I have to admit that I viewed the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell fro a place of total apathy. I’m anti-war, anti-conscription. I believe that the only wars worth fighting are revolutions to overthrow tyrants. Otherwise wars are where the poor of one country murder the poor of another country to enrich the wealthy who rarely send their children to murder or be murdered.
In international affairs, national interests are never really the interests of the working people but are rather the interests of the rich and powerful.
That said the rewriting of how the repeal of DADT was accomplished is already in progress.
Michelangelo Signorelli offers details in an article in The Advocate: http://www.advocate.com/Print_Issue/Features/Rewriting_History/
Advocate columnist Michelangelo Signorile says falling for a false narrative of how “don’t ask, don’t tell” repeal came to pass gets us nowhere as the gay community continues to fight for its rights.
“Don’t ask, don’t tell” is on its way to becoming history. And there are two things about history I feel compelled to point out: It’s often unpredictable (I never imagined it would take nearly 18 years for the United States to dump this embarrassing policy) and it’s often revised.
Look no further than false narratives about what the White House, Congress, and leading gay organizations did to make repeal happen. Some say it doesn’t matter now how it happened, that we should sweep it all under the rug, thank the president, and move on. I say not so fast.
There’s no question that this is Barack Obama’s victory, a great one for which he will be credited in the history books. He initiated the task, taking on the entrenched homophobia in the Pentagon. And we should be enormously grateful that he came through in the end. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t look deeply at how we achieved the goal and realize the fundamental lesson for the LGBT movement: Only sustained pressure and continued media attention to the cause — which led to outright embarrassment for an administration and a Congress that failed to deliver all they had promised — will ultimately bring success. Remember that, because the revisionists are already trying to obscure it. Without an understanding of what really happened, we’re not going to win future battles.
Continue reading at: http://www.advocate.com/Print_Issue/Features/Rewriting_History/