Hoping to avoid the mistakes of Bill Clinton, the Obama administration has told Pentagon officials that it intends to study the national-security implications and build Congressional support before it asks the military to overturn Don’t Ask-Don’t Tell, the policy that prevents gays and lesbians from openly serving in the armed forces. While Obama has not signaled a timetable on when it will overturn the bill, it was one of his campaign promises to do so and when asked if the President would overturn the bill Press Secretary Robert Gibbs answered a one-word reply of “Yes.” While gay bloggers are bemoaning that Obama is going “slowly”, our take on the latest news is that the President is moving ahead on the issue, but doing it in a deliberate, thorough way so as to defuse the issue.
The Boston Globe reports that the Obama administration recently met with Service Member’s Legal Defense Fund executive director Aubrey Sarvis about DADT:
“The Clinton experience makes a lot of folks [in the administration] apprehensive,” said Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Fund, which represents gay military personnel discharged under the current policy. Sarvis, an Army veteran who served in Vietnam, recently met with Obama advisers on the subject.
At the Pentagon, officials say they have been told not to expect the administration to seek to lift the ban quickly. One senior officer, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press, said staff officers for Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have been told it will be several months at the earliest – possibly not even this year – until the top brass will be formally asked to weigh in on a change in policy.
And even then, he said, the military has been assured it will have wide latitude to undertake a detailed study of how a change in the policy would affect the military.
Mullen told reporters earlier this month that he is aware of the president’s “intent to do this,” but “there are no more specifics with respect to when.” When the time comes, he said, he will give the president “my best military advice” on “the impact of what a potential change could be.”
blake
Let the screaming and damnation begin!
Leland Frances
Obama Inc. is NOT “avoid[ing] the mistakes of Bill Clinton,” they are REPEATING them.
Clinton’s first mistake was the one that castrated him in the end: the moment he got pushback from the Pentagon troglodytes, led by the insubordinate-should-have-been-fired-on-the-spot Gen. Rectum Powell, he decided to “work with the military” instead of saying, “Excuse fucking me, I AM the Commander-in-Chief. You WILL do what I say or your military career is over.” [Even some grunts who opposed integration said, “We will follow orders” just as Mullen did on “60 Minutes” recently in relation to Iraq.]
Clinton’s choice gave the civilian opposition time to flood Congress with calls, letters, etc., screaming bloody murder which contributed to the defeat of a bill in Congress by Boxer, Schroeder, et al., to open the military and the passage of DADT after homohating cracker Sen. Sam Nunn, eager to get even Clinton for passing him over for Secretary of Defense, led TV camera crews through a dog-and-pony show in the cramped sleeping quarters of a submarine, stacked televised hearings with military opponents of integration. Yes, the opposition is already there but this gives them more time to do the same kind of damage then did in ’93.
In the primary debates, when asked what he would do if the Pentagon opposed withdrawing from Iraq, Obama quickly responded that he would remind them that he was Commander-in-Chief. But all this nonsense about getting “buy in” from the Pentagon is historical ignorance and political cowardice. Studies commissioned by the military going all the way back to NINETEEN FUCKINNG FIFTY-SEVEN have already proven that open gays can serve with distinction, and in the intervening half-century mountains of evidence have risen that the average soldier doesn’t care as long as the gay soldier does his/her job well.
Congress, which is, again, only required to repeal the ban because of Clinton giving them time to formally legislate one, is a different matter, they will need persuaded. But Commander-in-Chief Obama is CREATING a second obstacle, doubling the delay to repeal, by giving the tail permission to wag the dog.
Mike
Obama has to work with the military closely on this. Not working with the military close enough gave Bill Clinton a lot of problems, one of them being he had to compromise with DADT.
Clinton initially lost a lot of clout and respect with the military for this issue, and his inability to intervene in the Rwanda genocide was actually partly because of how he handled the gay issue. The military got very upset with him, and when he wanted to intervene in Rwanda, they pushed back as retribution.
Bob R
Obama is, like Clinton was, the Commander-in-Chief. When a valid, legal order is given, whether by a platoon sergeant or the Commander-in-Chief all subordinates salute, say “yes sir” and follow the order. Period. There is no debate in the military, it is not a democracy, you do what you’re told or you are disciplined. Usually severely. In war, a member of the military can be shot for disobeying a direct order. Clinton should have called Powell’s bluff and asked for his resignation, fired him or Court Martialed him for failure to obey a lawful order. Even the idiot Bush knew he was the “Decider” and those Generals who questioned him were summarily shit canned. Most of the Generals had no problem obeying questionable and even illegal orders by Bush and company getting us involved in an illegal war, torture, violating international treaties (Geneva Conventions), but they want to buck this? President Truman took no crap from his Generals, the example he made of MacArthur showed who was the boss. When he signed the order to integrate the military, it was done. Generals and southern politicians howled. But the military was integrated. The problem is, you now have a bunch of triangulating, wimpy, go along to get along politician’s who have never spent a day in uniform and are completely ignorant about how the military works. Obama needs to start getting rid of political generals and replacing them with military leaders or his policies involving the military are going to be undermined by a very politicized General staff. Is there any Democrat who doesn’t suffer from empty scrotum disorder? Someone has to clone a Democrat with balls, including Obama.
koalaboy
I dream of the day I can fulfill my Yossi and Jagger fantasy!
rcdc
fact of the matter is, sure, Obama *could* issue a direct order, and i think he will, if push comes to shove. but think of the fallout from just saying “ok, gay people, you’re up” and not FIRST laying out the groundwork for adequate retraining and support services. because that screws gay people worse than waiting another couple months.
and i’ll tell you something else. a lot of soldiers may say they don’t mind, but when push comes to shove, there is still a strong homophobic streak in the military because there’s one in America, and i’s potentially volatile. i almost smacked one of my best friends once, a smart, moderate liberal naval reservist from a liberal east coast city because he didn’t believe gay people should serve in forward areas, just like women. he’s had to retrain his thinking now, having come to know more gay servicepeople. but if someone with his relatively liberal sociopolitical views thinks that, there’s still room for real danger for openly gay soldiers in our military, and we have to deal with that before we can in good conscience remove DADT – or at the very least we have to get counseling for gay soldiers set up so they can have help and support for any additional problems they will face. given the state of military mental health services, i’m not holding my breath for that…
Charles J. Mueller
@Leland Frances: @Bob R:
I could not agree more with the both of you. The military is NOT a Democracy. It is a top-down organisation where members are trained to take orders, not debate them.
What Obama is doing in this instance, is no different than what happened with Yes on Proposition 8 in California.
Once again, civil-rights are being put up to a popular vote. That was un-Constitutional, and not allowing gays to serve in the military is equally so.
When is someone, in position of power, going to have the guts to stand up and say so?