22 July 2010
Kagan and the Military--What Really Matters
Despite Pete Hegseth’s OpEd opinion in the July 21, 2010, Wall Street Journal, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is indeed the military’s policy. The military’s role in our society is to take orders from civilian authorities. As the enforcer of a congressionally and presidentially imposed law, the military cannot escape responsibility for the effects of DADT. Moreover, the military was really complicit in the formulation of DADT. If the military brass did not oppose homosexual behavior as threatening to unit integrity, the law would have demanded total non-discrimination towards sexual orientation.
But the real issue for Elena Kagan as dean in restricting military recruitment at Harvard Law School must have been the priority in her mind of protecting personal rights in our constitutional system over enabling the federal government to use unilateral military power for international adventures like Iraq. After all, obstructing manpower recruitment for a misguided war is a reasonable trade for preserving the freedoms our constitution guarantees.
Despite Pete Hegseth’s OpEd opinion in the July 21, 2010, Wall Street Journal, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is indeed the military’s policy. The military’s role in our society is to take orders from civilian authorities. As the enforcer of a congressionally and presidentially imposed law, the military cannot escape responsibility for the effects of DADT. Moreover, the military was really complicit in the formulation of DADT. If the military brass did not oppose homosexual behavior as threatening to unit integrity, the law would have demanded total non-discrimination towards sexual orientation.
But the real issue for Elena Kagan as dean in restricting military recruitment at Harvard Law School must have been the priority in her mind of protecting personal rights in our constitutional system over enabling the federal government to use unilateral military power for international adventures like Iraq. After all, obstructing manpower recruitment for a misguided war is a reasonable trade for preserving the freedoms our constitution guarantees.
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