GEN. SHEEHAN BLAMES GAY DUTCHBAT TROOPS FOR SREBRENICA GENOCIDE

General John Sheehan, former Supreme Allied Commander for NATO, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy, arguing that openly gay Dutchbat peacekeeping troops contributed to the 1995 Srebrenica Genocide. Take a look at this video:

Gen. Sheehan told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the Netherlands' inclusion of gays in their military rendered Dutch peacekeeping troops unable to prevent the slaughter of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica in July 1995.

GEN. JOHN SHEEHAN: The case in point that I’m referring to was when the Dutch were required to defend Sbrenecia against the Serbs, the battalion was understrength, poorly led. And the Serbs came into town, handcuffed the soldiers to the telephone polls, marched the Muslims off and executed them. That was the largest massacre in Europe since World War II.

SEN. CARL LEVIN: And did the Dutch leaders tell you it was because there were gay soldiers there?

SHEEHAN: It was a combination –

LEVIN: Did they tell you that?

SHEEHAN: Yes.

LEVIN: That’s my question.

SHEEHAN: They included that as part of the problem.

LEVIN: That there were gay soldiers among the Dutch force.

SHEEHAN: The combination was the liberalization of the military, the net effect of basically social engineering.

Later, Senator Carl Levin disputed General John Sheehan’s allegations against the openly gay Dutchbat troops who served at Srebrenica in 1995. Here is what he said:

LEVIN: I think we all remember Srebrenica. But I think that any effort to connect the failure on the part of Dutch to the fact that they have homosexuals or did allow homosexuals I think is totally off target. And I’ve seen no suggestion of that, I’ve seen the failures that you talk about general, that their training being peacekeeping and not being trained to do the combat work that needed to be done is accurate. In terms of any attribution to the fact that they have allowed gays in the military is no more on point than the fact that they may have allowed Dutch Africans or women, if there were women. [...] They were trained to be peacekeepers, not peace enforcers - I totally agree with that. But to slip over, slide over from that into a suggestion that it had something to do with the fact that homosexuals were allowed in the Dutch army suggests that somehow or other homosexuals are not great fighters. And I think that’s totally wrong.