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A retired U.S. general said Thursday that the Dutch policy of allowing openly gay soldiers to serve in its military led, in part, to its failure to halt the massacre of Muslims in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in 1995.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, "nations like Belgium, Luxembourg, the Dutch, et cetera, firmly believed there was no longer a need for an active combat capability in the militaries," John Sheehan, former supreme allied commander - Atlantic, told a Senate hearing on the don't ask, don't tell policy under which gays are not allowed to serve in the U.S. military openly.

"As a result, they declared a peace dividend and made a conscious effort to socialize their military," he said. "That includes the unionization of their militaries. It includes open homosexuality demonstrated in a series of other activities, with a focus on peacekeeping operations, because they did not believe the Germans were going to attack again or the Soviets were coming back.

"That led to a force that was ill-equipped to go to war. The case in point that I'm referring to is when the Dutch were required to defend Srebrenica against the Serbs. The battalion was under-strength, poorly led, and the Serbs came into town, handcuffed the soldiers to the telephone poles, marched the Muslims off and executed them," Sheehan said.

"That was the largest massacre in Europe since World War II."

Asked whether Dutch leaders had told him that the Dutch military's performance was linked to its gay soldiers, he said, "Yes. ... They included that as part of the problem."

He was referring to the incident that began July 11, 1995, when Serb forces overran the United Nations "safe zone" of Srebrenica and systematically executed men and boys while expelling the rest of the Muslim population. In all, 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were killed.

Asked which Dutch officers had told him that the debacle at Srebrenica was in part due to the fact that gay soldiers serve in the Dutch army, Sheehan cited a "Hankman Berman," whom he described as "the chief of staff of the army who was fired by the parliament because they couldn't find anybody else to blame."

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The small force of 450 lightly-armed Dutch peacekeepers tasked with defending the enclave by the United Nations was simply not equipped to repel the invading Bosnian Serb Army. When the Serb commander, Gen. Ratko Mladic, led an attack on Srebrenica in July 1995, the Dutch repeatedly requested that their NATO colleagues use airstrikes to keep that force at bay. That close air support failed to come in time to prevent the Serbs from taking control of the town and eventually killing more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys.

…[W]hen the United Nations voted to declare Srebrenica and five other Bosnian towns “safe areas” in 1993, the United States and other countries that supported the resolution failed to agree to send enough troops to police the towns. The United Nations estimated that it would take a force of 34,000 soldiers to protect the civilian populations of Srebrenica and the other towns that were completely surrounded by Bosnian Serb positions. Only 7,600 troops were divided among the six towns.

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Asked if Dutch leaders had told him that the Dutch military’s performance was linked to its gay soldiers, Sheehan mentioned the name of the then Chief of Defense, a ”Hankman Berman.”

According to the Times:

The Dutch Defense Ministry guessed that this was a reference to Gen. Henk van den Breemen, the country’s former chief of defense staff. On Friday the ministry issued a statement saying that General van den Breemen, now retired, called this “absolute nonsense,” since he did not believe that the presence of gay troops had anything to do with what happened at Srebrenica and had never said any such thing.

The Dutch minister of Defence, Eimert van Middelkoop, issued a statement to distance himself from Sheehan’s remarks, which he called “outrageous and unworthy of a soldier”. “I do not want to waste any more words on the matter,” Van Middelkoop said.

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This would put our military in the strange position of actively recruiting personnel who have an expressed intention to violate the Uniform Code of Military Justice (which still prohibits certain forms of sexual conduct, including homosexuality). Forcing soldiers to cohabit with people who view them as sexual objects would inevitably lead to increased sexual tension, sexual harassment, andeven sexual assault. America’s military exists to fight and win wars –not to engage in radical social engineering.”

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The Gay and Lesbian Military Freedom Project (MFP) gave a presentation to the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Service (DACOVITS) in April of 1989. MFP focused on the problem of the sexual harassment of both lesbians and straight women in the military. The testimonials of the women in the hearing revealed shocking practices: sham investigations by Defense Department intelligence agencies, women being pressured to confess to things that they did not do, threats ranging from physical harm to discharge and loss of benefits, stellar service records being disregarded at even a rumor about their sexual orientation, sexual harassment and the lack of any recourse to pursue their claims, and the use of the gay ban to intimidate women through "lesbian-bating." Straight women that refused the sexual advances of a male were accused of being lesbians, and sexual harassment of women largely relied on this practice.

The MFP provided statistics showing that women were targeted for discharge based on homosexuality at a rate 10 times higher than that of men. The military undertook anti-lesbian witch hunts, most notably at the Parris Island Marine Corps Recruit Training Depot, where at least two women were incarcerated for being lesbians. One, Barbara Baum, served 226 days in the brig at Quantico. It took two years for her conviction to be overturned.

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That's a war better waged with mind, will, and words, and it absolutely can be, will be, won that way - alas that it's likely gonna be sometime after the militia idiots first shoot the hell out of each other over internal schisms, and then get absolutely obliterated by the goons in green, not that I would miss em so much, just that every ounce of violence you add to the fabric of society strains it closer to the breaking point, yanno ?

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