Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) has slammed “very weak” Joe Biden in a scathing statement on the Democrat president’s approach to national security.
Hawley led the charge to sink the provision in the Senate and yesterday the Leaders of the House and Senate Armed Services committees left the provision out of the final version of the National Defense Authorization Act.
“This is obviously something I fought since the committee stage,” Hawley said:
“I forced a vote in the committee on this provision and forced a roll call vote on it and have obviously been prepared to force a vote on the same provision on the Senate floor.
“If this is accurate, I think that this is a big victory for common sense. And I’m glad to have helped lead the charge on this. The West clearly has made a culture war their priority across a lot of fronts.
“I just think it’s unbelievable. And it really shows that they have been hijacked by these cultural issues.
“They’re trying to create a culture war and I think it’s one that they are going to lose because the American people like our culture.
“I’m not in favor of using the military as a social experiment. And I think they need to get back to focusing on defensive security issues when it comes to our military.
“I just think the Biden administration is projecting weakness everywhere.
“I think our enemies saw that, and they saw a president who cannot lead.
“We’re seeing our enemies emboldened and thinking that they can take advantage of a very weak administration and a very weak president. That’s dangerous.
“I think what is plain for everybody to see is that the administration and the Left are more focused on their gender issues and on their culture war issues than they are on actual national security issues.
“We’ve got a lot of security threats, and they’re growing worse and the Biden administration is making them worse,” Hawley said.
Score one for Josh Hawley: Provision to expand the military draft to include women is expected to be axed. https://t.co/c0PBmz4YYY
— Philip Melanchthon Wegmann (@PhilipWegmann) December 7, 2021
From Politico:
Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo.), a social conservative who opposes requiring women to register, celebrated its removal from the bill. She criticized the move as “imposing a woke ideology on our troops rather than meeting the current needs of our military.”
“Women are not chess pieces in a political game. They are doctors, lawyers, engineers and already valuable members of our all-volunteer force,” Hartzler said. “I applaud the removal of this unnecessary provision and am grateful to see reasonable minds come together to join me in resisting this effort.”
Calls to expand the draft beyond men have grown recently, particularly after the Pentagon opened all combat roles to women in 2015. An 11-member independent commission that reviewed the draft also backed the change last year in its final report to Congress.
Advocates of reining in presidential war powers also came up short in the defense bill.
