Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Change. Don’t Win.
Why Former USAF Chief of Staff Merrill McPeak’s
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Memories Don’t Apply To Today’s Military, Or To Today’s America, And Will Make Us Lose Every Battle, Foreign And Domestic.
This week saw more momentum toward repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Senator Joe Lieberman introduced his “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal bill in the Senate. Congressman Patrick Murphy, author of the House’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal bill, headlined HRC’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Citizen’s Lobby Day. But in a New York Times Op-Ed, Merrill A. McPeak, the 74 year-old former Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force, who retired more than fifteen years ago, urged America to, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Change.”
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Change.” What an exquisite epitaph, that should be engraved on the tombstone of the conservative movement.
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Change.” It’s the very language and practice that embodies and explains America’s financial crisis, America’s housing bubble, America’s health care crisis, America’s eduction crisis, America’s infrastructure crisis, America’s misguided “War on Drugs,” America’s misguided “War on Terror,” America’s diminished world reputation, and, well, most everything else that’s wrong with America today. Not to mention, most everything that was wrong with the America of yesterday.
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Change” explains why the insurance and financial industries have been able to rule Congress without sufficient regulation.
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Change” explains why this country has a secret child homelessness problem, yet allows the bigoted policies of some states to deny same-sex couples the right to adopt.
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Change” explains when the NRA is quietly one of the most powerful and richest lobbyists in America, why school shootings have more than doubled over just the past few years, and why 32 Americans — eight of them children — die every day from gun violence.
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Change” explains why people like California’s vehemently anti-gay state senator Roy Ashburn, who represents a stridently conservative district, ultimately had to go down in flames, pulled over and arrested for DUI after leaving a gay bar,
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Change.” Frankly, it’s what head-in-the-sand ostriches and head-in-the-air, too-stupid-to-stop-drinking turkeys do. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Change” means we don’t move forward, we don’t solve problems, and we don’t win. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Change” means we all lose.
Keeping quiet about issues that need improvement is not only bad for America, it’s downright un-American. Imagine if the Founding Fathers told folks, “Oh, that whole taxation without representation thing? We’ve decided on a policy of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Change.'” America would still be an English colony.
Now, all that said, let’s look into what else McPeak is offering.
McPeak retired from the military in 1994, just one year after “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was adopted. So, any experience with that law he may have had in his distinguished career would be minimal.
“I was one of the service chiefs when the “don’t ask, don’t tell†compromise was reached in 1993. Until then, every person coming into the military was asked questions directed at establishing sexual orientation, and admitted homosexuals were automatically rejected.”
(Ah, the “good ole days,” right, McPeak?)
Second, McPeak is 74. He comes from a different time, a different world. Americans, and the soldiers of today, are far more comfortable with gay men and lesbians than the soldiers of his day, which ended in 1994.
Remember 1994? The Menendez brothers had their first trial, Apple sold its first “PowerPC,” Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were murdered, Kurt Cobain committed suicide, and George W. Bush was first elected Governor of Texas. In 1994, a man named Marc Andreessen, founded a company called “Netscape,” which introduced its first version of something called a “web browser,” named the “Netscape Navigator.” And in 1994, Marc Andreessen spoke at the “first conference devoted entirely to the subject of the commercial potential of the World Wide Web.”
That was 1994, McPeak’s last year in the military. My, things sure have changed, haven’t they?
McPeak’s argues are that the military is not about civil rights. “Why should exclusion of gay people rise to the status of a civil-rights issue?,” he asks. He says the money we expend on training “people who were eventually removed on account of homosexuality [is] minuscule.” And finally, and most importantly to him: the military is not about the individual, but the team.
“[I]t would be a serious mistake to imagine that personal performance is what matters in combat. Combat is not a contest between individuals, like poker or tennis; it is a team event whose success depends on group cooperation and morale. So the behavior that concerns us is not individual achievement but the social dynamics of relationships and groups. The issue is whether and how the presence of openly declared homosexuals in the ranks affects the solidarity of the unit.”
