If anyone is looking for progressive input on the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, they now know not to ask the new commandant of the Marine Corps. Gen. James Amos is on recent record expressing his misgivings about any effort to lift the 17-year-old DA/DT law. Something about possible loss of unit cohesion and combat readiness.
An eminently more sensible policy, one that the president, the secretary of defense and the chairman of the joint chiefs would accede to, would be: “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, But If You Do Tell, So What?” Gen. Amos might consider that the most logical response to the service of gay marines, given the likelihood that they would be pressed into Middle East combat under hellish circumstances, would be: “Thanks.”