But for all its advantages, this approach still leads back to the same place we’ve been stuck for nine years—and, seen a certain way, for much longer than that. I can believe Obama is very different from the imperialist Westerners who’ve been fucking over small states for generations, and still believe that the best way for him to show his difference is to stay out of their affairs insofar as possible. We don’t have a great track record since World War II, and while Obama appears to think that the best way to fix that is to do foreign intervention right this time, I would prefer a cooling-off period. Always leave ‘em wanting more.
Here are my concerns: Obama, rightfully, wants to right our relationships with the broadly-named Muslim world by demonstrating that we’ve grown past our imperialist tendencies. Great goal! But his strategy, as Roy as noted, is less “show them that we really mean it by not interfering” and more “make this a competition between you and your predecessor over who can do it right”. The latter urge, by the way, is why wars are so hard to extract yourself when you get into them. Cutting your losses is hard. Letting the other guy get you into a situation and then failing to finish the job correctly is even harder. Never, ever underestimate the ego of a politician, even those with good intentions.
My problem with this strategy is it falls right into one of the worst liberal traps, which is thinking politics works on an intellectual, nuanced level when it in fact works on a broad, emotion-based level. This is true here, there, everywhere. It’s a universal problem. So if you say, “We really don’t want to be imperialists,” people who are suspicious of you are going to say, “Then why are you still firing guns in nations where your noses don’t belong?” They’re probably not interested in your nuanced rationalizations. This is doubly true of people who are highly motivated to rally people against you. Every bullet fired can be assumed to be money donated to their propaganda. Obama’s hope is that successfully putting down Qaddafi will take the knees off of these arguments, and it very well might—-if this goes exactly as planned. Does it ever, though? That’s my concern.
My broader concern has little, honestly, to do with this latest war adventure and more my frustrations with the U.S. and its defense program in general. It’s fucking ridiculous that we are perpetually at war with someone, but we’ve completely abandoned the Constitutional requirement to declare war before going to war. I’m not an absolutist on this or anything. If troops are attacked or our country is invaded, feel free to self-defend before a formal declaration. But the fact that no President, Democratic or Republican, even bothers to pay tribute to this legal restraint on what has become a tyrannical power bothers me.
And I think the reason is simply that our military is ridiculously large. When you spend as much money as we do on a military year after year, I think it starts to seem criminal not to use it. It’s like as if you spent twice as much on a big house and then only use two rooms in it. You’re going to start to feel guilty. Seriously, we spend so much money on our military it’s ridiculous. It becomes a self-rationalizing thing. If you don’t use it regularly, people are going to start talking about—-gasp!—-cutting defense spending. Can’t have that.
Because we spend an obscene amount of money on defense, we will always end up paying for and leading these actions. I find it especially ironic that Republicans always bitch about the leadership role that the U.S. takes on these peacekeeping missions. That’s like being the guy who insists, over your spouse’s protests, that you’re going to buy that ginormous SUV that seats ten people, claiming that if you don’t, everyone in the neighborhood will think you’re a pussy. And then you complain when it’s always on you to drive when you get together with your 9 closest friends for a road trip. Sensible people look at this situation, and buy a smaller car if they don’t like being the driver everywhere. A two-seater is an especially good way to avoid driving duty. But we are always driving, which Obama alluded to when he described our “unique” role in the world.
Meanwhile, we’re funding this giant SUV and its ridiculous gas bill, and telling our starving family we don’t have money to pay the mortgage or for food, and they’ll just have to pick through garbage and sleep on the street (and certainly not in the SUV, because they’re dirty and will fuck up the interior). Like Bob Herbert said in his last column:
The U.S. has not just misplaced its priorities. When the most powerful country ever to inhabit the earth finds it so easy to plunge into the horror of warfare but almost impossible to find adequate work for its people or to properly educate its young, it has lost its way entirely.
I realize this is a problem that should have been fixed before Libya started to erupt into civil war, but the fact that it continues not to be fixed is being highlighted by our role in this military action compared to the other nations that are involved.
This video by RonMattieu is up on YouTube. It’s a TV screencap of a report by Barbara Starr about the survey sent out today by the Pentagon related to implementation of DADT repeal to 200,000 active duty troops and 200,000 reserve troops.
CNN’s Barbara Starr defends polling soldiers if they want to shower with “open” gays. Listen carefully as anchor Drew Griffin challenges her and she becomes quite defensive in justifying the ‘survey’. Truly despicable. The exchange starts around 2:20.
Here is part of the Starr’s report as it appears on the CNN web site, and she repeats almost verbatim in the video.
An administration official confirmed to CNN that the survey is being sent to 200,000 active duty troops and 200,000 reserve troops. The official declined to be identified because the survey has not officially been made public.
The survey, which service members can expect to receive via e-mail, asks about such issues as how unit morale or readiness might be affected if a commander is believed to be gay or lesbian; the need to maintain personal standards of conduct; and how repeal might affect willingness to serve in the military.
The survey also asks a number of questions aimed at identifying problems that could occur when troops live and work in close quarters in overseas war zones. For example, the questionnaire asks military members how they would react if they had to share a room, bathrooms, and open-bay showers in a war zone with other service members believed to be gay or lesbian.