Let’s repeat that.
“[T]he behavior that concerns us is not individual achievement but the social dynamics of relationships and groups.”
This is McPeak’s main argument, that “homosexuals,” (as he writes clinically and disparagingly,) adversely affect “unit cohesion.” That argument is not just plain false. It is outdated.
Taking McPeak himself to task, along with The Times, Media Matters says it best:
“[N]umerous studies have considered and debunked the unit cohesion myth and the Times itself has reported on a prominent study that found that allowing gays to serve openly “does not undermine unit cohesion, recruitment, retention, morale, or overall combat effectiveness.”
As they did last month, as well:
Award-winning Joint Force Quarterly essay: Unit cohesion argument “not supported by any scientific studies.” In an essay published in the fourth quarter 2009 issue of Joint Force Quarterly — which is “published for the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, by the Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University” — Col. Om Prakash wrote of “don’t ask, don’t tell”: “[T]he stated premise of the law — to protect unit cohesion and combat effectiveness — is not supported by any scientific studies.” The essay won the 2009 Secretary of Defense National Security Essay Competition.
Face it, McPeak, the “team” doesn’t have the problem you feel they do with “openly declared homosexuals in the ranks.” Perhaps you do, but today’s soldiers do not.
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Donald Trump is on his fourth day of promoting his false claim that 20,000 undocumented Haitian migrants were dumped on Springfield, Ohio and have destroyed the townsfolk’s way of life, including by stealing people’s pet cats and dogs and eating them. Now, one U.S. Senator is suggesting the Republican presidential nominee is using “stochastic terrorism” to help his flailing presidential campaign.
A bomb threat and another, unspecified threat forced several Springfield elementary schools and one middle school to evacuate or not open Thursday and Friday. On Thursday, the Springfield city hall was evacuated and shut down, as were some state motor vehicle offices.
The emailed bomb threat on Thursday echoed Donald Trump’s and U.S. Senator JD Vance’s racist lies.
“My hometown of Springfield is becoming a thirdworld (expletive) because you allowed the federal government to dump these (expletive) here,” the email stated, USA Today reports. “We have Haitians eating our animals and then you lie and claim this is not happening when we see this happening. I’m here to send a message, I placed a bomb in the following locations…”
RELATED: ‘Hell Isn’t Hot Enough’: Fury at Trump as More School Evacuations Follow ‘Pet-Eating’ Lies
During Tuesday’s presidential debate Trump had falsely said: “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats, they’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
On Thursday he used the lie to promote the candidacy of a Republican seeking to unseat Ohio Democratic U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown.
And on Friday, despite the bomb threat and other unspecified threat, Trump said in a press conference he would travel to Springfield and vowed to do “large deportations” from that city and send the legal immigrants he removes to Venezuela.
The “20,000 illegal Haitian migrants” are reported 12,000 to 15,000, ABC News reports, and they are not “illegal.” They are in the country legally, and the town as far back as a decade ago resolved to invite immigrants to help rebuild their failing economy and businesses.
Trump: We will do large deportations from Springfield, Ohio. Large deportations. We’re going to get these people out. We’re bringing them back to Venezuela pic.twitter.com/41CdKtcmwq
— Acyn (@Acyn) September 13, 2024
Also on Friday, while reportedly not repeating the racist pet-eating lie, Trump dismissed the bomb threats as unimportant.
Reporter: The mayor of Springfield, the police chief, the Republican governor have all debunked this story about pets. And now there are bomb threats at schools and kids being evacuated.
Trump: No no, no, the real threat is what’s happening at our border pic.twitter.com/oDvbGDURYB
— Acyn (@Acyn) September 13, 2024
U.S. Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) is not dismissing them, but he is asking how anyone could function again under a Trump presidency, and suggesting Trump is engaging in stochastic terrorism.
