10/13/10

Yesterday, a federal judge ruled that the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy violates servicemembers' constitutional rights and issued an immediate injunction that halts enforcement of the policy worldwide. The decision found that "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" harms both military readiness and unit cohesion, and as a consequence, undercuts U.S. national security. Additionally, not only does this policy contradict the military's culture of honesty and integrity, but it also costs the taxpayer at least $20,000 per discharged member of the military and results disproportionately in the dismissal of many high demand specialists in the midst of two wars. Therefore, as Congress debates this policy and the administration reviews its options, the courts' decision - which supports a policy change that a broad consensus of senior national security leaders have long advocated for - will help restore American values while advancing our country's national security interests.

Federal judge halts enforcement of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, saying it harms military readiness and unit cohesion. "A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the United States military to stop enforcing the ‘don't ask, don't tell' law that prohibits openly gay men and women from serving," writes the New York Times. "Judge Virginia A. Phillips of Federal District Court for the Central District of California issued an injunction banning enforcement of the law and ordered the military to immediately ‘suspend and discontinue' any investigations or proceedings to dismiss service members." According to the Times, the ruling found that the policy, "‘infringes the fundamental rights of United States service members and prospective service members' and violates their rights of due process and freedom of speech." The ruling also noted that, "Taken as a whole, the evidence introduced at trial shows that the effect of [‘Don't Ask, Don't Tell'] has been, not to advance the Government's interests of military readiness and unit cohesion, much less to do so significantly, but to harm that interest." According to the AP, Judge Phillips's ruling also declared that "the policy doesn't help military readiness and instead has a ‘direct and deleterious effect' on the armed services by hurting recruiting when the country is at war and requiring the discharge of service members with critical skills and training."  [New York Times, 10/12/10. U.S. District Court, Central California Division, 10/12/10. AP, 10/12/10]

"Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is harmful to U.S. national security.  The Palm Center's Nathaniel Frank detailed the costs of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", finding that, "Far from protecting military readiness, the policy has harmed it, sacrificing badly needed personnel that is replaced with less qualified talent; undermining cohesion, integrity, and trust through forced dishonesty; hurting the morale of gay troops by limiting their access to support services; wasting hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars; invading the privacy of all service members-gay and non-gay alike-by casting a cloud of suspicion and uncertainty over the intimate lives of everyone in the armed forces; and damaging the military's reputation which makes it harder to recruit the best and brightest America has to offer."

"Don't Ask, Don't Tell" has meant the dismissal of thousands of service members, many of whom are critical to today's wars. At the Center for American Progress Larry Korb and his coauthors find that, "DADT has resulted in the discharge of more than 13,000 patriotic and highly qualified men and women since its enactment more than 16 years ago. At least 1,000 of these 13,000 have held ‘critical occupations,' such as interpreters and engineers. Moreover, approximately 4,000 service members leave the service voluntarily per year because of this policy." A particularly harmful example is that "a few months after the fall of Baghdad, the military had forced out more than 320 service members with vital language skills such as Arabic and Farsi.  These are the very critical specialties in which the military continues to face personnel shortfalls."

"Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is a "costly failure."  In 2009, Joint Force Quarterly, a top military journal published for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, published a study citing a "growing gap between social mores and the law," and finding that, "if one considers strictly the lost manpower and expense, DADT is a costly failure." The author of the report, Col. Om Prakash, an active duty officer in the Air Force, concluded that the policy:

"has had a significant cost in both personnel and treasure"

 "may do damage to the very unit cohesion that it seeks to protect"

"has led to an uncomfortable value disconnect as homosexuals serving, estimated to be over 65,000, must compromise personal integrity"

"has placed commanders in a position where they are expected to know everything about their troops except this one aspect"

"is not supported by any scientific studies"

[Nathaniel Frank via The Palm Center, 8/10. CAP, 6/24/09. Joint Forces Quarterly, 2009]

There is broad support amongst both military leaders and young veterans for repeal of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy:

Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: "It is my personal belief that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would be the right thing to do. No matter how I look at this issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens. For me personally, it comes down to integrity -- theirs as individuals and ours as an institution." [Admiral Michael Mullen, via Washington Post, 2/3/10]

General Colin Powell, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,  who helped implement "Don't Ask, Don't Tell": "In the almost seventeen years since the ‘Don't Ask, Don't Tell' legislation was passed, attitudes and circumstances have changed...For the past two years, I have expressed the view that it was time for the law to be reviewed by Congress. I fully support the new approach presented to the Senate Armed Services Committee this week by Secretary of Defense Gates and Admiral Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff." [Colin Powell, 2/3/10]

General John Shalikashvili, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: "‘Don't ask, don't tell' was seen as a useful measure that allowed time to pass while our culture continued to evolve. The question before us now is whether enough time has gone by to give this policy serious reconsideration. I believe that it has." [General John Shalikashvili, 1/27/10]

Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton: "It's a matter of military discipline. All soldiers - gay, straight or otherwise - have the right to serve and to be held to the high standard of conduct currently applied to heterosexual service members. Ending ‘Don't Ask, Don't Tell' is the right thing to maintain the integrity of the military and the right thing for our security." [Gen. Paul Eaton, 10/13/10]

Air Force Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenbach: "‘Don't Ask, Don't Tell' unjustly discharges well-trained, highly skilled, motivated and combat-seasoned veterans. Discharging dedicated people with critical combat skills-13,500 of them since the law was put in place-has cost billions. Their skills are lost, the money spent training and preparing them is wasted, and the costs are high to train their replacements. In this way, the law makes us less safe." [Former Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenbach, 2/11/10]

51 retired generals and admirals and a former army secretary: In a letter to Congress, 52 military leaders recommended that Congress repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell": "We respectfully urge Congress to repeal the ‘Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy. Those of us signing this letter have dedicated our lives to defending the rights of our citizens to believe whatever they wish." [Military Leaders Letter to Congress, 7/23/08]

What We're Reading

The United States indicated that it was open to the removal of more Taliban militants from a U.N. sanctions list in order to facilitate peace talks in Afghanistan.

Israel's opposition leader and a former prime minister criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for not agreeing to a U.S.-proposed two-month extension of a West Bank settlement freeze, whose expiration has threatened to sink renewed Mideast peace talks.

Territorial disputes in the South China Sea are a growing challenge to regional stability, the United States warned, as analysts said there is little prospect of a legally binding code being developed to regulate the region. 

One week after Iraq's Prime Minister Maliki announced an alliance with Muqtada al-Sadr, the fiercely anti-American cleric who leads the Mahdi Army militia, a new coalition is taking shape to undermine the Maliki-Sadr bloc.

Long a lagging priority, the plan to produce many more highly trained Afghan troops is moving forward this fall at a rapid pace.

A group of retired Communist Party officials and intellectuals issued an unusually blunt demand for total media freedom in China, stating that the current regime of censorship and government control of the press violates China's constitution and debases the government's claim to represent its citizens.

The Pentagon's new cyber strategy, to be concluded by the year's end, will have three layers: first, follow commercial best practices on security; second, deploy sensors, which map and detect intrusions; and, third, conduct "active defense."

Thousands of former fighters are taking part in a new United Nations-supported disarmament drive in the far south of Sudan.

The haggard Chilean miners trapped under a half-mile of rock for more than two months have been emerging to the arms of their families and an electrified nation.

A new natural gas pipeline stretching from Turkmenistan to western China will help ease, but will not eliminate, Chinese demand for oil.

Commentary of the Day

Madeleine Albright and Igor Ivanov warn that we must restart our stalled nuclear talks with Russia.

Winston Wheeler writes that advocates of higher defense spending ignore what has been happening in the Pentagon's budget: as we spend more, we become weaker.

Karim Sadjadpour considers George Kennan's 1947 essay on the Soviet Union for insight into the machinations and gradual decay of Tehran's paranoid, opaque regime. He argues that Kennan's wisdom does not call on the United States to shun dialogue with Tehran, but merely to temper its expectations.