At the end of her report, Drew Griffin seems perturbed at the idea of the whole survey idea, and asks:
Why do they care—these joint chiefs—these guys are paid to make decisions. Why are they sending out this public relations survey asking whoever wants to respond to this and supposedly going to use this to make a decision on this?
Starr is a little taken aback and responds with
“You’re right this is a terrific question because there is a lot of confusion about it because we all know that in the military once the Commander in Chief give an order, salute smartly and carry on. That’s the way life goes in the military, you really don’t get a vote on what orders you want to follow.”
She continues on to talk about the political “delicate nature” of the situation, how the President really wants repeal but well, to paraphrase broadly—they want to make sure these 200,000 active duty troops and 200,000 reserve troops aren’t worried about the soap dropping in the shower.
Now what’s weird is that the video on CNN’s web site (below) obviously edits out that exchange between Griffn and Starr at 2:26 - 4:39 in the above video.
Why? There’s no real reason to do so, as it’s a web clip, so time constraints aren’t relevant. What editorial judgment was made that Griffin’s interest in a logical reason for the survey is not newsworthy to readers of CNN’s web site?
Brass ones, I tell you. This is going to be interesting. The Politico has the PDF of the subpoena. Ben Smith:
The gay soldiers arrested outside the White House protesting “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” will annouce today that they’re demanding that President Obama testify in their trial on minor civil disobedience charges.
Their novel argument: Obama himself called on gay rights advocates to pressure him, so they were just following orders.
The full text of the subpoena summary:
SUMMARY OF THE CASES
Lt. Dan Choi and Cpt. James Pietrangelo II are each charged with two counts of Failure to Obey a Lawful Order, pursuant to DC Municipal Regulations (18 DCMR 2000.2 (1995); these charges stem from arrests at the White House sidewalk, on two separate occasions, March 18, 2010 and April 20, 2010. They face a nonjury trial on both charges, on Wed., July 14, 2010, in Courtroom 120 of DC Superior Court. This Court is located at 500 Indiana Avenue, NW, in Washington, DC. These are relatively minor charges (the Defendants may only be fined, from $100 to $1000, and may not receive jail time for these infractions). However, the Defendants seek to use their trials to highlight the ongoing effects of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law and policy of the U.S. Armed Forces toward gay and lesbian servicemembers. They seek to compel the testimony of President Barack Obama who has, on several occasions as President and Commander in Chief (and previously as a Senator and Presidential Candidate) called on the LGBT community to “pressure” him to change the DADT law and policy, thus allowing gay servicemembers to serve their country openly and honorably.
The subpoena of the President is necessary for the defense to prove that Defendants were following and obeying lawful orders or directives by their President and Commander in Chief, and were therefore under an obligation and authority to act as they did in order to pressure him - in a non-violent, visible way - on this important public issue. In addition, these statements support the contention that Defendants were acting out of necessity, in order to prevent discrimination and greater harm to gay servicemembers now serving.
They explain why they are doing this below the fold.
Jamelle Bouie, blogging at Matt Y’s place, has a post up about how Obama sending the National Guard troops to Arizona’s border is a naked political ploy to look tough that is a) unnecessary and b) won’t even work to get Obama any votes. The notion that there’s some horrible crime wave from Mexico gushing over the border is just wrong. I’m not denying the horror of the drug cartel wars, believe me. But crime isn’t like, say, an oil volcano under the Gulf of Mexico. It doesn’t just spew out randomly in every direction, letting the tides carry it wherever. There’s been a whole lot of murdering going on in Mexico, but as a general rule, people who kill have specific targets in mind, and those targets by and large aren’t living on the U.S. side of the border. And conflating your average immigrant here looking for work with dangerous drug dealers and bona fide racketeers is just straight up racism.
As Jamelle notes, crime in Arizona hasn’t actually gone up despite the drug wars. Last time I was in El Paso, it was right as shit was spiraling out of control in Juarez,* and rest assured, things seemed as peaceful as ever in the hot, dry, thickly polluted place of my birth. My gut sense that I was unlikely to be gunned down in an spate of drug-related violence in El Paso turned out to hew closely to reality. El Paso has once again made the list of the top 25 safest cities in the country, despite being across a very small (creek-like, really) river from the most dangerous city in the Americas. (News which has naturally made me incredibly fucking sad; I remember when Juarez was considered safe enough, at least for law-abiding citizens and visitors.) If the crime in Juarez isn’t spilling over into El Paso despite the very thin and malleable border between them, then it’s completely asinine to think that it’s just going to spill over into Arizona for no reason whatsoever.
Militarizing the border is a bad idea. I’ve seen this before, and all it does is sow animosity and suspicion, at best. It’s well worth remembering that dumping a bunch of troops into an area full of wary people who are armed to the teeth, which is how I’d describe (with love!) the people of the Southwest, is a recipe for random acts of pointless violence. I still carry horrified memories of an incident that happened when I was visiting home in West Texas while in college. The Marines were stationed on the border during another spate of drug war violence in Mexico, and while there they got trigger happy on an 18-year-old kid who was herding goats. I promise you that, on top of the anger and grief at the loss of an innocent life, there was also a rush of fear and suspicion. There are a lot of people hanging out in the countryside with guns at any point in time, and often they need them for work, like this young man did. But if you put a bunch of troops out there and fill them up with fears that they’re going to a war zone, they’re not going to see a goat herder with his anti-coyote weapon so much as they’re going to see drug dealer on a mission.