RELATED: Loomer Invokes Hannibal Lecter as Trump Triples Down on Lies About Immigrants Eating Pets
“Think about what it would be like to have four years of a President engaging in overtly racist stochastic terrorism against people pursuing the American dream and then just ask yourself what your immigrant grandparents would want you to do. Kids deserve to go to school safely,” Senator Schatz wrote.
Wajahat Ali is a New York Times contributing op-ed writer, Daily Beast columnist, and author of “Go Back to Where You Came From.” Responding to the news Friday of more school evacuations, Ali wrote: “Stochastic terrorism thanks to Trump and Vance.”
Mother Jones’s D.C. bureau chief David Corn, an MSNBC analyst, also noted: “Trump and Vance incite. Look up stochastic terrorism.”
And Mother Jones on X posted: “Days after Trump went on a racist rant during the presidential debate, the city of Springfield, Ohio, received a bomb threat that was explicitly hostile to immigrants and Haitians. This further proves that Trump’s demonizing rhetoric portends violence.”
Watch the videos above or at this link.
READ MORE: Trump Faces Increasing Calls to Participate in Second Debate
For the second day in a row, elementary school children in Springfield, Ohio, were forced to be evacuated due to threats: a bomb threat on Thursday and an unspecified threat on Friday. The threats come after Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio U.S. Senator JD Vance, have repeatedly spread lies about Haitian immigrants in Springfield this week, including that they are stealing residents’ cats and dogs and eating them.
Thursday’s bomb threat specifically mentioned the false claims about Haitian immigrants eating people’s pets, USA Today reported.
“Three schools in Springfield were evacuated or closed Friday, based on guidance from police, school officials said,” local NBC affiliate WLWT reports. “Officials with the Springfield City School District said that based on information they got from the Springfield Police Division, students at Perrin Woods and Snowhill Elementary were evacuated and moved to another district location.”
A Springfield middle school was also ordered closed Friday morning, before classes began, and “at least one Springfield location of the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles is closed.”
READ MORE: ‘Screaming About Eating Cats Is Not a Solution’: Walz Rallies Michigan Crowd, Slams Trump
On Thursday, a bomb threat targeting Springfield city hall and an elementary school forced evacuations of those buildings.
“Police Chief Allison Elliott said that due to the seriousness of the threat, officials evacuated multiple buildings in addition to City Hall, including BMV Springfield Driver’s Exam Station, Ohio License Bureau Southside, Springfield Academy of Excellence and Fulton Elementary School.”
Despite the reports of the bomb threat on Thursday, hours later Donald Trump used his Truth Social platform to promote the Republican nominee working to unseat Democratic U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, by spreading more anti-Haitian immigrant racism.
“Bernie Moreno has a very good chance of winning Ohio against a Radical Left Democrat, Sherrod Brown, with what is happening in Springfield, and other parts of the State,” Trump declared Thursday afternoon, referring to the far-right extremist Republican who is currently leading in the polls by low single digits.
Trump then invoked his racist Haitian immigrant lies.
“Ohio is being inundated with Illegal Migrants, mostly from Haiti, who are taking over Towns and Villages at a level and rate never seen before.”
On Truth Social, Trump on Thursday also posted memes of cats, including one with them holding a sign that says, “Don’t let them eat us, vote for Trump.”
RELATED: Loomer Invokes Hannibal Lecter as Trump Triples Down on Lies About Immigrants Eating Pets
During Tuesday’s presidential debate, Trump had falsely claimed, “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats, they’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
USA Today also reported that the “false rumor that Haitian migrants were stealing and eating pets began to circulate in the days leading up to the debate and was further popularized through posts from running mate J.D. Vance about his own state and AI-generated images shared by Trump, Elon Musk and the Republican House Judiciary Committee.”
J.J. Abbott, former press secretary to then-Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf, responded to ABC News immigration reporter Armando Tonatiuh Torres-García’s viral social media post reporting Friday’s threat and evacuations:
“In 2018, the GOP and Trump’s anti-immigrant conspiracies led to the deadliest mass shooting in recent PA history at a synagogue in Pittsburgh. The gunman took him seriously and literally. There’s nothing funny or intriguing about this dangerous racism.”
