Somebody remind mewhy ANYBODY is trying to earn the “right” to murder other people in faraway lands because those people happened to commit the horrific and heinous crime of pissing off the President of the Untied States?

Afghan war I do not have a problem withThey are going after al-queda and their taliban supporters; I was in Manhattan on 11 September 2001

Sometimes….….It’s the only ticket out of the wrong town,  to be quite honest.  
LGBT people often end up there,  either to avoid a barefoot-and-pregnant scenario,  or to try and ‘be a man’  or to just plain get away.
When it doesn’t work out,  we’re left with a lot of servicemembers being treated unfairly,  to say the least.  
Whatever you think of war, or a particular war,   for a kind of people so often cast out of our families with few prospects,  or expecting to be,   the military often looks like the only option.  
Between that and the fact that, or a lot of trans sisters,  signing into the military is often a last-ditch attempt to try and force themselves to be like everyone demands, there are a lot of TS women who are veterans.  
I think there is reason that the military might honestly think that the military is no place to go through a transition,  but neither are some of the horror stories I’ve heard anything that helps that, or anything to put American citizens through.  
Homophobia and transphobia are not those honest reasons. There’s discrimination,  and then there’s what’s otherwise the best thing to do.  
So,  whatever one thinks of war,  or a war,  the situation exists.   And it won’t stop just because someone says it should.    
   

The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everyone blindWe’ve already killed more innocent people in Afghanistan than the hijackers did, some estimates say much more than 10 times more.  War is utterly absurd.

It’s not about the numbersThe Taliban had also been getting medieval on the people and particularly women of Afghanistan long before 9/11.
It’s hardly about finding some morality about it,  it’s about what anyone hopes to accomplish.    
Our community is not responsible for either thing,  nor for the existence of the US military.  
Unless you intend to make war disappear,  the question of whether or not the military is used as an excuse to deny us the very freedoms it supposedly protects,  regardless of how much of our blood is shed for whatever reason…  Remains there to be redressed.  

One good reason:See http://docs.google.com/View?id…
Some cultures need eradicating. Doing that without harming the people is tricky.

Key Observations
   * A culturally-contrived homosexuality (significantly not termed as such by its practitioners) appears to affect a far greater population base then some researchers would argue is attributable to natural inclination.
   * Some of its root causes lie in the severe segregation of women, the prohibitive cost of marriage within Pashtun tribal codes, and the depressed economic situation into which young Pashtun men are placed.
   * Other root causes include a long-standing cultural tradition in which boys are appreciated for physical beauty and apprenticed to older men for their sexual initiation.[2] The fallout of this pattern of behavior over generations has a profound impact on Pashtun society and culture.
   * Homosexuality is strictly prohibited in Islam, but cultural interpretations of Islamic teaching prevalent in Pashtun areas of southern Afghanistan tacitly condone it in comparison to heterosexual relationships in several contexts.
   * Pashtun men are freer with companionship, affection, emotional and artistic expression, and the trust bred of familiarity with other men. They often lack the experience of these aspects of life with women.
   * This usurping of the female role may contribute to the alienation of women over generations, and their eventual relegation to extreme segregation and abuse.

Half the populations is treated considerably worse than livestock by the other half.
It’s not Gay Sex that’s forbidden – that’s allowed, as long as it’s the rape of children. It’s Gay Love that is anathema.
And their reaction to having little girls in a primary school is to fumigate the place with poison gas. There have been several such attacks.
It’s a multi-generational problem, and a military solution is only a partial one. But a necessary first step.

We’re also good at itSeriously. Many Trans women in particular have unusual neurology, that makes us particularly adept at the military art.
Same with computer science, and a few other areas, where both creativity and logic are needed. Not all of us – but far more than in the general population.

“Some cultures need eradicating”I stopped reading right here

When do we start bombing Saudi Arabia?n/t

There is no rightto murder people.
There is a right to defend one’s self and one’s nation when someone else tries to murder that nation’s people.
The invasion of another country is a separate concept from this one, linked only by the presence of military thought.
I understand the pacificism, the opposition to the wars, the dislike of the fact that our country invaded other countries.
That does not make wanting to serve one’s country, one’s fellow citizens, in a capacity to defend them from crimes and harm by extranational forces, wrong or ignoble.
But I am biased.  I served.  I’m proud to have done so. I did not enjoy it, mind you, but I’m proud I did.

