With the release of the Pentagon study on the impact of repealing "don't ask, don't tell," opponents are already lined up to sob about needing more time to end discrimination.
People like Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who said:
... I believe that we need to assess the effect on the morale and the battle effectiveness of those people that I -- those young Marines and Army people I met in forward operating bases that are putting their lives on the line every day.
Or Reps. Buck McKeon (R-CA) and Joe "you lie" Wilson (R-SC), who today issued a joint statement to complain:
Today's briefing and the release of the Pentagon's report are the first steps in what should be a comprehensive process to study whether implementing these recommendations would undermine military readiness or negatively impact the war efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq.
... Today's Pentagon report must be thoroughly examined by the committees of jurisdiction to determine potential impacts on military recruitment, readiness, and morale.
But as a section of the Executive Summary of that report points out:
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, our military took on the racial integration of its ranks, before the country at large had done so ... By our assessment, the resistance to change at that time was far more intense: surveys of the military revealed opposition to racial integration of the Services at levels as high as 80–90% ... Some of our best-known and most-revered military leaders from the World War II-era voiced opposition to the integration of blacks into the military, making strikingly similar predictions of the negative impact on unit cohesion ...
The story is similar when it came to the integration of women into the military. In 1948, women were limited to 2% of active duty personnel in each Service, with significant limitations on the roles they could perform. Currently, women make up 14% of the force, and are permitted to serve in 92% of the occupational specialties. Along the way to gender integration, many of our Nation’s military leaders predicted dire consequences for unit cohesion and military effectiveness if women were allowed to serve in large numbers.
It's deja vu all over again.
Opponents of repeal need to stop pretending that they just need a little more time and shout out their unspoken battle cry of "discrimination now, discrimination tomorrow and discrimination forever." Then they can admit they're on the wrong side of history and get the hell out of the way.
