CYNTHIA TUCKER: DON'T ASK DON'T TELLL WILL BE RELEGATED TO THE DUSTBIN OF HISTORY

"With wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s frustrating that the military still enforces a policy that punishes brave men and women who want to put their lives on the line for their country. But the tide is turning. Don’t ask, don’t tell will be abolished, assigned to the dust bin of history alongside “colored” water fountains and waiting rooms."
--Cynthia Tucker

Listen up. When Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and columnist Cynthia Tucker tells you something, you can take it to the bank. It's true. She has proven it many times. For example, to the dismay of many blacks, she revealed how the children of the late great Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were bickering over the control of the family finances. Want more? To the outright hatred of some younger blacks, she blasted black gang culture: how it promotes misogyny, sexism, and violence, and is contributing to the destruction of black communities.

Now, the sistah is laying it down about the military's decrepit and dishonest President Clinton policy called Don't Ask Don't Tell. She says that even higher ups in the Pentagon are beginning to turn against it and, like "colored only" hotels and water fountains of U. S. southern apartheid, it will be relegated to the dustbin of history. Check it out.

The Pentagon’s transformation on gay soldiers

5:00 pm October 9, 2009, by ctucker

It hasn’t been that long ago — about 16 1/2 years — since Bill Clinton’s relationship with the Pentagon was permanently warped by his efforts to keep a campaign pledge to allow gay men and women to serve openly in the United States Armed Forces. The outcry from the military and its supporters was such that you’d have thought Clinton had promised to make Hillary a four-star general.

Looking back on all that, it’s nothing short of remarkable that the current issue of Joint Force Quarterly, a scholarly publication put out by the Pentagon, includes an essay that calls for ending the ban on allowing gays to serve openly. In fact, the essay, written by Air Force Col. Om Prakash, who currently works in the office of Defense Secretary Robert Gates, won the 2009 Secretary of Defense National Security Essay Competition.

That doesn’t mean every military officer supports his point of view. Indeed, inclusion of the essay in a Pentagon publication is hardly a stirring endorsement of gay soldiers by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Nor does it suggest that the discriminatory and destructive “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy can be dropped without controversy. Already, certain mossbacks are gearing up for another tirade against gay soldiers, despite Prakash’s conclusion that dropping the ban wouldn’t have a negative effect on combat readiness.

Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, has already prepared her talking points. “Society may have changed but the need for good order and discipline has not changed,” said Donnelly, who opposed allowing gays to serve openly in 1993. (Donnelly’s think tank is private; it is not affiliated with the Pentagon.)

But inclusion of the essay in a journal with a Pentagon imprimatur does show that top military officers no longer view the subject of gay soldiers, serving openly, as a non-starter. The battle for full equality for gays and lesbians has come a long way in a relatively short period of time, even in the nation’s most tradition-bound institution.

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