Back in the early 1980s this was the catch phrase of Kenny Everett’s American general: “Round ‘em up, put ‘em in a field and bomb the bastards!” It was his proposed resolution to any “faggy ideas” that “pinko intellectual commies” would put forward. General John Sheehan, who blamed the 1995 Srebrenica massacre on the fact that the Dutch army let the homos in, is the modern day equivalent.

“They declared a peace dividend and made a conscious effort to socialise their military – that includes the unionisation of their militaries, it includes open homosexuality. That led to a force that was ill-equipped to go to war.”

Sheehan does not have an easy time of it with the English language. What does the first part of that sentence mean? It is as if he is improvising from a script peppered with words he does not understand. He is apparently talking about the Dutch military and has claimed that the former chief of staff of the Dutch army told him that the failure to prevent the 1995 massacre was down the fact that homosexuals were allowed to openly serve in the military. This has been dismissed out of hand. “It is astonishing that a man of his stature can utter such complete nonsense,” the Dutch defence ministry spokesman, Roger van de Wetering, responded.

The problem is that they’re all soft, aren’t they General? That’s why the war in Iraq was such a debacle. And while we’re at it, Vietnam would have been a victory but for the drafted hippies and the pinko commies on the home front who undermined public support, and … ad infinitum.