JOHN McCAIN'S NO
LONGER A HERO:
HIS STANCE ON PATRIOTIC GAYS
IS SHAMEFUL AND UN-AMERICAN
Watching the Senate Armed Services Committee hearings on repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell, I couldn't help feeling relief John McCain was soundly beaten for president in 2008.
I always believed the man was out of his depth and a raging
conservative, despite his support of political campaign contribution
reform. However, his stubborn and at times inane clinging to policies
most Americans now regard as foolhardy encourages me to believe that,
in spite of recent Democratic Party losses, the Republicans will fall
short of regaining control any time soon.
One by one the Republicans on the committee, Jeff Sessions (R-Ala),
Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga) and Roger Wicker (R-Miss), all right-wing
southerners, joined McCain (R-Ariz), who cited as support of his views
a statement opposing repeal signed by over 1100 retired general and
flag officers. The fact that the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs,
Admiral Mike Mullen, was sitting in front of them indicating his
personal preference for tossing out the law meant nothing at all. In
fact they accused Mullen of following orders when he said, "I cannot
escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which
forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend
their fellow citizens." They were convinced Mullen was forced to say
what he had because he was bound to Barack Obama as his commander in
chief.
However, Mullen specifically said he was giving his own opinion,
which Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich) reminded one and all at
the hearing's close, a testament he took to be true as the admiral was
bound by the oath he'd sworn at the outset. That Mullen further stated
he'd served with gays and lesbians since 1968 didn't move the
intransigent stick-in-the-mud Republican dogma.
Ironically, it was a Republican, moderate Susan Collins of Maine,
who made the greatest case against her own party. She asked Mullen
pointedly whether in discussions with his NATO allies, whose forces
joined ours in the Middle East and whose military allowed gays to serve
openly, if they'd advised him of any problems. He replied he'd been
told it was not an issue at all.
To Senator Jack Reed (D-RI), Mullen further said that such
integration of foreign militaries had likewise not in any great way
affected Americans who had to serve alongside their gay comrades from
other nations. Mullen also stated, in response to Senator Claire
McCaskill (D-Mo), that there'd been no broad indication of any
objection to changing the law by those in our current military.
McCaskill then brought up an interesting point related to the
yearlong study Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Mullen proposed to
examine the long-range impact on gay integration in the military. She
repeated the statement that Mullen had no personal problem, that
foreign militaries with gay integration had no problems and that it was
well known and acknowledged that gays currently served in the American
military. She then added the irony that under the present law Gates and
Mullen would not be able to receive personal input from American gay
servicemen and women without jeopardizing their careers. Mullen
admitted this was a hard one to deal with, but that he and Gates would
look for a way around it, and, as a start, would be talking with those
who'd been separated because they were gay.
And how intriguing to see Joe Lieberman (I-Conn) return, at least on
this issue, to the party that gifted him with its vice presidential
nomination in 2000. In spite of the fact that Lieberman supported
McCain in 2008 and generally shares his conservative stance about Iraq
and Afghanistan, he took umbrage at the notion that gays in the
military presented a danger. He said, "it just seems to me you ought to
judge a member of our military by how they perform in the military and
not by their sexual orientation." He added that people in a tank would
be more concerned with the courage of their partner and the fact they
were prepared to risk their lives in the defense of their country.
McCain and his party colleagues nonetheless stayed true to form with
the exception of Collins and reiterated every chance they got the
bigoted expression of support signed by former military leaders. The
fact that these retired folks represented a different generation and
were out of touch didn't seem to faze them. This notion was best
brought out by interim Senator Roland Burris (D-Ill), who likened the
current debate to the controversy when Harry Truman integrated the
services sixty years ago.
All the comments from McCain et al about how military readiness and
performance would be affected by being forced to work alongside gay
people had been previously stated back in the forties with respect to
whites working and sleeping closely to blacks against whom they'd long
discriminated. David Gergen told CNN's Anderson Cooper that, while he
opposed McCain's position, he felt it to be sincere. To me, Gergen was
soft soaping McCain's hostile rigidity.
It's outrageous a man like Senator McCain, recently publicized as
being at odds with his wife and daughter regarding gay marriage, can
function at such a high level in politics, exhibiting none of the
maverick sensibility that appealed to so many during his candidacy in
2000. But perhaps that was a sham, designed to distinguish himself from
George Bush the younger. It's more likely that what we saw on C-SPAN
and repeated on YouTube, NBC, CBS, ABC, MSNBC and Fox News throughout
the day and talked about on Facebook and Twitter was the real John
McCain. We better hope he stays on the sidelines of power in our nation.
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