With just four days remaining in his term as the commander-in-chief of America’s military, President Joe Biden urged members of the six armed services branches to remain true to their pledge to uphold the U.S. Constitution as he addressed them for the final time.
“Our commitment to honor, to integrity, to unity, to protecting and defending not a person or a party or a place, but an idea,” Biden said on Thursday.
Biden, who addressed an assemblage of service members and dignitaries including Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Vice President Kamala Harris, their spouses and First Lady Jill Biden at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall in Arlington, Virginia, used the appearance to recount his administration’s accomplishments that benefited American forces and veterans. They included enacting the PACT Act to increase access to medical care for veterans exposed to toxic substances, as well as to combat the rash of suicides that has plagued the veteran community for years.
“We brought veterans homelessness to record lows, made historic changes to the military justice system, which has reduced the rates of sexual assault for the first time in nearly a decade, rescinded the ban on transgender service. We took landmark steps to create more economic opportunities for military spouses. We expanded opportunities for women in combat roles,” he said.
He also noted that he’d appointed the first-ever female military officer to lead one of the nation’s armed services, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Lisa Franchetti before urging the audience to “clap for that” because “she deserves it.”
As he spoke while wearing a Defense Department Distinguished Public Service Medal that he’d been awarded by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin just moments earlier, Biden praised the military — “the finest fighting force in the history of the world” — for having done “everything” that had been asked of them during his term “with honor, commitment, grit and guts.”
But the outgoing commander-in-chief added that he had one more request for them, not one made as the sitting president, but as someone who “spent 50 years of his life serving his country in a different way” through his long service in the U.S. Senate, as Vice President, and as president.
“Remember your oath,” he said.
Quoting his late son, Delaware Attorney General and U.S. Army Major Beau Biden, the president called the oath service members take to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic” the troops’ “home base.”
“That's a set of principles, of values that give you light and darkness, that guide you ... you are the smartest, most well trained force on earth. That's all critical. But that alone is not what makes us strong — it’s our values,” he said.
Continuing, Biden stressed that what makes America “unique in the world” is that it’s the only nation based on “an idea ... that we’re all created equal.”
“That's the idea that generations of service members have fought for, idea you have sworn an oath to defend as a nation. We've never fully lived up to that idea, but we've never, ever, ever walked away from it. My country is counting on you to ensure that that will always be true,” he said.
Biden’s final address to America’s fighting forces came just days after the Senate held a contentious confirmation hearing for Pete Hegseth, the former Fox News host who Biden’s successor, President-elect Donald Trump, has tapped to serve as the next defense secretary.
His exhortation for American troops to remember the oath they take to the constitution appeared to be a plea for them not to follow any illegal orders that come from Hegseth or Trump, who during his first term repeatedly pushed to deploy active-duty troops to put down protests against his administration.
