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Loading ...Obama bends to hardliners on gays in military
05.26.2009 10:12am EDT
(Washington) If President Barack Obama’s campaign promises made military leaders jittery, his five months on the job have calmed their nerves.
From his first days in office, Obama has been siding with the brass over the desires of some of his political constituency on the left. The latest examples: back-to-back moves this month to revive military trials for some prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and to fight release of potentially incendiary pictures of prisoners allegedly roughed up by U.S. soldiers.Earlier, Obama decided to slow his promised withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq. And now he’s going along with his top military advisers with a go-slow approach to repealing the ban on gays serving openly in the armed forces.
Spokesmen at the White House and Pentagon have been at pains to say Obama is committed to repeal. But a senior military official said Friday there is no timeline.
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.
Obama has surrounded himself with current and former military men, placing ex-generals in charge of the National Security Council and as ambassador to Afghanistan. He’s picked out a few favorites among the medal-chested Joint Chiefs who advise him nearly daily, and is said to enjoy the straight-talking style and field smarts common to the Pentagon’s elite officers.
Not rushing the gays-in-the-military debate adds to the reserve of good will Obama is building with officers who worried privately that Obama, with little direct exposure to the military and its culture, would cut them out of decisions or prize ideology to a fault.
Although Obama promised as a candidate that he would end the ban, he has made no specific move to do so. He has set no 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.
He didn’t mention the issue either during lengthy remarks on his national security program on Thursday or during a sometimes lighthearted commencement address at the U.S. Naval Academy on Friday.
Obama’s intent is clear to eventually lift the ban, said the senior military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because no decisions have been made. The key, said the official, is that “if and when the law changes, to do it in a deliberate way.”
Nuts-and-bolts Pentagon planning for such a change is on hold, the official said, although there are initial discussions about the mechanics of removing the ban and the possible effects. There is concern that reopening the socially and politically divisive question of homosexuality in the ranks could place an additional burden on a military stretching to fight wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the official said.
The imperatives of fighting two wars undergird some of Obama’s other decisions that have angered liberal critics while pleasing the military, including the reversal of plans to release photographs that apparently echo the images of Abu Ghraib.
Obama changed his mind after top generals, including the senior commander in Iraq, warned that the images might draw additional violence and serve as a recruiting tool for terrorists.
“There are nearly 200,000 Americans who are serving in harm’s way, and I have a solemn responsibility for their safety as commander in chief,” Obama said Thursday. “Nothing would be gained by the release of these photos that matters more than the lives of our young men and women serving in harm’s way.”
The same commander, Gen. Raymond Odierno, had Obama’s ear when the president decided to leave more combat troops in Iraq longer than promised. Odierno had argued vigorously that he didn’t want to be short-handed if violence marred upcoming Iraqi elections.
Obama took his time about approving a long-standing request to add thousands of new forces to Afghanistan, although as a candidate he had promised to shift his focus to that war. In the end his choice to commit 17,000 new combat troops and 4,000 trainers answered a near-term military need while sending a signal that the forces will pursue a new strategy.
Obama then signed off on the firing of the commander who had asked for those troops, Gen. David McKiernan, because his top civilian and military advisers had recommended it.
Former President George W. Bush’s reliance on Predator drones and other unmanned vehicles for surveillance and attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan will continue, even though they enrage both countries. The military likes drones because they are effective, relatively cheap and keep pilots out of danger.
Obama rehired Bush’s defense secretary, Robert Gates, and then gave him a green light to whack some bloated programs from the Pentagon budget. The former decision was popular at the Pentagon, the latter less so.
Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were among top Bush advisers who had come to see the military prison at Guantanamo Bay as more trouble than it was worth. Obama is keeping Mullen in his job, too.
my problem with the idea that we can’t repeal DADT now because of how we’re fighting wars is this – we are almost constantly fighting wars. Sometimes bigger, sometimes smaller, but our troops are always fighting. There is never going to be a “good time” to make this change, and there are always going to be those who have gone into the military thinking it’s a safe place for homophobia UNTIL we change the policy. The situations that make this a difficult move are not going away, so at some point we have to just do it.
I am not a religious person, but the words of Jesus come to mind, when I think back on the promises made by Barrack Obama, (these people honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me). This couldn’t be more true of him.
I still believe the way to our equality is civil disobedience, withholding of a portion of taxes to the military, protests, and lawsuits until we get our equal rights, and never stop being heard, not only with our voices but with our money as well.
It’s time to become independent voters.
I’m not ready to throw in the towel on our president just yet. In politics everything is in opportunity and timing. He has enough on his plate right now. I do think, however that constant pressure needs to continue on DADT and on marriage equality at the national level. Also continued pressure on hate crime legislation which spcifically states “sexual orientation and gender orientation”in those laws.
For an issue that 75% of the general public supports he is so reluctant. What would he do for issues like DOMA.
Hillary extended benefits to same sex couples in her jurisdiction.
What a “fierce” advocate.