Even if the troops are just for show, I promise you that it’s really disturbing to have at least the visual image of martial law imposed on your home. You can intellectualize it, say that they’re not there for you, or say that it’s just political theater. But when troops are dispatched to your relatively peaceful home because of the imaginary violence in the streets, you catch yourself wondering if you’re still living in the United States as you understand it.
*For those who don’t know the geography, Juarez is not only right across the border from El Paso, for all geographic purposes, the two cities are basically one. Just imagine a huge, sprawling city that has a river flowing through it, and that’s what El Paso/Juarez looks like. The biggest border crossing is actually up on downtown El Paso.
With the clear support for repeal of DADT in almost every demographic imaginable, and clear calls for repeal from Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mullen, and the Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, it’s almost incomprehensible that this Administration, through its Department of Justice, is continuing to defend the constitutionality of the law. Joe @ Americablog:
DOJ had to go the extra mile to show just how valid the DADT law is. It’s hard to miss the section titled:
Because Congress Could Rationally Have Concluded That The DADT Policy Is Necessary To Maintain Unit Cohesion, Accommodate Personal Privacy, and Reduce Sexual Tension For Military Effectiveness, LCR’s Facial Due Process Challenge Fails
They only right-wing talking point they left out is the “we’re in two wars” argument.
It’s incredible that the administration cannot even respond to questions about strategy for repeal - see Barney Frank’s statement calling for the Obama administration to come clean about its intent:
[T]he Administration has been ambiguous about it, and that ambiguity has allowed some to interpret Secretary Gates’ argument for a delay in implementation as a delay in adopting the legislation. I believe that the Administration should make clear that it supports legislative action this year, and that while implementation is being worked out, it will carry out the policy in the way it was originally intended, which would reduce the number of discharges, in my view, by over 90%.”
Joe hits the nail on the head here:
I’m sure the usual apologists will jump to the defense of the Obama administration, even as it becomes more and more clear that the Obama administration has no intention of working to repeal DADT, or enacting ENDA, or repealing DOMA. This also begs the question of what the DOJ’s LGBT liaison, Matt Nosanchuk, does all day. Didn’t this set off some warning bells? Perhaps he has as much sway as the LGBT liaison at the White House, Brian Bond—which isn’t much.
Speaking of Bond, this is what he said back in November 2009when I interviewed him at the Equality NC Annual Conference:
Again, this president has not backtracked on any of his commitments; and at some point the bloggers and the readers there I hope they will trust this president and work with him, work with us to achieve true equality. We’re working on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell…we’re working on ENDA; you’re going to see mark up in the House next week on ENDA. These are important pieces of equality legislation for our community.
...The reality is, in some situations there are going to be times when you’re going to have to trust us because there are some things that you can’t necessarily put the specific timeline out there. Again, this is a president that means what he says and does what he says.
So which part of the above makes any sense to you, given we have an administration that alternately sends out negative messages such as this brief or doesn’t even respond to queries from Barney Frank about when the President plans to push for legislative repeal? I guess it depends on what this admin defines as “means what he says and does what he says.”
Perhaps that definition has been cleared up by Obama DOJ spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler, who went to court to repeatedly cite quotes from retired Gen. Colin Powell’s 1993 statements about gays in the military—views he has since very publicly reversed. WTF?
“This is pretty shocking,” said Richard Socarides, the White House liaison to the gay community under President Bill Clinton. “When Powell said this 18 years ago, it was inflammatory and incendiary. ... [Powell]’s now said this stuff isn’t even true anymore.”
This is ridiculous. And if you think I’m reading too much into this pantomime BS the White House is doing, take a look at Tuesday’s White House briefing that landed in my inbox, where Robert Gibbs does yet another tap dance that proves President Barack Obama has no problem letting the LGBT community twist in the wind on this. Kerry Eleveld of The Advocate tried yet again to extract something resembling an answer from Gibbs.
Q Over successive weeks, Congressman Barney Frank has asked the White House to clarify whether it would like to see legislative action taken this year on “don’t ask, don’t tell.” He’s said that direction from the White House has been muddled, and then at one point said that you guys were actually sort of ducking whether or not you wanted to see legislation action taken on repeal. Would the President like to see that law—
MR. GIBBS: Well, Carol, I would just say this, I don’t think what Admiral Mullen and Secretary Gates have enunciated on this appears muddled to anyone. I don’t—there is a process that’s in place to move forward on the President’s commitment to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
I don’t—Admiral Mullen is the first chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to sit up in front of Congress and say that the law ought to be repealed—not somebody who is retired, not somebody who is long past their commitment of serving their country, but somebody who sat up there and said that. And Secretary Gates and the commission at the Pentagon have taken some important steps.
We’re following that process. We’ll see where the legislative road takes us as we continue to build support to keep the commitment that the President has made.
Q So the President would feel perfectly comfortable letting the next Congress take that up?
