Biden Supports Dishonorable Discharge For Troops Refusing Covid Vaccine

It may not be enough for a U.S. soldier, sailor, airman, or Marine to simply decide that they don’t want a Covid-19 vaccination so they’re going to leave their post with an honorable discharge. Democrats in the House, backed by the Biden administration, are attempting to change sections of the law that would prohibit a dishonorable discharge for refusing a vaccination. The result amounts essentially to forced vaccination with threats of a permanently stained military record for refusing a Covid-19 vaccination.

In August, the Pentagon mandated all 1.4 million service members must be vaccinated. There are still some 800,000 who have yet to receive a dose meaning there could be a large number waiting or planning to exit the service if the mandate stands.

At the moment, however, the White House is attempting to give the Pentagon some teeth behind the mandate by threatening a dishonorable discharge for refusal to accept a Covid vaccination:

The White House said Tuesday it ‘strongly opposes’ a provision of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that prohibits the Pentagon from punishing or dishonorably discharging any service member who refuses a vaccine.

‘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 White House Office of Management and Budget said in a statement on the yearly bill that funds the Pentagon.

‘To enable a uniformed force to fight with discipline, commanders must have the ability to give orders and take appropriate disciplinary measures.’

Republicans, who have seen this coming, attempted to prevent such language from being removed from the bill:

But during the budget bill’s markup under the House Armed Services Committee, an amendment, now section 716, proposed by Rep. Mark Green, R-Tenn., made its way into the bill that prohibited ‘any discharge but honorable’ for vaccine refusal.

‘I am appalled that the Biden Administration is trying to remove my amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that prevents anything but an honorable discharge for service members who refuse to get the COVID-19 vaccine,’ Green said in a statement to DailyMail.com. ‘This was a bipartisan amendment — every Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee agreed to it.’

In the private sector, and even in other areas of government, employees can simply decide to quit or take on a regimen of weekly testing if they refuse to receive a Covid-19 vaccination. The military will now be treated differently with no exceptions allowed, and threats of a permanent scar as a dishonorable discharge on the record of any individual who refuses and decides to leave instead.

The mark of a dishonorable discharge can amount to a similar notation as being judged a criminal felon. Any soldier receiving such a mark cannot re-enlist in the future and sometimes their rights can be curtailed in other ways, such as losing the right to purchase a firearm.

In essence, any servicemember refusing to be vaccinated could be instantly branded as no better than a criminal who committed rape or murder.

At the moment, the amendment introduced by Rep. Mark Green which prohibits a dishonorable discharge for vaccine refusal is part of the law that may be signed in coming months:

The authorization bill still needs to survive a full House vote and negotiations with the Senate before it can be sent to the president to become law. That process is expected to take several more months.

Meanwhile, dismissals for vaccine refusals could begin within the next few weeks. Lawmakers did not say whether they would push to make the provision retroactive if other-than-honorable dismissals take place before the legislative language becomes law.

For the time being, many service members are in limbo, waiting to discover how severe the consequences could be for continued Covid-19 vaccine refusal.