“The Unit Got Over it”

By stlo7 ( February 4, 2010 at 3:47 pm) · Filed under Fairness, News, Stlo7

The supposed problem with gays in the military is unit cohesion.  Well, guess what - the sooner it is repealed the sooner “the unit” gets over it.

What am I talking about? The title of this post comes from a West Wing episode where the CJCoS character (Admiral Fitzwallace) walks into a White House Policy meeting on gays in the military and ultimately says “the unit got over it.”

Watch that West Wing clip (from the Let Bartlet be Bartlet episode I wrote about earlier) after you read these quotes.

Locally, activist and veteran Pat Martinez was interviewed -

“When you are in the military and you have to deny who you are, you have no sense of value.  You have no sense of self-worth and I think that there’s a guilt that kind of washes over you when you are going through training classes on leadership and lead by example and set an example and there’s always that inner thought that you have about, you know, ‘I’m living a lie.’”

Which seems to echo what chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mullen said

“We have in place a policy that forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens,” Mullen said. “For me, personally, it comes down to integrity: Theirs as an individual, ours as an institution.”

Heck. even Colin Powell changed his mind and supports repeal.

(apologies for the poor quality)

Change is difficult - the sooner we start, the sooner we change

Blacks in the same unit?  the unit got over it

Women?  The unit got over it.

Gays?  The unit will get over it.

Why?

It always does especially when that is the assigned mission.

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  5. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: Pat Martinez interviewed

5 Responses to ““The Unit Got Over it””

  1. Publius says:
    February 4, 2010 at 9:11 pm

    We can look back at Prsident Truman’s resolve to integrate the military. Certain political and military leaders screamed like cats on fire that it couldn’t work.

    The effort took a president with intestinal fortitude, tenacity and a willingnes to call his adversaries out. And it got done.

    I wonder if this president has the stomach to take the risks Truman did?

    http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/desegregation/large/index.php?action=chronology

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  2. Mike In WNY says:
    February 4, 2010 at 11:49 pm

    Here’s an interesting perspective.

    “Don’t ask, don’t tell” is an appalling policy, one that has nothing to do with justice and everything to do with the most primitive prejudice. But what else can one expect of an institution such as the military, particularly the US military in the Age of Empire?

    Also, the idea that the concept of equality means that everyone should have the “right” to join an institution that is currently rampaging over the earth, invading countries hither and yon, and causing in incalculable amount of human suffering and material destruction would be laughable if Americans — particularly gay Americans — didn’t take it so seriously.

    No one should join the military — not gay people, not straight people, not any people. In a free society, the military would be just another job — working to ensure the defense of the country. In today’s America, however, that is most definitely not the function of the military, which has been turned into an instrument of oppression and worse. To say, therefore, that everyone has the “right” to participate in, say, what went on at Abu Graib — in the name of “justice” — is self-evidently absurd.

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