General Wesley Clark, the former NATO
supreme allied commander, disagreed with opponents of openly gay
service on ABC's
This Week.
The debate, moderated by host
Christiane Amanpour, included Lieutenant Colonel Bob Maginnis
representing the Family Research Council (FRC), a socially
conservative group that opposes gay rights and was
recently added to the Southern Poverty Law Center's (SPLC) list of
hate groups, and Elaine Donnelly, founder and president of the
Center for Military Readiness. Both say they oppose “Don't Ask,
Don't Tell,” the 1993 law that prescribes discharge for gay service
members who do not remain celibate or closeted, because gay men and
lesbians should not be allowed to serve in the military.
Supporting repeal of the law were
Clarke Cooper, an active Army reservist and executive director of the
gay GOP group Log Cabin Republicans, which is challenging the law in
the courts, and Tammy Schultz, director of national security and
joint warfare at the Marine Corps War College.
On the program, Clark pointed to a
Pentagon report that supports repeal.
“On a scale of 1 to 10, the report
said this was about a 2 in terms of degree of difficulty and degree
of disruption,” he said via satellite. “Yes, it does add
complexity, but not nearly as much complexity as the continuing
uncertainty.”
Clark added that war is an ideal time
to implement change, a point made by the military's two top uniformed
officers, Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, and General James Cartwright, the vice chairman.
“I do agree with the point that the
chairman and the vice chairman made that, if the military's focused
on war, this is the ideal time to do it, because we're talking about
building teamwork around a common purpose.”
“And what the survey showed is that
essentially all of the service members, 92 percent, agree that they
could serve – they could serve in a unit in combat, and they could
work together effectively, and it wouldn't compromise mission
readiness,” he said.
Echoing a complaint first made by
Arizona Senator John McCain, Donnelly said the report was flawed
because it did not ask service members if the law should be repealed,
a
question Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has called inappropriate.
Maginnis dismissed a video report on
repeal of a similar ban in Britain, which resulted in few negative
effects.
“The U.S. military is about 18 times
larger than the Brits,” Maginnis said. “You know, to compare
them to – you know, to us, is like comparing an M1A1 tank to a
Roman chariot.”
“Nothing will be good enough for the
opponents who do not want to repeal 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,'”
Schultz replied. “It's not about the evidence; it's about the
ideology. They're saying, 'Oh, you can't compare the U.S. military
to other militaries. We're bigger, we're in war, et cetera, et
cetara.' But then they simultaneously want to say we have the most
professional forces in the world, which we do.”