I received an email from Brian Hughes, a former sergeant in the Army Rangers, who wrote an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal the other day, “Gays Have Served Honorably in the War on Terror,” calling for the repeal of DADT. He said that he was moved to write it after reading a post and comments in a thread on the topic that I cross-posted to Pandagon.
A veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, Hughes was awarded the Commendation Medal twice for his service, and the fact that he was gay—and out to some of his platoon mates—didn’t matter. And being in close quarters didn’t matter either.
Elaine Donnelly, are you listening? His colleagues had nothing to fear, but Hughes did…As a candidate, Barack Obama spoke out strongly against the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy of banning gays and lesbians from serving openly in the Armed Forces. He promised a full repeal of the ban if he was elected. But President Obama seems to be backing down from this pledge. The White House now hedges on the issue, saying it supports changing the policy “in a sensible way.”
What’s clear to me, a gay man who served for four years in the military, including in Iraq and Afghanistan, is that the most sensible change would be a full repeal.
I was a line infantryman in the Army’s Ranger regiment from 2000-04, earning a promotion to sergeant within three years. In that time, my platoon performed dozens of combat missions on the front lines. Our lives depended on complete mutual trust.
Several of my colleagues knew I was gay. We lived in the closest possible conditions. When there were showers, we showered together. When we were out overnight on the cold, bare mountains of Afghanistan, we slept huddled together for warmth. It should go without saying that there was nothing remotely sexual about these situations. We had uncomfortable experiences—we were at war, after all—but my buddies were never uncomfortable with me.
The reason I didn’t come out to more of my comrades wasn’t out of concern for morale. I was worried about losing my job.
Since “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” came into effect, some 13,000 service members have been fired for being gay. Thousands more decided against pursuing a full career in the military and let their contracts expire. Replacements can be recruited and trained—at a cost of more than $36 million per year—but each individual’s institutional knowledge is lost, to the detriment of the unit and the mission.
Today the strongest resistance to overturning “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” may not come from the military, which polls show mostly supports repeal, nor from social conservatives, who are not in power. Rather, there are many Democratic leaders and strategists who blame the issue of gays in the military for damaging the beginning of Bill Clinton’s presidency. They fear it could have the same effect on Mr. Obama.
There you have it—the fear is the Political Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PPTSD) of the advisors who lived through the missteps and caving during Clinton’s first term. The problem with this fossilized thinking is that the world has changed, people. The polls favor repeal; those currently serving support it. About the only group that is currently cited over and over in favor of retaining this policy are some long-retired service members and the “representatives” of this position like the shrill, catastrophic doyenne of discrimination, Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness, who did her cause no service by making asinine statements on the Hill during her laughable testimony last year.
Read some of the ludicrous things she said after the jump.