At today’s Senate hearing examining repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was the star and a fierce gay advocate pressing for repeal of DADT. Gates, who was appointed by President George W. Bush to his current position, and by President George H.W. Bush as the Director of Central Intelligence in 1991, had no trouble speaking to Republican Senators with great eloquence but also great firmness.
Speaking to presumed GOP presidential candidate John Thune (R-SD) and approaching frustration, Secretary Gates said about delaying repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, “If not now, when? When we’re out of Afghanistan? As I look ahead I don’t see the world getting to be a safer, easier place to live.”
Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) almost immediately took an amazingly hostile position, inquiring about Admiral Mike Mullen’s previous statement that he has servied with gays and lesbians for years. Chambliss came dangerously close to impugning the Admiral’s honor and all but suggested dereliction of duty for not outing and discharging service members he knew to be gay or lesbian. “Did you discharge everyone you knew was gay at that time?,” the Senator asked the Admiral. The Admiral was forced to say he had, indeed, discharged any known gay or lesbian service members.
Chambliss had the temerity to ask Secretary Gates if he had read the report. The Georgia Senator then cherry-picked certain sentences, though not complete thoughts, from the report.
“You’re basing your opinion on a 28% response to surveys that were went to 400,000 men and women. The question wasn’t even asked to them, do you think we ought to repeal this? The question was, can we implement it?”
With Senator Wicker (R-MS,) who suggested Secretary Gates didn’t do his job by conducting a wide-enough reaching survey and assuming that repeal should take place, the Secretary almost lost his composure. Folding his hands, then taking a breath, Gates said, “What the president did in his State of the Union was say he would like to see this law repealed. Now, there aren’t enough fingers and toes in this room to count all the times that a president has said that he wanted to see a law changed.”
The Secretary went on to blast the Senator. “I didn’t spend a career in the military but I can’t think of a single prescident in American history of doing a referendum of the armed forces of a policy issue. Are you going to ask them if they want fifteen-month tours? Are you going to ask them if they want to be part of the surge in Iraq?That’s not the way our civilian-led military has ever worked in our entire history. The ‘should’ question needs to be decided by the Congress or the courts.”
He then went on to say, “I think doing a referendum on a policy matter is a very dangerous path.”