Why Trump Is Right About Transgender Service Members By David Lampo
By David Lampo David Lampo is author ofA Fundamental Freedom: Why Republicans, Conservatives, and Libertarians Should Support Gay Rights. He previously served on the boards of Log Cabin Republicans and Equality Virginia.
August 4, 2017
President Trump’s tweets are legendary, but few have aroused such fierce reaction as the one recently rescinding the “right” of transgender Americans to serve in the military. Not only have Democrats and leaders of the gay rights movement denounced this change; even some Republicans like Sen. John McCain have publicly expressed opposition, and pro-gay conservative organizations such as Log Cabin Republicans and American Unity Fund have also come out against it. Unfortunately, the president’s opponents have trotted out the usual clichés, accusing him of “discrimination,” a pejorative term used to demonize those who question the current policy as bigots and shut down debate by attacking their motives and character rather than address the real issues.
In fact, there is not, and never has been, the “right” of any class of citizens to join the armed forces. The military, in fact, “discriminates” against many classes of U.S. citizens. It’s ageist, for example: The maximum age for Army enlisted recruits is 35, while the Navy and Marines top out at ages 34 and 28, respectively. Those with serious medical conditions such as diabetes or obesity or who have physical limitations or impairments, those with any form of mental illness, those who aren’t U.S. citizens or have criminal records, to name just a few, are also prohibited from serving. Until recently, gay men and lesbians were banned, but that policy was rightly changed in 2010.
As with other groups of people excluded from service, there are a number of compelling reasons why the current policy of allowing transgender individuals to serve in the military should be reconsidered. Despite the fact that there are transgender Americans currently serving, “gender dysphoria,” as it is labeled in the medical literature,
is still considered a mental illness in
every country in the world except
Denmark.
Some of the most influential medical references in the world, including the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases (ICD), continue to categorize gender dysphoria as a mental disorder.
The Trump budget would increase spending only 3%. With today’s threats, that’s not nearly enough.
U.S. and Australian soldiers at a military exercise in the Philippines, May 8.PHOTO:AFP/GETTY IMAGES
By
Dick Cheneyand
Liz Cheney
June 20, 2017
North Korea is making alarming progress in its ballistic-missile and nuclear-weapons programs. Russia and China are developing and fielding advanced weapons against which the U.S. may not be able to defend. Al Qaeda operates in more countries than ever. Islamic State is targeting the West and launching attacks throughout Europe and the Middle East. Iran is supporting terrorist organizations across the globe, modernizing its ballistic-missile and other capabilities and likely continuing to pursue nuclear weapons.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told the House Armed Services Committee last week that the U.S. is losing the military edge on which our security has long relied: “Today, every operating domain—including outer space, air, sea, undersea, land and cyberspace—is contested.”
Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, seconded that worry in written testimony for the same hearing: “Without sustained, sufficient and predictable funding,” he wrote, “I assess that within five years we will lose our ability to project power; the basis of how we defend the homeland, advance U.S. interests, and meet our alliance commitments.”
In short, the situation President Trump inherited is dire. America today faces an array of threats more serious and complex than at any time in the past 75 years.
A recent mishap with the USS Carl Vinson is a case study for rebuilding the fleet to about 350 ships.
The USS Bataan fires a missile during exercises in the Atlantic Ocean, Jan. 11.PHOTO:AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
By
John Lehman
April 27, 2017
Mr. Lehman, secretary of the Navy under President Reagan, is the author of the forthcoming “Oceans Ventured, Oceans Gained” (W.W. Norton).
EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE: The next step is to reform the overgrown defense bureaucracy and overhaul the Pentagon’s dysfunctional procurement process. According to the Government Accountability Office, cost overruns have ballooned to more than $450 billion over the past two decades. The Navy needs to take authority back from the bureaucracy, end the culture of constant design changes and gold-plating, and bring back fixed-price competition.
Recall the development of the Polaris nuclear-missile system in the late 1950s. The whole package—a nuclear submarine, a solid-fuel missile, an underwater launch system, a nuclear warhead and a guidance system—went from the drawing board to deployment in four years (and using slide rules). Today, according to the Defense Business Board, the average development timeline for much less complex weapons is 22.5 years.
A case in point is the Ford-class aircraft carrier. The program is two years delayed and $2.4 billion over budget. The ship was designed to include 12 new technologies, such as electric instead of steam catapults that had not yet been developed. Many of these systems don’t work after 10 years of trying, and the ship will be delivered to the Navy without fully functional radar and unable to launch or recover aircraft. Yet the defense firms involved still profit under cost-plus contracts.
By Bruce M. Lawlor and Kevin McCarty– – Wednesday, March 8, 2017
Bruce M. Lawlor, a retired U.S. Army major general, is a former member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council and chief of staff of the Department of Homeland Security. Kevin McCarty is a former naval officer and strategist who served under two presidents as a member of the National Security Council staff.
EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE: THE NEW WAY
There needs to be an information component in the new ISIS strategy, one that meets head-on the issue of Islam being used to justify terrorist violence. The vast majority of Muslims are already with us in condemning hatred in the name of Islam, but there are still many who aren’t because a small percentage of 1.6 billion Muslims is still a lot of people. We need a political campaign to influence their ideas, to convince them that suicide vests and beheadings on the beach are not part of an answer to their problems.
ThePentagoncan’t run such a campaign because it doesn’t know how, as it has proved time and time again. Ironically, it was George C. Marshall, one of our greatest generals, who understood that sometimes firepower is not the best option, and that solutions can be found outside of government, if one is willing to accept a different conceptual approach. That is what is needed here. The people who know most about how to change minds are not found in the federal government. They live in political campaigns, think tanks, advocacy groups, academia, and yes — Hollywood and the media. If you want to change people’s thinking, that’s where you go to find the men and women who can do it.
Julius Caesar went to Pontus (now Turkey) in 47 B.C. to make war on the king, and proclaimed “I came, I saw, I conquered.” President Trump went to Washington to make war on ISIS and met Albert Einstein.
Like Caesar, Mr. Trump wants to put a quick, decisive end to the barbaric “dirty rats” of ISIS, shorthand for the Islamic State. Unlike Caesar, he has to rely on others to devise a strategy that will kill his enemy. To do that, he’s ordered thePentagonto come up with a new strategy.
It’s undeniably true that the United States needs a new approach to defeat ISIS. While President Obama issued press releases about drone attacks against individual ISIS leaders, the organization expanded into 31 countries and carried out or inspired terrorist attacks in Europe, the Middle East and the United States. Mr. Trump has wisely said we need to do something different. That’s where Albert Einstein comes in.
What happened to the strong military support that President Kennedy had from his
Democrat Party supporters? He actually increased military spending. Those days are gone as the Far Left has been very successful in changing the direction of the Democrat Party over the past 40+ years. Nancy
WATCH: GOP Congressman Booed By Leftist Activists After Vowing To Support More Funding For U.S. Military
Liberal activists booed Michigan Republican Rep. Dave Trott Saturday morning after the two-term congressman vocally supported increasing funding for the United States military.
Speaking to a packed ballroom inside a suburban Detroit convention center, Trott hosted his first town hall meeting since the 2016 elections, where he echoed President Donald Trump’s call for higher levels of military spending.
Many attendees were reportedly affiliated with the liberal activist group,Michigan People’s Campaign, which has been asking Trott to host a town hall ever since his reelection. The Daily Caller News Foundation reached out to the Michigan People’s Campaign for comment and received no response.
These are the promises that Trump ran and won on. Call or write to your representatives in congress if you agree that these cuts need to be made. Without those of us at the grassroots letting our voices be heard, congress won’t have the backbone to do this. Nancy
Trump Budget Seeks Big Cuts to Environment, Arts, Foreign Aid
EPA, State Department are among those to see sharp spending reductions to offset military outlay in White House plan
March 16, 2017
PresidentDonald Trumpcalled for sharp cuts to spending on foreign aid, the arts, environmental protection and public broadcasting to pay for a bigger military and a more secure border in a fiscal 2018 budget blueprint released Thursday.
The budget proposal is certain to run into stiff opposition in Congress, where lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have already signaled they are unlikely to enact Mr. Trump’s deep cuts when they pass spending bills that actually fund the government.
The budget proposes hefty cuts for the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Institutes of Health and the State Department. It also seeks to eliminate funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts and other independent agencies long in the crosshairs of some conservative Republicans.
The cuts, if enacted, would mean some agencies would have to lay off federal workers, though the budget doesn’t always offer exact head counts. It does specify that cuts to the EPA “would result in approximately 3,200 fewer positions at the agency.”
“You can’t drain the swamp and leave all the people in it,” said Mick Mulvaney, the president’s budget director. “I would expect there would have to be reductions of forces at various agencies.”
Robert Joseph was undersecretary of state for arms control and international security from 2005-2007; Eric Edelman was undersecretary of defense for policy, 2005-2009.
Of President-elect Trump’s tweets since winning the election, the one drawing the greatest criticism may well be his comment last week that the United States “must strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.” The next day, his critics went downright ballistic when the president-elect reportedly made the off-camera statement: “Let it be an arms race. . . . We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.” The partisans at the Ploughshares Fund and their paid-for “echo-chamber” colleagues across the disarmament community were seething that Trump’s comments could touch off an arms race and undercut strategic stability, lowering the threshold for nuclear use, possibly leading to a global holocaust. But beyond the obvious hyperbole, what are the relevant facts?
Fact one:The nuclear arms race has been going on for more than a decade, but it has been primarily a one-nation race, by Russia—unless you count China, which has been aggressively modernizing its nuclear arsenal as well. Moscow has strengthened and expanded its nuclear capability across the board. It has maintained a broad array of warfighting systems, from nuclear-armed torpedoes to short- and medium-range missiles, including the development of new capabilities that violate the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. At the strategic level, Russia has modernized all three legs of its triad. It has deployed, or soon will, new mobile and heavy ICBMs as well as a new class of strategic ballistic missile submarines. It has begun testing a rail-mobile ICBM, raising the prospect that it will bring back an operational concept most thought had been abandoned with the end of the Cold War. It is modernizing the air-breathing force with new cruise missiles (already tested over Syria multiple times) and an advanced heavy bomber. Moreover, Russia is developing, and may have tested, an unprecedented new nuclear weapon—a nuclear-powered torpedo with an enormously large warhead, perhaps as large as 100 megatons, whose sole purpose would be to inflict massive civilian casualties and long-term ecological damage.
