A Full Plate is No Excuse for Discrimination
Robert Gates’ statement that we shouldn’t expect the Obama administration to fulfill its pledge to end Don’t Ask Don’t Tell anytime soon is highly disappointing:
Defense Secretary Robert Gates says both he and President Barack Obama have “a lot on our plates right now.” As Gates puts it, “let’s push that one down the road a little bit.”
It’s simply the nature of the military that this “a lot on our plates right now” excuse will almost always be available. In retrospect, the 1990s were a period of relative peace and quiet for the military, but at the time it was seen as a stressful period of multiple deployments (to Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia) around the world mixed with efforts at containment in the Gulf and the Korean peninsula. The Joint Chiefs are never going to say “eh . . . we don’t really have much going on these days.”
Meanwhile, racial desegregation of the military actually required a large number of active steps and was successfully carried out near the peak of Cold War tensions. The biggest step toward ending discrimination against gays and lesbians in the military would be the passive step of just not discriminating against them. Gay and lesbian soldiers are already serving. Gates could just decide that with as much on his plate as he has at the moment, he’ll make sure we stop persecuting them.
48 Responses to “A Full Plate is No Excuse for Discrimination”
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March 29th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
Utter dogshit: Obama can multitask except when we can’t. I dunno what Gates’s problem is, but getting rid of DADT is great policy and great politics. Sooner the better on both counts.
March 29th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
This is why I worried about Obama’s post culture war rhetoric. it has a way of becoming policy. If Obama doesn’t change this policy before he is done with his first term I will not vote for him.
March 29th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
Oh, Matt, stop making so much sense. You’re going to cause these military guys to short circuit.
March 29th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
Get ready, this is going to be Obama’s excuse not to do anything liberal or progressive.
And half of you will buy it.
March 29th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
Not disagreeing but Wikipedia has different line on end of racial segregation in US military:
In 1948, President Harry S Truman’s Executive Order 9981 ordered the integration of the armed forces shortly after World War II, a major advance in civil rights. Using the Executive Order (E.O.) meant that Truman could bypass Congress. Representatives of the Solid South, all white Democrats, would likely have stonewalled related legislation.
…
At the end of June 1950, the Korean War broke out. The U.S. Army had accomplished little desegregation in peacetime and sent the segregated Eighth Army to defend South Korea. Most black soldiers served in segregated support units in the rear. The remainder served in segregated combat units, most notably the 24th Infantry Regiment. The first months of the Korean War were some of the most disastrous in U.S. military history. The North Korean People’s Army nearly drove the American-led United Nations forces off the Korean peninsula. Faced with staggering losses in white units, commanders on the ground began accepting black replacements, thus integrating their units. The practice occurred all over the Korean battle lines and proved that integrated combat units could perform under fire. The Army high command took notice. On July 26, 1951, the US Army formally announced its plans to desegregate, exactly three years after Truman issued Executive Order 9981.
March 29th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
It’s precisely because DoD has a lot on it’s plate that this law should be repealed immediately. From the office of Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA):
I don’t know what problems on Sec. Gates’ plate are solved by homophobia and a shortage of human intelligence specialists and military police but he should articulate how homophobia is more important to national security than trained personnel. And maybe DoD should stop doing joint ops with 20 NATO countries and Israel, all of which ban sexual discrimination in their military and allow openly gay people to serve in their armed forces. We wouldn’t want any of teh gay to get on our full plate.
March 29th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
The military is not a sociology experiment.
March 29th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Judd I hope you understand that having high moral standards is extremely important in a military. It must reflect the values of our country in order to be effective. Kicking people out of our military becasue they are gay is not somethng that reflects our values. Remember the previous administration opposed letting gays in the military, but its concern for ethical conduct in the military somehow was no strong enough to prevent Abu Ghraib. I hope Obama will do better.
March 29th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
“The military is not a sociology experiment.”
It doesn’t need to be. We did the experiment already with racial integration of the military, which worked out great.
March 29th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
Although I wish the policy would change immediately, it’s hard to miss the change in tone on the issue. In lieu of staunchly defending the policy and insisting it will never change, saying that the topic should be taken up sometime in the future is an improvement. In effect, it changes the question from whether, to when. And it’s a sign that the day is rapidly approaching. Keep pushing.
March 29th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
We did the experiment already with racial integration of the military, which worked out great.
Yeah, well, smart guy, how many wars have we won since then?
