Sec. Robert Gates' Brain Lapse

Sec. Robert Gates' Brain Lapse

I would never accuse retiring Secretary of Defense Robert Gates as being a hate-monger nor of harboring animus toward our country and America’s troops. However,, Gates does seem to suffer from a bad case of political correctness.

The scholarly Gates has served our nation long and well as Deputy National Security Adviser, CIA Director, Defense Secretary under two presidents, and has received numerous awards for his service, including the Presidential Citizens Medal.

All that said, Robert Gates can also be a nitwit as he showed during his farewell visit to America’s fighting men and women in the Mideast.

Addressing Marines in Afghanistan, Gates opened the forum to a Q&A which, in retrospect, I’m guessing he regretted. He was put into an apparently untenable position by a Marine sergeant who forced him to either tow the Obama administration line or to speak his mind with respect to gays in the military after the lame duck Democrat congress repealed Bill Clinton’s 17 year old “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.

I’m also guessing his mind but, whatever he really thinks, his response was beyond lame, if not ignorant.

Although Gates hasn’t shared his future plans with me, I suspect that at 67 he’s not quite ready to hit the links for the rest of his life and instead may have his eye on a job as military expert on CNN or even on FNC, although his response to that sergeant would seem to better qualify him for CNN than at Fox News.

In the interests of preserving that sergeant’s already imperiled career in the increasingly PC Marines, his name will not be divulged here. He very politely and articulately commented, “Sir, we joined the Marine Corps because the Marine Corps has a set of standards and values that is better than that of the civilian sector. And we have gone and changed those values and repealed the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy.”

The Marine then dropped his fair and reasonable, bombshell question: “We have not given the Marines a chance to decide whether they wish to continue serving under that. Is there going to be an option for those Marines that no longer wish to serve due to the fact their moral values have not changed?" . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=4754)