America’s nuclear triad is sorely out of date, left to age by a president who saw it as a relic of the Cold War.
By
FRANKLIN MILLERand
KEITH B. PAYNE
Mr. Miller, a principal of the Scowcroft Group, earlier served in senior positions at the Defense Department and on the National Security Council staff. Mr. Payne, the director of the Graduate School of Defense and Strategic Studies at Missouri State University, is a former deputy assistant secretary of defense.
President-elect DonaldTrumpwill soon be working with his national security team to establish priorities on security and defense policy. Two challenges will demand immediate and unrelenting attention.
Throughout the campaign Mr. Trump emphasized the need to destroy Islamic State, also known as ISIS, as a functioning terrorist organization. Since there is no way to negotiate with or reliably deter medieval zealots willing to murder and die for their misbegotten cause, military force is the only answer at this point. The next president also must keep the defense and intelligence communities focused on preventing the remnants of ISIS from obtaining weapons of mass destruction—particularly nuclear weapons.
But Mr. Trump has inherited the even greater threat of an increasingly precarious nuclear balance. All three elements of America’s nuclear triad—land-based and sea-based missiles, and bombers—are now approaching obsolescence. A hostile Russia that miscalculates U.S. will and deterrence capabilities poses a mortal nuclear threat to our existence.
Democratic Democrats seek to repeal the 1976 Hyde Amendment so that federal funds can be used to pay for abortions. The platform says, “We will continue to stand up to Republican efforts to defund Planned Parenthood health centers.” Democrats support ratification of UN efforts that affirm “the reproductive rights of women” globally.
Republican The GOP asserts the sanctity of human life and affirms, “The unborn child has a fundamental right to life which cannot be infringed.” The party supports a Human Life Amendment making clear that the 14th Amendment’s protections apply to children before birth, and it salutes states that require informed consent, parental consent, waiting periods and clinic regulation.
Marriage
Democratic Democrats applaud last year’s Supreme Court ruling that “LGBT people—like other Americans—have the right to marry the person they love.”
Republican The GOP platform condemns the Supreme Court’s rulings that removed the ability of Congress and the people to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. The GOP urges the reversal of those decisions, whether through judicial reconsideration or a constitutional amendment.
Religious freedom
Democratic The Democratic platform says: “We support a progressive vision of religious freedom that respects pluralism and rejects the misuse of religion to discriminate.” The party opposes a religious test to bar immigrants or refugees from entering the country.
Republican Republicans affirm that religious freedom in the Bill of Rights protects the right of the people to practice their faith in their everyday lives. The platform endorses the First Amendment Defense Act, which would protect faith-based institutions and individuals from government discrimination.
Fifteen years after 9/11, the next president will face greater risks and a weaker military to combat them.
By
DICK CHENEYand
LIZ CHENEY
Mr. Cheneywas U.S. vice president from 2001-09. Ms. Cheney is the Republican nominee for Wyoming’s at-large seat in the House.
Fifteen years ago this Sunday, nearly 3,000 Americans were killed in the deadliest attack on the U.S. homeland in our history. A decade and a half later, we remain at war with Islamic terrorists. Winning this war will require an effort of greater scale and commitment than anything we have seen since World War II, calling on every element of our national power.
Defeating our enemies has been made significantly more difficult by the policies ofBarack Obama.No American president has done more to weaken the U.S., hobble our defenses or aid our adversaries.
President Obama has been more dedicated to reducing America’s power than to defeating our enemies. He has enhanced the abilities, reach and finances of our adversaries, including the world’s leading state sponsor of terror, at the expense of our allies and our own national security. He has overseen a decline of our own military capabilities as our adversaries’ strength has grown.
Our Air Force today is the oldest and smallest it has ever been. In January 2015, then-Army Chief of Staff Gen.Ray Odiernotestified that the Army was as unready as it had been at any other time in its history. Chief of Naval Operations Adm.Jonathan W. Greenerttestified similarly that, “Navy readiness is at its lowest point in many years.”
Nearly half of the Marine Corps’ non-deployed units—the ones that respond to unforeseen contingencies—are suffering shortfalls,accordingto the commandant of the Corps, Gen.Joseph F. Dunford Jr.For the first time in decades, American supremacy in key areas can no longer be assured.
The president who came into office promising to end wars has made war more likely by diminishing America’s strength and deterrence ability. He doesn’t seem to understand that the credible threat of military force gives substance and meaning to our diplomacy. By reducing the size and strength of our forces, he has ensured that future wars will be longer, and put more American lives at risk.
