Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was shredded by Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz, who accused the Pentagon of being too focused on “wokeism” and not defense, during a House Armed Services hearing.
It happened on Tuesday when Rep. Gaetz argued that the United States was behind on hypersonics and had made assessments on conflicts in Afghanistan and Russia that ere incorrect while focusing on gender pronouns and socialism, a partial transcript showed.
RUSH TRANSCRIPT:
AUSTIN: So your question was whether or not –
GAETZ: I control the time. You guys have been blowing a lot of calls lately on matters of strategy, Mr… Secretary. You gus told us that Russia couldn’t lose, that the Taliban couldn’t immediately win. I guess I’m wondering, what about the $773 billion that you’re requesting today is going to help you make assessments that are accurate in the face of so many blown calls?
AUSTIN: You’ve seen what’s in our budget, you’ve seen how the budget matches the strategy, and so I’ll let that speak for itself.
GAETZ: I mean, I’ve also seen that we’re behind in hypersonics, we failed to deter Russia.
AUSTIN: What do you mean, we’re behind in hypersonics?
GAETZ: Who is ahead in hypersonics?
AUSTIN: How do you make that assessment?
GAETZ: I don’t know. I make that assessment because China is fielding hypersonic weapon systems and we are still developing them. I make that assessment because Russia – by the way, your own people brief us that we are behind and that China is winning. Are you aware of the briefings we get on hypersonics?
AUSTIN: I am certainly aware of briefings we provide to Congress.
GAETZ: It’s all over the world. It’s in Taiwan where China flew more than ever before, it’s North Korea on pace to shatter prior records, the number of missiles they are testing. While everyone else in the world seems to be developing capabilities and being more strategic, we’ve got time to embrace Critical Race Theory at west point, to do mandatory pronoun training.
AUSTIN: You know, again, this is the most capable, the most combat critical force in the world. It has been and it will be so going forward.
GAETZ: Not if we continue down this path.
AUSTIN: The fact that you’re embarrassed by your country –
GAETZ: I’m embarrassed by your relationship. I am not embarrassed for my country. I wish we weren’t losing to China.
AUSTIN: That’s what you’re saying.
GAETZ: That is so disgraceful that you would sit here and conflate your failures with the failures of the uniform service members. You guys said that Russia would overrun Ukraine in 36 days. You said that the Taliban would be kept at bay for months. You totally blew those calls. And maybe we would be better at home if The National defense university actually worked a little more on strategy and a little less on wokism.
AUSTIN: Has it occurred to you that Russia has not overrun Ukraine because what we’ve seen and our allies have done.
It comes months after National Defense University’s Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy hosted an event titled “Responding to China: The Case For Global Justice and Democratic Socialism,” the university’s website reported.
“The event will be held February 16, 2022, from 1200-1300, on the Strategic Multilayer Assessment platform and is open to the public. An access link will be posted the week of the event,” it said.
The event’s speaker was Thomas Piketty, who the university bio said is “a French economist who is Professor of Economics at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, Associate Chair at the Paris School of Economics and Centennial Professor of Economics in the International Inequalities Institute at the London School of Economics. Piketty is the author of ‘Capital in the 21st Century (2013) and ‘Capital and Ideology’ (2020).”
And the summary of the event on the school website read “Western countries are still struggling to define their attitude towards the Beijing regime. In this talk on February 22, 2022, Thomas Piketty will argue that the right answer lies in ending Western arrogance and promoting a new emancipatory and egalitarian horizon on a global scale, a new form of democratic and participatory, ecological and post-colonial socialism. If they stick to their usual lecturing posture and a dated hyper-capitalist model, Western countries may find it extremely difficult to meet the Chinese challenge.”
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