I can’t actually disagree there. Some of us.   Not all.  Some parts of the brain develop early,  and some later, depending on what hormones those parts are exposed to, can make an interesting combination.     It’s hardly comfortable,  but it can add up to some uncanny ‘side effects’  which happen to be useful in a fight.   Or,  I suppose,  understanding programming languages.  
But the issue here isn’t really about fighting.  I could have flown jet fighters,  but it wouldn’t have meant I’d survive boot camp with my sanity intact.   I was just honest enough with myself to accept that,   in my case.  It’s essentially immaterial to how anyone’s treated in the military, though.  
They really couldn’t care less how well some of us may be able to think or fight or anything.  That’s not what they have these wars to ‘prove.’  

I like Rowan! Rowan must have served in the military and lived in the barracks/ship/tents with the first termers a lot. Just like I did. It’s amazing that no one draws the correlation between the high family rejection and homelessness of GLBT youth and the same high incidence of GLBT youth in our military.
Its doubly sad when you see someone who’s been rejected by their natal family and then rejected by their military family. It tears me up.  They only want a roof, a meal and to feel useful doing something. The fact that many find ‘family’ in the military… its one reason why I stayed as long as I did.
(HUGS) to you Rowan, you understand.  

They are an enemy measuring success by the number of civilian deadI had friends in the Trade Center at Cantor Fitzgerald. I watched them all die
I dined with them there the night before, at Windows on the World.
They were non combatants, they were banking and brokerage attorneys.
There was no military presence or value in either One or Two World Trade Center.
Al-Qaeda committed crimes against peace and crimes against humanity under international law.
They need to be hunted to the ends of the earth and brought into a court room to face justice, for crimes of this magnitude cannot be ingnored for we can not long survive their being repeated

We cannot bring Al-Qaeda to justicewithout hunting them down, to the ends of the earth if necessary. Otherwise, sooner or later, they will do it again…and again…an again

Actually, their INTEL is skynet gradeMostly vapour.
I wrote them about the deck level work I’ve been doing with Transgender citizens serving. I’m pretty sure I’ve given more assitance to actual Transgender citizens serving in the military than they’ve even heard of.
IF you are mil-spec Trans and did read the entire article, here is some additional information.
For foot note;
[1] NO, there is no disiplinary action that can be brought against a person for having GID or being Transgender. If you are in a command that does that, contact base legal.
[2] [a] NO,DO NOT talk to a civilian ‘relegious professional’ they have shown to me several times that they WILL contact the closest miliary chaplain and tell them everything.
[2][b] Active and Reserve in active status can utilize Military One Source or Military Medical and request to talk to a civilian mental health professional. That 1 request will allow them to see a therapist for 10 visits and they can have a further 10 visits upon request.
I’ll post my white paper that I wrote a while back to the blog here.    

Thanks.But,  no, not in this life,  I didn’t choose that.  I know all about the decision process, though.   And, later,  the stories of sisters who chose differently.  
It could really have gone either way at the time, though.  
I could see far enough ahead that I knew it wouldn’t work.  I’d already had enough of hiding and regimentation,  and had, I think,a realistic assessment of myself to know that it’d probably break me.    
I chose the great unknown and just ran.  
It wasn’t actually any easier, looking back,  but such were the times,  and I would later meet up with veteran sisters in much the same places.
 

For those with prior service or not.Not one of us CHOSE a war or to kill when we enlisted.  We all knew it was potentially part of the deal and we raised our right hands anyway.  For those who’ve never heard the Oath of Enlistment in the United States Military here it is and for those of us who took that oath…remember what it meant and still means:
I, (name), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States  against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States  and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.
For those of you who don’t choose to serve in the military I understand that it can be difficult for you to understand how anyone can look down the barrel of a rifle and pull the trigger to take another humans life.  I’m not going to try and explain it to you here, there’s not enough time or space and I no longer have the patience.  I will say only that the ability to live a life in any country with the choice to “speak freely” and to “live and let live” comes with a very steep price and, at least for this country, it’s been paid for, and continues to be paid for, in blood by every generation we’ve ever produced.
So if you don’t agree with the war, any war, or the military, or use of the military then do something other than blame those who chose, and still choose, to serve their country.  Blame the people who control the military, blame the President of the United States who is THE Commander-In-Chief.  Blame Congress who must ACT before War can be declared in this country.  Place the blame for war squarely in the laps of those who determine our participation in one.  Use your voice and VOTE but don’t point a finger in anger at the very people who have paid, and are paying, for your right to have a voice and your right to point a finger in blame.
Finally, for those of you who have served…you have every right to be angry at the idiocy of DADT and at the pitiful way our government cares for those of us damaged by our service.  Use your voice and your vote to change things, write letters, you KNOW that Congressional Interest in an issue brings results in the military.  Use your voice to shine a light in those dark places where homophobia, transphobia, gender discrimination, and stupidity hide in plain sight.
As for me, yes, I chose to serve. I’m also transgendered and FTM.  I served as a woman in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1975-1994.  I know what gender discrimination is and what homophobia feels like and we don’t even need to mention how it feels to be transgendered.  I was free to make the choice to serve and to have a career in the military.  You are free to do the same or not, just as you are free to voice your opinion.  Just make sure you remember how you came to have that freedom.    

