Dr Sullivan is having a good day. He is again absolutely right concerning the utter idiocy of the armed forces discharging people who are gay, even if they are Arabic speakers and the armed forces have a severe shortage of Arabic speakers. ( Here is the New Republic article he is actually following up to). This is just idiotic, at a time when winning the war at all costs should be paramount. As he says, the policy is also morally indefensible, but in the circumstances that is barely the point.

A bureacrat in the Australian Department of Defence one told me that this sort of thing is what happens in peacetime. Military forces fill up with careerists and bureacrats, who implement lots of inflexible rules that are usually counterproductive when you are fighting actual wars. When have a war, it takes some time to get rid of the careerists and replace them with the sorts of flexible people you actually need to run a campaign.