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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How To Repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

From The Progress Report:

While campaigning for the White House, President Obama pledged to repeal the military’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy, which bars openly gay men and women from serving in the military. But since taking office, the Obama administration has yet to follow through on its promise and has repeatedly resisted calls to suspend DADT by executive order. The administration is seeking “Congressional action” to resolve the issue. As a consequence, the military has discharged more than 265 service members on the basis of the discriminatory and counterproductive policy since Obama took office. Despite the losses, when asked about DADT in March, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that repealing DADT would have to be pushed “down the road a little bit.” Last week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said that the Senate was waiting for “a legislative proposal from the White House on repeal so as to provide clear guidance on what the President would like to see and when.” Seventy-seven members of the House recently sent Obama a letter urging him to “suspend” DADT. As part of an effort to build momentum from this call for action, the Center for American Progress published a report yesterday by Lawrence J. Korb, Sean Duggan, and Laura Conley that provides a practical outline for repealing DADT and opening the armed forces to men and women who are currently excluded.

HOW TO MOVE FORWARD: Korb, Duggan, and Conley have laid out a five-step solution to repealing DADT that starts with the Obama administration setting the agenda: 1) Sign an Executive Order banning further military separations based on DADT and send a legislative proposal on DADT repeal to Congress; 2) Form a presidential panel on how to implement the repeal; 3) Repeal DADT in Congress and change the Uniformed Code of Military Justice; 4) Change other necessary military guidelines to conform to the new policy; and 5) Follow-up to ensure that the armed forces implement the policy changes. The CAP report says that “careful examination of the laws outlining the president’s powers as commander in chief show that the executive branch has the authority to suspend homosexual conduct discharges without legislative action.” This provision, commonly known as a “stop loss” order, grants the president authority to suspend the release of military members during any period of national emergency in which members of a reserve unit are serving on active duty. But because Congress originally passed the ban, an executive suspension will have to be followed up with legislative action that reverses DADT. CAP also recommends forming a DADT advisory panel modeled after the Gates Commission, which was established by President Nixon in 1969 and outlined a plan for transitioning the military to an all-volunteer structure. The commission’s charge should be to consider “how” to end DADT, not “whether” to make the change.

LESSONS LEARNED: A crucial hurdle, the CAP report says, is the military’s “strong aversion to change.” President Truman’s effort to integrate the Army bares this out. In 1948, after Truman issued an executive order ending racial segregation in the armed services, Gen. Omar Bradley, then the Army chief of staff, flatly refused, saying desegregation would ruin the Army. Because of the military’s reluctance and bureaucratic hedging, Truman’s 1948 order wasn’t implemented until 1954. The CAP report notes that it’s common for members of Congress, especially those on the Armed Services Committee, to aid the military’s aversion to change. Robert Taft, the Senate Majority Leader at the time, called Truman’s executive order a “cheap political ploy.” On the question of gays serving openly in the military, perhaps the biggest obstacle has been public opinion — until recently. According to a recent Quinnipiac poll, nearly two-thirds disagreed with the argument that “allowing openly gay men and women to serve in the military would be divisive for the troops and hurt their ability to fight effectively.” And a 2006 Zogby International poll of returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans found that 73 percent were personally “comfortable with gays and lesbians.” The most recent example of a military seamlessly integrating its Army can be found in Britain. The British, who have a military structure and deployment patterns most similar to ours, were forced to allow gays into the military by the European Court of Human Rights in 2000. Before integrating, surveys in Britain indicated that there would be a backlash from current service members, with “two-thirds of male troops” saying that they would not work with gay men if gay bans were lifted. Once the ban was lifted, however, only a handful of troops resigned.
DADT STILL CLAIMING CASUALTIES: During a conference call with reporters yesterday, Korb underscored that repealing DADT was “not a gay rights issue” but an “issue of military readiness” at a time when the U.S. is engaged in two wars. Since its enactment more than 16 years ago, DADT has resulted in the discharge of more than 13,000 highly qualified men and women. At least 1,000 of these service members have held “critical occupations,” such as interpreters and engineers. In addition, roughly 4,000 service members have left the military voluntarily every year because of DADT. The recent cases of Air Force Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenbach and Army Lt. Daniel Choi are illuminating. Fehrenbach, a highly decorated F-15 fighter pilot and an 18-year veteran of the Air Force with 88 combat missions, was informed last September that he would be discharged because someone notified his commanding officer that Fehrenbach had a male partner. It’s estimated the military spent roughly $25 million training Fehrenbach. Choi was a National Guard infantry officer, whose expertise as an Arab linguist was vital to the war in Iraq. But he was also discharged because of the bigoted policy. The result of losing talented and crucial service members, said Korb, is that “lives could be lost.”

Of all the industrialized nations with a military..how many are as homophobic as the United States military? The following is a list of countries which allow gays in the military:

Argentina
Australia
Bermuda
Canada
Germany
Israel
Italy
The Netherlands
New Zealand
Philippines
Romania
United Kingdom
Switzerland
Uruguay

Russia is a tad strange on this issue- those alleged to have “sexual identity problems” are to be drafted only during wartime. “Well adjusted homosexuals” are permitted to serve in a normal capacity.

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