The Washington Post’s Craig Whitlock and Greg Jaffe have a helpful report on Senate Armed Services Committee testimony provided yesterday by Defense Sec. Robert Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: Gates and Mullen both said they supported an end to “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for gays in the policy.
I criticized Barack Obama for not pushing to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell” his first year in office. What Obama has done here, though, is win the support of military leaders — something that Bill Clinton was painfully unable to accomplish when that president pushed to end discrimination against homosexuals in the military. Maybe Obama needed to wait to get Gates and Mullen to publicly support a repeal before he advocated for a repeal.
However, even if the White House has made the right moves, a repeal requires the Senate passing legislation. Given the Senate’s track record in the Obama administration of delay and uniform Republican opposition, the president should first issue an executive order putting a moratorium on the discharge of gays from the military.