McCain says gay troops represent an ‘intolerable risk’
I suspect it’s difficult for supporters of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” to come up with a rationale for their position. They probably realize they can’t come right out and say, “I don’t like gay people,” or “Dobson told me I have to take this position,” so they’re left with varying degrees of incoherence.
Take John McCain, for example.
In an April 16 letter to Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN), McCain says the law, passed in 1993, “unambiguously maintains that open homosexuality within the military services presents an intolerable risk to morale, cohesion and discipline.” Senator McCain goes on to incorrectly assert that the U.S. Supreme Court “has ruled that the military may constitutionally discharge a service member for overt homosexual behavior.” […]
“Most importantly, the national security of the United States, not to mention the lives of our men and women in uniform, are put at grave risk by policies detrimental to the good order and discipline which so distinguish America’s Armed Services.”
This is breathtakingly dumb and is the latest evidence of just how far McCain has slipped into “crazy base world.”
First, McCain cites a Supreme Court ruling that doesn’t exist. Strike one.
Second, McCain calls gays an “intolerable risk” to military morale, cohesion, and discipline. Really? According to a recent Zogby poll of active personnel, 73% of military members say they are comfortable around lesbians and gays. For that matter, more than one in five U.S. troops already knows a gay person in their unit, including combat units. So where’s the “intolerable risk”? Strike two.
Third, McCain emphasizes “national security” as a rationalization for discrimination. In what way, exactly, does it improve our national security for, say, Bleu Copas, a decorated sergeant and Arabic language specialist who joined the Army after the 9/11 attacks, to be thrown out of the military for being gay, despite his role in helping translate intercepted messages from possible terrorists? Are we more or less safe with Copas as a civilian? Strike three.
There isn’t even a political upside to any of this for McCain. A recent Newsweek poll asked Americans, “Do you think gays and lesbians should or should not be able to serve openly in the military?” It wasn’t even close — 63% said they should, 28% disagreed.
The troops don’t care; Americans don’t care. And yet, there’s John McCain — the “maverick” — with his absurd defense for the indefensible.
Maybe McCain should take another look at a recent op-ed from former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.), who backed the DADT policy in 1993, but who has since come to realize his mistake.
24 nations, including 12 in Operation Enduring Freedom and nine in Operation Iraqi Freedom, permit open service. Despite controversy surrounding the policy change, it has had no negative impact on morale, cohesion, readiness or recruitment. Our allies did not display such acceptance back when we voted on “don’t ask, don’t tell,” but we should consider their common-sense example.
I dare a DADT supporter to explain to me why foreign militaries are strong enough to allow gays to serve openly, but the United States military, the finest in the history of the world, is too weak. Please.
The first U.S. Marine seriously wounded in Iraq was Staff Sgt. Eric Alva, who lost his leg when he stepped on a land mine. Because Alva is gay, McCain apparently thinks Sgt. Alva had no business joining the U.S. military. That somehow, his sacrifice was in vain because he shouldn’t have been allowed to wear a uniform in the first place.
As the campaign progresses, McCain regresses. By January, I expect him to be dragging his knuckles, grunting, and carrying a club.
There isn’t even a political upside to any of this for McCain. A recent Newsweek poll asked Americans, “Do you think gays and lesbians should or should not be able to serve openly in the military?” It wasn’t even close — 63% said they should, 28% disagreed.
And poor McCrazy needs to pander to the 28%, who largely make up the base of the Republican party. Or he doesn’t survive the primaries.
Must suck to be strapped to the Titanic.
By January, I expect him to be dragging his knuckles, grunting, and carrying a club.
Now now, CB. You’re insulting the GEICO Caveman.
I would rather predict that, come January, one would find McRampstrike gnawing on his knuckles, whimpering for mercy, and being beaten remorselessly by a large mob of knuckledragging, grunting, semi-bipedal lifeforms with clubs (a.k.a. the denizens of Crazy Base World)….
i think mccain’s age is the biggest factor here. it seems to me that as each new generation comes of age, each is more tolerant than the last. increasingly, racism, sexism, homophobia, and a host of other unsustainable cultural biases are going the way of eugenics and phrenology. not that these tropes aren’t being replicated in the cultural petri dish, but with each generation the matrix is becoming less and less supportive of hating people for things they can’t help (hurray for mlk; that was a good dream).
so it’s not surprising that mccain, the septuagenarian, would hold to cultural biases that are on their way out, and i look forward to his flameout as another brick out of the wall we built around ourselves.
