Pentagon's 'Don't Ask' Survey: Soldiers in Afghanistan Are Just Not That Interested

Combat troops in Afghanistan had less opportunity than those at home to weigh in on the potential repeal of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell'' law on gays and lesbians in the military, Defense Department officials acknowledged.

The Pentagon, under pressure to repeal the law from President Barack Obama, Congress and its own top leadership, this summer launched what spokesman Geoff Morrell described as a "scientifically supported'' effort to survey "a large representative sample of our force'' to determine how they felt about allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly.

That outreach included e-mailing detailed questionnaires to 400,000 service members, holding dozens of closed-door forums with troops, and opening anonymous online comment and chat-room sites. The e-mail surveys contained 103 questions about each recipient's job satisfaction, unit morale and how unit cohesion and combat readiness would be affected if gays and lesbians were allowed to serve openly.

The surveys, which were designed and distributed by a private contractor, are being forwarded, together with recorded and collated information from the chat rooms and forums, to a military task force headed by Army Gen. Carter F. Ham and Jeh Johnson, the Pentagon's general counsel. The task force's findings will be critical in determining how the Defense Department will respond if Congress repeals the law barring open gays and lesbians from military service, as well as its 1993 interpretation, "Don't ask, don't tell.''

Ham said last month that people who received the surveys were demographically selected on the basis of age, rank, service, military specialty, marital status and other data to ensure the responses came from a broad cross-section of the force. Half the surveys were sent to active-duty troops, and half to members of the National Guard and reserves.

I've just returned from a month in the combat zone, where I was embedded with soldiers from three different battalions in northern, central and southern Afghanistan.

In conversations with hundreds of soldiers, I met one -- only one -- who had received the e-mail questionnaire. "Oh, yeah, I think I got it a few weeks ago -- haven't really looked at it,'' this young lieutenant said.

Given the heated passion this issue has aroused on both sides, I was a little surprised at his ambivalence. On second thought, though, I realized that it made sense: in a war zone, the range of things you care about is narrow: risk, food, comfort. On the few bases with dining-hall TV service, I've watched a Fox News broadcast playing on a big-screen TV with a crowd of soldiers eating and joking and paying no attention to the news.

That tracks generally with the Pentagon's final tally of returned e-mail questionnaires. Of the 400,000 surveys mailed out, only 109,883 were returned by the Aug. 15 deadline -- just over 1 in 4.

David Segal, a military sociologist at the University of Maryland and director of the Center for Research on Military Organization, said that rate of return is pretty good considering that people in military service tend to be focused on the job at hand -- especially in a war zone.

"It's also the case that they simply don't see 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' as an issue,'' Segal said.

Still, none of the approximately 100,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines serving in Afghanistan was invited to express his or her opinion in the 77 closed-door town hall meetings held by Pentagon officials this summer. Those were reserved only for "garrison'' troops, those who are not deployed in the war zone. In these sessions, held at military posts across the country and in Europe, 20,325 people voiced their ideas and opinions.

The Pentagon felt that holding these meetings in the war zone "would be a distraction'' from combat, said Pentagon spokeswoman Cynthia Smith. The Pentagon does not know how many e-mail surveys were returned from military personnel serving in Afghanistan or Iraq, she said.

In my own conversations with soldiers, most looked baffled when I asked if they'd had a chance to let Pentagon leaders know how things would change for them if openly gay or lesbian service members were allowed to serve.

"It wouldn't be a big deal,'' shrugged one infantryman to whom I promised anonymity. He said he knew several gays in high school and had served in the Army alongside a gay soldier, and not given it much thought.

Another soldier, a cavalry scout, said he was concerned that allowing openly gay soldiers to serve in a combat unit would expose them to danger. "I'd be afraid they'd get beat up in the shower,'' he said. But he added: "Maybe that's just me. I grew up in a place where we didn't know any gays. Personally, I'd be OK with it.''

Defense Department spokesman Morrell said last month that the Pentagon has made every effort to capture opinions like these.

"We're not playing games here, guys,'' he said at a Pentagon briefing for reporters. "We're trying to figure out what the attitudes of our force are, what the potential problems are with repeal, what the potential opportunities there may be available to us as the result of appeal. But we won't [get] any of that conclusively, scientifically, unless we get this survey done, unless there is full and active participation from those who it's been sent to, and unless there is not outside influence on their answers.''

The low participation of troops in Afghanistan, though, was seen by pro-repeal activists as evidence that the question is largely settled.

"It's not a question of whether people had a chance to weigh in or not. It's just not a priority. People are ready to change this policy, and the low response rate shows that,'' said J.D. smith, co-director of Outserve.org, an underground network of gay and lesbian active-duty service members.

But Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness and an outspoken activist for banning gays and lesbians from military service, said the low interest in the Pentagon's surveys and town forums was because "they never asked the question that really matters: Do you support retention or repeal of the law?''

The Pentagon "deliberately excluded that question,'' she said, "and the message has gone out that the Department of Defense has taken sides, and they don't even care about the opinions of active-duty members who support the current law.''