Retired Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, a Leilehua High School graduate, is among a group of 56 retired generals and admirals from the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard who signed onto a statement saying that President Donald Trump’s tweeted transgender ban, if implemented, would degrade military readiness.
Such a ban on military service “would cause significant disruptions, deprive the military of mission-critical talent, and compromise the integrity of transgender troops who would be forced to live a lie, as well as non-transgender peers who would be forced to choose between reporting their comrades or disobeying policy,” the military officers said.
The group found to be “without merit” Trump’s assertions that having transgender troops in the ranks is costly and disruptive, adding that 18 nations, including the United Kingdom and Israel, allow transgender troops to serve, and that “none has reported any detriment to readiness.”
The statement was released by the San Francisco-based Palm Center, an independent research center that has studied sexual minorities in the military.
Transgender troops have already been serving in the U.S. military “honorably and openly for the past year, and have been widely praised by commanders,” the writers said.
Then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced in June 2016 that transgender individuals would be able to serve in the U.S. armed forces.
“This is the right thing to do for our people and for the force,” Carter said at the time. But in a series of tweets July 26 that surprised the Pentagon, Trump said transgender individuals would not be allowed to serve “in any capacity in the U.S. military.”
No elaboration was provided, and in that absence, Marine Gen. Joe Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, issued a memo to service chiefs saying, “There will be no modifications to the current policy until the president’s direction has been received by the secretary of defense and the secretary has issued implementation guidance.”
Taguba, who lives in Virginia, in 2004 led the investigation into detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, finding that “numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted” on some detainees. He later accused the Bush administration of committing war crimes.
Two former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, retired Gen. Martin Dempsey and retired Adm. Mike Mullen, spoke out in favor of inclusion of transgender troops in the ranks.
Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Paul Zukunft, meanwhile, told a Washington think tank Tuesday that he contacted transgender service members to express his support and said he had spoken to one, Lt. Taylor Miller, to say, “I will not break faith” in support of her service, Politico reported.
