This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, February 15th, 2010.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Don't Ask Don't Tell was a compromise that made no one happy and a generational shift has rendered that policy an

artifact of a time long gone.

Christopher Prabble, Director of Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, says

Don't Ask Don't Tell, should be judged on how it impacts the effectiveness of the US military.

For a long time, the presumption was that people who were homosexual could not serve in the military at all.

And in 1993 they enacted the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy, which is pretty much what it sounds like,

that they would not process people out of the military for

homosexuality as long as they kept their sexual orientation a secret and

that policy has remained in effect to this date.

And it was a rather ham-fisted compromise that was ultimately came about because President Clinton made a promise that the

military was not prepared to carry out and so this was kind of a incomplete or unsatisfactory solution for all parties involved,

basically.

In 1993, I think that the dominant position in the military is the gaze should not be allowed to serve,

period.

The dominant position outside of the military or certainly within the Clinton administration

was that they should and this was a compromise that both sides could agree to and save some

face.

And the key players of course were beyond President Clinton, were the outgoing Chairman

of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell, and the incoming Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell,

and the incoming Chairman of the Joint Chiefs,

...