On national television, Biden administration spokesperson John Kirby mounted a feeble attempt to explain the president’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for the military. Kirby, a retired Navy admiral, had no acceptable answers when pressed about the administration’s “folly” and the perilous impact the mandate is already having on our national security.
Remarkably, Kirby perpetuated the narrative that the military’s mandate must remain in place while admitting with a straight face that he was quarantined for 10 days due to his current bout with COVID-19, despite being vaccinated and double boosted.
The unrelenting push to remove thousands of religious service members from the military for their sincerely held objections to taking the COVID-19 vaccine should be classified as a clear dereliction of duty by the Biden administration. The president himself declared “the pandemic is over.”
As Kirby revealed on national television, COVID-19 vaccines are ineffective in preventing infection or the spread of the virus. According to the Centers for Disease Control, service members who were only vaccinated once last fall are still at risk of severe illness. And boosters are not mandated by the Department of Defense.
At this point, there is no “compelling government interest” in vaccinating this small percentage of religious service members because there is no evidence that the COVID-19 vaccines promote the “health and safety” of our force.
In April 2021, top military leaders admitted that “the U.S. military has successfully continued operations and kept our forces safe during the pandemic by implementing other force health protection guidelines.” Despite this statement, on Aug. 9, 2021, Kirby had an unusual message regarding the mandate, “You can consider this memo not just a warning order to the services but to the troops themselves,” with the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee commenting that, “Some may try and criticize the Secretary’s decision, using anti-vax arguments that are not supported by facts or science to politicize the conversation. These desperate attention seekers must be ignored.”
While service members of faith are being denied accommodations and are presently prevented from doing their jobs and maintaining their careers, the Air Force is willingly accommodating service members who are unvaccinated for COVID-19 for medical reasons.
To any reasonable person, the hypocrisy and unlawfulness is clear.
ARMY PENALIZING SOLDIERS SEEKING RELIGIOUS ACCOMMODATIONS TO VAX MANDATE: ‘TECHNIQUE OF COERCION’
In a recent decision in a lawsuit brought by United Airlines employees, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Judge James C. Ho provided the best explanation of what the real objective is with these mandates.
In his concurrence, Judge Ho stated that United Airlines placed its employees with religious objections to taking the COVID-19 vaccine on indefinite, unpaid leave “to coerce its employees into violating their religious beliefs – and what’s worse, to do so irrevocably and permanently.”
Judge Ho rightly concluded that United’s business decision had nothing to do with safety, but rather “the real reason for the vaccine mandate and indefinite unpaid leave policy is ‘virtue signaling’ and ‘currying political favor.’”
CLICK HERE TO GET THE OPINION NEWSLETTER
It’s time for the Biden administration to put its false, damaging narrative to rest. As the Supreme Court urged this past fall, “even in a pandemic, the Constitution cannot be put away and forgotten.” The Supreme Court has also held that where it is “only conduct motivated by religious conviction that bears the weight of the governmental restrictions,” then there “can be no serious claim that those interests justify the [military’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate.]”
At this point, the Department of Defense should be more concerned with its own 100% compliance with the Constitution rather than 100% vaccination compliance. How will religious liberty ever be preserved if our own executive branch is permitted to overtly dishonor it?
