Florida Senate - 2023 SM 1382
By Senator Collins
14-01912-23 20231382__
1 Senate Memorial
2 A memorial to the Congress of the United States,
3 urging Congress to restore the United States
4 Department of Defense’s superior warfighting
5 principles of recruiting, assigning, training,
6 promoting, and retaining personnel solely based on
7 merit and ensuring such personnel maintain and display
8 a warrior ethos.
9
10 WHEREAS, the United States became the world’s greatest
11 warfighting nation shortly after its founding, a fact clearly
12 demonstrated in the 1900s and early 2000s through its engagement
13 in two World Wars and several other military campaigns
14 throughout the globe, establishing a deterrent effect that has
15 prevented another World War for almost 80 years, and
16 WHEREAS, the United States’ military dominance in
17 warfighting came about through reliance on the concept of
18 meritocracy, in which personnel are recruited, assigned to
19 specialties, assigned to positions within a unit, retained, and
20 promoted based on their demonstrated aptitude and performance in
21 the roles they are assigned to perform, regardless of their
22 race, gender, sexual preference, or other person-centric
23 identifiers, and
24 WHEREAS, the United States’ military dominance in
25 warfighting also came about through the ability of personnel to
26 have and maintain a warrior ethos, one in which they are able to
27 transition from being a kind, compassionate individual in
28 peacetime to one who is willing and able to engage an enemy in
29 battle with violence and lethality, and this includes support
30 personnel who may not typically be called upon to engage an
31 enemy face-to-face but nonetheless may find themselves in
32 situations that require them to do so, and
33 WHEREAS, over the past several years, the United States
34 Department of Defense and its military services have engaged in
35 various practices eroding these warfighting principles to the
36 point at which United States military dominance has been called
37 into serious question, which practices include, but are not
38 limited to:
39 (1) Overemphasizing and relying on diversity and inclusion
40 in all its forms, including gender, gender identity, race, and
41 sexual preference, as a primary determinant in how military
42 forces should be comprised without providing credible and
43 verifiable evidence that such a prescribed composition results
44 in higher job performance, unit effectiveness, and mission
45 accomplishment, as opposed to a model in which a meritocracy
46 based force composition is used;
47 (2) Making nonsensical “unconscious bias” training
48 mandatory for all military and civilian personnel;
49 (3) Instituting mandatory “emergency use only” COVID-19
50 vaccines with little regard to individual medical concerns in
51 light of the Anthrax vaccine mandate problems of the late 1990s
52 and denying almost all requests for exemptions based on
53 religious grounds, which is particularly troubling given the
54 recent decision by the United States Department of Defense to
55 rescind the COVID-19 vaccine mandate; and
56 (4) Requiring mandatory training at the United States Air
57 Force Academy to incorporate “person-centered” and gender
58 neutral language when describing individuals and to request
59 cadets to consider using the term “parent” or “caregiver” rather
60 than “mother” or “father” as to not offend those that may come
61 from a different parenting background, and
62 WHEREAS, such practices are having a detrimental effect on
63 recruitment, as the United States Army was 15,000 soldiers short
64 of its 2022 recruiting goals, the worst recruiting year on
65 record since the Armed Forces switched to an all-volunteer force
66 nearly 50 years ago, and the remaining branches of the Armed
67 Forces are well behind their historic goal rates as they enter
68 into the 2023 recruiting season, and
69 WHEREAS, recent studies have found that most young
70 Americans are not fit for military service, with the Department
71 of Defense estimating that just 2 percent of those between the
72 ages of 17 and 21 years have the desired combination of strong
73 academic credentials, adequate physical fitness, and an interest
74 in serving, and
75 WHEREAS, the combination of an incapable and uninterested
76 recruiting age group and nonmerit-based practices calls into
77 serious question whether the United States military currently
78 has a sufficient number of members who hold a warrior ethos
79 needed to effectively engage an enemy, and
80 WHEREAS, those with the necessary warrior ethos currently
81 serving in the United States military are more likely to leave
82 service, and those with the necessary warrior ethos before
83 entering into service are more likely to refrain from enlisting
84 as they discover the composition and practices of the Armed
85 Services as referenced herein, NOW, THEREFORE,
86
87 Be It Resolved by the Legislature of the State of Florida:
88
89 That the Congress of the United States is urged to use its
90 authorization and appropriation authorities to prohibit the use
91 of such “woke” social engineering and experimentation practices,
92 which are eroding military effectiveness, and to mandate a
93 return to a merit-based system for military force development
94 and composition.
95 BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Secretary of State dispatch
96 copies of this memorial to the President of the United States,
97 the President of the United States Senate, the Speaker of the
98 United States House of Representatives, and each member of the
99 Florida delegation to the United States Congress.