If there is still one person somewhere in America who doesn’t think President Joe Biden and the toxic progressives who increasingly call the shots for the White House and the Democratic Party are heading swiftly down an authoritarian road, here’s yet another illustration:
“The Administration strongly opposes section 716, which would detract from readiness and limit a commander’s options for enforcing good order and discipline when a Service member fails to obey a lawful order to receive a vaccination …
“The Administration also strongly opposes section 720, which would create a new and overly broad exemption from the vaccination requirement for previous infection that would undermine the effectiveness of the requirement.”
Those graphs are from a September 21 Statement of Administration Policy issued by the Biden White House concerning a congressional proposal to bar dishonorable discharges for members of the U.S. military who decline to be vaccinated against Covid.
For those who might have expected Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to step up in defense of the 1.3 million active-duty military service members and 800,000 reservists, be aware that he was asked his position on the issue during a recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.
Austin’s response wasn’t exactly a profile in courage, as he responded by saying that “taking a vaccine is a requirement. I’ll just leave it at that,” Note that neither Austin nor the White House statement made clear or even remotely acknowledged what is at stake for every declining service member on this issue.
The proposal being objected to by the Biden administration was introduced by Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.) as an amendment to the draft National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Green’s amendment enjoyed bipartisan support in the House Armed Services Committee. The Senate still has to act on the NDAA and it is far from certain that the upper chamber will endorse Green’s call.
But it’s important that everybody understands what is really at stake on this issue and how it illustrates Biden’s weaponizing Covid against millions of Americans who insist on their right to decide for themselves what medical treatments they will experience.
To that end, Senators Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) and James Lankford (R-Okla.) are vowing to push the Senate to go on record as being opposed to dishonorably discharging service members who choose not to get the vaccine.
The weaponizing is seen in the consequences of being dishonorably discharged, Marshall explained earlier this week during a panel discussion at the Family Research Council’s (FRC) Pray Vote Stand Summit:
“I just hope the people here realize what a dishonorable discharge really means. You’re never going to be able to get a job again. You’re going to lose your Second Amendment [rights]. They’re going to take away your VA health care benefits and your education. It’s a big deal, is what I’m trying to say.”
Lankford, who joined Marshall on the panel, added that those who are dishonorably discharged are “treated worse than a convicted felon.”
Now, why does Biden and the Left equate declining to be vaccinated, whether it’s for religious reasons or simply as a matter of individual rights, with somebody who is convicted of a heinous crime like murder or rape?
That is a classic illustration of the Left’s age-old tactic of personally discrediting opponents rather than actually engaging with the substance of their arguments. The tactic is seen every time a parent is branded a “domestic terrorist” for daring to challenge a local school board.
Marshall and Lankford, joined by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Sen. Tom Tuberville (R-Ala.), sought unsuccessfully to amend a Continuing Resolution last week to bar the dishonorable discharges, but the Kansan says nobody is giving up.
“The National Defense Authorization Act will be coming up for a vote probably the end of this month, and we’ll be offering an amendment just like we did on the continuing resolution to stop that nonsense. And we’ll need to activate your folks to help us out,” Marshall told the 2,000 attendees at the FRC event.
Here’s the kicker in this situation: Biden and Austin are flouting the law by threatening dishonorable discharges for service members who decline to get the jab, which, by the way, would be the Pfizer version of the vaccination.
“The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) did a bait and switch last month by announcing it approved its ‘first COVID-19 vaccine’ in order to push the ‘vaccine’ mandates and protect the Pfizer pharmaceutical company from legal liability,” notes Liberty Counsel, the Florida-based public interest law firm that specializes in civil liberties litigation.
Liberty Counsel explains why the FDA’s recent action amounted to a bait and switch:
“The BioNTech version called Comirnaty was approved. While substantively the same as Pfizer, Comirnaty and Pfizer are legally different. Pfizer remains under [federal law’s Experimental Use Authorization] EUA. The new BioNTech label of Comirnaty is approved, but it is not available in the United States.
“There is currently NO FDA-approved COVID-19 injection available anywhere in the United States. Every COVID shot in America remains under the EUA law and thus people have the ‘option to accept or refuse’ them.”
While it is true that members of the military are subject to other compulsory vaccinations, none of those required jabs are with an experimental drug. Think about that, then ask yourself: What is it about this particular vaccine that makes the Left willing to intimidate, persecute and banish those who choose not to accept it?
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