Deaf teacher’s quest for armed service inspires students.
I have every sympathy with this guy but come on! Deaf people in the military? Really? The purpose of the military isn’t to make people feel good about themselves. There have to be barriers to military service. Some of the past barriers were admittedly artificial and unnecessary (no women in the front line, etc) but the barrier against deaf people is plain common sense.
Thoughts?
There are all kinds of jobs in the military, so find a place for them, and be proud of them.
Tell it to the Israelis.
As long as it is not a position in which hearing is critical, then I don’t see why not. But if someone wants to argue that deaf people should be allowed to be fighter pilots or air traffic controllers, I think that would be a case of political correctness run amok.
The US military is big on equal opportunity. Deaf people should have the same equal opportunity as everyone, which means serving in combat units and the ability to hold command positions in combat units. If we can’t guarantee EO, then we’re discriminating and we might as well replace “deaf people” with “women” in our arguments.
Tons of civilians serve their country by working for the DoD or Dept of the Army, etc. They’re not soldiers, but they’re working for the military.
If you can’t communicate, you can’t be a soldier. He can’t even talk to the reporter without an interpreter.
Does he expect his interpreter to accompany him to Afghanistan?
Does he expect the taxpayer to pay for an interpreter to follow him around?
Does he expect the other soldiers to take his CQ shifts because he can’t hear a radio or answer a ringing telephone?
Does he expect to be competitive for promotion with his zero deployment experience?
There are lots of positions available for DA civilians. Maybe he could take one of those. Or maybe he could just admit that not everyone gets the job they want and the rest of us shouldn’t have to bend over backwards just so you can be happy.
Yep. And while we’re at it, let’s let the blind people apply to sniper school and let the guy with no tongue be a HUMINT collector. I’m sure that will work out great. And while we’re at it, let’s give the guy with a 25 GT score a chance to fly a fighter jet. I mean, we’re wrong to tell them “No,” right?
So - again, do you think deaf people should be allowed to be fighter pilots? Air traffic controllers?
Well, you can keep punching those strawmen all you want to, but ISTM you’re not addressing the more sensible question of whether the deaf ought to be excluded from military service entirely.
As I noted in my earlier cite, the Israeli military not only permits but requires deaf people to serve in the military, just like non-deaf conscripts. Deaf servicepeople are assigned to tasks in which their hearing impairment will not interfere with their duties. Why couldn’t the US military do the same for deaf volunteers, instead of simply prohibiting them from entering the service altogether?
It’s not like deafness automatically disqualifies somebody from having valuable skills. As the OP’s cited article points out,
One might reasonably expect differences between a conscripted force and a volunteer force.
Sure, but why should those differences automatically extend to outright banning of people just because of a specific disability, when it’s clear that that disability doesn’t automatically exclude people from having useful skills? The above-cited National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency isn’t a “conscripted force” either, after all.
If the Navy accepts male recruits who are as short as 57" (that’s 4 feet 9 inches), even though such recruits are obviously very far from having the physical capacities of an average-sized or larger person, then I really don’t see why having any degree of hearing loss (including using a cochlear implant or hearing aid) should automatically be considered a complete disqualification. After all, we don’t require every recruit to have perfect eyesight (not even after correction with spectacle lenses).
He can’t perform ALL currently required skills.
Every occupational specialty in the US Army requires things like being able to do things like performing voice communications on a radio, reacting to an ambush, and reacting to indirect fire. If he can’t coordinate his individual movement under fire with his battle buddy that might be out of immediate sight behind the next bush/tree(“I’ll cover you move”) they are both at enhanced risk of dying. Those all need to be performed in incredibly chaotic and noisy environments under time pressure. That’s every single specialty - a 42A Human Resources Specialist and an 11B Infantryman both have to be able to do those things. There’s no entirely safe, completely office based, specialties in the current standards.
Effectively this is a request to lower standards and combat capability across the force.
It works for the Navy because the Navy needs tiny people to fit in tight spaces. I’m six-foot-six and I didn’t join the Navy because … get this … my body is not suited to perform that job.
If a person can’t hear, he can’t fight. If he can’t fight, he can’t deploy. If he can’t deploy, then there is no reason for him to be in the Army. He is functionally a civilian. If you want to help out, get a job with Northrop Grumman or be a DA civilian like everybody else.
Israel needs all the manpower it can get because it is a tiny country surrounded by hostile nations who invade with some frequency. America has ample supply of soldiers. In fact, it has an excess of soldiers and is trying to kick out as many as possible.
