Military Vaccinations are Not a Political Issue
Exemption, NJP, Restriction, Court Martial, or Discharge. Or simply roll up your sleeve and get the jab. These are the options that face about 3% of service members who have not gotten the covid jab. I pray they make the right choice and choose the jab if they cannot get an exemption. After all, it is about protecting more than themselves. It is about protecting their unit to protect the mission to protect the United States of America. To not get the protection that a vaccine can provide is, in fact, an act of dishonor and disrespect to their fellow members who have done the right thing.
As a Navy Corpsman, I faced more than my fair share of vaccination hesitancy over my twenty-year career. I’ve heard every excuse to avoid various shots. I’ve encountered these excuses up and down the chain of command from privates to colonels and captains. In very few cases, an exemption was granted, usually because of a known allergy or other medical condition. But in the end, very few service members escaped their obligation to receive immunizations.
To be clear, military members do not want to get the number of vaccines that they are required to receive. They have to get many more vaccines than any civilian ever would. The military has about seventeen different vaccines a service member may be required to get depending on their duty assignment. Nine of those vaccines the member will receive before they finish their first phases of training. Yes, it is a lot. But then again, very few civilians would ever face the possibility of heading to a disease-infected area at a moment’s notice.
So military members know the vaccines will probably protect them. Yet no one has ever shown up to sick call dying to get their next shot. And many service members will complain about the shots. They will swear that they don’t need it. They will invent excuses to delay the inevitable. But in the end, they line up, roll up their sleeves and get the mandated vaccines.
Military members do it because they know that an order is an order, and not obeying the order could result in consequences, including disciplinary action. They do it because they know that the unit’s vaccine status affects the unit’s deployment status. This, in turn, determines if the unit is up to its mission. And no one wants to be part of a unit that is prepared to do its mission, especially because of missing a jab in the arm.
Frankly, this issue seems wildly overblown by people who have decided force protection is a political issue. The reality is that force protection, which includes vaccine programs, is not a political issue. Force protection is exactly as stated–something that protects the force and thus protects the mission.
Vaccinations, as part of that force protection, are not just about protecting the individual service member. Vaccinations are far more important than that. I hate to break the news, but force protection trumps individual protection, needs, and even what some think are rights. The collection of individual vaccines offers the type of force protection that allows for a force ready to serve anywhere in the world at any time under any circumstances.
Because of this, it is odd for me to hear politicians defend the relatively very few military members who have chosen not to obey an order. To defend the few who think their rights trump the needs of the unit and the protection of that unit and their fellow service members. To defend a defiance of the military chain of command that could lead to a further erosion of good order and discipline. There is already enough of that in the modern all-volunteer military.
Finally, as some politicians suggest, if the problem is just a recruiting and retention issue, then there are other answers. I personally would start with fixing military pay. To some, the pay seems generous, yet some military members can still qualify for food stamps. That fact alone should cause shame in the same politicians that say they support the troops. After that, the list of issues to fix ahead of vaccinations is long and not that complicated. They amount to taking care of the troops so they can take care of the missions and protect the United States. It’s just that simple.
And if that isn’t addressed or doesn’t fix the recruiting problem, then there are still options. America still has a draft on the books. It might be time to declare the all-volunteer model dead. We could also choose to begin a force reduction by fine-tuning America’s military presence in the world. Either of these options is better than surrendering force protection and good order and disciple for the sake of keeping the relatively few who choose not to obey orders anyway.