MR. GIBBS: Well, again, we’re going to follow the process and the path that are underway with the clear direction that the President has given to repeal this.
Well what is the damned process? We don’t even know where the legislative road is, let alone what direction it is going. What does the President intend to tell Congress to do, if anything, and what is the timeline, since he suggested in the State of the Union that DADT was as good as gone this year?
Does Gibbs need his lips oiled like the Tin Man to utter what the administration intends to do when asked a direct question? Mixed messages and dodges like this have generated strong responses from SLDN and HRC. They are below the fold, as well as some speculation on my part—and some fresh video—as well as a few things readers to look out for going forward.
Jesus H. Christ—Admiral Mullen has a handful now. The free-flowing ignorance of Marine Commandant Gen. James Conway, who surely has gay service members bunking in with hetero ones, is ready for some same-sex segregation. They’ve already seen each other naked, General.
The Marine Corps’ top officer said March 25 that even if the ban on openly-serving gays in the services is lifted, he would draw the line at forcing heterosexual Marines to bunk with gays on base.
“We want to continue (two-person rooms), but I would not ask our Marines to live with someone who is homosexual if we can possibly avoid it,” Marine Commandant Gen. James Conway told Military.com during an exclusive interview at the Pentagon. “And to me that means we have to build BEQs (bachelor enlisted quarters) and have single rooms.”
And what do you know, Military.com goes to military “expert” Elaine Donnelly:
“In this case, I would want to reserve the right of a Marine that thinks he or she wouldn’t want to [share a room with a homosexual]. And again that’s the overwhelming … number of people that say that they wouldn’t like to do so.” Conway said the Corps billets two-to-a-room—unique today among the services—because it believes it’s good for unit cohesion. But if a gay Marine sharing a room with a straight one has the opposite effect, the Corps will adopt the single-room standard of the other services.
Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness said the question is whether the military, without a ban on gays serving openly, will opt for mixing gays and heterosexual troops in the same facilities or have “separate but equal” facilities.
“That’s what [Conway] seems to be advocating here,” she said. This is something the working group established by Gates to look at repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell should address up front, Donnelly said.
In no time flat, The Palm Center sent out a release with other generals with common sense, noting that there would be more disturbance of unit cohesion with a clearly homophobic move like this.
Richard H. Kohn, a prominent military historian who was faculty at the Army and National War Colleges, and was Chief of Air Force History for the U.S. Air Force, said that “segregating Marines, as Gen. Conway envisions, might undermine the very cohesion he and other opponents of change say they are trying to protect.” Kohn said that “the proper response to a question on the issue is to defer any statement until the Ham-Johnson group reports,” referring to the year-long Pentagon Working Group. Kohn is currently Professor of History and Adjunct Professor of Peace, War, and Defense at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Retired Marine General Carl Mundy, one of Conway’s predecessors as Commandant of the U.S Marine Corps, opposes openly gay service, but recently said that if repeal is going to happen, “the easiest way to deal with it is to make it as simple as possible. The last thing you even want to think about is creating separate facilities or separate groups or separate meeting places or having four kinds of showers — one of straight women, lesbians, straight men and gay men. That would be absolutely disastrous in the armed forces. It would destroy any sense of cohesion or teamwork or good order and discipline.”
Other top generals have noted that uniformity is what’s needed for this policy change, and that divided leadership and separate rules or facilities will make the transition harder, not easier. In a 2009 op-ed in the Washington Post, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. John Shalikashvili, said mixed messages from leadership could be toxic, and that it was crucial for top leaders to communicate consistent signals that the force is capable of carrying out new orders. “Given the inevitability of change,” he wrote, “it will be important for senior leaders to send clear signals of support to the rank and file. Every general officer knows that mixed signals undermine leadership. Indeed, studies show that when organizations implement controversial change, signals from the top must be clear.” Gen. Shalikashvili wrote that when senior officers oppose the inevitable, their messages “could cause the very disruptions they predict.”
...Nathaniel Frank, Senior Research Fellow at the Palm Center, said Conway’s plan is inconsistent with research on gays in the military. “Decades of research, including all of the conclusions of the 1993 RAND study, shows that separating gays and straights is a bad idea,” he said. “RAND found that creating policies that are applied only to one group of people or to accommodate the prejudices of another group of people only undercut the larger mission of a unified, integrated force.”
“I asked seven or eight times to speak with a lawyer. I was not given a phone call. I was called a liar by one officer.” —Dan Choi, on what really happened during that night in jail after White House protest, to Newsweek.
In this week’s Newsweek, Eve Conant has a writeup of what occurred last week when Lt. Dan Choi and former Army captain Jim Pietrangelo did their White House protest against the slow-mo action on DADT repeal.
Lt. Dan Choi, a West Point graduate and fluent Arabist being discharged from the Army for being openly gay, was arrested last week along with former Army captain Jim Pietrangelo II, after handcuffing themselves to the White House gate in protest of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. They were handcuffed with the help of Robin McGehee, a former PTA president turned activist who last week cofounded GetEQUAL, an LGBT activism group inspired by civil-rights organizations and gains made through civil disobedience. “We’ve held marches, lobbied, manned the phone banks,” says McGehee. “The last resort is to rumble.”
