Don’t Ask Don’t Tell elimination delayed, again

Lefti on the News

In the last couple days the elimination of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” has gone from one year to two years away. Hey, not so fast!

If Obama wants to rescind DADT, he simply needs to do what Truman did to end segregation in the Armed Forces. As commander in chief, Truman issued a direct order that it be done. And it was.

On July 26, 1948 President Harry Truman issued Executive Order 9981. The order brought an end to racial segregation within the ranks of the United States military forces. The written document contained six paragraphs with less than 250 words.

If Obama wants to end DADT then he simply has to order the military to do it.

With his civil rights legislative proposals bogged down in congress, President Truman decided to desegregate the United States Armed Forces by executive order. This decision surprised both liberals and conservatives. Army General Omar Bradley, warned, that it was not the business of the armed services to conduct “social experiments.”

Notwithstanding General Bradley’s public admonition, the armed services marched forward and implemented the desegregation policy. By the end of the Korean War in 1953, the U.S. military was almost completely desegregated.

Truman took this then-unpopular stand on moral and ethical grounds, not because a poll told him to or because of political triangulation and calculation. And history has shown him to be correct.