It’s been quite some time since Americans could reliably assume every member of Congress will always choose national defense and military readiness over cheap political gamesmanship or partisan grandstanding.
Senate Armed Services Committee member Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., has indefinitely frozen more than 300 military promotions as a way to force tighter restrictions on abortion for members of the armed forces. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images/TNS
Yet, even despite that grim view of lawmakers, Sen. Tommy Tuberville has for months managed to further sully the federal legislature by singlehandedly blocking every military promotion that requires confirmation in the Senate.
This has to stop. The Alabama Republican should have long ago earned a stern rebuke by members of both parties as well as his constituents at home. But he shouldn’t need an admonition to understand the instability caused by indefinitely freezing over 300 personnel moves, including some at the highest echelons of Pentagon leadership.
Last month, the U.S. Marine Corps conducted its change of command ceremony as Gen. David Berger concluded his four years as commandant. Ordinarily, Assistant Commandant Gen. Eric Smith would have ascended to the top job, but Tuberville has blocked his nomination in the Senate, leaving the Marines without a commandant for the first time since 1910.
Tuberville’s Senate blockade means that Smith will carry out the duties of the No. 1 and No. 2 roles in the Corps. According to the Marine Corps Times, Smith told reporters that he also will not issue the traditional Commandant’s Planning Guidance, which sets out a commandant’s vision for leading the service.
That’s just one way in which Tuberville’s actions have disrupted how military leadership operates at the moment. It means those at the highest levels of the Pentagon will be overstretched and, in some cases, unable to carry out their duties. As the blockade continues into this month and September – when the Senate returns from its August recess – it could also affect other members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; three more terms will expire in the next two months, meaning half of the Joint Chiefs soon could be vacant.
Tuberville launched this crusade as a way to force tighter restrictions on abortion for members of the armed forces. According to NPR, the senator wants the Pentagon to end the policy of “granting leave and travel expenses for military personnel who cannot obtain an abortion in the state where they are stationed.”
Tuberville’s Alabama is now one of the most difficult states in the nation for women to have an abortion, and the senator contends that state law should be honored. He points to last year’s Supreme Court decision, which overturned the longstanding precedent of Roe v. Wade and returning the issue to state legislatures.
Making reproductive health care more challenging for service members to obtain will hurt, not help, the military. Recruiting numbers are already perilously low, and Tuberville would make staffing our all-volunteer force more challenging. Women who might want to join the military may think twice knowing they could be deployed to a state where abortion is all but banned and where having a child could spell the end of a promising career in uniform.
During his confirmation hearings last month to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Air Force Gen. C.Q. Brown warned that tactics such as Tuberville’s risk alienating more than female service members.
“We have our more junior officers who now will look up and say, ‘If that’s the challenge I’m going to have to deal with in the future … I’m going to balance between my family and serving in a senior position,’ ” Brown told the Senate Armed Services Committee. “And we will lose talent because of those challenges.”
Even those who may be sympathetic to Tuberville’s cause must recognize the folly of this – and the danger. It’s one thing to oppose a Pentagon policy and quite another for one legislator to compromise military leadership until he gets his way.
Members of the Senate, both Republican and Democratic, must tell Tuberville to stop his tantrum and allow these personnel decisions to proceed in the interest of national defense.
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