When Sen. Carl Levin and the Senate Armed Services Committee begins hearings on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell on Tuesday, one man who won’t be attending is Gen. James Conway, the Commandant of the Marine Corps (the guy in charge), who’s a supporter of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Is his absence curious?
As the chief of the Marines, Conway also servces as one of President Obama’s top military advisers. (He was part of the Bush administration’s original charge into Iraq in 2003.) And it was only in November that Conway, in “private conversations” that were leaked to the Washington Times, was running his mouth about how Don’t Ask Don’t Tell shouldn’t be repealed. Killing the policy would be “disruptive.”
Conway’s military equivalents include Army Secretary John McHugh, who has said publicly he wants to see DADT repealed.
Is Conway’s absence from the Senate hearings that bizarre? Hard to tell. It’s unknown whether he was even queried about testifying — whether Sen. Levin wants to hear from him, or whether the White House is purposefully keeping him off the record.
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But his superiors will be there: Defense Sec. Robert Gates (who, if we understand it correctly, is Conway’s immediate boss, before the president) and Joint Chiefs chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, who is literally the most senior member of the armed forces; Obama and Gates, a cabinet member, hold executive branch positions. (Then again, the DADT hearing is really just Part Two of a Defense Department budget hearing, which Gates and Mullen would attend anyhow.)
Sec. Gates sees a far off timeline for DADT’s removal. And as for Mullen? He says we need to wait at least a year to repeal the law. So maybe it doesn’t matter that Gen. Conway and his fellow lower-level discrimination endorsers aren’t part of the process.
From there, it’s a matter of whether Washington’s lawmakers will listen to military leaders, as they often default to, or go their own way and risk pissing off the Pentagon.
tavdy79
From there, it’s a matter of whether Washington’s lawmakers will listen to military leaders, as they often default to, or go their own way and risk pissing off the Pentagon.
Or, to put it another way, it’s a matter of whether the Pentagon carries out US government policy, or the US government submits to Pentagon prejudice.
Ted B. (Charging Rhino)
Can we kill the St Lucia couple?
TommyOC
I don’t know if it’s standard for the Commandant of the Marines to weigh in on department-level talks. But if this really is a department-level conversation and not a polling of the individual services of the armed forces, the Commandant of the Marines WOULD be absent.
Why? Because there are three departments of the military: Army, Air Force, Navy. The Marines? They answer to the Navy. This means, Queerty, that General Conway answers to Admiral Mullen, the head of the Navy, as his direct supervisor (and not Mr. Gates).
(For note: The Coast Guard is a department of Homeland Security ever since the cabinet-level department was created. Stupid idea, but it is what it is.)
AFbrat
Commandant Conway’s direct boss is more accurately the Secretary of the Navy; but Bob Gates is def. head honcho above them all. See the following org chart:
http://odam.defense.gov/omp/pubs/guidebook/Pdf/DoD.PDF
As I understand it, there are civilian and military command structures that interface at that highest of levels. The various ‘Chiefs of Staff’ (like the CNO of the Navy, Commandant of the Marines, and Chief of Staffs of Army and AF) are _THE_ senior military commanders of their respective forces, with the Chairman of the JCS as _THE_ senior military figure in the entire US. However, each chief himself has a civilian commander in the Secretaries of each respective force (with the marines under the purview of the Navy), and of course in charge of the military writ large is a civilian secretary of defense (Gates). Their role is more to facilitate and translate the political guidance of the civilian president into military language the various service branches can follow.
[[Now, when it comes to the conduct of war it’s a different deal. The JCS is a largely DC-based political body charged with interfacing b/w the civilian and military command structures. The combatant commanders (say…Petraeus, CinC of Central Command) are the actual “move tanks here, shoot bad guys here” leadership. They report to the Secretary of Defense directly, and the JCS in an advisorial capacity]].
But the Goldwater-Nicols act (or maybe the Defense act of ’47–can’t remember which) established the Joint Chiefs of Staff command in part so that the president can receive military-only advice on military affairs from a representative body of his entire military force. Thus, while Gen. Conway has to report to a civilian secretary of the navy, when he’s giving military-specific advice (say on matters of war) he’s generally speaking amongst the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It was in this context that he offered his opposing views on DADT.
Now, the JCS has a duty to respond both to the commander in chief (the president) as well as the Congress during routine testimony (something Eisenhower considered legal insubordination and a breach of executive branch powers). In this case, Conway gave rather stubborn advice amongst the JCS, and asking him not to testify is probably a way of avoiding embarrassment for the service broadly–since CinC Obama, Sec. Gates, and Adm. Muller are all in line on this policy. It would be another example of ‘legal insubordination’ for Gen. Conway to provide an opinion contrary to the chain of command in Congressional testimony, and reflect poorly on Gen. Conway, his civilian leadership, and the military at whole.
Comeon queers! We needs to know our shit if we’re going to sound half-convincing in the DADT debate. Wikipedia’ll teach ya everything you need to know.