Ending ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ but only at the military’s pace

From a progressive standpoint, the most significant positive to come out of the president’s state of the union last week was his commitment to ending the military’s arbitrary and discriminatory “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.

In practice, however, expect the military to drag its feet — even if top military officials say they also are committed.

Today, for instance, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates told Congress the military was committed to the repeal, with Mullen offering some pretty strong language:

“No matter how I look at the issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens,” Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee. He said it was his personal belief that “allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would be the right thing to do.”

However, there is a caveat. The repeal is going to be phased in over a number of years — to give the military time to address some of what it considers to be sticky issues:

Mr. Gates said that the review would examine changes that might have to be made to Pentagon policies on benefits, base housing, fraternization and misconduct and that it would also study the potential effect on unit cohesion, recruiting and retention.

For further information, Mr. Gates said he would ask the Rand Corporation to update a 1993 study on the effect of allowing gay men and lesbians to serve openly. That study concluded that gay service members could serve openly if the policy was given strong support from the military’s senior leaders.

Mr. Gates and Admiral Mullen were responding to President Obama’s campaign pledge to end “don’t ask, don’t tell,” which the president, after a year of saying of little about it, reaffirmed in his State of the Union address last week.

“The question before us is not whether the military prepares to make this change, but how we best prepare for it,” Mr. Gates told the committee. “We have received our orders from the commander in chief and we are moving out accordingly. However, we also can only take this process so far as the ultimate decision rests with you, the Congress.”

This might seem reasonable, but it leaves gay and lesbian soldiers in limbo and signals to straight members of the military that their gay and lesbian comrades are somehow different — so different, in fact, that even with the lifting of sanctions against them they must be treated differently.

The military was desegregated — which meant mixing black soldiers with racist whites — and women have been serving with only minor incident (on the part of neanderthal men who should be drummed out). Gay and lesbian soldiers have been serving honorably and will continue to do so.

Don’t ask, just end the policy.

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In memoriam, Howard Zinn

I read Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States about two decades ago and it transformed my way of reading history, helping to shift my view away from the great men and standard narratives of the history books we had in school and toward a narrative of average people battling elites, fighting for change and to make the dream we have long talked about into a reality.
Like Studs Terkel, he was a radical interested in speaking for those whose voices are all too often silenced.

Through four presidential elections and three wars, I found his voice a necessary tonic — especially at a time when progressives have ceded their activism during Democratic presidential administrations, as too many have now.
Zinn’s people-centric approach informs my poetry — I tend to write narratives about people we normally ignore or forget about and I try to make connections between the big issues (Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.) and the people caught in the whirlwind.
I didn’t know Zinn, but I felt like I did and I am better for it and I hope the world is, as well.
Some people writing about Zinn:

David Zirin in The Nation
And, of course, Zinn in his own words.

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Score one for the president

After a lackluster first year that ended with the loss of a Senate seat in Massachusetts, President Obama decided to step into the political lions’ den this afternoon.

And by all accounts, he stepped out unscathed, having bloodied the big cats pretty badly.

The president met with Congressional Republicans this afternoon on the GOP’s home turf, in what The New York Times called “a session that resembled the British custom where a prime minister responds to questions in Parliament.”

Mr. Obama took questions from House Republicans, who pressed him on why he had disregarded their ideas and instead advanced what they called big government solutions rather than more surgical alternatives.

Mr. Obama replied that he did consider many of the suggestions they had made over the past year and incorporated some of them into his initiatives but found others unworkable or simply political posturing. Rejecting the notion that he had pushed a “Bolshevik plot” on America, he complained that Republicans had caricatured him as a radical, making it harder to then sit down and compromise.

Much of the Republican focus was on pushing Obama back on his heels, trying to make him look like the obstructionist in Washington’s gridlock culture.

President Obama, however, parried well, deflecting what were bogus claims — the GOP, after all, has been voting in lockstep, going so far as to engage in negotiations designed to mold legislation that they had no intention of voting for — with humor and more spine than his party has shown since it took over the majority in Congress three-plus years ago.

The question now is what comes next and will it mean an end to gridlock. And will it result in the kind of legislation that results in improvements to the lives of most Americans.

Politically, the president may have staunched the bleeding — by allowing the Q&A to happen on live TV, the Republicans gave him the opening he needed to answer their criticisms, to do so in a camera-friendly way that will play well on television.

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Bernanke’s getting a free ride

Anyone else with Ben Bernanke’s track record at the Federal Reserve would likely find themselves out of a job. But unless all 30 senators who have refrained from commenting on his renomination vote no, opponents opt for a filibuster and convince 20 of those holdouts to join them or enough senators in the pro-Bernanke camp change their minds, we are looking at another four-year term for Bernanke as chairman.

 

For the record, here is how things are lining up, according to Bloomberg:

  • Full Senate: 49 yes, 21 no and 30 who have not commented.
  • Democrats 35 yes, six no, 17 not commented.
  • Independents: one yes and one no.
  • Republicans: 13 yes, 14 no and 13 not commented.

The fact that the GOP is abandoning Bernanke — a Bush appointee who is very much in the Alan Greenspan mode — and the Democrats are not probably says more about the need for a third party than anything.

 

By the way, both of New Jersey’s senators — Democrats Bob Menendez and Frank Lautenberg — are on record supporting his renomination.

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Move over plumbers, make room for the telephone repairmen

I wish I knew what to make of this silliness, but it is kind of fun to watch — like the early stages of a reality show when the whack jobs are still involved.

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