If I hire a person to be a soldier, that means they are filling one of a limited number of slots. Why should I waste a slot on a soldier that I know is disabled, when I have other able-bodied recruits that are vastly more useful to me? As he gains rank, the problem gets even worse. Unlike the Israeli Army, the American Army is zero sum: You cannot add a soldier without subtracting a soldier.
So you’re left with a soldier that can’t pass basic (because he can’t hear instructions), can’t shoot (because he can’t take commands from the tower), can’t stand guard duty or CQ, can’t deploy to a combat zone, can’t answer a ringing phone, and can’t even speak to another person without the assistance of an interpreter. And I am supposed to have this soldier clogging up my roster, when I could have a 100% qualified soldier on hand that can do everything I ask of him?
The Army also has something called retention control points. If you don’t advance, you get kicked out. Say this soldier does advance to a leadership position. Now you have an NCO who can’t operate a radio, can’t give instructions to his subordinates, and has never had the experience of deploying, doing guard duty, etc. etc. How are the soldiers supposed to respect a leader who cannot perform and has never performed the same tasks that they are asked to?
No matter how you slice it, you end up with a system that has to make overwhelming exceptions for one random soldier who can’t do the job they are being paid to do. If they want a specialized non-combat position that can afford the sacrifices and inherent inefficiencies required to accommodate a handicapped employee, they can get a civilian job.
And THAT is why we can’t have a deaf soldier.
If you wanted to join the US military but could only speak German, do you think the US military has any obligation to cater to you, when they could just find an English-speaking recruit with the same skills?
To the extent that “desk jobs” do not depend on having specialized experience that can only be gained through military experience (e.g., you need a fighter pilot to help design the performance of a new fighter jet), then as a general rule we should avoid having military personnel serve in those jobs. There’s no reason someone needs to enlist to be, say, an administrative assistant. To the degree possible, those jobs should be filled by civilians or contractors so that military manpower is husbanded for things that civilians or contractors can’t/shouldn’t do.
This calculation is obviously different for a country with mandatory military service. Such countries often have a surplus of cheap military manpower, so putting someone who can’t reasonably serve in the infantry (for any reason - lack of physical performance, can’t follow orders, can’t shoot straight) into a desk job may often be a better use of money than hiring a civilian to do the same job.
Maybe there’s a role for hearing impaired military personnel that shouldn’t be given to civilians, but I can’t think of it at the moment.
If they aren’t when they fo in, they might be when they come out.
I spent some time working in a Veterans Service Office, and one of the most common disabilities that we dealt with was service-related hearing impairment, mostly tinnitus. Seemed like it affected nearly half of the veterans. Korea & Vietnam era ones had it from big guns going off nearby without any hearing protection, later vets also had IED’s going off near them.
This is a good point. I don’t know how the Israeli military does things, but in most countries I’m familiar with (like South Korea) the conscript is paid far less than a civilian employee would be paid. They tolerate it because the duty is temporary, the Army provides their basic subsistence, and it is considered a sacrifice for the good of the nation. In this case, it makes sense to use your soldiers as a cheap labor pool for non-combat duties (even the deaf ones), because service is mandatory and they get paid peanuts. It is cheaper to use a conscript than to hire a civilian.
The US doesn’t operate this way. Because service is voluntary, compensation must be competitive with the civilian world. Pay is somewhat lower than a civilian might expect, but US soldiers get generous lifelong benefits.
So here’s the thing: Every time the Army hires a soldier, it is making a tremendous long-term investment that extends far beyond just the monthly salary. Therefore, there is no reason to hire a soldier to perform a non-combat task. In fact, the US military does everything it can to hire civilians for administrative and clerical work specifically because keeping soldiers around for non-combat tasks is a wasteful burden on the taxpayer.
Because the US does not use conscripts, it is cheaper to hire a civilian than to use a soldier.
Those that support women in combat don’t support standards to also be lowered to be more accommodating to women. If a woman can meet the standards, they should be allowed to enter those jobs.
Deaf people would not even be able to get through basic training without significant accommodations.
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Well, I see your point.
My military service is behind me, and I don’t feel quite ready to offer a final opinion yet, but I will allow as how when I was a sailor, I was a fan of the concept of rotating between going-to-sea commands and staying-ashore commands. Had I been a soldier, airman or Marine, I suspect I would have considered a balance between combat-ready (or egagement-ready) and non-combat-ready assignments something that every member was entitled to and responsible for.
Having some personnel exempted from the less-desired components of that balance strikes me as problematic, even if only because it potentially deprives someone of his turn “out of the barrel,” so to speak.
Thoughts?