Tuberville Pushes for Answers on U.S. National Defense Strategy

WASHINGTON - Today,U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) questioned Chair of the Commission on the National Defense Strategy Jane Harman and Vice Chair of the Commission on the National Defense Strategy Eric Edelman during a Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) hearing. Senator Tuberville asked about the ongoing threat at the southern border, recruiting issues within the U.S. military, the need to end the hate that is being taught in our schools, and whether Ukraine should join NATO.

Read excerpts from the Senator's remarks below or watch on YouTube or Rumble.

ON THE THREAT AT THE SOUTHERN BORDER:

TUBERVILLE: "Thank you very much for following up on that. Is our southern border a national threat? I've only seen it in your report one time."

EDELMAN: "Yes, absolutely. […] Border security is a threat. We do call in the report for additional funding across the agencies of national security, including DHS, which has the fundamental responsibility for the border."

TUBERVILLE: "Yeah. 80,000 Chinese [people have] come across border in the last nine months. Is that a threat? That's a pretty good threat, isn't it?"

EDELMAN: "It's a potential threat, Sir. Yes."

TUBERVILLE: "Yeah, huge. I don't understand why we're not talking about it more. […] I saw a report the other day where you can order fentanyl from China and make it at your own house. You can order it, [it will] be delivered, and make millions of pills without any repercussion. We're losing our kids."

ON MILITARY RECRUITMENT:

TUBERVILLE: "Your report mentions changing our military standards. Is that correct? To take more young men and women in the military?"

EDELMAN: "Part of what you hear from the services when you talk about the recruitment challenges, they face, [Sen.] Tuberville, is that some of the standards are no longer really relevant, and some of it's an artifact of…"

TUBERVILLE: "Such as?"

EDELMAN: "Childhood Asthma, for instance. You know, is that something that…"

TUBERVILLE: "Flat feet? You know, that's why a lot of people got out of Vietnam because of flat feet, right?"

EDELMAN: "So the question is, do you continue to use those standards, which are screening out people who might otherwise be willing and ready to serve, or do you change it? Some of it is a function of the changing tracking that we have in medical records that allow things that wouldn't have come up 10 or 15 years ago to block somebody from service. And that's I think what we were talking about."

TUBERVILLE: "Well, what's hurting us too is a lot of our government schools-I call them government schools because I went in[to]thousands of them while I was coaching and recruiting. And the problem we have is hate is being taught in a lot of our government schools towards our country. Why would any young man or woman want to fight for a country that they don't believe in, that they're being taught to hate. It's absolutely amazing to me the direction this country is going. So, is there any agreement there, Representative Harmon?"

HARMON: "I mean, yeah. There is agreement there. I think hate on both sides is totally destructive. I think the absence of civics education and the absence of institutions that help people understand what patriotism means [is a problem]. We had a conversation about national service, which might be a way to get all of our youth back together. I mean, this country sadly is in a point where many people say our biggest enemy is us fighting each other. I was just gonna talk about standards. One of the problems is the kind of deployments the military does. Every two years moving somewhere, where in many cases the spouse works and having to change his or her job every two years is very burdensome. It's also hard on kids. And so that could change. And we talk about incorporating more of the tech base and the tech skills into the work that our military does. I mean, after all, future fights, we were just talking about this, are in more domains. They're in cyber and space, not just in air, land, and sea. And so if we don't have the skill sets, to fight those wars, we're gonna lose.

TUBERVILLE: […] "We gotta start training our kids again. […] We are losing the ball here. To me, that is a national security threat when we don't teach kids how to use their hands."

ON UKRAINE JOINING NATO:

TUBERVILLE: "Let's go to Ukraine really quick. We gotta get out of this. Right? I mean, this has gotta be solved. Do we let Ukraine into NATO, your thoughts?"

EDELMAN: "NATO has already made the decision back in 2008 that Ukraine at some point will be in NATO. I mean, that's a decision that was taken under the George W. Bush Administration in which I served. I think the alliance that just completed […] has made clear that while there's an ongoing conflict in Ukraine, it's probably not appropriate to have Ukraine be a member, but the alliance has undertaken a series of actions and the U.S. bilaterally with Ukraine has undertaken a series of actions to build a bridge towards Ukraine's potential future with action."

Senator Tommy Tuberville represents Alabama in the United States Senate and is a member of the Senate Armed Services, Agriculture, Veterans' Affairs, and HELP Committees.

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