March 29th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
What does it even mean to say that the military isn’t a sociology experiment? Both opponents and supporters of letting homosezuals serve openly in the military are proposing this as a long term policy that would never change. Its hard for me to see how letting people serve openly is an experiment. There isn’t any evidence that would convince either side that it was a mistake.
March 29th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
Coming from out of left field, I wonder if there’s a connection between the military’s shoddy reocrd of dealing with male-on-female sexual assaults and the continuation of DADT on some level. Essentially, the brass couldn’t turn such a blind eye as to the actual going-on between soldiers (as well as civilian contractors, etc.) with the additional scrutiny of right wingers looking for “gotcha” cases of same-sex sexual violence. Not a theory, just a thought…
March 29th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
The military places a lot of value on having moral, upstanding people in it.
Does anyone really believe gays qualify as that? Half of them spend all their time hopped up on meth, and the rest have HIV. They are not people who my children would feel comfortable or safe serving with.
I commend Obama for refusing to sell out to the gay agenda. If he did, it’d be tantamount to stabbing our troops in the back.
March 29th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
Shorter Judd: Fags!!
March 29th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
I should not in fairness to Judd that I assumed that he is against letting gays serve openly. I only assumed this because concern about ’sociology experiments’ is more likely to come from a conservative than a liberal. It is entirely possible that he supports gays serving openly, but somehow thinks concerns about ’sociology experiments’ are relevent in this context. There are contexts in which that kind of concern is more justified. For instance taxing cigarettes is a sociology experiment and there is a line of arguement that says we shouldn’t have government trying do things like that. Notice how in the case of a cigarette tax advocates would support changing the policy if evidence showed it had bad consequences. Letting gays serve in the military isn’t like that. Even if it reduced the effectiveness of our forces I would still support it, because I place an infinite value on social equality. By contrast conservatives place an infinite value on preserving any social inequality that exists at any given time. Strangely if we change the policy not only will conservatives support the new policy, but they will claim that real conservatives never opposed it in the first place.
March 29th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
“A lot on our plate” is pathetic, though not really worse than the other arguments for drumming gays out of the military. The history Otto cites pretty much sums it up. Actual desegregation (as opposed to the formal policy) didn’t just occur at the height of the cold war, it occurred on the front lines of a large “hot” war.
Gates is basically acknowledging that Obama has decided to continue the policy because of political risk and institutional opposition to change.
March 29th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
“The military places a lot of value on having moral, upstanding people in it.”
You must be joking. The military places a lot of value in turning human beings into efficient killing machines. It may be necessary, but it certainly isn’t moral. Before you tell me that these people have exceptional morals, spend some time watching the soldiers at the strip club located near your local military base.
March 29th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
Thinking again I realized that I made a mistake. In terms of strict morallity countries wouldn’t have militaries. In this context militaries exist for strictly utilitarian purposes and if having gays serve totally crippled the military it would be a bad idea. I don’t think the military’s policy toward gays is or ever was designed to improve its effectiveness. It is a difficult issue because on the on hand we want the military to reflect our values and on the other we want it to kill people. Thus I revert to arguement B which is that both letting gays serve and kicking them out are sociology experiments. In one we allow our military to grow increasingly disconnected from society as a whole as it discriminates in a way that no other institutions do and on the other hand we let gays serve in the military and find out how that effects its ability to function. I am completely certain that letting gays serve is the more prudential course. Still I do wish there were some way for countries not to have militaries because they are not a good thing. I don’t think unilateral abolishment of our military is a good idea, but it says something about the way countries regard their militaries that it is rarely meantioned that we would be better off without them.
March 29th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
I have to disagree a little with fostert. Yes militaries are about killing people and we would be better off without them, but I don’t think members in the military are any worse morally then people like me who didn’t serve. In fact most of them are probably more decent. Part of the problem with excluding gays from service is that many gays are very decent and moral people. Also most of the people who serve in the military are fine with the gays they serve with, the anti-gay stuff is a reflection of the bigots who run Washington rather than what the country wants.
March 29th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
Yes I am all for bypassing the military’s concerns and expediting the end of discrimination. But why stop at DADT? We should also, in the name equality, allow women to serve in combat positions. Then we should accept everyone regardless of size or disability.
I have no objection to ending DADT but equality and discrimination should not be the overriding reason for how the military should decide policy.
March 29th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
Interestingly if having Gays serve in the military made it less effective that would argue for creating universal standards that gays serve in every countries military. This would reduce the absolute effectiveness of militaries while maintaining their absolute effectiveness. However there is no evidence that including gays has an effect on our ability to kill each other.
