If you ask me President Meanswell, I will tell (you), stop discriminating NOW!
By Retired Military Patriot (RMP)
Barack Obama knows that the U.S. highly discriminatory Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy is archaic, homophobic and morally wrong. Military organizations in Europe and around the world have long since dropped any pretense of believing that an open gay or lesbian in any way threatens the morale and welfare of the men and women honorably serving their nations.
Winston Churchill was dead on when he said “Americans will always get things right, after they have exhausted all other possibilities.” I’ve asked myself why such an intelligent man like Barack Obama, who I believe does care about the welfare and hopes of his fellow Americans, could possibly agree with Secretary of Defense Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mullen and allow them to take several more years to change the DADT policy. A policy initiated by Gen. Colin Powell when Bill Clinton wanted to stop gay discrimination at the beginning of his presidency. At that time I also asked myself how a black general like Powell who rose to the top of the military because discrimination against minorities was banned by former wise military leaders in the late ’60s, could have supported DADT.
The fact that Powell would play politics with American citizens who wanted to serve their nation and could only do that by lying about who they are and be forced to live in a degrading closet, either shows how deep homophobia can seep into the soul or how a political desire to one day become President over road the need to help the last minority group still undergoing discrimination in our armed forces.
I got very angry when I pulled up a HuffPo post article Saturday that said it would take several years for the Pentagon to lift the gay ban. A day later, I’m still attempting to calm my anger trying to understand why Obama is such a weakling that he apparently has bought this Pentagon leadership rubbish. President Obama appears to be making a similar decision to Powell, not to feed his ego or become president, but to keep from having to fight on another political front.
He made the LGBT community a promise early in his campaign and now keeps dangling it in front of them as if they were Wiley Cayote. I’m not part of that community, but during my 28 years in the Air Force from 1963-1991, I grew increasingly frustrated at the depths of homophobia in my military. Raised in racist and homophobic North Dakota, if I could shed my homophobia by visiting Hollywood for two months in 1961, why in the hell has it taken so long for our military leaders to see the light and destroy the closet. There were plenty of heterosexual flower children during the ’60s who lived where gay and lesbian communities existed who came to the same conclusion as I did that such a private, individual matter was nobody’s business to question let along make against the law. Yet in 2010, Gates and Mullen are still in the dark.
If I had attended the last meeting Gates and Mullen had with their president, here is what I probably would have heard. Mr. President, we completely agree with you that the DADT policy needs to be changed. It is not fair and we are losing talented men and women who have cost us a lot of money to train because of this policy. However, changing the minds of our personnel on a moral and religious basis is not an easy task. It takes time for them to adjust. We have already put our troops in a lot of stress because of our two demanding wars and that stress will continue for many years as you well know. We firmly believe that the best course is to implement the change gradually. That also will cause you less problems on the political home front.
What the current military leadership has forgotten and one of the tenets of effective military leadership is to learn from the successes of the past. There were far more military members in the late ’60s who were strongly opposed to giving blacks in the military a fair opportunity to be on a level playing field with their white counterparts than those who want to keep DADT. Admiral Zumwalt and other top leaders decided that if regulations forbade discrimination or even discriminatory oral outbursts and harsh consequences resulted, attitude change would follow. They didn’t support the false premise that you first change attitudes and then regulate behavior.
Back in the Zumwalt era, when a top NCO who was only six months from retirement and a lifetime pension uttered a racial slur, he was dismissed from military service with his pension gone. The change in overt actions came very rapidly. Once the overt actions stopped, the covert gradually diminished because the troops found out that all their racial fears were unfounded and people were just people regardless of color.
That same approach should have happened with gays back when Powell forgot the lesson that gave him all his opportunity and we would not be talking about it now. There is nothing to be gained by delaying dropping DADT. It doesn’t need more study or gradual implementation. Discrimination is wrong and should never be tolerated even for a minute let alone since 1992 when it should have ended.
Stop over analyzing every decision Mr. President. Justice is not granted by weighing every aspect and political consequence. Wrong is wrong. Right is right. Do what is right Now!
Would that he will. Such cowardice seems part of Dem DNA these days. I used to respect Powell myself, but after reading a Lewis Lapham essay that correctly identified him as a “supple careerist,” and watching him lie his ass off to the UN, my opinion got a tad jaded. Unfortunately, the civilian branch bowing to the dumbest and most benighted parts of the uniformed one is par for the course these days, all these years later.
Back when I was in Central Command, I got to know a lot of officers and generals in the Army and not one of them had any respect for Gen. Powell. He achieved all of his advancements in rank from Lt. Col. on through political connections and ass kissing. An Army general gets respect for commanding and leading the troops. They all saw him as a phony politician and nothing more.
Cowardice and apathy are even more of a problem with the right. Here’s a HuffPo post where the author through the headline asks a very intriguing question. Suggest you answer it before you read the post. It’s making me do some rethinking about those lemmings I am always complaining about who act against their own best interests.
Is Apathy Socially Redeeming?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/russ-wellen/is-apathy-socially-redeem_b_443388.html
What is really strange about slow-walking the demise of DADT is that getting rid of it ASAP would provide an instant, very useful recruiting tool.
Capable people are needed in the services. Today! It’s that simple, considering the strain on the force due to the Iraq and Afghanistan operations, where there appears to be no end in sight, or, to borrow a phrase from another era long ago and far away: no light at the end of the tunnel.
The defense chiefs are saying what: that the tender sensibilities of the people now in uniform need two (or more) years to adjust, to be “conditioned,” to a change in policy allowing gays to serve?
What nonsense! Moreover, it’s irresponsible to the said tender troops now in uniform who certainly could use some help right away.
Ain’t gonna be no draft no time soon!
Give me a break.
Slow walking …
http://rawstory.com/2010/02/pentagon-expected-stop-enforcing-don/
Not allowing a third party to turn someone in and get the person they are mad at kicked out of the military is at least a start. The article says that Obama can’t do much more until congress does. With that change, it would then be up to the individual as to how long they can stand living in a closet hiding who they really are.
Well even allowing for how things go in the service, encouraging a third party to turn someone (or a couple) in under suspicion of having an “assignation” or whatever is like living in a town where witches are being hunted down.
I’d love to hear a commander defend this practice as contributing to “good order and discipline.”
And then, how many cases brought in this way have been filed, adjudicated and disposed of?
That would be interesting, and maybe embarrassing.
The example of the NCO months from retirement suddenly dismissed for a racial slur – retirement gone – amazing. Naturally I don’t remember it, but it’s what a military organization can do. Harsh as it was, it was crystal clear. The military got better than the country as a whole on the simple principle of race-irrelevance, and it all happened right quick. Thanks for the story.