The National Defense Authorization Act, an annual exercise in allocating money to America’s military, has been used to open the door to “detain as a threat to national security anyone viewed as a troublemaker,” creating the framework for a police state, according to critics.
This year the bill includes a social experiment dubbed “feminist pork,” according to a new report from the military watchdog the Center for Military Readiness.
The organization is an independent, nonpartisan, public-policy organization that promotes high standards and sound priorities in the making of military personnel policies.
Its new report on the Senate proposal, titled “Problematic Proposals in National Defense Authorization Act for 2015,” says several elements of the plan “are problematic and needlessly disruptive to our military.”
For example, the report says, the Senate Armed Services Committee version of the NDAA bill, S.2410, “would establish yet another power base in the Pentagon for feminists who believe that a person accused of sexual misconduct is automatically guilty, unless he is somehow (against all odds) found innocent because of ‘anti-women’ legal procedures that must be ‘fixed.'”
“The Senate bill calls for what could be called ‘feminist pork’ – a 20-member committee to be called the Defense Advisory Committee on Investigation, Prosecution and Defense of Sexual Assault in the Armed Forces,” the report says.
Essentially, it would establish “a special-interest committee” that would duplicate a “vast array of existing programs available to persons reporting sexual abuse.”
The report also cites “several ill-advised provisions” from “feminist” Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif., that would “create the presumptive impression that Congress already has approved women in the infantry, despite the fact that the House has not had a hearing on the subject since 1979 … and has conducted almost zero oversight since the administration announced its intent to order women into the infantry by January 2016.”
Among the provisions would be stepping up recruiting efforts to “increase military service academy accessions by women by an additional 2o percent.”
“There is nothing wrong with special efforts to recruit women and attract them into the military service academies, but the additional 20 percent quota would be divisive, counterproductive and completely unnecessary,” the report said.
The goals would include “gender diversity metrics,” or “quotas,” that if fully implemented, would make “military promotions contingent on support for those quotas.”
The bottom line, the report said, is that qualified men would be excluded “in order to achieve female gender quotas at West Point, the Naval Academy and Air Force Academy.”
Further, it would contradict an April U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allowed Michigan voters to forbid, by law, gender-based quotas and reverse discrimination, the report said.
And, the criticism said, the proposal’s call for equal opportunity is unneeded.
“For decades, women have been promoted at rates equal to or faster than men, and a Defense Department report submitted to Congress in 2012 confirmed: ‘The [DoD February 2012 Report to Congress] highlighted that there is no indication of women having less than equitable opportunities to compete and excel under current assignment policy.”
Then there are the NDAA provisions that could weaken combat capabilities.
The calls for “gender-neutral occupational standards” easily could lead to adopting of physical standards that fail to hold candidates fully accountable.
For example, under an “equal” policy, women might be held to lower lifting and carrying requirements, a potential disaster if women then were installed in direct ground units, the report said.
The report said concerned citizens should reach out to members of Congress to demand the problem areas be fixed.
WND has reported extensively on controversial NDAA provisions in previous years.
There was the time the Supreme Court refused to hear a challenge to the NDAA’s provisions allowing the president and U.S. military to arrest and indefinitely detain individuals.
The provision authorizes the military, under presidential authority, to arrest, kidnap, detain without trial and hold indefinitely American citizens thought to “represent an enduring security threat to the United States.”
Journalist Chris Hedges was among the plaintiffs charging the law could be used to target journalists who report on terror-related issues.
A friend-of-the-court brief submitted in the case stated: “The central question now before this court is whether the federal judiciary will stand idly by while Congress and the president establish the legal framework for the establishment of a police state and the subjugation of the American citizenry through the threat of indefinite military arrest and detention, without the right to counsel, the right to confront one’s accusers, or the right to trial.”
The brief was submitted to the Supreme Court by attorneys with the U.S. Justice Foundation of Ramona, California; Friedman Harfenist Kraut & Perlstein of Lake Success, New York; and William J. Olson, P.C. of Vienna, Virginia.
WND also reported when the NDAA was described as allowing Washington “free rein” to enact martial law.
