Speaking to the importance of veterans running for Congress, a former Green Beret tore into President Joe Biden’s “criminally incompetent” leadership abroad that is “catastrophic” for the nation.
(Video: Fox News)
Retired U.S. Army officer Pat Harrigan has set his sights on Washington, D.C., taking on a crowded Republican primary to replace outgoing North Carolina Rep. Patrick McHenry in the state’s 10th District. In his second attempt at holding office, the combat veteran turned businessman spoke to Biden’s actions as commander-in-chief as a driving factor.
“I’m incredibly concerned for the future of our country,” Harrigan told Fox News Digital. “With the fall of Afghanistan — being a West Point graduate and a former Green Beret who spent a little over 18 months in Afghanistan — I honestly could not believe how we could have a criminally incompetent chief executive lead the exit and lead the failure of Afghanistan the way that it happened.”
Likening the disastrous withdrawal to Vietnam at the beginning of Biden’s political career, the candidate described it as, “Just absolutely catastrophic for America.”
“We have to go to Washington and make some change and make it very quickly, or this world is going to devolve into a place that I don’t think any American has ever truly experienced,” he went on to say as he argued that American interests abroad are the key to “secure the American way of life.”
“We’ve done a terrible job of doing that in the last 20 years. I think we can do it much, much better. And I think…that when America fails to lead, the world burns and, boy, the world is burning today,” contended Harrigan, “so we just need principled leaders of character to return to Congress. We need veterans to return to Congress.”
The congressional hopeful’s view came as a report from U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) confirmed that three U.S. troops were killed in a drone attack at a base in Jordan near the border of Syria that also injured at least 34 others.
The president had issued a statement noting, “America’s heart is heavy,” and assuring, “We will carry on their commitment to fight terrorism. And have no doubt — we will hold all those responsible to account at a time and in a manner our choosing.” Yet the dramatic escalation in the Middle East stood in stark contrast to Biden’s self-congratulatory remarks on foreign policy while campaigning for re-election.
Addressing how he developed his own “leadership perspective” well-informed by international stakes, Harrigan told Fox News Digital about his role in Afghanistan.
“I was in the Arghandab Valley up north of Kandahar. 23 years old, I was leading almost 400 Americans and Afghans all by myself. I had nobody over me for about 65 or 70 miles away, and so I really got to kind of create my own adventure, cut my teeth, during some pretty significant combat operations,” he recounted.
That kind of experience informed his opinion that, like in the wake of WWII, the country needed people with real world skills to shift away from the status quo in D.C. “If we don’t have veterans at the helm, if we just have more go along to get along, same old, same old lawyers, term career politicians who are just climbing the political ladder to the next level in Washington, D.C., we’re going to have the same old problems that we’ve always had.”
If elected, Harrigan told the outlet he would like to address the southern border first, noting, “President Trump’s position on the border, which is to create a massive wall in order to safeguard our domestic security, should be our one and only priority. We have got to protect this nation.”
Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn't researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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