Abolishing "Don't Ask Don't Tell": David Loftus

My opinion on this matter counts for nothing. I have never served in the military. It’s a culture with which I am not familiar.

But I would think the opinion of the top military brass should be the last word on this question. And their answer, mostly, is yes. Robert Gates, the secretary of defense, supports repeal. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, made a clear commitment to a change in policy when he testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week. Former chairman of the Joint Chiefs John Shalikashvili, who headed our forces in Iraq for a time, supports repeal.

Note also that many countries who have sent troops with the U.S. to Iraq already have policies that allow gays to serve in the military without staying in the closet: Australia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Canada, France, and Germany have sent troops to Afghanistan, and they allow gays and lesbians to serve openly. Most of all, as Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens observed yesterday, gays have served openly in the Israeli Defense Force since 1993, and the old argument of a threat to “unit cohesion” has been a non-issue for them.

If military leaders are in favor of dumping the law, and so many other countries already have done without it, why haven’t we? The problem here is that “don’t ask, don’t tell” is a federal law, which means Congress has to repeal it. And since the Congress hasn’t done squat about health reform, campaign finance reform, or reining in the banking industry, why should we expect swift and sensible action on this?