Dutch officials have fired back at remarks yesterday by retired General Jack Sheehan that their military’s readiness may have been hurt by openly gay service-members, calling his comment “irresponsible” and “way off the mark.”
At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing yesterday, Sheehan suggested that the Dutch’s attempt to “socialize their military” after the fall of the Soviet Union may have hurt their efforts to intervene in a massacre in Bosnia in 1995.
Today, Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said that “these remarks should never have been made.”
Toward Dutch troops — homosexual or heterosexual — it is way off the mark to talk like that about people and the work they do under very difficult circumstances.
Defense Minister Eimert van Middelkoop added that Sheehan’s remarks were “damaging” but said: “I don’t want to waste any more words on it.”
