Back-to-back
statements about the military's policy on gays from
former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Colin
Powell, and the present chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen,
have some LGBT activists guessing that more explicit
directions have been given behind the scenes by the incoming
President.
Powell's
semantic shift from previously saying the military
"can" review "don't ask,
don't tell" to last week suggesting that it
"should" do so was followed up by
Tuesday's revelation that Mullen has had initial
conversations with his top commanders about changing the
policy, which would ultimately require congressional
repeal.
"The
president-elect's been pretty clear that he wants to
address this issue," Mullen told The New
York Times. "And so I am certainly
mindful that at some point in time it could come."
Steve Ralls, who
spent eight years as director of communications for the
Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, a group lobbying for
repeal of the ban, said the dual statements leave
"little doubt" that change is coming to
the Pentagon.
"Military
leaders like Powell and Mullen do not go on-the-record, or
prepare for a significant policy change, without a green
light from their commander-in-chief," Ralls
said. "This could be the first indication that
the incoming Obama administration has sent word to its
highest personnel that their position and the position
of their agencies must be clear and consistent with
the president-elect's position on
'don't ask, don't
tell.'"??Powell, who testified
in favor of the policy when he was chairman of the
Joint Chiefs in 1993, has previously indicated that he
was open to reconsidering the policy.
"You can review
it, but I'm not prepared to say that you should do
away with it until you have talked to the people who have to
execute it and implement it -- the armed forces
leadership," Powell said last July during an
appearance at the Aspen Institute.
But last week
Powell went so far as to urge a reevaluation of
"don't ask, don't tell."
"We
definitely should reevaluate it," Powell told
CNN's Fareed Zakaria. "It's been 15
years, and attitudes have changed. And so I think it is
time for the Congress, since it is their law, to have a full
review of it. And I'm quite sure that's what
President-elect Obama will want to do."
The slow but
steady progress reflects a sentiment uttered two weeks ago
by Steve Elmendorf, a Democratic political operative and
former deputy campaign manager to John Kerry. Speaking
at a December 5 political panel on gay issues,
Elmendorf suggested that in order to overturn the ban
President-elect Obama would have to gather his top generals
in a room and in no uncertain terms tell them he
wanted the policy repealed.
Asked whether
these latest comments by Mullen and Powell evidence that
such a meeting has already taken place, Elmendorf said,
"I think the comments are a very positive sign
that former and present military leaders are beginning
to reflect the larger population's evolution on
this issue."
Numerous polls in
the last decade have shown that a solid majority of
Americans believe gays and lesbians should be allowed to
serve openly in the military, including an
ABC-Washington Post poll last summer that put the
number at 75%.
Though some
reports have suggested that the Obama team wouldn't
broach the issue until 2010, David Mixner, a longtime
gay activist who avidly supported Bill
Clinton's '92 candidacy and then broke with
him when Clinton settled on "don't ask,
don't tell" in 1993, disagrees.
"I
don't think he'll wait till 2010 because of the
midterm elections," Mixner said. "I
think most people won't want to deal with that so
close to the elections."
Mixner
anticipated that the timeline for repeal would be closer to
the end of 2009 and that it wouldn't be a
stand-alone bill.
"I'm
guessing that it will be toward the end of the next year,
probably in a rider to an appropriations bill or a
greater bill," he said. "They'll attach
it as an amendment -- not as a separate piece of
legislation, not with separate hearings -- and congress will
just sail it through."
Mixner added that
the administration would probably have Gen. Colin
Powell and former Senator Sam Nunn, who chaired the Senate
Armed Services Committee in 1993 and was a strong
proponent of the policy, in their court by then. Nunn
has also advocated for reviewing the law within the
last year.
"Obama's
treated Nunn very well, has made him a respected counsel, so
I think he'll take the bullet for Obama on this
one," Mixner said.
