60 Minutes had a fascinating story this week on the military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. The arguments put forth by defenders seemed--to put it mildly--a stretch.

The most intriguing came from Congressman Duncan Hunter, former chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Asked by Lesley Stahl about how a military necessity for the policy could be justified given that most western European nations allow gays and lesbians to serve openly, Hunter replied,

We aren't the Brits. We're not the Europeans. We're not the Swedes . . . The Fallujahs of the world, the Ramadis of the world that require heavy combat and lots of fire-fighting capability - those are the places the Americans go. The other countries tend to go to the so-called peacekeeper zones, where they have fewer fire fights and less contact with the enemy. And the European nations show little will to send large contingents of their military people into dangerous places.

This analysis doubtless will come as news to the British forces who have spent the last five years in southern Iraq. More to the point, the IDF has allowed gays and lesbians to serve openly for almost 15 years.

Somehow, claims that their forces aren't able to handle situations that"require heavy combat and lots of fire-fighting capability" or that the Israeli government shows"little will to send large contingents of their military people into dangerous places" do not strike me as arguments most people would associate with the IDF.

Unless proponents of DADT can come up with better arguments than they did to Lesley Stahl, it's hard to see the policy much outlasting the Bush administration.

Ralph E. Luker - 12/19/2007

KC, It seems to me that the long-term prospects for DADT depend largely on whether United States military personnel continue to be stretched the way they have been since the invasion of Iraq. There's a pretty good case that gay people have been tolerated in the military when there is a military personnel crisis and that they have tended not to be tolerated in peacetime. My sense is that lawmakers and military leadership is quite willing to keep DADT on the books -- to be enforced in peacetime and informally suspended in wartime.