I’m pretty sure McCain had gay sex as a prisoner in Vietnam. That proabably explains a lot.
Some comedian once said that, when it comes to gays in the military, he thinks it’s great. After all, if I have someone covering my ass, it wouldn’t hurt if that person thinks my ass is cute …
Seriously, though, The McCain Implosion Tour ‘07, while entertaining, shows just how much one has to pander to the base in order to be successful in the GOP. Whether or not the arguments make sense is irrelevant as long as you say what the hatemongers want to hear.
It’s obvious McCain is pandering to his newfound base. I, for one, won’t vote for any Republican who’d make the current Iraq War a neverending one. McCain has forever lost my once highly regarded opinion and respect of his once highly regarded stance on issues that are important to all Americans, not the trivial issues he now pursues that are important only to the narrow-minded conservative base.
The troops don’t care; Americans don’t care. And yet, there’s John McCain — the “maverick” […] — CB
Swimming upstream and behaving irrationally is, precisely, what makes him a “maverick”. It’s a situation similiar to that in Olde England, where a peer of the realm was called “eccentric”, while the hoi-polloi acting in the same way was just plain “stark, raving, mad”. We don’t have peers of the realm; we have high-ranking politicians, but the principles are the same, even if the euphemisms we use are somewhat different. Can’t have a Senator be called “batshit crazy”; now, can we?
Oh, mercy!!! If gays are allowed to serve in the field, they’ll probably want to redecorate the checkpoint in pastel hues, or something else that would be detrimental to combat efficiency!!!!
The truth is, it’s called “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” because if you DIDN’T ask and they DIDN’T tell, you would never know. “Overtly homosexual” behavior such as lisping and batting of eyelashes is a myth outside comedy-show parodies. John McCain is legislating (with phony legislation, at that) against a strawman.
More proof, if any were needed, that McCainiac as PoTuS would represent an intolerable risk to the entire fucking world. This SOB is one of the many reasons I don’t watch TV. If I see him I might bust my knuckles trying to get my hands around that hate-spewing tedious old whore’s neck.
Can you imagine this gibbering idiot with more power than he has now? [shudder] I wonder how desperate BushBaby is to secure some sort of semi-decent legacy? He might be willing to settle for Second Worst President EvA and ask Unca Dicky to crank up the Diabolic Diebold program in order to get this drooling sack of crap into the Oval Office.
Fine, maybe it is all an act to trick Das Base into voting for him and he’d turn around and tell them to get stuffed. So fucking what? It’s like dressing up in the robes and hood & setting fire to a cross to get the inbred WS vote. You can do it, but prepare to catch some hate from the right thinking people of the world.
The insidious thing (or one of them) about the pathetic attempts at justification by McCain and his ilk is that the “unit cohesion” argument basically says, “You know, I’m not personally against gays and lesbians, but our troops are just too bigoted and homophobic to deal with it.” At least Pace took his homophobia on his own shoulders. Same thing happened during racial integration — “Oh, you know, I’m not racist, but our boys sure are.” If I were in the military, I’d be really insulted by this crap.
McCain is suffering a humiliating, combined degeneration of personality and backbone. The way he’s going, he’ll soon be in favor of returning to segregation and decrying the right of women to vote.
“Animals without backbones hid from each other, or fell down.”
– I Think We’re All Bozos On This Bus, Firesign Theatre
So… 73% are comfortable around homosexuals and just over 20% actually know a homosexual in their unit. Who’s to say the latter isn’t the remainder of the former? Just a thought.
Well duh, obviously they don’t present an intolerable risk to morale.
The real reason McCain can’t say what he thinks about gay army personnel is that he agrees with this guy:
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/gays_too_precious_to_risk_in