Ed. Note: This post is from Jarrod Chlapowski, a U.S. Army veteran who recently joined the Human Rights Campaign to consult on ending the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. Having been trained as a Korean linguist and cryptologic voice interceptor, he served in Korea, supporting the 3rd Military Intelligence Battalion on more than 300 sensitive reconnaissance operation missions. Chlapowski chose not to re-enlist in the Army because of the excessive burden of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law.
I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: the difference in media – and subsequently, public – attention on DADT today as compared to 4 years ago is pretty darn significant, and the constant search for new angles allows us to provide data points and appealing arguments to a much wider audience than ever before. Still, new angles aside, a sound bite can only convey so much, and there are mountains of supporting evidence for our arguments that remain effectively buried and unused during most discussions over repeal of DADT.
Enter Air Force Colonel Om Prakash, and his The Efficacy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” [pdf] If you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend you do, as it is a brief but effective argument for repeal from a national security perspective. Much to do was made about the fact that Prakash’s article was printed in Joint Force Quarterly, a Pentagon publication, and while this is indeed significant, there are more subtle gifts of the article that I think many overlook.
In researching his article, Prakash dug through that mountain of evidence, destroying virtually any seemingly reasonable argument for not repealing DADT. Referenced extensively is the 1993 Rand Corporation report in particular, as it addresses current justification for opposition to open service in the military, specifically the ideas of unit cohesion, combat readiness, and troop morale. For the first time in over 15 years, the general public is now aware that the research supporting repeal DADT has already been done. That the Pentagon knows, and has known, that – at least from an academic perspective – lesbians and gays should have no problem serving openly.
One more benefit of Prakash’s article is that the same mountain of evidence hidden behind sound-bites for so many years is now in and of itself a new angle for the media to cover. This was demonstrated last Tuesday when The Atlantic published an article not only highlighting the Rand data of 1993, but the GAO data of 1992, the PERSEREC data of 1988, and the Crittenden Report data of 1957, and which has since been picked up by numerous media outlets.
When evidence for repeal is itself a top story, you can be sure that a tremendous amount of necessary education is occurring, and that all-important cost-benefit analysis that will go into the debate for repeal will be that much more accurate.
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