Skip to main content

"Don't ask, don't tell" may be on the chopping block, but apparently nobody knows where the hell the ax is

Kafka, not Dana, would be the appropriate reporter for this story, as the AP chronicles the fascinating waffle of the Obama administration and the so-far successful public foot-dragging of senior military officials:

President Barack Obama's top military adviser said Sunday the Pentagon has enough challenges — including two wars — without rushing to overturn a decade-old policy that bans gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military and incites political and social factions on both sides.


Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he is working on an assessment of what — if any — impact overturning "don't ask, don't tell" policies would mean for the military and its culture. In the meantime, the Pentagon plans to follow the existing rules, which say gays and lesbians can serve in the military if they do not disclose their sexuality or engage in homosexual behavior.

"The president has made his strategic intent very clear, that it's his intent at some point in time to ask Congress to change this law," Mullen said. "I think it's important to also know that this is the law, this isn't a policy. And for the rules to change, a law has to be changed."

During his presidential campaign, Obama pledged to overturn the Clinton-era policy and promised that gays and lesbians could serve openly in uniform. But he has made no specific move to do so since taking office in January. He has not set a deadline for repeal, has given the Pentagon no direct orders and has kept Capitol Hill guessing about when he might ask for a change in the law.

Mullen said the military would not start on a timeline until Congress acts.

Obama's go-it-slow approach has drawn criticism from gay rights groups, including activists and fundraisers who met in Dallas to organize a grass-roots lobbying effort to force Obama's hand.

Last week, Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs stood at the White House podium and reiterated the president's eventual goal, although he said the administration was fine with Congress taking the lead on the potentially divisive subject.

"Try as one may, a president can't simply whisk away standing law of the United States of America," Gibbs said. "But if you're going to change the policy, if it is the law of the land, you have to do it through an act of Congress."

Gibbs' counterpart at the Pentagon issued a similar statement.

Obama's top advisers — in uniform and in politics — have urged restraint despite the issue's resonance among the president's left-flank base. They want Obama to move with a deliberate plan that accounts for all potential consequences during wartime.

Retired Marine Gen. James Jones, the White House's national security adviser, said this month he wasn't sure the policy would be overturned.

"We have a lot on our plate right now," he said.

There is concern that reopening the socially and politically divisive question of gays and lesbians in the ranks could place an additional burden on a military stretching to fight wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Buying time serves both the Pentagon's desire for caution and Obama's desire not to pick an unnecessary fight. Former President Bill Clinton never fully recovered from his miscues over the gays in the military issue.


Meanwhile, since the Obama inauguration, over 200 [the number rises each week] LGBT American citizens have been discharged from the US military, including--as Waldo tells us--one of our very few Arab linguists...

At a certain point, President Obama's performance on this issue moves from far-sighted through prudent, past pandering and into gutless.

We're about halfway through the P's now.

Comments

Delaware Watch said…
It's interesting what people find significant in a news story. This is what I find significant:

""The president has made his strategic intent very clear, that it's his intent at some point in time to ask Congress to change this law," Mullen said. "I think it's important to also know that this is the law, this isn't a policy. And for the rules to change, a law has to be changed."
Miko said…
Perhaps it's time for a demonstration of civil disobedience, i.e., a massive coming-out by soldiers. As I recall, Obama promised not to do anything good unless a lot of us forced the issue. So long as it's just a trickle of dismissals, he's going to keep his attention on bombing civilians and coming up with weak arguments to justify permanent detention of the kidnappees in Gitmo. But if 10% or so of the military is kicked out in one day, it might get his attention.

Popular posts from this blog

Comment Rescue (?) and child-related gun violence in Delaware

In my post about the idiotic over-reaction to a New Jersey 10-year-old posing with his new squirrel rifle , Dana Garrett left me this response: One waits, apparently in vain, for you to post the annual rates of children who either shoot themselves or someone else with a gun. But then you Libertarians are notoriously ambivalent to and silent about data and facts and would rather talk abstract principles and fear monger (like the government will confiscate your guns). It doesn't require any degree of subtlety to see why you are data and fact adverse. The facts indicate we have a crisis with gun violence and accidents in the USA, and Libertarians offer nothing credible to address it. Lives, even the lives of children, get sacrificed to the fetishism of liberty. That's intellectual cowardice. OK, Dana, let's talk facts. According to the Children's Defense Fund , which is itself only querying the CDCP data base, fewer than 10 children/teens were killed per year in Delaw

With apologies to Hube: dopey WNJ comments of the week

(Well, Hube, at least I'm pulling out Facebook comments and not poaching on your preserve in the Letters.) You will all remember the case this week of the photo of the young man posing with the .22LR squirrel rifle that his Dad got him for his birthday with resulted in Family Services and the local police attempting to search his house.  The story itself is a travesty since neither the father nor the boy had done anything remotely illegal (and check out the picture for how careful the son is being not to have his finger inside the trigger guard when the photo was taken). But the incident is chiefly important for revealing in the Comments Section--within Delaware--the fact that many backers of "common sense gun laws" really do have the elimination of 2nd Amendment rights and eventual outright confiscation of all privately held firearms as their objective: Let's run that by again: Elliot Jacobson says, This instance is not a case of a father bonding with h

The Obligatory Libertarian Tax Day Post

The most disturbing factoid that I learned on Tax Day was that the average American must now spend a full twenty-four hours filling out tax forms. That's three work days. Or, think of it this way: if you had to put in two hours per night after dinner to finish your taxes, that's two weeks (with Sundays off). I saw a talking head economics professor on some Philly TV channel pontificating about how Americans procrastinate. He was laughing. The IRS guy they interviewed actually said, "Tick, tick, tick." You have to wonder if Governor Ruth Ann Minner and her cohorts put in twenty-four hours pondering whether or not to give Kraft Foods $708,000 of our State taxes while demanding that school districts return $8-10 million each?