Retired Navy commander debunks Trump's national security claims
President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that from a national security standpoint, the United States suffered greatly under former President Joe Biden — and that he has made the country much safer since returning to the White House. But in an op-ed published by the Philadelphia Inquirer on March 10, former Rep. Joe Sestak, a retired U.S. Navy vice admiral, argues that the United States' national security is, in fact, hurting during Trump's second presidency.
Sestak focused heavily on national security when he was serving in the U.S. House of Representatives via Pennsylvania as a Democrat in the late 2000s/early 2010s. And he was a member of the House Armed Services committee. Before that, during the 1990s, Sestak was director of defense policy for the National Security Council (NSC) under then-President Bill Clinton.
"Before we struck Iran again," the 74-year-old Sestak explains in his Inquirer op-ed, "U.S. special regional envoy, Steve Witkoff, said President Donald Trump was 'curious' why Iran hadn't 'capitulated,' given the threat of military strikes. But as Ukraine demonstrated when denying the (Trump) Administration's demand to trade its territory for a 'deal' with Russia — which also broke its word about not attacking Ukraine after it surrendered its nuclear weapons — nations are realists, and unlike Charlie Brown, don't trust Lucy's promise not to pull the football away again."
Sestak continues, "In addition, our having spurned American alliances, eight regional nations — from the United Kingdom, allowing its base on Diego Garcia to be used only for defensive purposes, to Saudi Arabia — barred America from using airspace above, and our bases on, their territories for the Iranian strikes. Now, the shoe is on the other foot: with swarms of low-tech, slow speed, low-to-the-ground Iranian drones breaching U.S. air defenses — killing U.S. soldiers, damaging operations centers and embassies — an unprepared America has asked Ukraine for its interceptor drones, advisors and detection technology that it has developed against Russia's similar drones."
Sestak was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as a Democrat during the 2006 midterms and won a second term in 2008. But he ran for the U.S. Senate in 2010, defeating the late then-Sen. Arlen Specter (who had left the GOP after many years and became a Democrat) in a Democratic primary but losing to Republican Pat Toomey in the general election. In 2022, Sestak left the Democratic Party and joined the Forward Party, led by 2020 presidential hopeful Andrew Yang and co-founded by former New Jersey Gov. Christie Todd Whitman (a Never Trump conservative).
Trump, according to Sestak, has hurt the U.S. militarily by undermining the country's alliances.
"Today," Sestak warns, "America is 'whistling past the graveyard' about future production of our most critical weapons systems. And time matters, as then-CIA Director William Burns made clear, in February 2023, that President Xi has instructed the People's Liberation Army, the Chinese military leadership, 'to be ready by 2027 to invade Taiwan'…. Finally, the U.S. military's ability to project future power across — and through — the globe relies critically upon trusted partners and allies."
Sestak adds, "This future battlefield is one that will be fought through connection — digital and otherwise — with global comrades-in-arms that we trust. In this second Trump Administration, we have forfeited too many of those."
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