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Kennedy’s defense priorities |
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By Byron York
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Posted: 09/28/07 05:32 PM [ET] |
What is the critical issue in our wartime debate over defense reauthorization?
You might think it’s how many U.S. troops should remain in Iraq in the coming year.
Or how much we spend on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Or what rest, training and equipment our forces will be given.
Of course, those things are important. But the critical issue? Well, anyone who’s listened to Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) would know the answer: It’s whether we should include the phrase “gender identity” in the definition of protected classes under our hate-crime laws.
Huh?
While most senators were concentrating on defense issues during the defense reauthorization debate, Kennedy was busy trying to turn the fight over the authorization bill into a fight over something entirely different: a hate-crimes bill.
With the assistance of co-sponsor Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Kennedy attached to the defense bill an amendment he called the Matthew Shepard Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007.
The amendment would increase the federal government’s powers to intervene in cases of alleged hate crimes, and it would broaden the definition of those crimes.
For example, it would protect alleged victims on the basis of “gender identity,” in addition to simply gender, and it would cover something Kennedy calls “perceived” gender identity.
The meaning of that is not clear, at least not to all the senators considering the amendment.
“Note that the amendment’s use of the term ‘perceived’ makes it difficult to say that there is any ‘class’ of individuals protected here,” says one Republican analysis circulating around. “Perhaps anybody could be a ‘hate crime’ victim, depending on what a fact-finder concludes the accuser ‘perceived’ at the time.
“Senators will have to vote without any real examination of what this new language means, how broadly it could be applied, and how the term ‘perceived’ will be interpreted in practice.”
Those are tricky questions, but here’s a bigger one: What does any of this have to do with the defense reauthorization bill?
“This amendment will strengthen the Defense Authorization Act by protecting those who volunteer to serve in the military,” Kennedy said on the Senate floor Wednesday.
How, exactly? Because our military men and women commit hate crimes, Kennedy explained, and this would protect others from them.
“The vast majority of our soldiers serve with honor and distinction,” Kennedy said. But “sadly, our military bases are not immune from the violence that comes from hatred.”
Kennedy listed a few examples — he had to go back to the early 1990s to find some of them — of alleged hate crimes in which members of the military were involved.
There was the recent case in North Carolina in which, Kennedy said, two members of the 82nd Airborne Division allegedly sold military equipment to FBI agents posing as white supremacists.
There was a case last year in which a Coast Guard officer posted on a white supremacist site.
There was a double murder at Fort Bragg in 1995, and another murder in 1992.
“These examples clearly demonstrate the relevance of this amendment to the military,” Kennedy said. “We can’t tolerate hate-motivated violence and must do all we can to protect our men and women in uniform.”
And it could get worse. Kennedy charged that military recruiters, struggling to meet quotas, are enlisting extremists these days, “putting our soldiers at higher risk of hate-motivated violence.”
Even if you believe all that, the odd thing is, if you read Kennedy’s amendment, you won’t see anything about the military. How his bill would affect the military, which has its own code of justice, is unclear.
In fact, it has absolutely nothing to do with defense, or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or anything under debate in the authorization bill.
Of course, it’s not the first time an extraneous amendment has been tacked onto a defense bill before. It happens all the time — Kennedy himself has tried to attach hate-crimes amendments to a bunch of defense bills.
But this is a critical time. Democrats say they want to force a change in U.S. policy in Iraq.
So far they have failed. But it’s a worthwhile debate to have.
And it shouldn’t be cluttered up with entirely irrelevant measures.
York is a White House correspondent for National Review. His column appears in The Hill each week.
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