In 2018, the GOP and Trump’s anti-immigrant conspiracies led to the deadliest mass shooting in recent PA history at a synagogue in Pittsburgh.
The gunman took him seriously and literally.
There’s nothing funny or intriguing about this dangerous racism. https://t.co/W3nCdSQEAw https://t.co/xMn9fGCOjG pic.twitter.com/ol0gXbNFQG
— J.J. Abbott 🦅 (@jjabbott) September 13, 2024
Many others responded to that reporter’s post.
“No sanitizing this. @jdvance and @realDonaldTrump bear full responsibility. They’re promoters of terrorism; and they did it intentionally,” wrote columnist, reporter, and former editor in chief of Crooked Media Brian Beutler.
“Ohio should look at this insanity and vote accordingly. Conspiracy peddling has real consequences. You can’t unring that bell. Donald Trump and JD Vance don’t care,” noted constitutional law professor and political scientist Anthony Michael Kreis.
“Donald Trump and JD Vance are terrorizing schoolchildren. They are unfit for any public office, let alone the highest,” responded attorney Andrew L. Seidel.
“JD Vance and MAGA influencers whipped up a blood libel panic and now children in Springfield are being traumatized by their lies. Hell isn’t hot enough,” commented the co-executive director of the progressive group Indivisible, Leah Greenberg.
“There’s a line from Charlottesville to Jan 6 to this. Trump speaks, his supporters act,” wrote political analyst and researcher Arieh Kovler.
“Trump could stop this but he won’t because he believes it serves his interests. It’s the same J6 behavior of spreading false conspiracy theories to inflame his supporters and then sitting back and watching instead of stopping it,” noted political science professor Michael McDonald.
READ MORE: Trump Faces Increasing Calls to Participate in Second Debate
Minnesota Governor and Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Tim Walz took aim at Donald Trump Thursday night at a rally in the battleground state of Michigan, where the Harris campaign is leading the ex-president by an average of less than two points.
The Detroit News’ Craig Mauger posted a photo of the overflow crowd at the Grand Rapids Public Museum:
A portion of the crowd at a museum in Grand Rapids to hear from Tim Walz tonight: pic.twitter.com/LdH5CSIVXV
— Craig Mauger (@CraigDMauger) September 12, 2024
Gov. Walz’s speech (full video here) was decidedly down-home and neighborly, but he had no trouble going on the attack as well.
He told the audience that their friends and neighbors had watched Tuesday night’s presidential debate, during which Trump had lied that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are “eating the dogs” and “eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
Walz did not denigrate Trump supporters. Instead, he said that after the debate, “I don’t hear them out there much. I don’t see them out there much. They’re a little bit – because they’re good people. They’re our neighbors. They’re like, ‘that didn’t look very presidential.’ Screaming about eating cats is not a solution. It’s not a solution.”
RELATED: Loomer Invokes Hannibal Lecter as Trump Triples Down on Lies About Immigrants Eating Pets
“Well,” Walz continued, “what Kamala Harris was talking about is things that you actually care about. They might not be sitting down at the bar talking about banning books, but they might down there be talking about, ‘how can I afford a house? I’m working hard. I’m working hard. I want to have a house,’ and because that house becomes a home to some of these folks. Your real estate mogul, venture capitalist, whatever, that’s just an asset to be traded and sold to whoever you want. For us, it’s a place we gather around the kitchen table to talk to our kids about what happened in school. That’s what Kamala Harris wants for you. That’s what she wants for you.”
Tim Walz continues to be very good at this pic.twitter.com/ksbFPrvCRR
— Acyn (@Acyn) September 13, 2024
The 60-year old governor who is the only one of the four candidates on either ticket with a positive net approval rating (Harris comes in second), focused on midwestern values.
“What I am most proud of is because of all the things Donald Trump has stolen and all the things he did, what is unforgivable, is him stealing our joy. So here’s the thing, Kamala Harris is bringing not only solutions that focus on you. She’s doing it with a smile and joy on her face.”
