Incredible: GOP Senator Doing More to Hamper U.S. Military Than Anyone In Living Memory
Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville is accidentally the most effective anti-Pentagon politician in recent history.
The U.S. has troops and bases scattered across the world and outspends every other country's military by hundreds of billions. For almost a year, the senator from Alabama stalled out this massive machine by blocking military promotions that needed Senate confirmation. It has made his colleagues hate him and caused some members of the military to think that a reliable group of supporters, Republican legislators, had abandoned them.
Case in point: Mara Karlin, a top architect of Biden's National Defense Strategy, announced she's leaving at the end of December. As Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Karlin she helped shape the Pentagon's overall strategy. With the Tuberville blockade still in place, there's no one to replace her.
Tubeverille's partially relented on his blockade last week after a closed-door meeting with GOP senators. But only partially. The Alabama Senator is still stalling on civilian positions and promotions to four-star general or admiral. Many of those positions create a ripple effect through the chain of command, meaning that he's still effectively preventing the Pentagon from doing its job.
Tuberville wasn't trying to reign in the military industrial complex. He was mad about abortion. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the Pentagon made it clear it considered a lack of abortion care a national security threat. After the decision, the Pentagon made it clear it would keep performing abortions under federal law and would help its service members travel when the procedure couldn't be obtained locally.
In response, Tuberville-who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee-said he would stall the promotions of senior military officials until policy was changed. He stuck to his guns for ten months, leaving hundreds of military officials across all branches in a kind of limbo. People who planned to retire couldn't because their replacements wouldn't come. Service members who planned to move couldn't because they didn't know where they'd be stationed. People didn't know which school to send their kids to.
Tuberville's stand pissed off everyone, especially his fellow Republican senators. One [commanding officer] I know personally told me: I'm apolitical but one group of elected officials always had our backs-Republican senators. Now you guys hate us-the world has been turned upside down," Republican Senator Dan Sullivan from Alaska, told Politico recently.
Over the Summer, the FBI arrested a man from New Hampshire for threatening to assault, kidnap, or murder a member of congress." Allegedly the man left an angry voicemail at Tuberville's office over the stalled military promotions.
In October, retired CIA Director Michael Hayden suggested that Tuberville should be removed from the human race on Twitter. Tuberville said he reported the post to Capitol Police that called for a politically motivated assassination."
Senators confronted Tuberville on the Senate floor, discussed re-writing the Senate's rules, and back channeled with Democrat colleagues to find a way to work around the Tubberville blockade. While the Pentagon's top brass waited to see where they'd be working for the next year and his colleagues plotted, Tubberville did the rounds on Fox News. It didn't win him any friends.
He also, apparently, wasn't a very good negotiating partner. You know, I've done literally everything I could think of and I can't tell you how many times that Tommy would tell us, Okay, yeah, I'm going to do that.' And then 10 minutes later, he would change his mind," Republican Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa told The Washington Post.
When Tuberville caved in December and was chastised on the Senate floor and behind closed doors. The senior senator from Alabama has nothing to show for his 10 months' delay ... except for the damage he did to our military readiness and the pain he caused to military families,'' Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor after it confirmed 400 of the promotions Tuberville had blocked.
We got all we could get," Tuberville told reporters after relenting. What he got was nothing, save the most effective disruption of the U.S. military's war effort by an elected official I've ever seen.