Admiral James A. Lyons, Jr., USNA ’52, USN (Ret), former Commander US Pacific Fleet, discusses the need to restore the “Military’s Moral Underpinning” in his below listed Op Ed. It is so appropriate and timely in light of President Trump’s decision to terminate the induction of transgender people into the US Armed Forces.
Terminating transgender people from serving in the US Armed Forces is another of the President Trump’s important steps, to change the disastrous policies Obama imposed on the US Armed Forces. by force feeding his “Social Experiment On Diversity” into the US military over the last 8 years.
President Trump stated that, after consulting “with my generals and military experts,” that the US government “will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military.”
The over 2 military personnel serving in the US Armed Forces and Reserve Force, do not want to conform to the strange transgender accommodations imposed upon them by Obama (men sleeping in women compartments, women using male bathrooms, males showering with women, personnel being absent from their units for extended periods going thru sex change operations, increasing the work load on everyone else in the undermanned unit, etc.)
The critical issue that Obama completely ignored for the last 8 years, was that no policy should ever been instituted in the US military, if it would degrade the “Combat Effectiveness” of the US Armed Forces.
The destabilizing “Social Experiment On Diversity” was forced upon the US military by Obama over the last 8 years. That policy degraded the “Combat Effectiveness” of the US Armed Forces, degraded unit readiness, destabilized unit cohesion, and damaged unit moral.
The US Armed Forces is not an organization for progressives and liberals to experiment with, by enacting one social experiment after another. The US military is also not an equal opportunity employer . The US Military like the all other strong & effective military organizations worldwide is, in reality, a dictatorship that has one focus and one focus only, to defend their countries from all enemies foreign and domestic.
In order to allow transgender people to enlist in the US Armed Forces, Obama had to repeal President Clinton’s policy of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”. A 2014 Pentagon study reported that Obama’s elimination of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”, resulted in thousands of gay members joining the US Armed Forces, which resulted in:
1. Thousands of young straight military recruits being raped in their barracks, many of those straight military recruits went AWOL to avoid being raped in their barracks at night. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/may/20/victims-of-sex-assaults-in-military-are-mostly-sil/
The decision by Obama to approve the enlistment of transgender people into the US Armed Forces was another of destabilizing decisions that have:
1. Created a massive compulsory retraining program for over 2 million members of the US Armed Forces and the reserve component of the US Armed Forces, as well as for millions of civilian employees of the US Armed Forces, requiring that they endure many hours of transgender “Sensitivity Training” classes, and “Politically Correct” training classes at prohibitive costs in terms of time and cost. Instead, military personnel should be going to classes to train them to be more efficient war fighters.
2. Burdened the US Armed Forces with millions of dollars in costs for gender change surgeries. How does gender change surgeries win wars? Often transgender people join the US military to get the free gender change surgeries which they would not have otherwise afford.
3. Resulted in medical costs per transgender enlistee that far exceeded the cost of rehabilitating personnel with serious combat injuries, and their extended hospital stays, taken the scarce hospital availabilities that would have normally been required for military personnel with legitimate service connected injuries.
4. Extended the time required for transgender people to go through a series of surgeries, resulting in newly enrolled transgender personnel spending years in gender change surgeries and extended recovery periods, making them unavailable to serve for many years.
5. Resulted in the enrolment of 6, 630 transgender people during the Obama administration. The JAG Corps spends an inordinate amount of time dealing with multiple complex legal issues affecting transgender personnel in comparison to an average enrollee. The JAG Corps is already short staffed, and has a myriad of legal issues normally affecting their services branches, without being saddled with issues affecting transgender members.
6. Resulted in massive bureaucratic problems, in additional administrative costs of $8 million annually for 6,630 transgender members (according to a RAND study), disrupting the smooth running operation of boot camps, the four Military Service Academies, every military base in the world, on hundreds of US Navy ships, in recruiting offices for all service branches in thousands of US cities across the nation, and in the Pentagon, in comparison to the benefits that 6,630 transgender members, out of 2,092,900 active duty and reserve personnel, provide for the US Armed Forces.
7. These gender-confused individuals are a tiny fraction of the 350 million Americans, yet Obama expected everyone on military bases, in military commissaries & exchange bathrooms, in base grammar school bathrooms, and in civil service offices bathrooms to succumb to transgender demands, such as being allowed to shower and go to the bathroom with them, or risk being labeled as a bigot, a homophobe, or worse. Accommodating transgender military members, requires women and victims of sexual abuse to risk their safety and privacy by allowing biological men into intimate areas reserved only for women and girls on military facilities.
The US Armed Forces must focus on its primary function, on its “Combat Effectiveness”. The ultimate function of the US military is to put a bullet into an enemy soldier, not to promote the progressive “feel good” social experiments that have been destroying unit cohesiveness, unit moral, and military readiness, while driving straight military personnel out of careers in the US Armed Forces.
We encourage you to read Admiral Lyons Op Ed, and forward it to those in your address book who would support our effort to support President Trump’s plan to focus, once again after 8 years, on developing the most efficient “Combat Effective” military force in the world.
Joseph R. John, USNA ‘62
Capt., USN(Ret)/Former FBI
Chairman, Combat Veterans For Congress PAC
San Diego, CA
