By Erick Erickson
Texas Insider Report: Washington D.C. I greatly dislike talking about Dont Ask Dont Tell. The topic drives me insane. Im not serving on the front lines of the battlefield and I frankly think if you arent serving on the front lines you should have no say in the matter whether you are in or out of the military.
I politely declined to discuss it on TV the other night but it sneaked up on me tonight as a topic and I finally let loose on it. Given the number of emails Ive had about my comments tonight I might as well share my thoughts now.
Ugh.
So heres my newsflash for you: there are gays in the military today. Dont Ask Dont Tell" does not magically make them go away. It just means they cannot be open. And as the military is about killing the enemy and not who you prefer to hook up with I have no problem with keeping the policy.
Heres another newsflash for you: no one wants to get into the nitty-gritty of all the details about fraternization etc. which most people would rather laugh off or cringe thinking about. After all what were dealing with here is the desires of a minority to be identified by their sexual preference in the military a preference that has no bearing whatsoever on whether or not they are competent to kill the enemy which is arguably their chief job duty.
For the life of me I cannot figure out why this is an issue.
There are gays in the military already. Dont Ask Dont Tell prevents the military from having to get into those sticky potentially icky discussions of fraternization that are now made very easy based on whether or not a member of the military has a uterus and if so separate at night before turning off the light etc.
But there is more to it than that. And this is the substantive part of it.
Yes a majority of Americans do not care. But who cares what these people think. They are not getting shot at by the Taliban. And yes supposedly a majority of the military doesnt care. But and no disrespect intended who cares what they think? I care about what the men and women on the front lines in the war zone think and I have not seen any polling breaking it out that way.
What I do see is the Marines who are on the front lines are opposed and that is enough for me. We are talking about an American military that burns piles of Bibles lest any Muslim gets offended.
Newsflash: what do Muslims hate more than Bibles? Gays.
And how is a cave dwelling Taliban dragging an American soldier off going to distinguish between a gay soldier and a straight soldier? They arent. And neither will their bullet.
But I wager their propensity to take no negotiating tools prisoners will go up.
Thats what I think. Your mileage may vary.
Hopefully I can go back to not talking about this issue now. Ultimately neither your opinion nor mine should count unless you are reading this from some tent on the front lines in Afghanistan or elsewhere.
