Sen. Levin pans Obama/Pentagon's survey on DADT: "I understand gay resentment"

[Bluebear]

Levin, and apparently other senior military officials, are not pleased that the President, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and the Secretary of Defense decided to violate military protocol - hell, violate the entire way our military is set up - and start polling the troops about what they think about the Commander in Chief's decision, essentially giving them veto power over their own CINC.

Can you imagine a Republican CINC agreeing to survey the troops in order to decide if the CINC's orders should be implemented? Via Cynthia Tucker, this is from TIME:

When Harry Truman wanted to integrate blacks into the U.S. military in 1948, he simply ordered it done. When the Navy wanted women on ships beginning in 1978, it commanded its admirals to do so. When the Clinton Pentagon decided women should become fighter pilots, it issued orders telling the military to make it happen. For generations, the military mind-set has been, If we want you to have an opinion, we’ll issue you one. So why is the Pentagon asking troops how they’ll feel if forced to serve alongside openly gay comrades?

“This is a very dangerous precedent,” says Lawrence Korb, who ran the Pentagon’s personnel office during the Reagan Administration. “It gives the troops the feeling that they have a veto over what the top people want.”

But even a top officer acknowledges some unease. “We’ve never done this,” Admiral Gary Roughead, the chief of naval operations, said in February after Pentagon leaders endorsed ending “Don’t ask, don’t tell” and said they would survey the troops about it. “We’ve never assessed the force because it is not our practice to go within our military and poll our force to determine if they like the laws of the land or not,” he told an activist from the University of California’s Palm Center, which monitors the issue. “I mean, that gets you into very difficult regime.”...

This morning in a roundtable with journalists, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich) added his own concerns about the survey, saying, “I can understand the resentment in the gay community.” Levin pointed out, as many gay activists have, that the survey is unprecedented.

Harry Truman didn’t poll the military when he decided to integrate the Armed Forces in 1948. Nor was there a survey when the Pentagon put women on battle ships in 1978. The Navy recently made a decision to allow women in the close quarters of submarines — again without surveying the male submariners.

“It would be really, really, really unacceptable for people in the military to believe it’s a democracy,” Levin said, adding, “I have my doubts about the content of the survey.”

http://gay.americablog.com/2010/07/senate-armed-services-chairman-carl.html
http://blogs.ajc.com/cynthia-tucker/2010/07/13/why-ask-troops-about-dont-ask-the-military-isnt-a-democracy/

[Radical Activist]

1. Ooops. The myth about Truman integrating the military quickly has been debunked.

Obama is moving several times faster than Truman, and he's doing it in a way that avoids the ugly conflicts Truman had with the Army. You didn't see it because you have me on ignore, which is why the thread didn't descend into an ugly flame-fest.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=433&topic_id=371008&mesg_id=371008

[dsc]

5. show me the survey

you certainly imply that such a survey exists so pony up. Somehow I think it is more likely that I will live to see tomatos on Mars than a link to a survey asking what the military thought of blacks.

[Radical Activist]

7. This statement is false.

"When Harry Truman wanted to integrate blacks into the U.S. military in 1948, he simply ordered it done."

[dsc]

8. That statement's context was clearly that he hadn't ordered a survey

which he didn't. The survey is a horrible push poll that had no business being commissioned.

[Stinky The Clown]

2. I agree with that essential point - the military is NOT a democracy. Just Do It is the right way.

Holding off and equivocating and doing surveys is just chickenshit cowardice on the issue.

Just Do It.

or

Just Don't Do It.

Equivocators suck. Stand for SOME damned thing, okay?

[Bluebear]

4. +

[kenny blankenship]

6. Hands up - who wants to be in the first assault wave up Omaha Beach?

What do you guys think : should we take Okinawa or just go around?

Any Russian mother's son who doesn't want to defend Stalingrad against the Nazis that's A-OK with us. Comrade General Zhukov wants you to know there will no reprisals, just get on the last truck out and leave your rifle behind, please. We know you gave it your all, and thanks for all you've done.

[Unvanguard]

3. The difference is that DADT had to be repealed by Congress.

And there was a lot of Congressional reluctance with going forward without military support. That's two additional veto points right there, each of which brings with it extra homophobia-motivated stupidity.