Free Republic

“You cannot impose your will, you can’t impose your values, you can’t impose your standards, your institutions on other societies and other countries. It has never worked; it never will work, as noble as you believe [the effort] is,” he is quoted as saying. This conclusion is partially based on his experience as an  infantry soldier in the Vietnam War, as he explains: “The violence, the horrors, the suffering that I saw [in Vietnam] conditioned me … I saw the suffering of our own troops; I saw the suffering of the Vietnamese people; I saw terrible things, which war always...

Demoralizing Hagel tells military to prepare for cuts, ‘appreciate’ its ‘limits’ Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel tried to mollify worried military leaders Wednesday, speaking publicly for the first time about the Defense Department’s pressing budgetary woes. Widespread cuts to the defense budget have led DoD to impose furloughs on civilian employees, defer critical maintenance projects, and consider cutting benefits to military families. Military employees who attended Hagel’s speech at the National Defense University did not hesitate to express their fears, pressing Hagel to explain why benefits and salaries have been placed on DoD’s chopping block. “Why are we still furloughing?”...

New footage of a speech by Chuck Hagel in 2008 has surfaced, in which the former Senator mocked the idea of continuing the U.S. policy of confronting Iran and supporting Israel. "When I hear the talk about--well you can’t talk with Iran, you can’t talk with Syria and we’re, we should stay where we are and support Israel, and so on, well you miss the point," he told the laughing audience at an event for his book, America: Our Next Chapter. Hagel added that the U.S. "shouldn't even be thinking about the options of bombing Iran," even in the event...