March 29th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
The military places a lot of value on having moral, upstanding people in it.
The military places a lot of value on having moral, upstanding people in it.
Maybe being gay should be a felony. THEN gays would be able to serve in the military with a waiver!
March 29th, 2009 at 5:50 pm
Thanks, Matt, for your deep insights into what makes for effective small unit cohesion, based on your years of study of the subject.
March 29th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
With women I would argue that flat bans on military in combat are in the same catagory as DADT. If women are excluded it should be on the basis of physical and mental ability to fight judged on a level playing feild with men. Also maximizing military effectiveness shouldn’t be the overiding concern, the overiding concern is minimizing the social costs of having a military that is as effective as we need it to be.
March 29th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Steve Staller please understand that it is not acceptable in a democratic society to exclude people from political debate on the basis of lack of expertise. Matt knows what he knows about and he can and should express his opinions. I don’t think it is crazy to think that DADT wasn’t a brilliantly designed policy to maximize small unit cohesion. It is a fucked up policy resulting from deep seated anti-gays attitudes in our society which have reduced somewhat but still exist.
March 29th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
Thanks, Matt, for your deep insights into what makes for effective small unit cohesion, based on your years of study of the subject.
We’ve heard that same argument before from your ideological ilk regarding racial integration of the military. Crap then; crap now. People who are unable to serve in units (of any size) with black people or gay people should find another line of work. Yes, it’s that dang simple. Get over it, bigots.
March 29th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
Re: The military is not a sociology experiment.
It doesn’t need to be. Evidence from both civilian life and from foreign militaries (including tough ones like Israel’s, Britain’s and Australia’s) proves that gays and starights can get along OK.
March 29th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
Steve Sailer, your sarcasm is irrelevant to the topic at hand. If Gates wants to act like it’s still 1993 and argue “unit cohesion,” we can have that argument. But he’s not. He’s saying, “Gee, great idea, but—heard this before?—equality willl have to wait for a more convenient time.”
And Gordon Gekko, do you want to say the way in which keeping gays out of the military is similar to keeping disabled people out of combat positions? Or are you just here to troll?
March 29th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
Well, it’s a funny thing. In 1927 the Army did a study of soldiers smoking marijuana in the Canal Zone. And they found that, even in an area where so many soldiers were smoking so much marijuana, it just wasn’t worth worrying about, because they weren’t seeing bad consequences.
It’s not the consequences people are worried about. It’s just their own prejudice.
The modern Army is, at base, an immensely cushy gig. There are always people who don’t want to share a cushy gig. Most discrimination is just a legalized form of theft.
And yes, this is immensely chicken-shit of Obama. He should thank Gates politely for his inability to do anything and then issue an order ending DADT.
March 29th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
I think otto makes the important point. Surely it’s much easier to make these kind of changes in wartime than in peacetime. It makes perfect sense to assume that it’s soliders with no war to fight who are more likely to spend time abusing minorities within their own ranks. When there is an actual enemy to worry about, the threat of teh gayz within is a lot less important. And you get to the end of the war and hey presto, desegregation pt II complete.
March 29th, 2009 at 7:36 pm
”When Joe Chink’s mortars began to chug,
The old Deuce-Four began to bug [out].”
Wikipedia and otto are right. Desegregation of the Army was noticeable by its absence from 1948-1951. What was widely noted, however, was how quickly the units began integrating after combat operations began in Korea; and by 1952 it was particularly noted that the closer one got to *the line* the more integrated the units became.
March 29th, 2009 at 8:10 pm
Clearly, at last in this case, “push that one down the road” is thinly disguised code-speak for throw the gays under the bus.
March 29th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
Just out of curiosity, how many openly gay people would serve in the military if DADT were ended? I have no idea, but I’ve been told that gay men are more likely than straight men to volunteer for the military. A gay friend of mine (a liberal Christian minister, of all things) told me some time ago that gay men are less rationalistic, and more susceptible to the emotional appeal of things like patriotism, religion, and dying for a cause.
If this is true, then allowing openly gay men to serve could be good for the military. And, more generally, Western civilization seems to be suffering from a surfeit of rationalism, so perhaps gay men have something to offer our society as a whole. The fact that homosexual acts may be morally wrong (I’m increasingly leaning towards agnosticism on that issue, though still a little more on the ‘morally wrong’ side of the ledger). Strip clubs, prostitution and pornography seem to me to be _more_ wrong (from a natural-law perspective) than homosexuality, but no one is talking about firing soldiers who visit strip clubs (although I’d be happy to see that happen).
