Why Don’t Rushpubliscums Respect Our Military Leaders?

Hasn’t the Rushpubliscum cry always been that they “listen to the commanders” whenever anything military comes up? Isn’t it supposed to be the dems that are deaf to the wishes of our military leaders?

And yet….. these Rushpubliscums, who love and respect our military leaders so much, simply dismiss them when they say something that runs counter to Ruhpubliscum dogma.

I guess that the military isn’t good for much besides photo-ops after all, at least to the Rushpubliscums. Dog knows that most of them have done everything they could think of to avoid actually SERVING. Come to think of it… maybe it isn’t hard to understand why the Rushpubliscums wouldn’t have much use for military commanders. We tend to understand things better when we’ve actually been a part of them.

John Kerry, who is a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War, was belittled and vilified by these “patriotic” Rushpubliscums a long time before they started vilifying STILL SITTING military people, so Kerry knows a little bit about the Rushpubliscum mentality when it comes to servicepeople. He took the time to lay it out for us.

“Admiral Mullen and Secretary Gates are both political appointees. They’re going to be biased. They’re going to say what the administration wants them to say.” – U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter, Jr.

Stunning. That was my reaction when I listened to a freshman Republican Congressman rebut the principled position of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, and the Secretary of Defense Bob Gates, that the policy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” needed to end and that gay members of the Armed Services should be able to serve their country without fear that just being who they are would end their service.

It was especially alarming to hear the judgment of Admiral Mullen and Secretary Gates dismissed so easily as ‘biased.’

Anyone who knows Admiral Mullen or Bob Gates knows damn well that neither of them say what any Administration just wants them to say.

This is, after all, Secretary Bob Gates – a lifelong Republican who was appointed to positions of high trust and leadership by President Ronald Reagan, President George Herbert Walker Bush, and President George W Bush. This is a Defense Secretary who planned to leave government and had to be talked into continuing to serve in a Democratic Administration. He is doing his duty today out of patriotism, not political ambition or partisanship.

And this is, after all, the same Admiral Mullen who was appointed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by President George W Bush. A four star Admiral who has spent 42 years wearing the uniform of his country. He’s tough. He’s independent. He speaks his mind, and he speaks the truth. Indeed, at Tuesday’s hearing, when Republicans members of the Senate Armed Services Committee accused him of “undue command influence” and of obeying “directives” from President Obama, Admiral Mullen responded in just the way you would expect a man of his caliber. “This is not about command influence,” he said. “This is about leadership, and I take that very seriously.”

But let’s test what Congressman Hunter said. Does the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs just automatically sing from the same playbook as the Administration? Ironically, the last time a Democratic President tried to lift the ban on gays on the military, the Chairman of the JCS, who happened to be a Republican appointed by his Republican predecessor, broke with the President and opposed gays serving openly. His name was General Colin Powell. The Republicans back then didn’t think to question the impartiality of that political appointee.

Of course, today, General Powell has changed his position – read the story here -
and he stands with Admiral Mullen and Secretary Gates .

This is not 1993. We have come a long way as a country, and we have come a long way as a military to arrive at this moment when I believe our men and women in uniform agree with the Commander in Chief and with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military is, as Admiral Mullen put it, “the right thing to do.”

This has been a rocky journey. In 1993, I testified in front of Senator Strom Thurmond’s Armed Services Committee in favor of lifting the ban. I said then and I believe even more fervently now that, “when it comes to defending our country, we cannot afford to waste the bravery and service of a single American. This is a time to find public servants, not public scapegoats.”

And it hasn’t always been Democrats making the case.

Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, a conservative Republican icon, once argued: “You don’t have to be straight in the military, you just have to be able to shoot straight.” Not long after he retired from the Senate in 1987, he tried to warn his fellow Republicans that “eventually the ban will be lifted” and the sooner the better. Rep. Duncan Hunter may claim that he never served with anyone in the military who was openly gay, but he’d do well to read what Senator Goldwater once rightly observed, “Everyone knows that gays have served honorably in the military since at least the time of Julius Caesar. They’ll still be serving long after we’re all dead and buried. That should not surprise anyone.”

Anyone who believes otherwise should again study Admiral Mullen’s testimony about a policy which “forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend this country.”

Senator John McCain, who replaced Barry Goldwater in the Senate, certainly understood the opposition to the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. In 2006, as he was preparing for his successful campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, McCain told an audience at Iowa State University that “the day that the leadership of the military comes to me and says, Senator, we ought to change the policy, then I think we ought to consider seriously changing it because those leaders in the military are the ones we give the responsibility to.”

Today, not just John McCain, but everyone in positions of public responsibility should understand that the moment is now – the leadership of our military are joining the Commander in Chief in saying, the time for change has come.

Indeed, it has.

One of the best soldiers I ever served alongside was gay. I knew gay and lesbian soldiers at almost every post I ever went to. They, for the most part, conducted themselves honorably while in uniform, and much less noisily than I did off-hours. This notion that somehow “cohesion” is going to be affected by gay people serving is known by damn near all of us who actually have served to be utter, complete bullshit.

But the Rushpubliscums, as always, have no problem throwing honorable men and women-up to and including the top brass-under a bus if they can score a few points with their hateful, racist, bigoted “base.” Classy, guys. Real fucking classy.

Crossposted at Reconstitution 2.0

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