The United States Army has suspended Lieutenant General Gary Volensky’s contract after it found a recent tweet that Gen. Volensky sent that appears to mock first Lady Jill Biden.
Ted S. Warren/A.P.
Before he was suspended, three-star general Volensky served as the Army Spokesperson and even got a medal for his service in Iraq. Lt. General Volensky also served as a consultant with the Army, earning $92 an hour and mentoring officers and students.
According to The USA Today, the general trouble started when information related to a tweet he sent on June 24 surfaced. Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade, Mrs. Biden tweeted that women’s right to choose has been taken away after almost 50 years. In his comment to the first lady’s tweet, General Volensky tweeted this: “Glad you finally know what a woman is.”
Lieutenant General Theodore Martin, commander of the Combined Arms Center, suspended General Volensky. According to the Army spokeswoman, he will remain suspended until the Army finishes its investigation into the matter. The USA reported that, in keeping with the military tradition, General Volensky’s response to Mrs. Biden’s tweet was a breach of military etiquette, which dictates that retired officers receiving payments from the Pentagon are advised to stay away from politically sensitive topics.
Although general Volensky has since deleted the tweet, analysts believe that Gen. Volensky’s tweet highlights anti-transgender feelings among some right-wing Americans, which questions the legitimacy of a transgender woman. The issue of trans-gender took center stage during the confirmation hearing of the first black woman appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court when Tennessee Republican Senator Marshal Blackburn asked Mrs. Ketanji Brown Johnson to define what a woman is.
This is not the first time the three-star retired army general has gotten involved in politically sensitive issues. The USA investigation revealed that when Republican Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney took to Twitter last July to say that she was honored to be appointed to the January 6 Committee investigating the capitol attacks, Gen. Volensky tweeted in response, saying, “This is all about partisan politics.”
Andrew Bacevich, Professor emeritus of history at Boston University and a retired army colonel, said that he finds it hard to come to grasp why Gen. Volensky and other senior retired officers will try to damage the military standing for being above politics to score some cheap political point on social media.
Besides General Volensky, other senior military brasses have gotten tangled up in hot-button political issues. General Michael Flynn, who later served as President Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor, made multiple comments against Democratic Presidential candidate former Secretary of State Mrs. Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election.