‘THIS IS NO DRILL’: CLINTON TALKS WITH JCS ON GAYS IN THE MILITARY MUST BE REAL, NOT A HUMILIATING CHARADE
(Washington, D.C.): According to
Secretary of Defense Les Aspin, today’s
White House meeting between President
Clinton and the nation’s top military
officers evidently is not
supposed to be a forum for serious,
no-holds-barred discussion about the
Clinton campaign promise to legitimate
open homosexuality in the armed forces.
Mr. Clinton evidently is not interested
in the Joint Chiefs of Staffs’ enormous
concerns on this issue; at best, the
meeting will amount to going through
the motions of
“consultation.”
On CBS News’ “Face the
Nation” yesterday, Secretary Aspin
acknowledged authorship of a memorandum
to the then-President-elect which
explicitly states that the session with
the Chiefs is “not a
negotiation….Instead, it is the first
step in the consultation
[candidate Clinton] promised.”
(Emphasis added.) According to Aspin,
what the JCS will be consulted about is
simply how a policy they adamantly oppose
will be implemented.
The Center for Security Policy
believes that two aspects of this
approach are dangerously flawed: First, it
is cynically manipulative to compel the
Chiefs to participate in discussions
about how to make something work
that they do not believe will work —
without affording them a genuine
opportunity to present their case that it
is fundamentally unworkable.
Such an approach is not only monumentally
disrespectful, it also infringes
seriously on the Joint Chiefs of Staffs’
legal responsibility to advise the
president about military matters.
Second, the Aspin memo makes clear
that Congress is unlikely to support the
president’s policy. According to the
Aspin memo, Senate Majority
Leader George Mitchell (D-ME)
“estimates that there are no more
than 30 sure votes [in the Senate]
against any…resolution” supporting
the present policy banning homosexuals
from the armed forces.
Accordingly, the Clinton Administration’s
strategy is determined to deny the
Congress an opportunity to speak to this
issue until after the President has
effectively vitiated the current policy.
The Center deems the Clinton
Administration’s management of today’s
meeting and the policy matter at its
heart to be a first, portentous test of
the new team’s larger relationship with
the military. In the months ahead,
President Clinton will likely be sharply
reducing the resources available to the
armed forces; inevitably, such reductions
will significantly affect their power
projection capabilities, their readiness
and their morale. Ironically, Mr. Clinton
seems at the same time relatively willing
to inject the U.S. military into foreign
trouble spots.
In the course of making such changes,
the President must be able to obtain —
and factor in — the military’s best
professional advice. While he may not in
every instance choose to follow it, if
Mr. Clinton refuses even to listen to
such counsel, he invites serious
mistakes, possibly entailing considerable
risk to the national interest and
unnecessary, irresponsible loss of
American lives.
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Mr. Gaffney is the host of Secure Freedom Radio, a nationally-syndicated radio program heard weeknights throughout the country. He is an associate author of highly acclaimed Shariah: The Threat to America and the publisher of over a dozen other books and monographs from the Center for Security Policy Press.
In April 1987, Mr. Gaffney was nominated by President Reagan to become the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy, the senior position in the Defense Department with responsibility for policies involving U.S.-USSR relations, nuclear forces, arms control, missile defense policy and U.S.-European defense ties. He acted in that capacity for seven months during which time, he was the Chairman of the prestigious High Level Group, NATO’s senior politico-military committee. He also represented the Secretary of Defense in key U.S.-Soviet negotiations and ministerial meetings.
From August 1983 until November 1987, Mr. Gaffney was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control Policy under Assistant Secretary Richard Perle.
From February 1981 to August 1983, Mr. Gaffney was a Professional Staff Member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, chaired by the late Senator John Tower (R-Texas). And, in the latter 1970’s, Mr. Gaffney served as an aide to the late Senator Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson (D-Washington) in the areas of defense and foreign policy.
Mr. Gaffney holds a Master of Arts degree in International Studies from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and a Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service.
Mr. Gaffney’s leadership has been recognized by numerous organizations including: the Department of Defense Distinguished Public Service Award (1987), the U.S. Business and Industry Council’s Defender of the National Interest Award (1994), the Navy League of the United States’ Alfred Thayer Mahan Literary Achievement Award (1999), and the Zionist Organization of America’s “Louis Brandeis Award” (2003), the Western Conservative Summit’s Stephen H. Long Award (2015), the Council for National Policy’s George Washington Military Leadership Award (2016) and the IMPACT Award from Ginni Thomas and United in Purpose (2017).
Mr. Gaffney was born in 1953 and resides in the Washington, D.C. area.
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