Along with Conant, I was in the D.C. Superior courtroom reporting on the arraignment, as was Joe Sudbay of Americablog. Conant scored an interview with Dan; the most newsworthy bit in the piece is that she confirms what I also learned from him:
What was it like in jail? Were you at all scared at where this might be headed?
I’ve detained people in Iraq, I’ve read them their rights, and I’ve applied handcuffs and zip ties. I’ve talked with people in Arabic who’ve just been arrested. I know what it means to arrest someone for my country’s mission. But I’ve never been incarcerated, and for something that I thought was not my country’s mission. I know my country’s mission is not to make an entire group of people into second-class citizens.
I asked seven or eight times to speak with a lawyer. I was not given a phone call. I was called a liar by one officer; I was scoffed at by another one. But there were others who wanted to talk with me about their service. The first time I saw a lawyer was in the courtroom, and I didn’t know who he was and I couldn’t understand what he was telling the judge at first. I asked him, “Did you just plea for me?”
Both men pleaded not guilty and are preparing to stand trial. They have to appear with attorneys on April 26, before the same judge who helmed the arraignment.
Here’s a video—with exclusive footage—that sums up the action and confirms Newsweek’s account.
The American Family Association, run by the elderly Don Wildmon and heir to the bigotry throne Tim, has moved into 21st century gay-bashing, with its blog Focal Point. It’s a poorly designed attempt to pull in some younger anti-gay sheep to fleece, but it still turns out drivel that is completely batsh*t.
The homosexual agenda represents a clear and present danger to virtually every fundamental right given to us by our Creator and enshrined for us in our Constitution.
Start with freedom of religion and freedom of speech, the first two of our inalienable rights secured for us in the Bill of Rights.
As a culture, we must choose between the homosexual agenda or the Constitution because we can’t have both.
Further proof comes from the abjectly pathetic decision of the chaplains’ office at Andrews Air Force Base to rescind a long-standing invitation to Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council. Perkins had been invited to give a non-political talk at a prayer luncheon on the base yesterday, but was abruptly dis-invited for one simple reason: he supports the current law which makes homosexuals ineligible for service in the United States military.
Does anyone here feel like a clear and present danger as you step out to by a gallon of milk? Are people around sensing the carnage you represent to their rights? Apparently Fischer has some sort of insight on how everything is going to go to hell in a handbasket when DADT is repealed. The melodramatic presentation and imagery here are so over the top, I’d like to see this essay faxed to Sen. John McCain, who is still clinging desperately to his belief that DADT is working. Is it at all embarrassing to be on the side of extremists Elaine “flow chart” Donnelly and Fischer? Christianity in the military is under attack.
The days of Dred Scott have returned. Christians now are the ones are being confined on the plantation, and warned about being too uppity.
The only ones who will feel “included” here are those who support sexual deviancy in the military. The rest of you Neanderthals, well, that’s just too bad. This is the new military, regardless of what the law says, so get used to it.
McCarthyism has now struck the U.S. military with a vengeance. The question now that the military is asking is this: “Are you now, or have you ever been, a supporter of traditional morality?” If the answer is yes, you go on our blacklist, and we deprive you of your freedom of religion, speech and military service.
The implications for national security, especially for recruitment and retention, are sobering.
As gays come roaring out of the military’s closet with fangs bared
, they will be sending heterosexuals to the brig if they won’t keep their opinions to themselves. Who wants to serve in a military like that?
In the wake of yesteday’s Senate hearing on DADT repeal, there are two reactions out that drew my attention. One was the lunatic WSJ op-ed by foreign policy journal editor Mackubin Thomas Owens. He took umbrage at the thought that heterosexual soldiers were capable of serving openly with gays and lesbians. The old saw of unit cohesion came up again, with this infantile, *sshat statement by Owens:
[T]he military stresses such martial virtues as courage, both physical and moral, a sense of honor and duty, discipline, a professional code of conduct, and loyalty. It places a premium on such factors as unit cohesion and morale. The glue of the military ethos is what the Greeks called philia—friendship, comradeship or brotherly love. Philia, the bond among disparate individuals who have nothing in common but facing death and misery together, is the source of the unit cohesion that most research has shown to be critical to battlefield success.
Philia depends on fairness and the absence of favoritism. Favoritism and double standards are deadly to philia and its associated phenomena—cohesion, morale and discipline—are absolutely critical to the success of a military organization.
The presence of open homosexuals in the close confines of ships or military units opens the possibility that eros—which unlike philia is sexual, and therefore individual and exclusive—will be unleashed into the environment. Eros manifests itself as sexual competition, protectiveness and favoritism, all of which undermine the nonsexual bonding essential to unit cohesion, good order, discipline and morale.
Wow. Owens’ eruption really needs deconstruction and discussion because it raisese several questions:
1. Then what about eros and women in the military? All of the above also true - and came up time and again when women were being integrated into the military. In fact the whole line in the sand barring combat service for women has been blurred as they are practically on the front lines anyway, subjected to the same levels of lethal force in Iraq, for example. Does Owens want women out of the military?
