More than 200 active service members and veterans have signed an open letter seeking accountability over the harm caused by the Department of Defense’s (DOD) implementation of the now-rescinded COVID-19 vaccine mandate. The open letter, published on January 1st, is directed to the American people but names specific senior military leaders that the signers claim enabled lawlessness and betrayed the Constitution. Some of the leaders named in the letter include former and current joint chiefs of staff, service academy commandants, service inspectors general, and service surgeon generals. The signatories state:
”In the coming years, thousands within our network will run for Congress and seek appointments to executive branch offices, while those of us still serving on active duty will continue to put fulfilling our oaths ahead of striving for rank or position. For those who achieve the lawful authority to do so, we pledge to recall from retirement the military leaders who broke the law and will convene courts-martial for the crimes they committed.” These veterans also pledged to introduce legislation to seek accountability by reducing the alleged perpetrators’ retirement income to zero. Many of the 231 signers of the letter are still on active duty.
Several said they are taking on significant personal risk to stand up for what they believe in and to defend their unalienable rights that they feel have been trampled. The Epoch Times spoke to Robert A. Green Jr., an active duty Navy Commander and author of ”Defending the Constitution Behind Enemy Lines.” As the author of the open letter, he employed the framework and phrasing of Thomas Jefferson’s words in the Declaration of Independence to address what he described as the current crisis of trust in the country’s military. He and the other signatories hoped to ”rebuild trust through accountability” and signed the open letter emulating the U.S. founding fathers when they mutually pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor in the Declaration of Independence.
”Where our situation departs from the signers of the Declaration of Independence is that we do not seek separation. We do not want to be separated from the Constitution nor from what was handed down to us at so great a cost. Instead of separation, we want restoration through accountability. For the senior leaders named, and for the thousands who were not named but who are equally complicit, I hope this is a wake-up call,” Commander Green said. As a result, he said, the letter may be more appropriately called a ”Declaration of Military Accountability.” He went on to note that at the highest levels of military leadership, the decision-making processes are largely comprised of risk analysis and mitigations.
”Due to the Feres Doctrine (which prohibits service members from suing the federal government for wrongful injury or death), and the inappropriate deference paid to the Department of Defense by the legislative and judicial branches of our government, our senior leaders have rarely felt any personal risk for their decisions,” he added. Bradley Miller, a former U.S. Army lieutenant colonel who previously served as a battalion commander in the 101st Airborne Division, said the allusions to the Declaration of Independence in the letter are ”deliberate and meaningful.” According to him, the signatories of the letter ”believe that we have suffered a long train of abuses that has come to a head with the unlawful COVID-19 shot mandate.
”We would be negligent in our duty to uphold our oaths to the Constitution as well as negligible in our loyalty to our countrymen if we permitted the continued demise of one of our most hallowed institutions,” Mr. Miller said. For him, the letter represents ”a pledge that we, the signatories, have made with one another and also to the American people, that we will not stand idly by as our military self-destructs.” Because of their faith in God, love of country, and oath to the Constitution, he said, ”We consider it our duty to lawfully resist the concerted efforts of current military leadership to destroy the institution that has been entrusted to their charge.”
According to Mr. Miller, the U.S. military has ”a unique mission: the American people expect the people to carry out violence on its behalf.” In a series of questions, he said: ”How can the people trust an institution to ethically carry out its mission if it wantonly violates the law? How can the American people trust a military that has harmed its own members and, rather than acknowledge that harm, doubles down by insisting that its course was lawful, productive, and necessary?” The signatories are demanding ”unequivocal acknowledgment of the unlawful nature of the COVID-19 shot mandate” and the harm it has caused.
”We demand full accountability for those responsible for perpetrating this deliberate disaster on our service members, their families, and by extension the nation, and we demand, in as much as possible, complete restitution for those harmed by this criminal activity. Without this complete reckoning, our military will not recover from this ongoing nightmare.” Mr. Miller emphasized he and the others are not advocating violence: ”We emphatically decry the physical and moral violence that has been inflicted on service members and their families through the unlawful mandate of these harmful injections.”
Lieutenant Colonel Carolyn Rocco has served over 20 years in the Air Force. For her, the letter serves two purposes. First, she said it is ”a promise to the American people that there are service members who understand the significance of their oath to ‘support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Having encountered people who have expressed ”feelings of hopelessness for our country’s survival,” she hopes the letter will encourage Americans to ”have faith that all hope has not been lost at a time when many see the steady collapse of morals, character, and justice among politicians and military leaders alike.”
Second, the letter is ”a way to inform the military leaders that the elephant in the room is not going away until accountability is had.” Senior leaders of the military, she said, were warned about the grave dangers a vax mandate would have on the force, but these warnings were ignored. ”Trust has been broken, and moral, emotional, and physical damage has been done. The tens of thousands of us who were directly impacted, as well as our communities who witnessed the atrocity known as the DOD COVID-19 vaccine mandate, are the ones who are encouraging those we love to not join the military until it returns to an institution of honor and morals and becomes apolitical once again.”