“This guy, this guy on purpose, and make no mistake, it’s on purpose. He broke our political system. He tried to break our faith in one another. He tried to break the thing that makes Midwesterners stick together. We’re positive people, for God’s sakes. We walk on water half the year, we have to be it’s cold as hell,” Walz said. “We don’t care. We dig our neighbors out. This guy is trying to tell you your neighbors the enemy. This guy’s trying to tell you that he knows best about what folks in Grand Rapids need. Well, trust me, nothing could be further from the truth.”
“So here’s the deal, we’re nice folks. We’ll dig you out after a snow storm. We’ll say ‘hi’ at the store. Some of us might even let you merge on the highway. Not all of us,” he joked. “We have a saying for that. It’s Minnesota Nice, is what we call it. I’m sure you have it too. But the one thing I’ll tell you about Midwesterners that stretches across that beautiful blue wall of Northern America here, the one thing about us is, don’t ever mistake our kindness for weakness.”
READ MORE: Multiple-Location Bomb Threat Follows Trump and Vance’s False Dog-Eating Immigrants Claims
Walz also went after school shootings while reassuring supporters Democrats support the Second Amendment.
“Leaves are changing,” Walz said, as The Detroit News reported. “Friday night football’s back. Our kids have a new start and they’re going in. It’s a time of excitement and hope. Everything we want. That’s what we want for our kids.”
“But too many of our kids, these first days of school, are a time of sheer terror. A time that is going to stick with them forever,” he said, referencing school shootings.
“I know guns, you know guns,” he said. “Kamala Harris is a gun owner, by the way, which you found out. I’m not going to take any crap (from Republicans) about the Second Amendment. We support the Second Amendment.”
“But our first responsibility,” Walz continued, “is keeping our children safe. And you can have both.”
He also referred to shootings as “that crap,” and reminded the crowd that it “does not happen in other places in the world.”
Walz, a former U.S. Congressman who served for 24 years in the U.S. Armed Forces, called Donald Trump a “criminal.” Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts in New York for business fraud in an attempt to subvert the 2016 election.
He told the crowd Vice President Harris’s debate performance should have not been a surprise.
“She took on the predators. She took on the fraudsters,” Walz said. “She took down career criminals and powerful corporate interests, which, by the way, was on the stage the other night, all those things so, so this time, just to be clear, that criminal being on the stage got put in his place.”
“And this is what true leadership looks like. And she says this time and time again, and I love it. A mark of true leadership is not who beats people down, it’s who lifts people up, who lifts them up. So so when it’s a bully, and there’s a time she proved she can beat some people down if they need it.”
Walz: That criminal on the stage got put in his place pic.twitter.com/hDgwW4Gi4r
— Acyn (@Acyn) September 12, 2024
Watch the videos above or at this link.
READ MORE: Trump Faces Increasing Calls to Participate in Second Debate
Senator Suggests Trump Engaging in ‘Stochastic Terrorism’ Amid Pet-Eating Immigrant Lies
‘Hell Isn’t Hot Enough’: Fury at Trump as More School Evacuations Follow ‘Pet-Eating’ Lies
‘Screaming About Eating Cats Is Not a Solution’: Walz Rallies Michigan Crowd, Slams Trump
Loomer Invokes Hannibal Lecter as Trump Triples Down on Lies About Immigrants Eating Pets
Multiple-Location Bomb Threat Follows Trump and Vance’s False Dog-Eating Immigrants Claims
News3 days ago‘Screaming About Eating Cats Is Not a Solution’: Walz Rallies Michigan Crowd, Slams Trump
News3 days ago‘Hell Isn’t Hot Enough’: Fury at Trump as More School Evacuations Follow ‘Pet-Eating’ Lies
News2 days agoSenator Suggests Trump Engaging in ‘Stochastic Terrorism’ Amid Pet-Eating Immigrant Lies