During his campaign, Barack Obama spoke out about the absurd Puritanical case of official mass denial that is the “Don’t ask don’t tell” policy in the United States military. His reasoning was straightforward; basically, if they are willing to die, who are we to stop them.
In the face of all this torture talk going on lately, it seems that if we are willing to convince a man he is going to die dozens of times in order to make the country “safer,” we should allow a homosexual who may prove crucial in revealing “the enemy’s” secrets (becasue he speaks their language) to serve and do just that. By any moral standard, especially the standards of this document, torture equals bad, smart guy who is an arabic linguist and a soldier is good. One Dan Choi happens to be gay, and he was recently discharged from the military along with 54 other Arab linguists. This is Dan Choi. Isn’t he charming?
Barack Obama should have intervened. He should have pounced on this opportunity and done something presidential and noteworthy and controvertial because he can and that’s why we elected him. Is he going to wait until his second term to do anything that counters the hairbrained religious right? Why can’t he just say, “This man is a valuable asset to the Army National Guard, he has foought bravely as an infantry soldier, he is respected by those under his command, and in this time of conflict with the Arabic-speaking world, we cannot afford to lose one of the critical weapons in our arsenal: the U.S.’s ability to execute intellegence and understand ‘the enemy’ to predict his next move.” Alas.
John Stewart isn’t afraid to say it like it is:
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Choi came out publicly on Rachel Maddow’s show on March 19. Last week he came back to talk about his termination:
