Cheney’s DADT Comments Show Times Are a ‘Changing
Today on ABC News This Week, former Vice President Dick Cheney joined President Obama, Admiral Mullen, Secretary Gates, Gen. Powell and Gen. Shalikashvili in the growing chorus of support for repeal.
"Twenty years ago, the military were strong advocates of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,' when I was Secretary of Defense. I think things have changed significantly since then. ... I think the society has moved on. I think it's partly a generational question."
Indeed times have changed since 1993. Support for repeal transcends the ideological and partisan divides of liberal vs. conservative, Republican vs. Democrat. As we saw in Friday's Washington Post/ABC News poll, 64 percent of Republicans back repeal. And the June 2009 Gallup Poll shows it's not just liberals who want DADT gone but a clear majority of conservatives too.
The former Vice President goes on to say that he doubts ending the ban will pose the risk to unit cohesion many feared almost 20 years ago.
"I say, I'm reluctant to second-guess the military in this regard, because they're the ones that have got to make the judgment about how these policies affect the military capability of our -- of our units. And that first requirement that you have to look at all the time is whether or not they're still capable of achieving their mission, and does the policy change, i.e., putting gays in the force, affect their ability to perform their mission? When the chiefs come forward and say, 'We think we can do it,' then it strikes me that it's -- it's time to reconsider the policy. And I think Admiral Mullen said that."
As the former Vice President indicated, we're also seeing a shift in the attitudes of our military culture. In the Feb. 10th Quinnipiac Poll, for example, 57 percent of military families agreed that lifting the ban would not be divisive or undermine military readiness. Also last week, the Reserve Officers Association, the nation's largest organization of retired U.S. military reserve officers, dropped its exclusion of gays and lesbians from the armed forces, and rejected a measure in support of retaining DADT.
With unprecedented growing popular support, ending DADT this year is not the political risk that some political operatives may still fear. The focus is now on the U.S. Senate, and rightly so. Senators, Democrats and Republicans, need to step up and get repeal done this year in the Defense authorization budget bill now moving through the Senate and House Armed Services Committees.
We urgently need more leadership in the Senate. Ask your senators to stand up and vote for repeal.
02-14-10 By Jeremy Wilson-Simerman, Legislative Manager |
5 Comments
Comments for this entry are closed.Michael @ LeonardMatlovich.com on February 15, 2010 at 09.53 pm
I’m sorry, Dino, I still don’t get your point. If it is to posit that Cheney and Rumsfeld are less homohating than other Republicans, one can acknowledge that they might be, and still not see what’s your point of bringing that up in this discussion.
IMO, your stories of their storied relative benevolence only serves to make them look worse not better for they didn’t have the courage of their alleged convictions in their decades of HUGE influence across several administrations and the GOP itself. And, yet, Cheney STILL cannot bring himself to simply say: “Repeal the goddamn thing!”
Perhaps your intent was simply to “be fair,” in the same way that I have often written that Bill Clinton is not the 100% antigay AntiChrist so many assume simply for the grave mistakes he made while helping us in other ways [e.g., reversing Eisenhower’s nearly half-century ban on gay federal employees].
But the difference, ironically, is that while many in the gay community are quick to indict and exile our friends when they fall short of perfection, they are even quicker to embrace pillars of the Party that has collectively demonized us [not to mention letting us die under Reagan’s reign] for the lightest of air kisses, not infrequently from simple selective perception.
E.g., Google “Dick Cheney” and “gay marriage” and one gets hundreds of thousands of hits to articles asserting that Cheney is “for gay marriage.” In fact, he is more for a state’s right to do whatever THEY want…which would include BANNING marriage equality.
I could not care less how many gay friends or children or assistants Cheney or Rumsfeld or Guiliani or Santorum or Nancy Reagan ad infinitum have. Nor that John McCain eulogized gay 9/11 hero Mark Bingham any more than I care, per se, for Obama’s Valentine’s to us.
I care about what they DO or do not DO to raise ALL gays, civilian and uniformed, to the level of full class citizenship. By that measure, Cheney remains, at best, an indefensible part of the problem not the solution.
