President Obama’s Defense Department team shouldn’t treat the military as “an experimental laboratory on social issues” in the final months of his administration, according to a top Republican lawmaker.
“We’re seeing a lot of stuff coming out of DoD in the waning months, and so that will present oversight challenges to us to understand the implications of what they put out and especially the long-term implications,” House Armed Services Chairman Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, told reporters on Monday morning.
Thornberry made the comments on the same day that the Defense Department unveiled a proposed regulation to provide hormone replacement therapy to transgender service members and their families, a proposal activists hail as a sign that the administration plans to allow transgender troops to serve openly. Thornberry demurred when asked for his thoughts on that proposal, but took a broader swipe at the Pentagon leadership.
“I do not believe that the military should be an experimental laboratory for social issues,” he said. “But I also believe that you focus on capability and getting the job done, protecting the country, and don’t worry so much about a person’s color or gender, whatever it is … as long as they can do the job, that’s what counts.”
Other members of the House Armed Services Committee are taking a similar line, sometimes even more forcefully, in criticizing the political appointees who lead the military, such as Navy Secretary Ray Mabus. “With Mabus, I find myself extraordinarily frustrated with the secretary on so many issues because I think he has viewed his role to fundamentally change the culture of the military,” Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont., a former Navy SEAL, said last month at a Steamboat Institute conference in Colorado. “And there’s a lot of the culture of the military that I do think we need to have paused and look at it. But we always have to look at the military as the core mission is to defeat our enemies.”
Mabus’ decision to overrule Marine Corps commanders who opposed allowing women into combat jobs particularly frustrated Zinke. “When the Marines, who I trust, say that when you intermix that they are less combat effective, that women get hurt more and they get injured more, I think that report was true,” he said. “You do need women on the battlefield in asymmetric warfare, because I tell you, men can’t go everywhere … and everyone should play the role they can.”
Thornberry denied that Republicans are generally reluctant to allow women into combat units, but he did express misgivings about how the Obama administration might implement that change. “I think there is concern among some members [of Congress] that the administration will change the standards in order to meet quotas,” he told reporters. “So, Secretary Carter mentioned when he called me about this several weeks ago that if you look at the requirements for certain units, they will certainly be open to women but we expect them to be relatively few because of physical strength requirements and so forth.”
The Texas Republican faulted the Defense Department for withholding the plans for how to implement such policy changes. “We hope we can do a better job when the administration gives us the information we request,” he said. “When they are reluctant to give us the information we request, it caused everything to be more [complicated].”
