Sen. Tuberville Department of Defense Confirmation Holds
A Reaction to Biden’s Progressive Virtue Signaling?
Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville has put a hold on all Department of Defense confirmation votes over his objection to the progressive cultural policies the administration is imposing on the military, most notably funds for abortion tourism. Hundreds of civilian and military officials are awaiting their confirmations, while many positions are currently vacant. This is jeopardizing national security for several reasons and negatively affecting the servicemembers and their families.
Many at the Department of Defense who hold deputy positions are now also performing the responsibilities of their former bosses in an acting capacity. The problem is that senior defense officials often travel to meet with their foreign counterparts, and those deputy positions are key to directing their divisions while the boss is traveling. Now, the deputies are doing the traveling, and nobody’s there to mind the door. When they go abroad, they don’t have as much credibility because they hold office in a temporary capacity and without Senate confirmation. Therefore, the other side can’t trust that what the acting American officials tell them is entirely reliable or holds in the long run. Alternatively, some of them aren't traveling at all, failing to engage in important diplomacy with allies and enemies alike.
Diplomacy still matters folks.
Military families are also suffering. Many do not know where they will be living. The military is careful, to the best of its ability, to inform the troops ahead of time when they are being deployed or stationed elsewhere, whether it's within the United States or abroad, and to do it during the summer so military children won’t have to change schools during the school year. Now, all of those bets are off.
Also, too often it is the case that those in acting positions a level above their permanent positions are not qualified enough for that acting position. After all, there is a reason that they were not appointed to that position in the first place. On top of that, the military likes to shuffle people around to give them a variety of experiences which benefits the troops intellectually by exposing them to different environments and threats. But now, that is not happening, either.
And last, this is increasing Americans’ diminishing confidence in the military. While the military used to stand head and shoulder above the rest of our institutions when it came to Americans’ trust, that is no longer the case, and partisan attacks on it have been harmful to that trust.
And it is “all Republicans’ fault!” — or that’s what propagandist like MSNBC and CNN would have you believe.
Let’s start with the Tuberville hold.
When Dobbs overturned Roe, the Pentagon announced that troops who couldn't receive abortion services in the states where they are stationed would receive travel funds from the Department of Defense to travel to a different state. On average, U.S. military hospitals have performed 15 abortions a year. Considering that many states still allow access to abortion, the number of military women who will not be able to receive abortion services in their stationed states is minimal.
But the Democrats warned that without this policy, recruitment would be severely harmed, and they argued that they had to implement the policy of a travel fund for abortion to maintain current recruitment levels. All this for fewer than 10 women a year?
It was not about recruitment. If the administration cared about U.S. military strength, it wouldn’t year after year submit its budget request to Congress asking for a cut in the defense budget. This is about partisan virtue-signaling. And not just to the voters but also to the angry progressives Biden has hired in the administration and the Pentagon.
The U.S. military is a culturally conservative institution. Most who join come from the Midwest (24%) and the South (41%). This isn’t necessarily a good thing. It is much better for America if the military represents the entirety of the society. Especially when recruitment is a serious challenge, reaching out to other Americans is a good idea. But doing so at the expense of losing conservatives in the military is not.
But the Democrats have been doing it for decades. Bill Clinton’s botched attempt to allow gays to openly serve in the military, well before the American public was comfortable with homosexuality, created an uproar and turned the military into an ideological football. Obama tried the same thing, but he was saved by his Republican Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, who managed to implement the policy with bipartisan congressional approval and consent from within the force. After Gates was gone, Obama overreached by unilaterally allowing transgenders to serve and lowering physical standards for women to join the infantry—decisions unpopular across the board and harmful to military lethality and unit cohesion.
Biden is doing the same now. During the height of Covid, vaccine requirements were implemented for military personnel; however, the administration made a point of keeping the requirement well after the pandemic was over until Congress ended the requirement. David Berger, then the Commandant of the Marine Corps, had expressed problems that the vaccine requirement had caused for him in recruiting for the corps. The administration has also imposed DEI policies on the military, with some senior officers, such as the now-retired Chief of Naval Operations Michael Gilday, adding Ibram Kendi’s 'How to Be an Antiracist' to his recommended reading list for Navy members. Travel funds for abortion are the latest example. None of these policies really accomplish anything, especially considering that they will not be permanent, and the next Republican administration will likely undo all of them. They are there to appease progressive Democrats and Act Blue donors.
Tuberville’s hold is harming national security. Just like Congressional Republicans passed a bill to end vaccine mandates, they can and should also end other nonsense by passing legislation. After all, that’s literally their job, to write and pass bills. But his ill-advised behavior is not happening in a vacuum, and, while mainstream media are condemning it, they should also explain the larger context: Tuberville’s lone wolf behavior is a reaction to Democrats’ irresponsible, progressive pandering behavior.
If you don’t want the military to become a partisan football, then, don’t turn the military into a partisan football.
American society has changed a lot, and the military has changed with it. Sometimes changes happened first in the military and then society followed, such as the racial desegregation of the force. Sometimes, society changes first. At a time that everything is so polarized, however, and foreign threats are greater than ever since the Cold War, it is prudent for the military to stay above the culture war, letting the society resolve its differences first before the military adjusts in whichever direction.
Meanwhile, Biden and the Democrats cannot impose ideological change on the force and complain when Republicans push back.
As an officer told me last week, Americans will look at this episode in two ways. They either see Tuberville’s holdout and think “man that sucks, but he’s got a point,” or they think “that selfish guy is grandstanding.” He added, “either way, you see the U.S. military shackled because of the legislative branch’s inability to put emotion aside and do their jobs.” In other words, while Americans and their political leaders had carved out a special place for the military outside of partisan politics, the armed forces have finally arrived where the rest of our institutions have finally caught up with the politics of our time.