March 29th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
As Gates puts it, “let’s push that one down the road a little bit.”
If allowing gays to openly serve in the military is a bad idea, it’ll be a bad idea down the road. But Gates isn’t saying it’s a bad idea (probably because it isn’t). This is dogshit. Somebody should do something about this.
March 29th, 2009 at 9:10 pm
It would have been more precise for Gates to say that the administration, rather than the military, has a lot on its plate right now.
While I completely support allowing gays to openly serve in the military, the reality is that instituting such a change now would be an enormous political storm in the midst of an economic crisis, a budget battle and a financial bailout.
Given the maelstrom such a move would cause among conservative culture warriors and Republicans in Congress, I assume the Obama people see this as a fight they don’t wish to get into at this moment – especially in light of their shaky, to say the least, handling of the financial crisis/bailout. They’re looking at it from a political prism. And you know what? It makes sense as far as politics is concerned. And given that politics is the realm in which they must work, I can’t say I blame them.
March 29th, 2009 at 9:17 pm
Re: Given the maelstrom such a move would cause among conservative culture warriors and Republicans in Congress
I have no doubt that the usual suspects would set up their usual whining and moaning, but I don’t think it would amount to a maelstrom– a teapot tempest might be closer. A lot has changed in this country since 1992.
March 29th, 2009 at 9:21 pm
They’re looking at it from a political prism. And you know what? It makes sense as far as politics is concerned. And given that politics is the realm in which they must work, I can’t say I blame them.
Repealing DADT is a stone cold political winner, a tempest in a teapot as JonF correctly put it. Sure, Republican douchebags would whine, but they’d be marginalized by the still gowning Reality Based Community. Pull that band-aid off and move on, none too soon.
Given the maelstrom such a move would cause among conservative culture warriors and Republicans in Congress
Which in particular? How do you see that playing out?
March 29th, 2009 at 9:29 pm
Thing is, the IDF is a bastion of secularism. Maybe militant secularism, but it’s the lineal descendant of the militantly secular Haganah (and Stern Gang, and Irgun). Meanwhile, the real crazies over there don’t serve.
Whereas we have this whole “onward Christian soldier” bullshit.
March 29th, 2009 at 10:07 pm
You know what’s really good for unit cohesion?
Encouraging military personnel to become adept at misleading their superiors and colleagues. Really builds trust.
March 29th, 2009 at 10:46 pm
At least wait until we’ve cashed the check for the 4th generation Gaydar!
March 30th, 2009 at 12:45 am
V: Yeah, next week is always better than this week. You should read “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” there’s a lot in there you’ll recognize.
What relevant circumstances will be different after the economic crisis et al? Is that when the GOP and the religious right will finally have decided to live and let live?
March 30th, 2009 at 8:53 am
What’s rather interesting is that, in the Macedonian/Greek Army of Alexander the Great, sexual relations between members of the Companions, an elite force of high ranking officers, was considered a method of inculcating unit cohesion.
March 30th, 2009 at 9:30 am
DADT has always been absolute bullshit. As a retired general once said, it excludes capable people from serving which de facto weakens our army. Its proponents are traitors.
The culture warriors will cause a stink about ANYTHING. We may as well do something just, since their reactions are preprogrammed anyway.
This is a test flag for abandoning any progressive agenda, period. We need to raise a big stink, or we’ll have Clinton’s presidency all over again.
March 30th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
The right will always find something to attack Obama about. If he doesn’t end DADT, they’ll just make stuff up — birth certificates, teleprompters, global currency, socialism. It doesn’t matter.
I thought we learned already that trying to govern from a defensive crouch in the face of an aggressive enemy (the GOP) doesn’t work.
March 31st, 2009 at 12:34 pm
I don’t really see why you are spending time on Gates’ opinion on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Wrong-headed as he is, his job is to enforce the law. And DADT isn’t an administrative policy (ala racial segregation in the military) which the Obama administration could reverse at the stroke of a pen. It is a law passed by Congress which the Executive Branch is required to uphold.
If you want to get it changed (and I agree that it ought to be), forget Gates and go after the members of Congress.
April 9th, 2009 at 8:08 pm
Not that I’m totally impressed, but this is a lot more than I expected for when I found a link on Delicious telling that the info here is quite decent. Thanks.