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Loading ...Pentagon to continue DADT discharges
05.26.2009 3:27pm EDT
(Washington) President Barack Obama’s top military adviser says 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.
Yet another disappointment from our new President, who gained the oval office but lost his spine. It’s so bad, you have wonder whether the cabal of multinational criminal corporations that privatized us to pauperism in the last 8 years decided they’d never leave. Economic aspects aside, how, HOW can Obama sit back and watch as HIS military continues to fester with blatant, institutionalized bigotry? He should be taking a page from those same genocidal monsters who are apparently now pulling his strings. The shock of war can facilitate progressive agendas and opportuniutes too. But only if one is bold enough to sieze them. War is the PERFECT time to institute major change, as Friedman, Kissenger, Pinocet’ Rumsfeld, Netanyahu, Thatcher, and Cheney have shown us.
What happened to the leader we catapulted to office shouting ‘take our country back! It’s like he has a proverbial (?) gun to his head.
By the way and just for the record, as this issue makes clear, some of those “pea-brained felons” under fire in mesopotamia are gay folks, friends of gay folks, poorly educated victims of the ongoing looting of the public trust, or just plain folks who don’t deserve that fate any more than the civilians who have died, as we knew they would, by the thousands upon thousands. I had felt similarly, have to admit, until I learned the real story of Pat Tillman. I
We will never get marriage equality and other equal rights as long as we keep teaching discrimination. DADT teaches discrimination using our tax dollars. I hope everyone here has contacted their representatives, urging them to repeal it ASAP. And be sure to contact the white house and let Obama know, it must go now.
This is so simple. Just quit firing people!! I have heard during WWII when they needed every soldier they just ignored “rumors” about what people did off base or on leave.
Tom in Long Beach
Oh okay… once again…. lets kick out thousands of troops just b/c they love someone of the same sex… it is not like we are fighting TWO WARS or anything… and I voted for this guy???
They have a lot on their plate? I fucking lay my life on line every single day to defend the rights of other people when I don’t have equal rights of my own to claim back home. I recite a creed that states that I am committed to the “fair treatment of all”, knowing that it is untrue, and these people have the nerve to give that response to my desire for equal treatment.
I serve with great and admirable men and women but I have also served next to men/women who judges provided a choice of jail or military, who clearly expressed how much they “don’t give a shit” about what we do, others who only join to take money for school then discharge, criminals, and many other characters who have no respect for what we do. Yet a person who keeps a clean record, willingly sacrifices his/her life, and cares about the safety of his country gets treated this way.
I enlisted many years ago believing military leadership would eventually fix such obvious discrimination, but appears they have failed me in that area. (I joined long before 9/11 and President Bush so please spare me the negative comments about your discontent with the wars we currently fight. Military is not a democracy and we soldiers/sailors do not pick & choose our battles.)
Never forget that Democrats love us when they want our vote and then turn on us. Never forget that it was Clinton who signed DADT and DOMA.
Obama is jerking our chain…..we need to move to Europe or Canada….our country is becoming a Theocracy like Iran. If the Gays all were to move than the “EVIL KOOKS”,will find someone else to hate…it is their nature.We are better off without them….I am sick of their evil agenda.
I say let the hetero right wing pea brain felons continue to die for us (the LGBT community). Since that is what it seems they want to do. We can enjoy what freedoms (excluding prop H8) that we have here in the USA.
“We have a lot on our plate right now” has become the battle cry of the opressor.
Yes, Mr President, that includes YOU.
It is not acceptable for this nation to let its lesbian and gay military people serve openly but it is acceptable to re-deploy military people with PTSD and on psychotic drugs with prescriptions written by Army doctors. It is not acceptable for this nation to let its lesbian and gay military people to serve openly but it is acceptable to overlook “minor drug use” and “criminal records” of straight recruits so the military can meet its quotas. It is not acceptable for this nation to let its lesbian and gay citizens serve openly, but it is acceptable for the military and its officers to “cover up the rape of female personnel” and to play the “blame the victim” game when it is straight soldiers doing the raping. This administration needs to wake up and do some house cleaning in the military before they become so desperate for recruits that they are “forced” into re-instituting the draft or before the military is made up only of right wing pseudo-christians and felons.
Doesn’t Washington bureaucracy LOVE ” assessments”, “commissions” and “study groups”? Even if someone told some of the military brass the sky was blue, they would have to “study” the matter for years before decided if that was right. The “military culture” among the tired and backward fossils that run the show is simply bigotry, and the only way to change is for the White House and Congress to drag them kicking and screaming into the–oh let’s say the 19th century!
Absurd – as if the troops in the field doing the actual fighting would be upset if gays were allowed to be open. The only burden it would place would be on the prejudices of the fat cat military administrators who don’t want their biases disturbed. A soldier in the field is glad to have someone to defend and fight with them, regardless of their orientation.