Marines who have refused to comply with President Joe Biden’s federal vaccine mandate said they are being punished and purged from the military.
Several active-duty officers told Fox News that the Defense Department is forcing out some of the branch’s “best and brightest” because they applied for exemptions from Biden’s mandate. The Marine Corps has denied every single religious exemption application.
One lieutenant colonel said the Pentagon is trying to discharge members “as fast as they can and as brutally as they can, damaging every Marine as much as they can on the way out.”
The officer said that after he applied for an exemption, he was warned by another colonel to “Tread very carefully, this is political, you will be crushed like an ant.”
A major with more than 17 years of active service in the Marines said leftist officers are using the vaccine mandate as a “political purge.”
“The louder I speak, the tighter the screws are turned against me,” a master sergeant confirmed.
As of last week, 169 Marines had been discharged from service for refusing to comply with the vaccine mandate. A provision in the annual defense bill recently signed by Biden guarantees that service members who refuse the vaccine receive either an honorable or general discharge. But some Marines believe they could face additional consequences, maybe even a court-martial.
“This is the American equivalent of Roman decimation,” the master sergeant said.
More than 3,192 Marines filed religious exemption requests, none of which have been approved.
When asked why these exemptions were denied, Marine Corps spokesman Capt. Ryan Bruce claimed “no religious accommodations have been approved for any other vaccine in the past seven years.”
“On the religious side, this is absolutely a travesty what’s happening,” a chief warrant officer said. “People are getting blanket denials, they’re not addressing the individual concerns or beliefs of Marines who are submitting for religious accommodations, and I think that’s just horribly wrong. I honestly believe that they’re not really reading the packages.”