2. Owens renders our fighting men weak, ignorant and guided only by their “little brains.” (It’s clear women aren’t even considered in Owen’s op-ed, so let’s set that aside.) If our mlitary is so strong and powerful, how can its capabilities be undermined so easily by their pee-pees? From the POV of Owens, if gay service members come out of the closet, the barracks will instantly become a cruising bar, complete with a disco ball and rocket-propelled grenades and IEDs. In his mind the soldiers can’t tell the difference between comradeship and bonding under stress-filled, life-threatening conditions
and a pick up line
.
3. Apparently theUniform Code of Military Justice(UCMJ) is a useless document. Owens alternately views the military as an institution of rules and regulations and as a lawless outpost. It’s clear he’s afraid that all this potential aggressive man-on-man cruising will lead to sexual assault that will go unprosecuted. Hmmm. Well he may be on to something—women who serve are being assaulted and raped at record levels, with their male peers going unpunished or receiving a slap on the wrist. If Owens envisions that scenario, he should spare his wrath against those who want to repeal DADT and direct it to those in the Pentagon that don’t take sexual assault and harassment seriously. It doesn’t matter whether it’s same- or opposite-sex criminal conduct—both should be prosecuted under UCMJ, including fraternization.
The other piece to take a look at is David Mixner’s “DADT: They Are Killing Us Softly With Their Song.” His position is that while we finally have the President and his military leaders Defense Secretary of Defense Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mullen strongly on the record for repeal in a very public way,
it’s not time for a happy dance
by any stretch of the imagination.
The problem is that DADT isn’t going to end in the near future - not even this year. These new converts are asking for a year long study and then maybe at least another year before implementation. After all is said and done, the implication is that once they ‘study’ us one more time, they might slowly integrate us into the Armed Forces over the next few years.
What do they mean they have to ‘study’ for a year our impact on the military if we are allowed to serve openly? How offensive is that?
Along with the unnecessary study about the impact of DADT on the agenda, the focus needs to be on Congress and its foot-dragging. Flip-flopping John McCain, who said he “needed to hear from the generals first” before his final decision, looked positively feeble and fossilized up there at the hearing. He offerws up discredited Elaine “homo flow chart” Donnelly’s letter w/1,500 flag officers supporting DADT. A letter signed by officials mostly over 70 years old, four of whom passed away even before the letter was published. The side of discrimination has no credibility left—what is Congress waiting for?
[T]he fact still remains on a daily basis we must lie who we are to our family, friends and those who lives depend on us. We must never acknowledge a loved one at home nor admit that we have a life like anyone else. We must continue to dehumanize ourselves for the comfort of others for an antiquated policy that should have never been implemented in the first place. Our soldiers who die in combat have to think of their partners who will be denied full rights in their heroic deaths. Who will not be even allowed to accept the flag as their loved one is buried. What kind of change is this? Not much of a one!
...Congress should act immediately for the full repeal of DADT and we should refuse to support or give money to anyone who does not support such an effort. In less than a year, we will face a Congress that is less friendly than the one now. Do we really believe our chances will be much better next year than this year?
Repeal it now. Stop the crap and deal with us as full American citizens. The policy is offensive, obscene and immoral. There is no reason to study us; just embrace our talents, gifts and patriotism.
With Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council going on Hardball to declare that homosexuality needs to be recriminalized (overturning Lawrence v. Texas) in the wake of getting the bad news that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Michael Mullen (and now General Colin Powell and even a tepid Orrin Hatch) said Don’t Ask Don’t Tell needs to go, you knew there would be a Freeper explosion.
And yes, the gloves come off in a primal scream of terror as these knuckledraggers cover their privates, worrying about dropping soap in the shower. Where were all these Freepers when heterosexual enlisted men were raping their female peers? Oh wait, they don’t want women in there either…
WHY DO FREEPERS HATE AMERICA AND ITS MILITARY COMMANDERS?!?! OH NOES!1101
I’ve linked to the Google cache just in case the thread “disappears.” See the misogyny and paranoia run wild. It’s beyond laughable. They know their side is going down in the long run, no pun intended.
Easy to say General Mullen when you don’t have to bunk or shower with these individuals.
”... it is wrong to force people to “lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens.”
So - Mike Mullen agrees with Congressman Joe Sestak. Who knew?
you cannot defend your fellow citizens when you are preoccupied with having swordfights in the showers. Eww, I just grossed myself out. This article reeks of leftist politics. No military man in his rigfht mind would approve of gutting the military, which is exactly what this amounts to.
What happened to the rights of “straights” to privacy?
I urge everyone to call their Senator and Congressional Representative TODAY!! Everyone I know in the military is outraged at Obama’s attempt to inject active homosexuality into the barracks and showers of the armed forces. Here we go again with another Dem idiot trying to social engineer the military.
But forcing people to accept this societal abomination is just honky dory? The military has lost its bearings. It is adopting self destructive polices and behaviors.
“Our diversity, not only in our Army, but in our country, is a strength. And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse,” Casey said
I fear too many of our higher-ranking officers appear to have been selected for their PC-compatibility rather than for their military competence. . .
If the ban is lifted homosexuals will flock to the military and overrun it and have the full force of military law behind them, the military will be theirs.