Agreed.Fully.
That doesn’t mean, however, that I can’t understand things from the perspective of others, and then use that understanding to explain something in their terms.

Of old,That’s supposed to be a gift of ours,   I understand.
Accordingly,  I say, any given bunch of psychos are going to be calling themselves ‘Al-Qaeda’ until the name wears out and hope it still matters.
As for Justice, and the perpetrators,  whether or not anyone formalizes it in this life, it’ll catch up.   Shoot em,  forget em,  tell stories till they’re nothing but bedtime bogeymen, it’s much the same.   They gave up their humanity in an attempt to sacrifice others to their cause a long time ago.  
I’d shoot anyone convicted of 9/11,  myself,  but they already lost anything such an act could take away.  Except mystique.   Which only exists because some people want it to.
Like I said,  these wars aren’t about who actually fights well.
The contemptible mass murders that led to this are only ‘wars’ because someone made them that way.
Just like straight men make a big show of claiming to be afraid of getting raped by gays in showers,  when really,  it’s the other way around.  
Certainly not transwomen.  Anyone who’s been to high school knows they go after transwomen for not wanting to be seen in showers.  
Forget about who’s ready for war:  we know what these dudes are afraid of cause they do it to us before ‘You and whose army’  gets any kind of literal, if you know what I mean.

Thanks, Patrick. That’s long and honorable service,  and it’s always wrong for anyone to come along and blame a soldier for standing to service,  when it’s someone else who does the sending.  
Sadly,   for a lot of LGBT people,   joining the military really isn’t a choice, …perhaps the lesser or last of several coercions.  
Which, I think, should also be taken into account:  if the ‘phobes want to claim there’s no place for transfolk and LGB’s elsewhere in society, and insist at the same time that  the military will ‘fix’  them,  they really need to own up to what happens if someone is fool enough to believe them.
If they can’t ‘fix’ us with military control, maybe there’s nothing to be fixed,  right?  
They’re trying to have it both ways on that count.  That’s why they demand silence.   Why they demand ‘Don’t Tell.’  
Bleed,  but don’t tell,  they say.  
I’d have been proud to serve, too,  and glad of getting the heck out of where I was.   I was OK with the idea of dying for my country,  but even back when DADT would have een considered an improvement,  I wasn’t quite up to lying for my country.  
And that’s what some are demanding to this day, brother.   No honor can come of that,  but the disgrace is not on those subjected to it.  
Under whatever circumstances.    

So what do you hope to accomplish?

You do realise that Al Qaeda and their ilk use the same arguments you do, yes?

Have you asked the half of the population that you want to helpwhat THEY want?
“And their reaction to having little girls in a primary school is to fumigate the place with poison gas. There have been several such attacks. ”
“Their” reaction? Who? The reaction of all the male population of Afghanistan?

I am sorryI apologize for the tart nature of the comment I started off this comment thread with. It’s not in my usual nature to say things like that, and I DO appreciate and thank our former servicemembers for their service.

The local allies also go medieval on women.

The the mission in Afghanistan is over for you?Or why do want people to die for your revenge there when it is about Al Quaeda?