Dermot’s comment is right on. Were the country not at war, GLBTQAI rights might be more easily pursued by the administration.
That’s sadly not the case. To keep the military from engaging in its usual passive-aggressive or cloak-and-dagger methods of protest (sour grapes among a significant minority or a spike in sexual harassment charges once gays can serve openly) seems to be the best way of getting us OUT of those 2 wars.
Intramural nuttiness within the military is sure to follow the permission of gays to serve openly. How much nuttiness is open to debate, as is how destructive it will be. But is now the time to find out? Maybe wait til we’ve got only got one war going on?
Like Dermot said, it’s an issue that needs to be pursued by activists – but it might be premature to start demonizing Obama. Calls to “boycott him” for this are almost laughable: will you feel better casting your vote for Palin in 2012?
It isn’t only the GLBT issues. Obama is demonstrating that all those ideals he talked about during the campaign were nothing more than that – just ideals. Anyone can proclaim to have certain convictions about issues. But then they need to follow up on those convictions and do something to bring them to fruition. So far, there’s a lot of not-so-much happening. And we can’t say it’s because the focus is on the economy. The focus has to be on many things: economy, war, defense, education, civil rights…That goes with the job of the president. During the campaign after Obama got the nomination, I was almost audacious enough to hope there would be real changes taking place. But I guess I always knew in my heart that this administration would turn out to be just like the last one, only a little less mean-spirited and with maybe some actual belief in its words (but just believing isn’t enough).
As disappointing as it is that DADT isn’t being swiftly repealed, the reasoning stated here makes…a great deal of logical sense. In this situation, it’s not about the fitness or right of LGBT people to serve in the armed forces – both are affirmed by truth and the majority of public opinion. The issue here seems to be that – even if the majority of the military goes along with it – a significant minority may not, and it may have a decimating effect of bad will. Considering that most Americans who join the military come from the South and Southwest (where cultural respect for LGBT people tends not to be high), maybe there won’t necessarily be mass-resignations, but there may be a souring of will among many servicemen. Ideally, we shouldn’t need them – they’re bigots we could do without. *sigh* But the hard reality is that the armed forces right now…can’t really afford to bleed servicemen (either in resignations or in performance-killing sour grapes).
DADT must go – that’s not in doubt – for all the same reasons everyone says it must go. But I can’t help but wonder – if I were the one making the decision and I had all these logistics reports and influential voices breathing down my neck (even if they are sometimes clearly unhinged), would *I* be able to do it? I would want to be a man of principles, but if it would mean bad will from an essential sector, I’m not entirely sure what I’d do. I mean, I’d want to do it anyway, but what the article said is true – good will is important. It’s a time like that I would hate having that job. Now, considering that Obama isn’t even gay (as far as we know), you consider that he may still have the fundamental principles in him to repeal DADT, but without a personal lifetime’s experience of being gay. He me not be able to fully appreciate just how cold it may seem to us to even temporarily detach himself from the principles of gay dignity, just like how many of us can detach ourselves when we hear of famine, plague or war far away from us.
We should not cease pressing on Obama to repeal DADT – it’s the right thing to do. But I also think we shouldn’t demonize him for not doing it very quickly. If he still does it within the span of his presidency, it will still mean something different than if he completely dropped the fundamental principle entirely. I never necessarily believed Bill Clinton became any less sympathetic of gay people just because he was railroaded away from lifting the gay ban.
President Obama needs to start supporting gay rights or we will boycott him in 2012…Us Gays need to stand together and quit, being so complacent, and say oh he will take care of us….its time to write our congressman, and make a stand…thanks
Is this what a “fierce advocate” for our equality does? Lame.
“Not rushing the gays-in-the-military debate adds to the reserve of good will Obama is building with officers.”
Enjoy it, Mr Obama. You have lost every single ounce of good will you ever had with many gay voters. Not that it bothers you, I’m sure. I just wish I had my campaign donations back so that I could give even more to the efforts to repeal DADT. You will NEVER get my vote again, regardless of what you don in the next 3 and a half years. I’d rather not vote at all than vote for a hypocrite, coward, and liar.
So the military brass is afraid that the straight members of the military are too wimpy to carry the same level of stress that the G&L members already are under. I guess that keeping that opinion in a closet is one way to protect and honor our troops.
Hope was good enough during his campaign, but now that he is actually president, we need a little more than hope. We need action.
“Obama’s intent is clear to eventually lift the ban, said the senior military official”
Clear? I’d laugh if it wasn’t such an obvious and disgusting lie. Obama has ignored any real action for the LGBT community since the day after his election. I have no faith in this Judas.
What a disappointment Obama is proving to be. Bush-lite. Where is the change we can believe in? His use of us as sacrificial lambs so he can bromance generals is disgusting.
DADT must go. It teaches discrimination, using our tax dollars to marginalize and stigmatize us. Contact your legislators and get them to move repeal to Obama’s desk. Let Obama know we expect him to sign it, as he promised.