(BIVN) – Senator Brian Schatz (D, Hawaiʻi) criticized the handling of the war with Iran during a hearing in Washington on Tuesday, saying the Trump administration has failed to meet the goals it set out at the beginning of the conflict.
Senator Schatz pressed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on a $67 billion supplemental budget request.
The questioning comes as flags across Hawaiʻi are being flown at half-staff in honor of U.S. Army First Lieutenant Tyler James Feehan, 25, of ʻEwa Beach. Feehan was one of two U.S. service members killed in action on July 18 at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan during an Iranian missile attack.
Feehan was an active-duty soldier supporting Operation Inherent Resolve, the Pentagon reported.
The following is a transcript of Senator Schatz’ remarks made during the Senate Appropriations Committee hearing:
Senator Schatz: Secretary, about 190,000 people in the state of Hawai‘i, believe it or not, voted for Donald Trump. And I know a lot of them, and I represent all of them. And one of the reasons that they were enthusiastic about Donald Trump – and you, Mr. Secretary – was they thought that we were going to have a new foreign policy. And that I think I’m paraphrasing, but I think you characterized yourself as a reformed neocon or some such thing. And people were pretty thrilled about the idea that America First, in their mind, meant that we were going to not do this kind of adventurism.
I don’t want you to answer me. I want you to answer them. And I want to walk through the sort of stated objectives of this war at the outset.
Regime change. We now have a younger and more radical regime.
Depleting, eliminating their conventional missile capability. It’s true that we’ve depleted their conventional missile capability. It’s also true that anything the Department of War sets out to do, it usually succeeds at. So the question is not do we kick ass, it’s when do we decide to use kinetic engagement to extend our power across the globe. And it’s clear that Iran still retains enough conventional missile capability to attack our bases and our interests in the region.
Now, it’s true that the Bluewater Navy is destroyed. It’s also true, and you know this, that the IRGC has something that you may not call a navy, but it’s got capabilities to touch us with drones and missiles and lay mines in the straight of Hormuz.
Preventing their nuclear capability. It’s also true that if you bomb the crap out of a place, they’re going to have less capabilities by the end of it. But it’s also true that we have not eliminated their nuclear capability. And whatever duration we’ve set them back actually pales in comparison to the – and I’ll say it – the Obama nuclear deal which we did without having to put our people in harm’s way.
And then the last objective, which has become a new objective, is open up the Strait of Hormuz. But the Strait of Hormuz was open before this war started. And so you tell my constituents why this war is going so well.
Secretary Hegseth: I think you did accurately portray me as a reformed neocon and members of our generation in Iraq and Afghanistan watched administrations on both sides try to project some remaking of a society in the image of America that spent thousands of lives. I mean in Iraq um you know 15 – I don’t know the exact number but tens of thousands between Iraq and Afghanistan men and women lost.
President Trump said we’re not fighting stupid wars like that again. And he hasn’t. That’s why we haven’t been trying to remake Iranian society, but simply – in a realist, America first way – ensure they never have a path to a nuclear bomb, full stop. And he has said as a candidate and he said for as a private citizen, Iran can never have a nuclear weapon because radical Islamists with nuclear weapon will wield it over our head in perpetuity. So, President Trump ran on fighting wars differently and we’re doing so overwhelmingly, and he was very clear as a candidate that Iran can never have a nuclear capability.
Schatz: I think we’re understanding the limits of air power here, because we’re basically at a stalemate. Someone says the straight of Hormuz is closed and we say, well, we’re we got a naval blockade and we’re just going to see who blinks first. And the truth is in order to sort of change the balance here, change the equation here, some kind of escalation would have to be considered. And if you’re taking that off the table, then we are in a holding pattern. And I go back to the original five objectives and none of them have been been met. Some of them have changed, but none of them have been met.
And with gas at now $4.02, with the Brent Crude hit $90 today, up from $70 two weeks ago. Gas up about a buck nationwide about a buck fifty in the state of Hawaiʻi. People want to know why are we even doing this?
