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Floor Speech

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Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, we are here discussing the nomination of the next potential Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth.

Of course that job, as we all know, is probably the second most difficult job in the country. He presides over the welfare of 3.4 million people in Active service and Active Reserve all around the world. He presides over a budget of $850 billion. The person who has that position has to be a preeminent strategic thinker: How do we modernize our Navy? How do we recruit in the modern world? How do we maintain force preparedness? How do we cement strategic alliances? It is a job that you can't just show up and start doing; there has to be behind it a lifetime experience that gives you some capacity to be able to do all of these things and respond to the emergencies that inevitably arise when you get that phone call at 3 in the morning.

There has been a lot of discussion by my colleagues about the lack of experience of Mr. Hegseth. I share that concern. There has been a lot of discussion about his views on women in the military, and our distinguished Senator Tammy Duckworth is the most preeminent example of the capacity of women to serve effectively and bravely.

Mr. Hegseth has repudiated his well-founded, longstanding view that he is against women in the military. Frankly, it sounds to me like a nomination-eve consideration.

Speaking, of course, to the Presiding Officer, I really respect the military service he has provided to our country.

But the big concern I have about Mr. Hegseth, in addition to the character issues, the experience issues, and the drinking issues--and by the way, I am puzzled as to his assertion that if he gets the job, he will stop drinking. Why wait?

But here is the concern I have: Unlike the Presiding Officer, I did not serve in the military. My draft lottery number was high--this was during Vietnam--and I wasn't drafted. Many of my college classmates were. They served in Vietnam. Some of them came home injured, and some did not come home. I think about them every day and how it is that they served. Some were badly injured, and some died.

When I think about the situation most Americans are in, most of us didn't serve, but all of us who didn't serve are so indebted to those who did.

My high school classmates were like the young people I see now who are volunteering to go into the military.

So we as Americans have a profound obligation to honor the service of those who volunteer to respond to the call of the Commander in Chief, who says: You are going to be deployed. They don't know where. They are not involved in the discussion of whether. They are not involved in the discussion of when. They show up.

Our democracy so profoundly depends on the idealism of young people who are willing to subject themselves to the decisions of the Commander in Chief, and I believe that every one of us here who is involved in the decisions about authorizing the use of military force has an absolutely profound obligation to do that with care because the folks who are going to do the work and be in harm's way are going to be there because we sent them there.

It is why I have been so insistent, as have many of us here, that we have to have a good VA, that we have to have medical care for our soldiers and sailors and airmen and marines.

But what we need, too, is a Secretary of Defense who honors that idealism of these young Americans who decide to enlist. That idealism is borne in a sense of common commitment, a sense of wanting to do something for the common good, and it is also to live by the code of military conduct.

There is great honor in our services. Those men and women whom I so admire know they may have to use lethal force to defend our values, to defend our country, to protect their fellow soldiers, but they know there are limits, and they use it when they must but never more than that.

By the way, that is asking a lot of our soldiers, to be restrained when they are in a combat zone and can be killed themselves.

So what distresses me so much about Mr. Hegseth is how he used his very powerful forum on FOX TV, in my view, to dishonor the soldiers who acted with restraint and valor and integrity by taking up the cause of some of our soldiers--there are not many of them, but they do exist-- who kill people, who use violence not in furtherance of our defense but for their own reasons.

I am speaking about Mr. Lorance. Clint Lorance was a soldier. He was sent, in 2012, as a new commander without combat experience to lead a platoon of young soldiers who were deployed to Afghanistan with the mission of defeating the local Taliban and winning over the area's population--an incredibly hard task. But one day, for reasons Mr. Lorance--then Soldier Lorance--knew, he threatened to kill a farmer and his son, a 3- or 4-year-old boy. A day later, he ordered his men to shoot within inches of unarmed villagers--that was including near children.

He said: It is funny watching the villagers dance.

Mr. Lorance's men, who were honorable, brave, willing to be in harm's way, and willing to act like warriors but were not ever willing to kill indiscriminately, balked at his orders. And you know how hard that is to do if you are a soldier when you are given an order even if you know it is the wrong order. Then they were told to make false reports about taking fire from the village to justify this conduct, but they refused to do it.

The next day, Lorance ordered fire on unarmed Afghans who were over 100 yards from the platoon. They were killed. They filed a false report claiming the bodies couldn't be reached.

The people I honor are the people under his command who refused to take those orders. The people I honor are soldiers whose bravery extends not just to putting their own physical well-being in harm's way but who maintain that commitment to the ideals of the military code of conduct that give us the standing and legitimacy that are so important to our well-being.

So my problem is this: I want a Secretary of Defense who is as good as the soldiers he leads. Mr. Hegseth, in my view, fails to meet that standard.

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