(LifeSiteNews) — Throughout his first year in office, Joe Biden has managed, time and again, to surpass my wildest expectations. Just when you think things couldn’t possibly get any worse, Joe manages, in a flash and without a hitch, to prove me wrong.
However, determining which one of his blunders, utter catastrophes, full-on failures, and/or outright abuses of power has done the most intrinsic damage to our country can certainly be a heavy task. one, in particular, stands out to me as distinctly appalling, even when compared against the rest.
When Joe Biden first began toying with the idea of federal Covid-19 vaccine mandates last year, he directed the Pentagon to test the waters with one of their own. On August 24, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin issued memorandum directing the branches of the military to require “full vaccination” of all active duty and Reserves members as a condition for their continued service.
From there, branches were responsible for implementing their own respective timeline(s) for the new requirements to be met. However, after several months had gone by since the Pentagon first issued its order, it became clear that not all soldiers would be so quick to jump on the bandwagon.
In December, the Air Force became the first branch of the military to begin discharging members who refused to comply with the new vaccine mandate. The Marines soon followed, along with both the Army and Navy. While each branch saw more than 90% of its active membership fall in line before the end of the year, the remaining men and women – who opted against sacrificing their own medical autonomy to achieve a political end for Austin and Biden, and of which there are still thousands – held steady, knowing that doing so could (and likely would) result in losing their jobs and their livelihoods.
The arrogance that must permeate any politician – let alone the president of the United States and his Pentagon chief – who believes honorable members of the Armed Forces are, in some convoluted sense, expendable, or worthy of penalization, ostracism, or sheer abandonment by their own Commander-in-Chief for not following their tyrannical marching orders is simply staggering, especially when, over the course of the last year, those very same politicians caused an entire country to fall to a barbaric terrorist organization that those men and women have held at bay for 20 years, and are currently hurtling us towards World War III with the planet’s greatest nuclear power as we speak.
They’re in no absolutely no position to make such needless demands of the courageous men and women who sacrifice everything, on a daily basis, to keep our country safe and to protect and defend the rights of all Americans; it’s time Washington started doing a fraction of the same for them.
Members of Congress can start by supporting the Service Restoration Act (filed as H.R. 6649), a new bill that would effectively nullify Biden’s military vaccine mandate and reinstate all service members who were terminated for refusing the Covid shot.
It would do so by, first, prohibiting any federal funds from being used to coerce or overtly force service members into getting vaccinated for Covid-19 against their wishes, which, alone, would legally annul the Pentagon’s standing mandate. As a result, soldiers’ medical autonomy would be prioritized once again, and their inherent right to opt against the shot for health-related, faith-based, ethical, and/or personal reasons without manipulation or intimidation would be restored.
This also means that, going forward, soldiers’ careers could no longer be used as leverage by the military, or any government entity, in order to achieve mass public health compliance. No longer would our brave men and women in uniform be subject to termination simply for doing what they believe is right for their health.
Likewise, the bill would also direct the branches’ respective Secretaries to reinstate any and all service members who were wrongfully discharged as a result of the mandate to the rank they held at the time of their involuntary separation, and require their time away from the military to be automatically counted into their future retirement benefits.
Another provision requires the expungement of any unfavorable mandate-spawned actions, including termination, from the affected soldiers’ records.
The full text of the bill amounts to just three pages, simply because its premise and stated purpose is, itself, rather straightforward: “To prohibit adverse action against a member of the Armed Forces who refuses to receive a vaccination against COVID–19, and for other purposes.”
And that’s exactly what it does. There’s no hidden agenda or fine print here, as is often the case with most legislation introduced in either chamber; the Service Restoration Act simply rights a grave wrong.
Advancing this bill through the legislative process could go a long way in reversing the damage done to our military by an administration that has prioritized cult-like devotion to “the science” rather than the actual science and Fauci-promoted Covid alarmism over having the backs of all service members no matter what – all at a time of momentous international conflict, no less.
The men and women of our military are America’s last line of defense against enemies both foreign and domestic, and their selfless willingness to serve, fight, and die for our country and its people should be honored by those who hold their lives in hands, not punished for a lack of adherence to prevailing political agenda(s).
But thanks to Joe Biden’s and Lloyd Austin’s misplacement of priorities and general fecklessness, those soldiers’ value has instead been reduced to the ink on a government-issued vaccine card.
The Service Restoration Act can and will change that, and members of Congress from both parties should recognize this ongoing debate as a matter of bipartisan importance by approving H.R. 6649 with a veto-proof majority as soon as legislatively possible.