General Petraeus' statement this week on DADT:
"I believe the time has come to consider a change to Don't Ask, Don't Tell. I think it should be done in a thoughtful and deliberative manner that should include the conduct of the review that Secretary Gates has directed that would consider the views in the force on the change of policy. It would include an assessment of the likely effects on recruiting, retention, moral and cohesion and would include an identification of what policies might be needed in the event of a change and recommend those polices as well."
Anti-gay social conservatives will be contacting Moveon.org to see if it has any of those General Betray Us posters left over.
10 Comments for “Not Betraying Us”
posted by Carl on
I wonder if we will be hearing more about this type of thing in efforts to convince everyone that gays shouldn’t openly serve in the military. Sadly I can actually see a number of senators using this.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/federal-eye/2010/03/ex-general_links_gay_troops_to.html
posted by Jorge on
Anti-gay social conservatives will be contacting Moveon.org to see if it has any of those General Betray Us posters left over.
Doubtful. The Moveon-ers will be recycling them for a new shrill campaign because he didn’t go far enough.
posted by Tom on
I think the “betrayal” argument was stupid, a case of misplaced impatience.
First, the impatience.
Major studies relating to sexual orientation and the US military — the Navy’s 1957 Crittenden study, the 1989 study by the Defense Personnel Security Research Center, the 1993 RAND Corporation study, for example — all found that sexual orientation is irrelevant to military performance.
Similarly, studies relating to the effect of allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in allied military forces — the 1993 Government Accountability Office study, the 1994 assessment by the U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, the 2000 British Ministry of Defense study, academic studies by the Palm Center and other university think tanks that study the military, for example — conclude, invariably, that lifting bans on open service by gays and lesbians had no negative impact on military readiness, including recruitment and retention.
So there is little doubt how the study currently underway will turn out. It will, condensed to a few words, “We can repeal DADT with no serious problems.”
In the sense that we know the outcome, impatience is, I suppose, justified.
But the impatience is misplaced.
Military leadership has been signaling their readiness to repeal DADT — Mullen’s and other senior officers’ statements to that effect, statements by past JCS Chairmen, polls reported in Stars and Stripes, and recent articles concluding that having openly gay and lesbian service members will not have adverse effects on combat readiness that have been published in military internal journals, including an article published in the Joint Force Quarterly, an article reported to have been reviewed and approved by Mullen and other senior leadership.
The military does not enter the political debate directly, because that is not the tradition of the United States, but all of these things are signals that the military is ready to repeal.
Given the signaling — the military leadership is ready for DADT to go — it is inevitable that DADT will be repealed. The social conservatives are not going to win this fight, although I expect them to make a hell of a noise about it, and impune the military as incompetent in the process.
But there is good military reason to move deliberately.
Military culture is “top down”, in the sense that orders are obeyed, but also “democratic”, in the sense that leadership understands that “buy in” by junior officers, NCO’s and enlisted personnel is an important factor in ensuring that orders, when issued, are carried out efficiently, effectively and uniformly.
In spending a year confirming the earlier studies and planning for implementation, military leadership is building into the DADT repeal process an opportunity for military leadership to build the case for DADT repeal from the inside out, facilitating “buy in” both to the necessity and wisdom of DADT repeal itself and to the military’s implementation plan for repeal.
I believe that DADT repeal is overdue, and I understand the impatience. But I think that it is more important to do it right than it is to do it quickly.
posted by Throbert McGee on
Meanwhile, last year’s DADT poster boy Dan Choi evidently felt he was suffering from a dangerous surplus of credibility, and effected a 99% reduction on Thursday by chaining himself to the White House fence while wearing his Army National Guard uniform.
Naturally, there was imaginative chanting involved.
posted by Jorge on
Meanwhile, last year’s DADT poster boy Dan Choi evidently felt he was suffering from a dangerous surplus of credibility, and effected a 99% reduction on Thursday by chaining himself to the White House fence while wearing his Army National Guard uniform.
Let’s split the difference and say 75%.
posted by Carl on
Does anyone have any thoughts on General Sheehan’s comments and whether you think there’s any validity to them?
posted by Tom on
Carl: “Does anyone have any thoughts on General Sheehan’s comments and whether you think there’s any validity to them?”
General Sheehan’s remarks don’t seem to have much, if any, validity. Dutch General Henk van den Breemen, reportedly the “source” of General Sheehan’s views, called his remarks “absolute nonsense”. The flawed performance of the Dutch military at Srebrenica has been studied extensively, in the Netherlands and outside, and General Sheehan’s theory is, well, unique.
posted by Jimmy on
On Gen. Sheehan’s comments:
His comments bespeak of a desperation that could be compared to what, I imagine, a dinosaur would have felt a few moments after that status-quo changing asteroid smacked into the Yucatan 65 million years ago. I’m sure he probably thinks it’s the end of the world, and for him, it is.
And life will go on without his ass.
posted by Jorge on
The general lumped gays openly serving under a combination of, I think he meant something like a relaxing of standards or liberalization within the military. So you can see how lazy his thinking and the thinking of his alleged source is. The accusation is very easy to disprove: eveyone in the Netherlands disavows it, citing their actual study of the incident, which states there was a lack of training. This is just water cooler talk.
I think it’s possible that the Netherlands integrated gays into the military without studying its possible effects and by somehow sacrificing rigorous standards and training. We’ll have to avoid that.
posted by Tom on
General Sheehan has, in essence, retracted his statements.