On Friday’s broadcast of C-SPAN’s “Ceasefire,” Rep. Pat Harrigan (R-NC) said that the politicization of the military started under the Obama administration, “and then the pendulum swung back in Trump 1 and it swung back even further under President Biden and now it’s swung back even further under Trump 2.” And Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is right about politicized leadership.
Harrigan stated, “There has been a [politicization] of the armed forces that has happened over now many administrations. And I would say it started in the post-Bush era with President Obama, and then the pendulum swung back in Trump 1 and it swung back even further under President Biden and now it’s swung back even further under Trump 2. That is a problem, carte blanche, across the board, that is a problem. What we need to focus on as leaders is — as the board of directors of this country, is making sure that the military is insulated from politics. It’s one of our finest institutions, and it doesn’t function properly when the perverse incentives that come with a [politicization] of our military leadership, to include our generals, which is a problem, and Pete is right about that. It’s a problem for the country, and it’s not sustainable if we want to maintain the world’s strongest military.”
Host Dasha Burns then asked, “So, what is your message to Secretary Hegseth right now?”
Harrigan answered, “My message is: We need stability, and we’ve got to get stability at all costs. And we will not have stability if we allow arguments that are happening around the periphery to actually come in and impact the work that Congress does, which is funding our nation’s military. We have way too many funding disagreements between Republicans and Democrats right now that have moved into partisan circles, when those discussions should actually be about the strategic flexibility of the United States of America.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett