Defense Secretary Robert Gates made a pathetic excuse about why Obama hasn't followed through on his promise to end Don't Ask Don't Tell.
The president and I feel like we've got a lot on our plates right now, and uh lets push that one [reffering to dont ask dont tell] down the road a little bit.
Jon Stewart, one of my heroes, had a very simple message for Obama about this on The Daily Show this week:
All that stuff you've been putting on your plate? It's F***ing chow time, brother.
Amen to that. While I support the president in many things that he does, he needs to get some things done. Huge victories like health care for every american and adequate climate change legislation might be a long way off, but I had expected Obama to deliver on at least Don't Ask Don't tell by now. Its not complicated-homophobic laws that prevent openly gay americans from serving in the military is wrong, and impractical. This bit from Jon Stewart is really awesome, and I agree totally. Its chow time, Obama. Knock some of those things off your plate, and end Don't Ask Don't Tell. Please watch this:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Moral Kombat | ||||
| ||||
Perhaps the National Equality march will help bring this to attention? I hope so.
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I support the repeal of, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and I was wondering to myself--given BO's unequivocal pledge to end it--why they hadn't started on it yet.
Two things struck me. First, it would require a statutory change (there are some executive statement tricks they could try but to make it permanent & to do it the right way it needs to be a statutory change). Even though repeal is supported by the majority of Americans, getting it through this Congress given health care, etc is unlikely.
Second, politically speaking, it would very odd to the majority of Americans if the 1st thing BO did wrt military was to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell, without having completed the strategy reviews & troop commitments for Afghanistan & Iraq. It would like he was putting off life & death decisions over politics, or at least it would be depicted that way.
Obama is setting it up to be a decision the military makes instead of one imposed on the military by a civilian. Considering the Clinton experience (which gave us DADT) I think that's a good strategy.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/10/laying-the-dynamite-around-dadt.html
Or a horribly terrible one considering the military commanders were opponents when Clinton brought it up, and seeing as how DADT was in part a "compromise" agreed to to not atagonize the military. Considering that not to many years ago the Commadant of the Marine Corps made statements about his beliefs regarding homosexuality waiting for the military high command to get on board is a horrible idea. Many service people not at the top may be fine with it (a paper advocating the allowance of open service even won top honors at West Point), but we absolutely can not rely on the top command.
Did you follow the link? Clinton's effort to jam gay rights down the military's throat failed miserably, so that's what Obama should do too and damn him for having an actual strategy that takes more than 10 months?
Yes I followed the link. DADT became law b/c Clinton allowed congress to step in and then settled for the resulting "compromise." Even if military brass doesn't like it, whatever came out of the white house by way of signed legislation or executive order they would have to follow.
And Clinton didn't make an effort to jam gay rights down the military's throat. He talked about repealing the ban then when congress stepped in and he stepped aside. It was to avoid baring the burden of making a decision that would upset military command, but still be able to appease his LGBT supporters.
And what is this strategy exactly? It would be different if he had a strategy that was known and that would take time. But what strategy? Fire all the current top ranking military officials and get open service friendly ones appointed? I doubt it. He already has the support of many, many former high ranking officers to offset the backfire of going against current homophobic ones.
The only other thing he could be waiting for might be the time when he won't be going against some of their wishes during a time of war in which case he should not have led people tothink he would overturn DADT this time around. The time now is as good as any that is going to come this term. I personally emailed his team during the campaign about DADT and received an encouraging reply. Asking him to make good on campaign promises is not damning him.
ANd there will never be a time thatIf he comes out and gives his "strategy" I may give some benefit of a doubt. There will never be a "good" time to tackle this issue, look what happened when Clinton tried during a time of relative peace. But there have been justice department reports saying he is in a postion to act now as well as many high ranking retired officials backing open service.
Yeah, I read the link. Basically, with papers calling for an end to the ban getting top awards at West Point, the possibility of support from some DOD officials, the realization that there are people dying on there third deployment while we exclude openly gay people, and the realization that many Arabic translators have been discharged, and support from the Justice Department, what exactly is this grand strategy?
HE HASN'T EVEN PLACED A STOP DISCHARGE ORDER!!! If he was serious he could have done that much by now at least and that would not have taken ten months or even one. A simple stop getting rid of half our freakin Arabic translators in a time we are so desperate we are hiring people who barely know Arabic would be a sign he was serious at least. But nothing? And you expect me to sit on my hands like a good little girl because of a link to Andrew Sullivan?
If he had issued an order to temporarily stop discharges under DADT and then said he would look into the issue later when he could give it his full attention I would be right there with him and as happy as a peach. But until he does at least that I think he and those so eager to defend his inaction are full of it. Put a temporary cease on discharges then I'll be willing to believe there is a wider strategy.
It was entirely inappropriate of me to tell you to sit on your hands like a "good little girl". It was rude and condescending and patronizing. I should have known better, I do know better, and I will never do it again.
"God forbid the guy who could understand what that prick was saying has a boyfriend."
Excuse me, but is this grammatical construction English?
Yes.
"Across the military, women represented about one-third of the 619 people discharged based on sexual orientation. They account for just 15 percent of servicemembers."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091008/ap_on_re_us/us_military_gays
The article doesn't comment on what the cause of the skewed male/female ration might be but a Few possibilities that come to mind are: a)outright bias towards gay and bisexual women, b)more gay or bisexual women than men in the military, c) gay and bisexual women are less likely than men to hide their sexuality.
The numbers in the article essentially say that women are expelled from the military for their sexual orientation at twice the rate of men.
sorry....I wasn't exactly clear in the wording.
Should read:
a) GREATER outright bias towards gay and bisexual women than gay or bisexual men.
and
b) PROPORTIONATELY more gay and bisexual women than men in the military.
c) Gay and bisexual women are less likely than men to hide their sexuality.
That article is crazy. The part that I thought was most interesting:
"Often times the lesbians under my command were under scrutiny by the same men who were also sexually harassing straight women, so it was this kind of sexist undercurrent of 'You don't belong here,'" said Anuradha Bhagwati, a former Marine who founded the Service Women's Action Network, an advocacy group.
With straight women you can harass them, and with gay women you can have them kicked out. At least the gay men have penises (I'm pretty sure guns don't work without them)
Ummm, I'm not sure that's the clip you meant to post. This is where Stewart talks about "Chow time":
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-october-6-2009/the-gay-after-tomorrow
Yes, DADT is homophobic and unjust. But it is also unjust to not have universal health care and have 14 million unemployed in the US. I'm glad that Obama is making those his first political priorities and not spending his political capital on ending DADT right now.
That is not a pathetic excuse. That a real world decision about the kind of issues that have no effect on multimillionaires like Jon Stewart.
Are you joking? If the so called healthcare "reform" is any indication of Obama's political capital, then allowing open service may be the only promise he is capable of delivering on. All these Democratic party apologists need to learn the difference between compromise and cowardice. Because putting off DADT to pass a farse of a healthcare bill that does not provide a public option much less universal care, and does not even allow the buying of insurance across state lines, and goes out of the way to court pharmaceuticals is not compromise and only furthers the likelihood people will be opposed to further "reforms" down the road. As a whole Americans are relatively conservative (we use socialist as an insult whereas in other places they are legitimate party that wins some elections) and once this debate is out of the way they aren't going to be linin up to expand government intervention down the road.
So instead of half-assing it on healthcare and the economy, they could do something that is actually progressive and has a huge effect. If healthcare reform that doesn't offer a whole lot of reform and then lying about saying he ever supported single payer, continuing the policy agreed upon by Bush in Iraq (not that I necessarily disagree as the Iraqi gov't agreed to it as well,but it was a promise of his), the continued drone attacks into Pakistan, continued double standard with regards to Israel, continued bailouts to corporations, the firing of Van Jones over right wing talkshow host ramblings, and such are evidence of his political capital then the man is freakin bankrupt.
For goodness sakes keep the promises you can, and DADT is one that he can keep.
To "allow the buying of insurance across state lines" is what Republicans are advocating, because it means stripping states of the right to regulate the behavior of HMO's. Currently states have certain requirements for HMO's, for example those operating in Minnesota must be non-profits, some states require HMO's to provide maternity care, etc. Why would you want all HMO's to have to follow the rules of only the least regulating state?
I am an ally of the LGBT community, disagree with Don't Ask Don't Tell, and a member of the military.
Here's the thing: it's not priority right now for a reason. We're engaged in war, and to win that war, we need to steer away from as much controversies as possible. The last thing commanders on the ground need is a change in this policy, which will create a lot of dialogue that is quite frankly not condusive to fighting and winning a war.
Secondly, if Obama engages in Don't Ask Don't Tell debates, and finally repeals it, you can expect him to be a one-term president. Changes come slowly. We can't expect everything to be done in one term. Doing so at this moment is going to mean we'll get at least 8 years of Republicans in the White House come 1012.
Lastly, this is a very emotional issue, and one that is going to piss off a lot of Soldiers. Obama is already seen as anti-military, doing this now gives our opponents a lot of ammunition to go after us in 1012.
I apppreciate everyone being passionate about this - but in politics, sometimes the head is more effective than the heart.