The nation would be better served if more veterans were in key positions making national security decisions, according to former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.
Speaking at a HillVets event on Tuesday night, Hagel pointed out that the president is not a veteran, a fact that will remain true for at least the next four years given the current pool of candidates.
“When you look at the presidential candidates today, not one is a veteran,” Hagel said during the event at the Reserve Officers Association on Capitol Hill. “Our current president and vice president are not veterans. The entire senior White House security staff, none are veterans.
“That doesn’t mean they’re bad people, that doesn’t mean they’re not smart, that doesn’t mean they don’t care about this country. But there is something missing here. And at a time when everything is hair-triggered, everything is nitroglycerine, and miscalculations can lead to a lot of trouble, we need veterans’ input.”
Foreign policy took center stage in the 2016 race for the White House following last fall’s attacks in Paris, and all the candidates weighed in this week after attacks in Brussels killed more than 30. But critics have called many of the candidates’ national security strategies vague and problematic.
GOP front-runner Donald Trump has taken the brunt of the criticism for saying that he would “bomb the hell” out of the Islamic State and take their oil, as well as bring back waterboarding and target terrorists’ families.
But the dearth of veterans in leadership roles extends beyond the top tier. There are only 101 veterans in the 114th Congress, or less than 20 percent, according to a Congressional Research Service report. By comparison, 73 percent of lawmakers in the 92nd Congress in 1971-72 had served in the military.
