More than a dozen retired flag-ranking officers representing all branches of the U.S. military penned a letter to President Donald Trump late last week thanking him for announcing plans to ban transgender individuals from serving in the Armed Forces.
“We write today to express our gratitude to you for making the extremely courageous decision to reverse President Obama’s transgender social experiment,” the letter stated, according to a copy provided by the Family Research Council.
“There may be an enormous amount of vitriol directed at you for making this policy correction, but please know that overturning this policy may have done more in the long-term to save the culture and war-fighting capacity of the U.S. military than perhaps any other military policy you will adopt as president,” the officers added.
In the letter, the signing officers pointed to an estimate by the Family Research Council that medical costs associated with allowing transgender persons to serve in the Armed Forces would cost the military anywhere between $1.9 billion and $3.7 billion over the next 10 years, as well as pose serious questions regarding co-ed housing for soldiers, sailors and airmen who don’t identify with their biological gender.
In addition, the officers expressed relief that Trump’s new policy would help the military avoid substantial time costs associated with treating and accomodating transgender individuals according to their personal needs – time that they say should be spent engaging in activities that benefit the military and advance their mission.
The Pentagon has stated the president’s ban on transgender individuals in the military, which he announced last week in a tweet that sent left-wing SJWs into a near-apoplectic frenzy, has yet to be enacted pending an official executive order from the White House. But if codified into the administration’s military policies, it looks like this new guidance would support majority opinion.
A recent poll from the Military Times, taken shortly after President Obama opened the doors for transgenders to serve openly, shows only 12 percent of military members believe allowing transgenders to serve would benefit the military. Contrarily, 41 percent said they think such a policy would actually be harmful, while an overall 57 percent expressed a “negative view” of former President Obama’s policy.