dailylife

The Royal Netherlands Embassy wrote today that General John J. Sheehan has apologized to former Dutch Chief of Defence General Van den Breemen about his remarks on March 18 that related the Srebrenica massacre to gays serving in the Dutch armed forces.

Sheehan, a former NATO commander who retired from the military in 1997, was speaking at a public hearing in the Senate Armed Services Committee in opposition to a proposal to allow gays to serve openly in the U.S. military. An opinion article in the Los Angeles Times by Borris Dittrich, Dutch born director of Human Rights Watch described the exchange:

Homosexuals in the Dutch military had depleted the forces' morale, he argued to the senators, and made them "ill-equipped to go to war." And that was in part why they failed to prevent Bosnian Serbs from massacring more than 8,000 civilians in the former haven of Srebrenica in July 1995.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) seemed incredulous at the testimony. "Did the Dutch leaders tell you it was because there were gay soldiers there?" he asked.

"Yes," Sheehan said. "They included that as part of the problem." He even claimed that the former Dutch commander of the U.N. peacekeeping force had told him this was true.

Earlier, Dutch prime minister Balkenende denounced the comments as “irresponsible” and said “these remarks should never have been made.” Ambassador Renée Jones-Bos issued a statement: "I heard the statements made by retired US General Sheehan in today's public hearing in the Senate Armed Services Committee, in which he suggests a causal relationship between gays serving in the Dutch military forces and the massacre of Srebrenica. I couldn't disagree more.

I take pride in the fact that lesbians and gays have served openly and with distinction in the Dutch military forces for decades, such as in Afghanistan at the moment.

The military mission of Dutch UN soldiers at Srebrenica has been exhaustively studied and evaluated, nationally and internationally. There is nothing in these reports that suggests any relationship between gays serving in the military and the mass murder of Bosnian Muslims."

In today's letter, Sheehan wrote: "I am sorry that my recent public recollection ... 15 years ago inaccurately reflected your thinking on some specific social issues in the military".

Gays have been allowed to serve in the Dutch army since 1974.

Sasha arrived late on Friday evening. Yesterday we visited a Dutch-American bakery and enjoyed a drive through rural New Jersey. On the way home we a hyacinth from a flower grower on the side of the road. Had a great day.

Today I'm planning two visits for my other website, one near New York and one near Philadelphia, so I'll be on the road.

Today is St. Patrick's Day, a cultural celebration of 'being Irish'.

Someone at work told me that the parade on this day started in New York City, not in Ireland, but now it is also celebrated in the old country.

Quite a few people came dressed in green to work today. I tried 'soda bread' (not nice) and Irish cheese (nice).

It's been raining really hard since Friday evening, and with the strong wind it has caused a lot of trouble. When I drove to the library yesterday afternoon Elizabeth Road was partially flooded and I had to drive through tire-deep water. The flag pole at the library was broken.

In the evening we went for dinner in New Brunswick. We're still getting to know the places around here and had set our eyes on a new pub.

When we entered New Brunswick police was blocking entrance to the downtown such as George Street and we realized the whole center was without power, including the bar we had in mind. We drive further north and in Highland we saw a place that looked very busy. A great find, turned out to be a wonderful Greek restaurant. Hadn't had Greek food in a long, long time and it was very good.