Far be it from me……To say that these wars are ultimately right, or in any way the best solution to the social problems of other places.  Or even that war’s ever really what solves things.  
But in the face of all this injustice,  there’s no reason to tell people who want fair treatment in our military that it’s their fault war, or a particular war, exists.  
What is (or could have been)  there to accomplish in Afghanistan isn’t really about the fighting.   But no one could accomplish anything good under the Taliban’s heels.  If not for Iraq, which was the wrong thing to do, and done  and with worse-than-no plan from the Bush administration, Afghanistan was a perfectly-righteous place to kick some tail.  Now it’s looking like an exercise in trying to salvage a situation that was screwed up in the first place because Bush and Cheney didn’t want American body bags coming home before he threw us at Iraq.  
What could be accomplished,  with the Taliban out of power,  was helping and allowing the people of Afghanistan to have more going on than picking what warlord to support.  
There’s no one to shoot that could accomplish these kinds of things,  but it can’t be accomplished with the Taliban holding guns to everyone’s heads.  
In any event,  given all the other considerations, there’s no sense blaming LBGTs who deserve equality in the military for the existence of war or some bad policy decisions.   Our military swore some trust in those who are set to command them.  A trust that I think was betrayed,  but it doesn’t mean there was never a job to do in Afghanistan.  
Or that when we join up,  it’s a policy statement on things that may not have happened yet.  As I’ve mentioned, sometimes it’s just the only ticket out of town or abuse,  and you’re hoping the military will live up to the promises.  
Personally, too,  I think if we’re going to send Americans to traipse around other people’s hometowns and cultures,  maybe they shouldn’t all be jocks, yahoos, and homophobic Christian supremacists,  which is the implication of claiming LBGTs should stay out.
That’s a stereotype that serves the bigots, not us.   I was against the Iraq war,  but felt that if I was remotely able or allowed,  I’d have gone, myself.  One tends to overestimate the impact one person can have,  but maybe if some on both sides of our social issues here at home weren’t trying to equate homophobia with the American military,  there might have been one or two less Abu Ghraibs or angry families.  
Sometimes people on either side wonder (when it’s time for equal rights)   ‘Why do you queers want to be in the military, anyway?  You’re not ‘supposed’  to be ‘like that!’
For one, a)  We’re there, anyway,  even if just because that’s often the last attempt to do what everyone around says and ‘Be normal,’  or just to get away from bad situations,
And for another,  b)  The fact that we’re not all ‘that way’  or by definition part of all those negative stereotypes is exactly the point.  
Why should our own defenders have to be in an environment that constantly insists we ourselves are lesser beings?  ’Not the kind of people that can be of use here?’
Especially as the ‘mission,’ whatever you think of it, turns to be much more about understanding and relating with the local populace, mere bravado and aggression just won’t cut it,  anyway, even if you do accept often-false stereotypes.  
I really don’t advise young transwomen to sign on, mind you:   while those of us who make it learn a lot about courage and dealing with physical risk and hostility,  until one’s body is sorted out, at least, there’s also a tendency to recklessness with it: we’re also prone to be walking around with PTSD before we even get out of high school.
The ironic truth of it is that many  MtFs often have all the makings of a good modern fighter: taking a socially-sensitive brain and subjecting it to lots of testosterone just when spatial and motor skills are being developed, all while under stress and physical threat, really can make for some impressive individuals in these regards.  
The only problem is it really hurts.  You see and feel everything   and the whole world can seem dull, slow, oblivious, clumsy, and cruel.  I think it contributes to the suicide and substance abuse rates, especially among those who don’t get physical treatment or a supportive community.  
It’ll screw with one’s head, but the point is that the stereotypes,or ‘our place’  or the assumptions that used to say that if a sister confessed to being T in the military, they’d figure what she needed was more testosterone, when of course the real problem was already having way too much.  The prejudices lead to the notion “Testosterone=Male, the more testosterone, the more ‘male’ you’ll be.”    But it doesn’t actually work that way.  
If transsexuals actually exist,  then the body’s already pumping more testosterone than the brain and body can handle.  That’s part of how it hurts.  People focus on the external changes and ignore that part of the experience:  they’d rather say ‘A TS is a weak, yet predatory gay man in a dress,’  (Yes, they leave out the FTM’s)  when,  I say with some irony,  a lot of us are tough cookies who might be mortified to shower in a pre-op condition around men, and actually have nothing but peeing with a little safety and dignity in mind in all those bathrooms they try to sexualize.    
The ‘myth’  goes both ways.  No need for LBGTs to embrace it,  regardless of our feelings about war and peace, and what the actual business of our military is, as opposed to the mystique.  
Part of why a lot of people don’t think they know a ‘gay person’  is because so few of us are actually the caricatures they intend to reinforce.  Sometimes the caricatures are just safe cartoons for people to pigeonhole people with.  
Whatever you think of war or armies,
That’s the real reason why they want us all to ‘not tell.’  
They want to preserve  both the ideas that LBGTs (And non-Christian-conservatives)  both can’t fight and that we’re ‘enemies’  ourselves.
They want the shadows, they want the shame, they want to sexualize aggression when it comes to directing an army.  
But letting them define ‘army’  won’t help on either count.
 

It wouldn’t be humanNot to have some kind of strong reaction to the idea of these wars.  
You’re right to be revolted:  but if you’re not in it,  you’ve also got to do better than saying ‘Just Don’t.’  
Gods know I’d rather do the same myself.  
It may be tempting to single out transfolk who ‘aren’t supposed to be there anyway’  … but it doesn’t help either the issue at hand or how to actually conduct a military.   So much is done against our wishes precisely because some claim to be the only ones who know a thing about it, and that that’s some natural order of the universe.