It was nearly two years ago that Congress debated the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," featuring a near-hysterical Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) warning of horrible consequences if gay and lesbian soldiers were permitted to serve openly.
We heard the horror stories of weakened recruiting, poor morale, a breakdown in unit cohesion, an inevitable lack of readiness during a time of war. Even after the Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs endorsed the change, most Republicans said President Obama's policy was too big a risk.
In case anyone's forgotten, they were completely wrong.
One year [after the official end of the policy], the first academic study of the military's new open-service policy has found there have been no negative consequences whatsoever.
The study, published Monday by the Palm Center, a research branch of the Williams Institute at University of California Los Angeles Law School, found that there has been no overall negative impact on military readiness, unit cohesion, recruitment, retention or morale.
The authors of the study, who included professors at U.S. Military Academy, U.S. Naval Academy, U.S. Air Force Academy and U.S. Marine Corps War College, arrived at this conclusion after soliciting the views of 553 generals and admirals who predicted that repeal would undermine the military, as well as with expert opponents of DADT repeal, a number of watchdog organizations and more than 60 active-duty heterosexual, lesbian, gay and bisexual troops from every service branch.
Every prediction made by conservative critics turned out, not surprisingly, to be wrong (pdf). Across the board -- readiness, unit cohesion, morale, recruitment -- the right had the entire policy backwards.
To reiterate a point from May, I realize that the norms of our political discourse discourage accountability, but I'd love to know how someone like McCain, who fought tooth and nail to keep the discriminatory policy in place, explains how/why his predictions turned out to be so foolish. Maybe during one of his many, many Sunday show appearances, someone can ask him.
For that matter, it's also worth noting that the 2012 Republican platform, shaped in part by Mitt Romney aides, seems to suggest DADT should be brought back -- the Republican document decries "social experimentation" in the military and condemns efforts to "undermine military priorities and mission readiness," which sounds like a position in support of the old policy.
For the record, Mitt Romney was one of the only Republican presidential candidates during the GOP primaries not to endorse bringing DADT back, but he hasn't affirmatively vowed to keep it in place, either, saying in December 2011, "I'm not planning on reversing that at this stage."
Leave a Comment:
Okeee.... I've just gotta say it: That photo is HOT! Makes me want to sign up for some of that military service. Who do I have to salute to get in that photo?
Sigh...
Another thing, the religious groups claiming the Bible tells them so, are the same that say Catholics will all go to hell for using sacraments in their religion. These same Bible quoting religious groups believe that "just accepting Jesus as our saviour" is all they need to do to get in to heaven. And that everyone should be just like them or they will go to hell. As a catholic, I have been told this and "forewarned." I say, really? I don't need to do anything but believe? By being Catholic I don't?
So LGBT don't feel alone! If they could they would outlaw any religion not like theirs too!
Intolerance of other religions, LGBT, the list goes on. I say, really, there are people without clean drinking water in this world and kids are hungry in America. I say to bigots and "those that seek to impose their limited views onto others": Get out of your self-imposed "perfectionism", help others, and realize how impossible their thinking is--we billions of the world are not going to all be the same at anything.
meddling monk got me thinking... are the far-right-wingers actually machines? running with a binary-coded operating system? everything is either "true/false," "black/white" or "1/0" to them. there is no compromise (you get half, i get half) in anything they do.
their scientific viewpoint is that there is only "revealed Truth" or lies, no room for "we're working on that and our best theory to date is 'X' and here is our data."
only one set of morals or none. only one kind of patriotism or none. only one kind of marriage or none. only complete agreement or total war. should i go on?
and, like machines, they have no emotions, empathy, or any ability to think critically about the data they received as children. new data is evaluated as to it's agreement with old data and rejected if it does not match.
remember - when it comes to binary, there are only 10 kinds of people, those that get it and those who don't.
They're not really machines. I don't mean 'binary' in the computing sense, just that they don't see the world or it's people as a wide range of options. But they do see things in terms of either/or. Just check out this piece from ThinkProgress, which quotes Brian Brown of NOM basically saying that marriage equality will mean same-sex marriage for everyone, straights included. That can only make sense if you assume that whatever is not forbidden is mandatory. To call them machines is to say (as you do) that they have no emotions; but as the quote from Brown illustrates, they are pretty much all emotion. They just don't have any settings between 0 and 10.
The stuff I say sometimes comes from just watching what the opposition does. Sometimes it comes from research into the psychology of authoritarian minds, such as the work of Robert Altemeyer. I think it's important to understand them, especially if asymmetry (the idea that people who are pulled left or right think in different ways, rather than just having different ideas) is true (because if it is, then their thought processes are going to be somewhat alien to ours).