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Thursday, March 12, 2009
Commandeering the Commanders?
This article in the San Francisco Chronicle, titled "Tauscher Renews Effort to Repeal 'Don't Ask,'" reports on the plans of the San Francisco-area congresswoman, including this:
"She also suggested that because the Pentagon is enforcing an act of Congress, Obama order the Pentagon to report on how a repeal might be implemented and thus empower top brass to take a position."
Rep. Tauscher, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, surely knows that this could be seen as an abuse of authority by the Commander-in-Chief. Members of the Joint Chiefs are obligated to answer questions from members of Congress truthfully; it would be out of line to pressure uniformed leaders to endorse in advance any type of controversial legislation.
This would be especially wrong in the case of a bill that, according to the annual Military Times Poll, active-duty troops consistently have opposed strongly for four years in a row.
The article also suggests that Tauscher wants to establish some sort of commission to "study" the issue, headed by former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Army General Colin Powell. In the same interview she described this cause as the next big "civil rights" issue. Rep. Tauscher keeps forgetting that the 1993 law is about conduct-not individual rights.
Tauscher also should know, as Elaine Donnelly wrote in a National Review Online article titled "Where is Colin Powell on Military/Social Issues?," that General Powell famously dismissed the civil rights issue long ago.
General Powell has made a few comments suggesting that "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" should be reviewed. (CMR agrees-President Bill Clinton never should have imposed that administrative policy on the military in the first place, and his successor, George W. Bush, should have dropped Clinton's inconsistent "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" regulations long ago.)
But that is a far cry from the unsupported assumption that Colin Powell is ready to impose the full gay agenda on the military, or that he would allow his good name to be used to lend credibility to advance the agenda of an assembly of gay activist groups who want to use the military for their own purposes.
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