It would solve that whole juicy girl problem, too.

You are a fruit cake.

I’ve made it pretty clear that the current policy concerning gays in the military wasn’t created and enacted solely by Congress, as you absurdly note. Anybody who goes through the primary and secondary accounts of the history of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, knows that Pentagon officials played a large hand in crafting the policy that we have today.

The current policy is something that the military brass was willing to accept in 1993 and Congress abetted their willingness.

So, the notion that all one has to do is go and petition their elected representative to have the policy changed is pat at best. Such a notion totally ignores the powerful institutional pressure, outside the Congress, that keeps the status quo in place.

“…the military didn’t make the policy, Congress did. The military just implements the policy Congress legislates.”

Bottom line is that it is a Congressional policy that if people want to change it they need to call their Congressmen not the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

I’m well aware of the personal positions of high level civilian officials at the time, as well as the sort political stunts engaged in by some activist groups. I’m also aware, as you stated, that many American voters had strong opposition to fully integrating homosexuals into the military and that they strongly voiced those concerns to their representatives.

However, all those things do not take away from the main point that I was making to GI: that the current “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy IS NOT something that was solely created by representatives and senators in the United States Congress. The impression that GI gives, is that high level Pentagon officials had no say in the current policy. In GI’s formulation, the military was merely “following orders”.

It is this argument that most know to be utterly false. You didn’t have to have been in the Pentagon’s working group in 1993 to know that fact.

In his book, “War in a Time of Peace”, the late journalist David Halberstam writes this about Powell and the issue of gays in the military:

“Powell himself was very conservative on this issue, and friends remember him becoming quite irate when the argument was made that integrating gays into the military was a step not unlike integrating blacks some 45 years earlier. It was by no means the same, he said quite vehemently. Powell was also speaking for many of his colleagues who were decidedly unenthusiastic about the idea. Opposition on the part of the Joint Chiefs and within the entire military cadre would be very, very strong, he said, because it touched on issue of human sexuality, opening up questions far more divisive than those raised by racial integration. POWELL ADVOCATED A “DON’T ASK, DON’T TELL” POLICY, which would not satisfy everyone-indeed, it would probably not satisfy anyone on either side-but it would almost surely work. The military, he(Powell) believed, with its inherent codes of justice and fairness, would do the rest.”

(This quote is taken from page 205 of the paper edition of “War in a Time of Peace)

There you have it: GI’s Congress, ALONG with its conservative allies in the military forced on President Clinton and then pushed through the current policy.

To be honest DMZDave, I think that you give me way too much credit when you say that I’m engaging in “revisionism”. When the fact of the matter is, I’m engaging in something far more mundane: stating a mere, obvious fact.

Senator Nunn among others heard loud and clear from their constituents that they wanted the Congress to oppose. The radical gay rights group Act Up staged a “kiss in” protest in Nunn’s front office and it did not have its intended affect. He was disgusted ss were a large number of staff on the Hill and Act Up definitely helped kill the Clinton initiative. The White House also was rocked by the reaction from the publicand Clinton was in swift retreat. Powell, Aspin and Nunn provided him a reasonable opportunity based on the new policy to retreat. Clinton grabbed it and ran with it and probably smacked Stephanopoulos about the head and shoulders for getting him into that one in the first place.

I agree with GI in terms of the way the Army generally deals with gays. My policy for gay and heterosexual misbehavior was always, don’t put it in my face and make me deal with it. The only gays I tossed were those who didn’t keep their hands to home and molested other soldiers. And of course there was the time I was walking through my motorpool in Graf and I found two soldiers going at it in the back of a Gamma Goat (yeah I’m an old guy). No matter what, for some reason that Goat’s bumper number was always being repainted HHB-69 by some clever jokester.

Today, so many gay soldiers are being discharged because they are stepping forward and saying “Iraq sucks and so do I.” You sign up today for 4 years, you’re going to do 8 after you are recalled from the IRR. Just say you are gay and you’re out. Obviously a lot of young men and women are stepping forward to “tell.”

…so to speak.

I’m sorry GI, but this is either a highly bowlderized interpretation of actual events or a fumbling attempt at historical revision.

Yes, GI, you’re right in that it was Congress who debated and eventually pushed through the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. But yet again, your engaging in a semantically shallow analysis.

Any sensible and serious telling of the history of the current “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy must contend with three indviduals: Senator Sam Nunn, who in 1993 chaired the Senate Armed Services Committee; Charles Moskos, the military sociologist who laid the intellectual foundations of the policy; and obviously Colin Powell, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

It was these three individuals that gave serious energy in pushing through “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”. Did Congress play it’s substantial role? Of course. But so did very powerful and influential individuals such as Colin Powell. Moreover, it was due to vehement protests, in part by the Pentagon brass, on comments made by then President Bill Clinton, the resulted in the policy we have today.

So the notion that the military itself had no role whatsoever in crafting “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is clearly and demonstrably false. They were one of the intials groups that ignited the controversy, and along with their allies in Congress, successfully manuevered in passing the policy into law.