(LifeSiteNews) — A retired U.S. Air Force Brigadier General called for the prosecution of U.S. Air Force Academy (USAFA) cadets who have been denied commission into the Air Force for refusing COVID shots.
Former Air Force officer Marty France declared not only that the COVID jab-free USAFA cadets should resign, but that they should be prosecuted for “failure to obey” an “order or regulation,” an offense that carries a penalty of as much as two years’ confinement, because they are vocally defying what he calls a “lawful order” to receive an experimental, abortion-tainted “vaccine.”
At the time of France’s guest post published by Daily Kos on May 18, four unnamed cadets had refused the COVID-19 jab. One of the four recently decided to get the shot, and so was approved to graduate and become an Air Force officer. A spokesperson for the academy said another submitted paperwork to resign from the school, leaving two cadets at a “stalemate” and unable to graduate from the Academy.
The cadets who have firmly refused to get jabbed for COVID-19 may be forced to repay tuition costs, which could amount to as much as $200,000 or more.
According to reports, the cadets have requested religious exemptions to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s August 2021 order that all service members, including those in military academies, receive COVID-19 shots.
The three COVID-19 “vaccines” currently available in the U.S. have used aborted fetal cells in their production and or testing, prompting some military service members to seek religious exemptions to the COVID jab mandate. Only a small portion of these requests have been granted: While as many as 20,000 service members have asked for religious exemptions, according to the Associated Press, only 73 religious exemptions have been approved by the Air Force, seven have been approved by the Marine Corps, and eight have been approved by the Army.
A statement released by the Air Force Academy to 11 News noted that “part of” the “religious accommodation process included an interview with a chaplain who determined if the cadet had a sincerely held religious belief. However, even if an individual holds a sincerely held religious belief, the decision authority … must weigh that belief against the compelling government interest of ensuring a safe and ready force … ”
U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn wrote to the USAFA on May 17 decrying the denial of commission to the then-four cadets and requesting a reversal of the decision.
“Not only does your decision penalize their religious beliefs and violate their First Amendment Rights, but it also upholds a requirement that is currently subject to numerous unresolved lawsuits,” Lamborn wrote to the AFA superintendent.
Lamborn noted that they will not graduate “despite meeting all requirements they agreed to when they entered the U.S. Air Force Academy four years ago,” and that the decision “stand[s] alone” among the military academies, “as neither West Point nor the U.S. Naval Academy are penalizing cadets or ‘midshipmen for not getting vaccinated, and their seniors are allowed to graduate regardless of their vaccination status.”
In his article, France compared the cadets’ religious objections with the COVID jabs to “fringe beliefs” like that of those who refuse to “get a haircut” or “wear pants,” advising that such a belief means “you don’t belong in the military and you should simply resign and pay any debts owed.”
France described the cadets as “dishonorable” for having refused COVID shots, and characterized them as a danger to the military. He attempted to capture what he believes is at the heart of the issue by introducing his article with a quote by George S. Patton, with his own added twist (in brackets): “If you can’t get them to salute when they should salute and wear the clothes you tell them to wear [and take the FDA-approved vaccines that their leaders mandate], how are you going to get them to die for their country?”
France went so far as to criticize U.S. Air Force Academy leadership for having “tolerated their insubordination and even normalized it by allowing it to fester,” instead of “making examples of” the cadets, who he laments have become “heroes” of what he calls the “radical right that refused masks, stormed the Capitol on January 6 … and continue to spread wild conspiracy theories about COVID, vaccines, and hundreds of other whack-a-doodle ruminations.”
He further claimed that the Academy has “lost its way,” in part because it has granted exemptions and what France terms “public martyr status to the worst among them.”
“In taking any other course but swift and severe military action against the disobedient, the Academy fails in its mission profoundly,” France concluded.
The Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 shots, those most heavily used in the U.S., have been described by several experts, such as mRNA vaccine technology pioneer Dr. Robert Malone, as more accurately termed “gene therapy.” The president of Bayer’s Pharmaceuticals Division has also acknowledged that the mRNA COVID-19 shots are indeed “cell and gene therapy,” and said that if the public was asked if they would take such gene therapy before the COVID-19 outbreak, there “probably” would have been “a 95% refusal rate.”
As of May 20, 2022, there have been reported a total of 1,277,978 COVID “vaccine” adverse event reports, and 28,312 reported deaths in the U.S. It remains a concern that these figures are just “the tip of the iceberg,” as a 2010 Harvard-executed study commissioned by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) revealed that reported vaccine injuries to VAERS represent an estimated 1% of actual injuries.