President Obama should order an about-face and open the military closet

New York Daily News / WP ^ | Tuesday, June 30th 2009 | Richard Cohen

[presidio9]

Back during the initial fuss about "don't ask, don't tell," I went over to the Pentagon to see the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. We mostly discussed the situation in the Balkans and the pressure on President Bill Clinton to militarily intervene.

Then I asked about gays in the military, and the chairman, who was opposed, asked me what I thought the reaction would be if two male soldiers took to the dance floor at some military base. No different, I answered, than if a black man danced with a white woman at the same base about 50 years earlier. Colin Powell seemed taken aback, and I thought, naively, that "don't ask, don't tell" was doomed.

Now it is 16 years later and "don't ask, don't tell" is still the law of the land. More than 13,000 troops have been discharged for being gay since 1993. Last year, 619 military personnel got the boot, a number that has held more or less constant in recent years. Some of them had invaluable specialties, like fluency in Arabic.

In the view of many present and former military officers, changing the policy to allow openly gay people to serve would prove to be a disaster. In a letter to President Obama, more than 1,000 of them argued that valuable officers and noncoms would leave the services if gays were tolerated, while concerned parents would withhold permission for their sons or daughters to enlist if, God forbid, homosexuals were openly in the ranks.

This is nonsense.

American society has changed radically in the last two decades. It would now be ludicrous for members of Congress to rush down to military bases to gauge the distance between bunks - as was once done. Gays have taken their place in

[presidio9]

One thing that I've noticed about Cohen over the years: For someone so concerned about other people sharing their own sexual activity with the world whenever they feel like it, he's never forthcoming about his own lifestyle.

[OldDeckHand]

I wouldn’t expect anything less from our first Marxist President. If our military can’t be destroyed on the field of combat, it will have to be destroyed from within.

[Albion Wilde]

This is nonsense. American society has changed radically in the last two decades.

If they keep saying this, it's suddenly going to change even more radically.

[griswold3]

I saw Cohen in person once in Columbus, OH at a town hall meeting. He was there with Madeline Albright and Sandy Berger discussing President Clinton’s Iraq ‘regime change’ proposal.
Funny, they act like it never happened and I remember it like it was yesterday.

[ansel12]

Here is another one.

“One issue I want to clarify concerns President Clinton’s “don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t pursue” military policy. I believe that the Clinton compromise was a step in the right direction. I am also convinced that it is the first of a number of steps that will ultimately lead to gays and lesbians being able to serve openly and honestly in our nation’s military. That goal will only be reached when preventing discrimination against gays and lesbians is a mainstream concern, which is a goal we share.”
Sincerely, Mitt Romney

[OldDeckHand]

With “Republicans” like these, do we really need Democrats?

[CaptRon]

zhe shows his iggnorance eehen he compares the military to the civilian workforce.

[mtntop3]

There’s just one problem with all these laments: they never consider the factor of HIV.

The military works in conditions of very close proximity unlike other “occupations”; it also works in battlefield conditions where the personnel take care of, and are exposed to, wounds.

This makes for a potentially lethal situation if a serviceman or women has become HIV active, the infection rate for gays continuing, sad to say, apparently at the same high rates.

The men and women in the U. S. Armed Forces will never accept putting their lives on the line in this way.

[liberalism is suicide]

Clearly
Homosexuals
And
Nazis
Gain
Everything=CHANGE