It's simply the nature of the military that this "a lot on our plates right now" excuse will almost always be available. In retrospect, the 1990s were a period of relative peace and quiet for the military, but at the time it was seen as a stressful period of multiple deployments (to Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia) around the world mixed with efforts at containment in the Gulf and the Korean peninsula. The Joint Chiefs are never going to say "eh . . . we don't really have much going on these days."
Meanwhile, racial desegregation of the military actually required a large number of active steps and was successfully carried out near the peak of Cold War tensions. The biggest step toward ending discrimination against gays and lesbians in the military would be the passive step of just not discriminating against them. Gay and lesbian soldiers are already serving. Gates could just decide that with as much on his plate as he has at the moment, he'll make sure we stop persecuting them.
« Fucking Racist | Main | Tell Us How You Really Feel, Rod » Justice Delayed30 Mar 2009 10:00 am
Matt swats at Bob Gates for delaying the death of Don't Ask, Don't Tell:
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Every May my uncle goes to the local Memorial Day parade and watches his long time companion dawn his Marine Corp uniform and march in the color guard. I use the phrase "long time companion" because "boyfriend" or "lover" just don't seem right for a man in his 60s who served as a combat NCO in Viet Nam and was awarded the Silver Star for his actions.
Some day the way we have allowed the gay and lesbian men and women who serve in our armed forces to be treated will be a source of great shame for our country.
Yeah, it seems like a more logical response would be, "With all we have going on right now, we need all the help we can get and we just don't have time to give a crap about who people who are doing a good job serving in the armed forces are sleeping with."
word. we should go with this instead of, for example, firing dozens of military translators (trained very well at taxpayer expense) just as we fight a war in a foreign country.
No kidding. The least--the least Gates could do is say "it looks like DADT is going to be gone soon, so we'll table any prosecutions for a year or so until we get some action on it." I can't be alone in thinking that the uptick in prosecutions looks a lot like some petty homophobia in the ranks, getting in some last shots before that's taken away.
You're very much not alone there.
Here's the video of Gates on Fox News Sunday talking about Don't Ask, Don't Tell:
http://gotchamedia.blogspot.com/2009/03/secretary-gates-not-about-repeal-dont.html
I have a few good friends of mine who were/are followers of an alternative lifestyle (I use this term because other terms are more offensive and don't really describe how I see my friends) that I met while I was in the service. Some of us knew others weren't trusted because of DADT, but we all knew that we were soldiers first. However, and this is just my personall opinion there is a large amount of institutional inertia in the military as in any bureacracy that isn't prejudice per se but is definately against changing policy. The most dangerous words often uttered in any institution are "But we've never done it that way before," and I think that this more than anything is responsible for continued DOD policy on multiple counts (not just DADT but most policy decisions can be placed under this heading of why they weren't tried). It's not that existing EO policy couldn't be extended to cover soldiers who would otherwise be released under DADT but that there is a large amount of inertia within the establishment that says "this is our tradition, and this is the way it will/should always be." No offense to Matt but major decisions like the reform of DADT require an executive order to be effective. After all if we take integration as a model for what should be done with the current DADT policy it wasn't Truman's secdef, but Truman himself who integrated the armed forces and had it been left up to the SecDef it probably wouldn't have happened. The Defense secretary has to deal with so many people and institutions that if someone powerfull enough becomes offended then there goes all hope of possible future co-operation on issues ranging from funding for future weapons to inter-agency information sharing that the possible backlash (in my opinion) prevents any effective action being taken by anyone other than the president.
Again not to insert my personal opinion in the middle of this but what this issue needs is someone to stand up and say we aren't doing this because it's popular we're doing this because it's right. Unfortunately when politics gets thrown in the mix the issue becomes way to complicated for most people to make a stand on principle.