Didn’t Mullen say like 6 months ago that the policy shouldn’t be changed? Oh, that was before Obama said he wanted to change it. Now it’s good. Man, this guy is such a suck up it’s disgusting. Between him and Gates I don’t see who has the stones to defend the military from the “I loathe the military” democrat powers that be.
Wonder what he would think if he has to share a shower room and toilet room with those people ? He has his nice private shower and toilet. The rank and file don’t.
It ought to be intresting keeping up with HIV exposure in the ranks.
No Navy admiral (or Air Force general) should ever be made head of the JCS. That responsibility should be left to the Army or the Marines. Or barring that, to the Coast Guard.
Please note that Mullen said he was speaking for himself not for the other service chiefs. The CNO hasn’t come out either way yet. Mullen is the CJCS not the CNO.
Except that the Marines are a Department of the Navy. There are whack jobs in all branches. Clearly this Admiral has no clue what it’s like to be a an enlisted on a combatant vessel. I do.
The Marines are older than the Navy, think in the spirit of Hope and Change that we can the Dept of Navy and replace it with the Dept of the Marine Corps.
Except that the Marines are a Department of the Navy. A bumper sticker for sale at a local gun show reads: The Marine Corps is a department of the Navy. The men’s department. It amused me, but I didn’t bring it home. My dad retired as a Commander in the Navy. My son served in the USMC.
OK Admiral Mikey Mullen. IF we do away with the old fashioned ways then lets quit SEGREGATION in WOMENS’ quarters from MENS’ quarters Let the straights have the same perspective as the gays.I doubt women will enjoy being leered at in the showers as well as straight men will be by gays And Face it, the Homo’s will eventually pair up and have sex in the foxholes(or bunks in the navy)while the straight men will be denied such companionship. How’s that for creating Esprit De Corps
NOTE: There’s a lot of buzz going on about the Senate hearings regarding DADT, which start today. The tentative (to be kind) moves by the Obama administration to signal he’d like to repeal it—with just a little more study and stroking of insecure manhood protective military egos—is something that has been met with derision by many in the LGBT community, given the amount of study and polling on this topic has had for some time now. With people like Elaine Donnelly screeching bogus talking points like these, it’s clear Congress needs to just scrap DADT and move on. (Tanya Domi, a former Captain in the U.S. Army, who served for 15 years, enlisting as a Private, rising to the rank of Captain before leaving the service honorably, will be a guest correspondent over at my pad, Tweeting the hearings. A widget to follow has been placed in the right-hand column.
And the doyenne of discrimination includes flow charts of “analysis” that you will not believe. And do NOT click on the link or the icon at right—or go below the fold—without protecting your keyboard. Remember that I warned you.
When DADT is finally repealed, I have no idea what Ms. Donnelly is going to do with herself. There will not be enough psychotropic drugs available to calm her after reading this tripe—and the aforementioned homo-obsessive, anal flow charts that will blow your mind.
In 1993 then-President Bill Clinton attempted to lift the ban on homosexuals in the military. Following months of intense debate, Clinton proposed a plan to accommodate homosexuals in the military if they did not say they were homosexual.
Members of Congress considered Clinton’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) proposal, but after twelve legislative hearings and field trips they realized that the concept would be unworkable and indefensible in court.
Contrary to most media reports at the time, Congress rejected DADT and passed a law clearly stating that homosexuals are not eligible for military service. The 1993 law-technically named Section 654, Title 10, U.S.C. but usually mislabeled “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”- passed with veto-proof bi-partisan majorities in both Houses. The only “compromise” allowed the Clinton administration to drop “the question” about homosexuality that used to appear on induction forms, but that inquiry can (and should) be administratively reinstated at any time. (A Secretary of Defense seeking a more “humane” way to enforce the 1993 law should stop the recruitment of people who are not eligible for military service.)
The 1993 Eligibility Law codified long-standing Defense Department regulations. It includes fifteen “Findings” recognizing that the military is a “specialized society” and “fundamentally different from civilian life.” Unlike civilians who go home after work, military personnel must accept living conditions that are often “characterized by forced intimacy with little or no privacy.” The purpose of the law, which Federal courts have upheld as constitutional several times is to protect “high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability.”
Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-PA) and others are co-sponsoring legislation (H.R. 1283) that would repeal Section 654, Title 10, U.S.C. and replace it with an open-ended, radical “LGBT Law” that would forbid discrimination based on “homosexuality or bisexuality, whether the orientation is real or perceived.”
The following charts summarize the consequences of replacing Section 654, Title 10 with the proposed new “LGBT Law.” More information is available from the Center for Military Readiness at www.cmrlink.org.
Look at this batsh*t crazy Human Events ad on the pending repeal of DADT. Well, clearly this is the kind of crap that the Obama administration and Congress fear—and what is causing them to call for more study and to say it will be "several years" before implementing the repeal of DADT in the WaPo:
The Defense Department starts the clock next week on what is expected to be a several-year process in lifting its ban on gays from serving openly in the military.
A special investigation into how the ban can be repealed without hurting the morale or readiness of the troops was expected to be announced Tuesday by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
While the review is likely to take the better part of this year to complete, and even more time to implement, its initiation will advance President Barack Obama's goal of repealing the ban and bring a divisive issue for the military back to the fore.
