"Repeal of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' - A good Thing byt Trivial, Relatively"

Sydney M. Williams

Thought of the Day

“Repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ – A Good Thing but Trivial, Relatively”

December 21, 2010

The repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was inevitable. The polls have decidedly moved in favor of repeal since the law was enacted in 1995. I respect Senator McCain, but, in my opinion, his fears that this legislation will harm the battle effectiveness of our soldiers are unlikely to be realized. More important, it does not seem fair to discriminate against anyone because of their sexual orientation. William McGurn points out in his op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, that the vote may provide an opening to return ROTC to the nation’s elite colleges. Additionally, the nation is better off for this having been determined by Congress, rather than by the courts. However, and risking the wrath of adamant Gay-Rights advocates, it seems to me that “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is a comparatively trivial issue – certainly at a time when we face the necessity of approving a final budget for fiscal 2011, dealing with entitlements that we cannot afford and assuring the American people that the START Treaty adequately allows for missile defense.

By that, I do not mean that Gay-Rights are unimportant; they are. But the issue is not comparable to the Civil Rights legislation of the 1960s and does not, in my mind, rank with the critical issues facing our country – an economy that has kept unemployment too high for too long and a debt crisis that threatens to bankrupt the country – issues that demand the attention of those who serve us in Washington.

However, there are some for whom this victory was a major celebration. The New York Times, for example, expressed hyperbolic exuberance in their lead editorial yesterday: “At Long Last, Military Honor!” The irony of the editorial will not be lost on anyone who has read the Times over the past nine years, since the attack on 9/11, and have noted their decidedly lack of enthusiasm and support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, signed by President Clinton, called for regime change. Three years later the United States was attacked and three thousand civilians were killed. Five years later, in 2003, the dictator of Iraq Saddam Hussein was deposed and a country of 25 million was freed. The Taliban, harborers of Al Qaeda who initiated the attack on 9/11, were chased from their power base in Kabul, Afghanistan. The cost has been high to a military that has responded with overwhelmingly selflessness and honor. Over the past nine years 1.8 million Americans have served in the two countries, of whom 5838 have been killed and 41,583 wounded. Nine Medal of Honors have been awarded, all but one of them posthumously. And yet it takes the passage of a repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” to cause the New York Times to speak of military honor? What kind of a message does that send to our youth, our allies and our enemies?

As a friend in London suggested last weekend, the world, or at least The United States, appears to be undergoing one of its generational seismic shifts. The early 1960s represented one such change; the presidential election of 1980 another; now we are facing a third shift. Overwhelming debt is causing many to re-think the benefits of financial leverage, potentially impacting innovation and creativity. Deregulation is waning; re-regulation is rising. American unilateralism is being challenged with a multilateralism that includes countries about which most Americans have little knowledge. At home, we face persistent debt and an economy which, while in recovery, continues to experience almost ten percent unemployment. The pressures of the present mean less focus on the future. Washington seems to be living in a vacuum of subliminal ignorance, incapable of addressing issues like Social Security and Medicare that, if not resolved, will bankrupt the nation. Like Nero’s Rome, they fiddle while the nation burns.

Of course, issues of all stripes, including the Dream Act (which should be approved), multilingualism in schools (which should be discouraged in favor of English) and Gay-Rights are deserving of Congress’ attention, but are they as critical and as timely as avoiding bankrupting the nation or fixing the economy? For an administration and a Congress which have been bent on change – and have accomplished a lot – their sense of priority seems confused.