Dino in Washington, DC on February 15, 2010 at 07.48 pm
Let me be clear. Even if Dick Cheney had firmly called for the full repeal of DADT, I wouldn’t be about to call for the beatification process to begin for a Saint Dick. I wanted to point out that he has felt this way for a long time. Yes, as Michael mentioned he was SecDef when many LGB Servicemembers were discharged. Many of them served during Operation Desert Shield and Storm only to be kicked out afterwards. It is also true that Cheney did bury the PERSEREC Report, the 1988 DOD Commissioned Report that demonstrated that gays and lesbians should be allowed to serve openly. At the time, Cheney had Pete Williams serving as his Spokesman at the Pentagon, and Mr. Williams was outed by the Advocate in 1991. Pete Williams had served as Cheneys Press Secretary when he was the At-Large Congressman from Wyoming from 1986-1989. Other talented, competent gay people served in high levels at the Pentagon when Mr. Cheney was SecDef. Cheney’s close pal from the Jerry Ford years Donald Rumsfeld fits that mold as well. Read http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001499.php an article by Steve Clemons of the Washington Note from 2006. You will hear all about gay people in Rumsfeld’s inner circle like Stephen Herbits who was a top advisor and trusted close aide to Rummy. Rumsfeld’s gay peeps all said that he was accepting and supportive and had them and their partners at his Christmas Parties. You think about the high level aides and servicemembers at the Pentagon who are gay and lesbian but those same people would probably be kicked out or at least harrassed if they served as an infantryman at some backwater post like Fort Leonardwood, MO. Cheney and Rummy played a game of good cop bad cop. More the latter than the former.
Bill on February 15, 2010 at 01.52 pm
Can I coin a phrase “damning by faint support?” Mr. Cheney certainly fits into this category. He has been a profoundly powerful American during the whole era of DADT, but even now does not step up to unambiguously demand a prompt end to DADT. Last week, General Powell gave stronger support for reform, but only after it became politically correct among a majority of Americans and had support from a successor Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Did Powell really believe until last week DADT was a reasonable policy? These men think of themselves as leaders, not followers. I will take them more seriously when I hear that they have been on the phone with key Republican Senators (who would all promptly take their calls) demanding these Senators (who are the key to ending DADT) do what is right rather than what is convenient for the fall elections. I greatly fear “damning by faint support” will only allow a rationalization for putting off an end to DADT to some ill-defined future. Another paraphrase: “Delay of reform is denial of reform.” Just ask Dan Choi and Victor Fehrenbach
Michael @ LeonardMatlovich.com on February 14, 2010 at 10.02 pm
Despite almost universal selective perception, Cheney did not explicity endorse “repeal.” He was asked directly if it should be repealed and he, as usual, chose his words carefully. He could factually say to his right wing supporters, “I never said I supported repeal; I said I supported ‘reconsidering’ DADT.”
That’s certainly a weapon to use again John McCain, et al., who oppose even that, but let’s not unnecessarily help Cheney collect naive gay/gay ally votes for his probable 2012 Presidential campaign.
The “chestnut” remark was SOLELY about the idea that gay servicemembers were a security risk, not about the ban itself.
While Nathaniel Frank did quote a gay civilian Pentagon employee who claimed in 2007 that both Cheney and Rumsfield were “privately against DADT,” he also recalls that Cheney tried to have the pro-gay servicemembers PERSEREC studies destroyed, then withheld from the attorneys for discharged gay Annapolis sailor Joe Steffan and Cong. Gerry Studds & Patricia Schroeder. When a copy was leaked to them, his office attacked the studies saying they were invalid.
Yes, Randy Shilts asserted that Cheney tried to stop “witch hunts” and demands that gays discharged while in or after military academies repay tuition, but over 10,000 gay servicemembers were kicked to the curb during his combined reigns as DEFSEC and VPOTUS.
With other leading Republicans, and the majority of Republican voters, EXPLICITLY supporting repeal, Cheney’s hedge today is nothing to canonize him for.
Dino in Washington, DC on February 14, 2010 at 05.32 pm
It is worth mentioning that almost twenty years ago, when Dick Cheney was Secretary of Defense, in late 1991, he called the military’s anti-gay ban an “old chestnut” and “something he inherited” when he was intervied about it on “This Week with David Brinkeley. That was hardly a ringing endorsement of the policy. In “Unfriendly Fire” by Dr. Nathaniel Frank, Dick Cheney as well as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were said to privately oppose the ban.