When asked on NBC’s Today show late last week whether he will issue an order for all U.S. military personnel to get a COVID-19 vaccination shot, President Joe Biden was equivocal. At first, Biden said, “I don’t know. I’m going to leave that to the military,” but then added, “I’m not saying I won’t. I think you’re gonna see more and more of them getting it.”
“It’s going to be a tough call,” Biden said of whether to issue such an order, “as to whether or not they should be required to get it in the military because you’re in such close proximity with other military personnel.”
The Marine Corps acknowledged that about 93,500 Marines have received the vaccines — produced either by Pfizer, Moderna, or Johnson & Johnson — but that nearly 53,000, or about 36 percent, have still refused to take the shot. More than 100,000 Marines have not yet been given the opportunity to receive the shots.
Captain Andrew Wood, speaking for the Pentagon, appeared to downplay the reluctance of military service personnel to take one of the three vaccines, at least so far. “Service members who decline one day can change their mind and become vaccinated when the next opportunity presents itself,” Captain Wood told Military Times. Wood suggested, without evidence, that many may be turning down the vaccine so others who are not as young and healthy can get the shot first.
Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Turner, who is in charge of the vaccination planning for active-duty personnel at Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, North Carolina, had a different explanation for the high refusal rate. “It’s a challenge to combat misinformation that Marines are seeing on social media. But that is one of our principal lines of effort here. We have to inoculate the force from the virus, and we have to inoculate the force for vaccine misinformation.”
The troops are not alone in their hesitancy to take the vaccine. According to a CNN poll, 26 percent of adults do not intend to get the shot.
This raises some questions relative to the possibility that Biden may issue an order requiring every service member to receive a shot, even if they do not want to get it. Some might argue that, as “commander-in-chief” of the armed forces, Biden can legally order individual soldiers and sailors to do anything. But Biden is restricted to issuing what are called “lawful orders.” In other words, Biden cannot order military personnel to do something that is illegal. For example, Biden could not order any soldier to attend religious services of a religion other than that soldier’s own religion, or to round up American civilians who do not wish to take the shot. While people understandably surrenders some liberties when joining the military, they don’t surrender them all.
American military personnel have for years been required to take certain shots — against anthrax, for example — to protect them in any encounter with enemy forces, or a disease common in the area of their deployment. But that the vaccinations so far approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are considered “experimental” raises another question. Should any American, including those in the armed forces, be required to take a shot that is still considered experimental?
Ordering American military personnel to take an experimental vaccine would, however, be par for the course. Because of the ability to order American military personnel to do things, liberals have already implemented their radical social agenda among the troops in areas such as forcing them to be subjected to diversity-training sessions on “white privilege.” This is instructive — whenever the Left has the opportunity to bully individuals to adopt their agenda, they do it, whether it be in the military or in industry. It reveals their attitude — they don’t need to persuade when they can simply issue an order, with the threat of dire consequences such as being fired from a job, drummed out of the military, or even placed in the brig. When they are in control of the executive branch, they use that power to impose their leftist values on the armed forces.
This is a strong indication of what they would do to the rest of us, if they are ever given the power.
