(1) How will senior leaders who sounded off publicly be treated? Will they be shuffled off, censured, or some other fate? It's hard to believe that those who spoke out so publicly against a policy would be charged with implementing it.
(2) How will the troops vote with their boots? Will they walk away just based on DADT?
I really think that for most soldiers, it'll be a shrug and they'll move on. More and more of the Army is under 30, and attitudes toward gays tend to shift dramatically along generational lines.
The one government institution that is conservative and apolitical by nature is the U.S. military. President Obama with his liberal agenda is trying to change that by politicizing and liberalizing the military by repealing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” (DADT) law and his henchmen are Secretary Robert Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen.
We used to be able to rely on the military as being the one truly apolitical American institution that was only focused on defending the United States and not advancing some social agenda. Not anymore with Gates and Mullen in charge. With their push to repeal DADT, they now bring Obama liberal-style Chicago politics to the Department of Defense. The current victim of this is Lt. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, who was publically denounced on March 25th at a public Pentagon press conference by Gates and Mullen. What was Lt. Gen. Mixon’s crime? According to Secretary Gates it was “inappropriate” to have publicly aired his feelings about the president’s desire to overturn the current don’t ask don’t tell policy. Admiral Mullen said “If there’s policy direction that someone in uniform disagrees with … the answer is not advocacy, it is in fact to vote with your feet.”
That’s very hypocritical and cynical since in the past they have let others critical of DADT speak out such as when Air Force Col. Om Prakash wrote a strong anti-DADT article in Joint Force Quarterly. Back then Mullen said it was ok because he wanted open debate. Admiral Mullen himself is the one who was inappropriate and should walk with his feet when he went against the military apolitical tradition and started pushing and advocating his personal views on DADT. Remember, DADT is the law and therefore the official policy of the military. Mullen however did not respect that. He started a big advocacy push last February at the Senate Armed Services Committee when he said it was his “personal belief that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would be the right thing to do.” Then he tweeted “Stand by what I said: Allowing homosexuals to serve openly is the right thing to do.” He also put a statement on the Pentagon’s Web site and on his own blog. That is about as public and activist as you can get.
So when Lt. Gen Mixon wrote his short letter to the editor in Stars and Stripes, he was just one of many officers who wrote their opinion. Stars and Stripes is supposed to be a daily newspaper published for the U.S. military free of control and censorship. That is unless you say something contrary to what Secretary Gates and Admiral Mullen want. Lt. Gen Mixon is a hero for saying it is important to “stop this ill-advised repeal of a policy that has achieved a balance between a citizen’s desire to serve and acceptable conduct.” He did not mention Obama or Gates or Mullen. Lt. Gen Mixon is right about DADT. DADT is not about whom you are but what you do. In the military lives are at stake and you must have military members with the highest possible moral and ethical conduct. That is why all sorts of immoral and detrimental conduct is not allowed in the military such as homosexuality, adultery, illegal drugs, bigamy, prostitution and many others. It is why you give up certain civilian freedoms and why DADT should not be repealed.
By: Brant
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