The Army National Guard fell short of its recruitment goal for the first time in decades this year, according to the Federal News Network. Instead of an end strength of 336,000 troops, only 330,000 will be serving. The Air National Guard also fell short of its goal.
Pentagon officials point to the strong economy and the nation’s obesity epidemic as reasons why it is difficult to find enough willing and qualified people to join the armed services. But former Department of Defense officials more willing to talk point to another culprit: President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. The Army National Guard, for instance, plans to discharge 14,000 members over the next two years who have refused to get vaccinated.
“The math and logic simply doesn’t add up to let troops go involuntarily over the vaccine while announcing at the same time historically high bonuses for new recruits,” the American Enterprise Institute’s Mackenzie Eaglen told Politico. “It is far more time-consuming and expensive to fire those with experience versus bringing in new, untrained personnel.”
“If you are sitting in the state of Georgia or Texas and you see they are putting 40,000 members out, you are going to scratch your head a bit and say, ‘Why would I join up?’” said a former senior official at the Defense Department. “And if you don’t want to get vaccinated, you are certainly not going to join.”
Young, healthy adults (the very population from which the National Guard recruits) comprise the same exact adult population at the lowest risk of hospitalization from COVID-19. Besides, as Biden himself told CBS News, “The pandemic is over.”
Given the increasing risks of a broader war in Europe and a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, this is not the time to be kicking troops out of the military over a vaccine that everyone now admits does not even prevent the transmission of the coronavirus.
Biden should end the vaccine mandate now. If he doesn’t, a Republican Congress should force him to do so in January.