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OBAMA ENDANGERS TROOPS LIVES by REPEALING "DON'T ASK-DON'T TELL"
President Obama pledged in his State of the Union Address to promote open homosexual aggression within the ranks of the military, by directly recruiting Congressmen and Senators in 2010 to overturn the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" law that saves troops lives andalready guarantees equality. Ignoring a letter signed by over 1,150 retired military flag and general officers, who asked Obama to enforce the 1993 Clinton-era law that currently prohibits open homosexual aggression in the military, Obama instead sacrificed military readiness, unit cohesion, and safety of all American troops, to prioritize his special relationship with less than 1% of the American population who claimed to be homosexual in the last census.
"This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay men and women the right to serve the country they love," Obama boldly misled, repeating the vow he made during a speech Oct. 10th before a gay rights group. (The truth is homosexuals already now have the right to serve, so long as they keep their sexual aggression to themselves.) "If you adhere to our common values, you should be treated no different than anyone else," Obama said oxymoronically, defining "equality" and "values" as a sudden endorsement of illegal acts of sod omy long banned by the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The Joint Chiefs sat stone-faced silent, aghast at Obama's plan, but powerless to publicly oppose their own Commander-In-Chief. We must be their voice…
And now we have to cope with theocrat arms manufacturers. What Would Jesus Do, indeed—lock and load, apparently.
Coded references to New Testament Bible passages about Jesus Christ are inscribed on high-powered rifle sights provided to the U.S. military by a Michigan company, an ABC News investigation has found.
The sights are used by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and in the training of Iraqi and Afghan soldiers. The maker of the sights, Trijicon, has a $660 million multi-year contract to provide up to 800,000 sights to the Marine Corps, and additional contracts to provide sights to the U.S. Army.
...Trijicon confirmed to ABCNews.com that it adds the biblical codes to the sights sold to the U.S. military. Tom Munson, director of sales and marketing for Trijicon, which is based in Wixom, Michigan, said the inscriptions “have always been there” and said there was nothing wrong or illegal with adding them. Munson said the issue was being raised by a group that is “not Christian.” The company has said the practice began under its founder, Glyn Bindon, a devout Christian from South Africa who was killed in a 2003 plane crash.
Are some in the military angry at this prosyletizing? Sure. But then there are some who are thrilled about guns for God, and they are in charge:
[Michael “Mikey” Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation], an attorney and former Air Force officer, said many members of his group who currently serve in the military have complained about the markings on the sights. He also claims they’ve told him that commanders have referred to weapons with the sights as “spiritually transformed firearm[s] of Jesus Christ.”
***
If that isn’t bad enough, in an ABC followup piece, “Marine Corps Concerned About ‘Jesus Guns,’ Will Meet With Trijicon,” we see just how compromised the thinking is in high levels of the military. Mind-blowing:
“We are aware of the issue and are concerned with how this may be perceived,” Capt. Geraldine Carey, a spokesperson for the Marine Corps, said in a statement to ABC News. “We will meet with the vendor to discuss future sight procurements.” Carey said that when the initial deal was made in 2005 it was the only product that met the Corps needs.
However, a spokesperson for CentCom, the U.S. military’s overall command in Iraq and Aghanistan, said he did not understand why the issue was any different from U.S. money with religious inscriptions on it.
“The perfect parallel that I see,” said Maj. John Redfield, spokesperson for CentCom, told ABC News, “is between the statement that’s on the back of our dollar bills, which is ‘In God We Trust,’ and we haven’t moved away from that.”
I don’t even know where to begin with that delusional thinking. I realize that at its core, both are Constitutional no-gos, but there is no comparison to it being on currency vs a weapon transmitting a message of both violence and religion in a military conflict where we’re already accused of infusing it with theocratic bullshit courtesy of BushCo.
I’ve been asked about this a couple of times, and Obama’s powerful speech last night creates an opportunity to talk about it: The military action in Libya. I hope Juan Cole is right and I’m wrong on this, but my skepticism is firm. There’s always a chance this could become more Bosnia, less Iraq or Afghanistan. But there’s reasons to be suspicious, and I agree with Roy Edroso here:
Jamelle Bouie, blogging at Matt Y’s place, 
Again, this president has not backtracked on any of his commitments; and at some point the bloggers and the readers there I hope they will trust this president and work with him, work with us to achieve true equality. We’re working on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell…we’re working on ENDA; you’re going to see mark up in the House next week on ENDA. These are important pieces of equality legislation for our community.
Q Over successive weeks, Congressman Barney Frank has asked the White House to clarify whether it would like to see legislative action taken this year on “don’t ask, don’t tell.” He’s said that direction from the White House has been muddled, and then at one point said that you guys were actually sort of ducking whether or not you wanted to see legislation action taken on repeal. Would the President like to see that law—
Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness said the question is whether the military, without a ban on gays serving openly, will opt for mixing gays and heterosexual troops in the same facilities or have “separate but equal” facilities.
The other piece to take a look at is David Mixner’s “
And now we have to cope with theocrat arms manufacturers. What Would Jesus Do, indeed—