boss gave you there? Good for the career, maybe? Methinks you protest much too much in public about some things and much too little about others, General Peter Pace. Like the medical care of the wounded, for example.
The general said his views were based on his "personal upbringing," in which he was taught that certain types of conduct are immoral. At this point in his life, with his awesome responsibilities, perhaps the good general should be relying more on his "non-personal" upbringing. He was born in Brooklyn, which, as every schoolchild knows, has never tolerated gays or adulterers. Thence to New Jersey, where he was raised, the full while no doubt maintaining and reinforcing his chastity and moral probity, despite being on the "other" side of the Hudson River. His parents allowed him to venture forth into that tiny sliver of the real world known as a "Service Academy," in his case, the United States Naval Academy – no cruising allowed there. He graduated in 1967, apparently totally oblivious to the four-year education intended to shape body, mind and spirit, TO INSTILL HONOR, and to develop military people with broad, worldly educations. He currently consorts with unrestrained civilian criminals, for whom he personally supervises murder, torture, and the vast destruction of private property. For ocular proof see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwkyXyHpTqM.
In his limited spare time, he casts homophobic slurs in public in the name of the United States military. Sadly, the petty Pace seems the very model of a modern political general.
