The Military at a Crossroads Again

The ongoing debate on the military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy (DADT) brings to mind the debate on integrating the military some seventy years ago.  In many ways that debate was a profoundly different one, yet many of the arguments made today are surprisingly reminiscent of how the conversation unfolded back then.

When the U.S. was preparing to take on the Nazi racial state in 1940, military planners faced the question of whether white and black U.S. troops should fight together in integrated units, as African American civil rights activists insisted.  Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall rejected their calls, however, because he believed that integrating the military during a time of war would jeopardize not only discipline but also morale.  Thus, the military’s officers’ training manual asserted that the use of segregated units was not an endorsement of a belief in racial distinctions but merely reflected “practical military expediency.”  Hidden behind the language of expediency, however, lay the ugly truth that most commanders did not believe that an integrated military could ever be an effective fighting force.

With these views, the military merely gave voice to widespread prejudices of the time.  A July 1943 survey conducted by the Office of War Information showed that 96 percent of white soldiers from the South and 85 percent from the North insisted on segregation in the military.  The attitude among African American GIs could not have been more different:  90 percent of Northern blacks and 67 percent of their Southern counterparts wanted to serve in integrated units.

Yet on July 26, 1948, despite vehement opposition from Southern Democrats in Congress and what can only be called recalcitrant resistance from the military leadership, President Harry S. Truman took a courageous step and issued Executive Order 9981, ordering the speedy integration of America’s military. Truman demanded that, “there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin.” Although it would take many more years and another war—this one in Korea—for the de facto implementation of this policy to take hold, with his Executive Order Truman struck a first, decisive blow to the doctrine of  “separate but equal,” the cornerstone of Jim Crow America.  

Truman’s decision, in the midst of the rapidly accelerating Cold War and growing fears of a possible confrontation with the Soviet Union, was a bold one, and not without its critics. The naysayers, including the secretary of the Army as well as most of the military brass, warned of deteriorating morale and troop cohesion, or the detrimental impact this revolutionary policy change was bound to have on military effectiveness.  Indeed, how could white soldiers be expected to eat together with black soldiers; were they to share the same showers and bathrooms?  How could “miscegenation” be prevented when racially mixed dances were held on military bases?  So concerned were the opponents of integration about the social implications of the policy that an exasperated chairman of the President’s Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services asked General Omar Bradley during one hearing: “General, are you running an Army, or a dance?”

Many of these arguments sound remarkably similar to what opponents of repealing DADT are saying today.  Then as now, opponents worry about whether troops showering together or using the same bathrooms could remain tough fighters.  Then as now, opponents caution the military not to enact such fundamental reforms during a time of war.  Then as now, domestic concerns and political calculations exercise a tremendous influence on the debate.  Then as now, these debates also have larger implications for U.S. foreign policy and how America is perceived across the world.

Truman integrated the military during the 1948 election because his opponent in the Republican Party, Thomas E. Dewey, ran on a platform that endorsed this very policy.  Just as important for Truman were foreign policy concerns.  As the leader of the “Free World,” Truman was embarrassed by the fact that a segregated Jim Crow army was charged with occupying and democratizing post–Nazi Germany.  The Soviets were only too happy to point to America’s Achilles’ heel in order to expose as hypocrisy America’s claim to leadership in Europe.

Those external pressures to force change do not exist in today’s post-Cold War era, some might argue.  The stakes in the “War on Terror” are of a different nature. But are they really?  The U.S. cannot at one and the same time claim American exceptionalism and carry its model of democracy across the globe, while denying the most fundamental individual rights to the gay men and women serving in the military.  Insisting that the very men and women who are asked to defend “the American way of life” have to live a daily lie, and have to deny the very essence of their humanity, is at odds with the fundamental principles of American democracy and its emphasis on individual liberty.  The current debates about the repeal of DADT are, therefore, an uneasy reminder of America’s long and continuing struggle to achieve equality for all Americans.

Since 1993, a large proportion of the military brass has come around to a more inclusive view.  The recent Pentagon study also shows that 70 percent of service members—combat and non-combat troops—believe that repealing DADT would yield either positive or mixed results, or have no consequences at all.  Indeed, the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, is convinced that abolishing this law will “make us more representative of the country we serve.”  In short, there are no insurmountable obstacles.

Even previous opponents of a repeal, such as General Colin Powell, have changed course.  Long before the current debates about DADT, Powell gave a speech in 1986 before a cohort of young officers at an Equal Opportunity Conference sponsored by the U.S. Army stationed in Europe.  He recalled some of his own painful experiences with segregation and the progress the United States and the military had made in race relations during his lifetime and service.  In Powell’s estimate at the time, the fulfilment of America’s democratic promise had been a guiding vision for “enlightened leaders” in the military and for any commander-in-chief.  Striking a personal note, he told the young officers:  “The kind of Equal Opportunity that I fought for, and the progress I lived through over the last twenty-eight years,” needed to be extended “to every person in our society of whatever racial origin, [or] whatever sex.”

In 1986, Powell was clearly concerned with emphasizing equal opportunity for women soldiers, who had been integrated into all-male military units only in 1978.  Sexual orientation was not yet part of Powell’s vision of equality.  Indeed in 1993, he was one of the most influential voices against allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military.  But that was then.  Today, Colin Powell has come around to a different point of view because “attitudes and circumstances have changed.”  He ended his 1986 speech by stressing that “full Equal Opportunity is a reality that catches up to a dream, and hopefully in my lifetime, and hopefully while I am still in the army.  There is a lot left to do.”  We could not agree with him more.

In 1948, Truman’s Executive Order declared that “that there be maintained in the armed services of the United States the highest standards of democracy, with equality of treatment and opportunity for all those who serve in our country’s defense.”  In 2010, it is time to fulfill Truman’s promise of equality by including sexual orientation.