What Old Military Guys Think About Things

A new Foreign Policy survey of 3,400 high-ranking military officers is pretty interesting. 53% of respondents said torture is never acceptable, which sounds admirable but should really just be the common wisdom. As Kevin Drum notes, perhaps more interesting -- and discouraging -- is the fact that 44% apparently think it's fine. Likewise disappointing is that only 22% support allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly as a way to boost enlistment. That's astonishingly low. Granting citizenship in exchange for service gets almost four times as much support (78%). Patrick Appel does point out an important caveat, however: the data set skews very old, with 89% of respondents being older than 50, 72% over 60, and even 38% over 70. 92% are retired, of whom 71% have been retired for more than a decade. So, in conclusion, this seemingly interesting survey might very well tell us absolutely nothing about the current state of military opinion on important topics like torture, gay rights, and citizenship. But it does give bloggers some numbers to toss around.