MEMORANDUM

TO: Cadet 2nd Class K. Miller, USA
FROM: Midshipman 2nd Class A. Weinstein, USN (Ret.)

Subj: SEPARATION

I’m an editor for Mother Jones magazine in San Francisco, specializing in military and defense affairs. But once upon a time I was Midshipman Adam Weinstein, USNA class of 2000…until, like you, I resigned from an Academy – Annapolis – at the beginning of my junior year.

My reasons for leaving were not due to DADT – rather, I was just a liberal with a big mouth and a lot of moral misgivings about the Academy’s internal workings, and I returned to the reserves after 9/11 – but in your letter to the chain of command I sensed a similar dilemma, a forced choice between upholding the honor concept, which I loved, and being the person I was born to be.

A flood of emotions came back to me in reading of your decision. I remember especially the last few weeks after I’d submitted my resignation, waiting to be separated, while I still lived in Bancroft Hall, and was among my shipmates in the brigade, but sensed acutely that I wasn’t any longer of the brigade. It was sad, saying goodbye to a place I really loved, people I really cared for, and a job I really saw myself doing for many years. But there was a sense that it wasn’t my place, and I grew anxious about my next steps in life.

I suspect you’re going to go through a similar time right now. You’ve already been accepted to Yale, and given your academic interests in LGBT equality and military affairs, I suspect you’re beginning a fruitful, lifelong, love-hate association with the defense establishment. I’ve gone that route, and felt especially grateful for it. It’s given me the opportunity to be more critical of the military than most military people can be; it’s also enabled me to articulate the military ethos to fellow journalists and progressives in a way that doesn’t come naturally to them.

If you choose that route, though, you may feel the occasional twinge of regret over your decision. For a lot of reasons, but primarily this one: People will say you didn’t go all the way. You weren’t a real, proven member of your class, and aren’t qualified to speak as an authority. You’ll feel this pressure all the more, because it will come from elements that believe deeply that homosexuality is a sin, one that can’t be tolerated in the ranks. Their way of dealing with you will be to dismiss your experience and membership in the profession of arms.

I will tell you what my closest, most valued USNA classmates told me: You must never for a second give yourself over to the sour-grapes macho attitude of some cadets and alums that you “washed out.” You made an affirmative decision, one that demonstrates a degree of courage and strength that many in the Corps and the professional officers’ ranks will never know.

Beyond that, good luck. I hope to chat sometime. Or to at least meet you at an Army/Navy tailgater.

V/R,

Adam Weinstein
MIDN 2/C USN (Ret.)

P.S. Beat Army!

Let’s talk about your computer. The conventional wisdom is that you’ve got your mac people, people who are willing to spend on high end hardware that comes with the legendary Macintosh operating system. The story is you get a quality machine with a quality OS and all you have to be willing to do is pay a premium for the hardware and software. Hmmm. Then there’s the Windows™ experience. All kinds of hardware options, from cheesy to gold-plated, but you’ve got to pay for the OS, you’ve got to pay for some third party software to try to make it safe and secure, and you’ve got to live with some rather unpleasant user experiences. AAaarrrgghhh. Is that all the choices? Over-rated, overpriced good stuff on gold plated hardware or an ongoing struggle against all that is unholy in cyberspace?

Citizens, I say to you NO! You have a third choice. Ubuntu 10.04 is out, a truly usable consumer desktop Linux OS that will do everything you need it to do, get out of your way when you need it to, and won’t require you to be some kind of IT Sysadmin genius to install or maintain. It does everything the other OSs do for free, and as an added bonus all the applications are free and the OS actually helps you find and install them.

I know. You’re skeptical. You USE a computer, sure, but you don’t want to have to become some kind of tech expert to read a blog post and play some Farmville. Ok. Let me introduce you to WUBI. WUBI is a tool, released and supported by Canonical, the Ubuntu people, that allows you to install Ubuntu underneath Windows without partitioning your hard drive (the thing that makes adding a second OS somewhat complicated and occasionally risky). You run the installation program, choose a user name and a password, and walk away. You end up with a righteous dual-boot system, but one that lives quite pleasantly side by side with Windows.

Now you can mess around with it, see what the fuss is about. If you like it (and I think you will), then you will never pay for an OS or an application again. It runs on just about whatever computer you want to buy (or even an old one that simply died under the weight of Windows and the accumulated toxic sludge Windows attracts), it’s fast and easy to use, fully customizable, and you won’t have to worry about spyware, viruses and all that painful and expensive anti-virus stuff that is such a constant annoyance in Windows. Alas, the only downside (and the only reason I still keep a windows computer around) is it doesn’t run iTunes.

For those of you familiar with Spencer’s extensive reporting on Guantanamo and the trial of Omar Khadr–and that should be all of you–today’s breaking news is that his trial has now begun, becoming the first revised military tribunal trial under the Obama Administration.

There are many issues that will come up in this case, not the least of which is Khadr’s age–at 23, he’s been imprisoned for the last eight years. And whether his confession, which the judge allowed in as evidence, can hold up under charges that it was elicited under undue duress and threat.

Khadr’s brother was free less than a week ago, though his charges were less severe than his younger brother’s. While Omar may not be as fortunate as Abdullah (Omar is facing life imprisonment), be assured we’ll be watching the trial closely as developments occur.