Yesterday I watched Senator Mark Kirk on CBS News' "Face the Nation" talk about a variety of current issues. Watch the video here. Mark gets right to the point and discusses Syria and Libya, and other foreign policy issues, and notes that the U.S. military is now "overstretched" with four current major military and humanitarian missions (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Japan). Nevertheless, Kirk says that now that we are involved in Libya we "have a responsibility to win," but we need to "wrap this up."
Kirk also worries about financial issues, including the debt ceiling, and criticizes the U.S. Senate for going on break when such serious issues must be dealt with. Kirk says he will vote "no" on raising the debt ceiling unless "we have comprehensive, dramatic, effective and broad-based cuts to federal spending, including the reform of entitlement spending."
Read more at The Hill.
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6 comments:
To be sure in the last 2 weeks the Senator has called for the United states to take on the Somali pirates pointedly using his 5 minutes with Secretary clinton during an appropriations subcommittee hearing to tell her the US should move a destroyer to the region to take on pirates-which would divert resources in that area which would otherwise be used to counter Iran. Now he's calling for stepped up engagement in Libya. If we're "overstretched" we can't continue to increase global commitments on 2nd and 3rd tier issues particularly in the meditteranean which is supposed to be the one crisis prone region where the EU and other European nations can help us out. This comes at a time when he supports a fiscal compromise which will perhaps involve cutting the pentagon and hasn't yet to my knowledge called for reducing troop commitments in Afghanistan.
FOKLAES
Who is impersonating FOKLAES on this blog? Harsh criticism of our junior senator. May I also ask who the foreign policy expert here is, Kirk or FOKLAES?
NorthSideSoxFan
Kirk looked much more polished than Walsh.
FOKLAES makes a valid point. However, I think that we need o remember that when Kirk was pushing for ONE destroyer near Somalia we were not yet engaged in the turmoil in Libya. And if memory serves (and its a little hazy) the exchange with Sec Clinton was BEFORE the earthquake in Japan. So while I think the work of Sen. Kirk, I don't believe he has a crystal ball to see the future.
I am not anti-mark kirk, I am pro smart mark kirk. When you say that the military is overstretched and then call for new engagements in 3 other countries without naming the 4 areas you would reduce our presence to compensate for that, it's not adding up.
the issue with the somali pirates is a problem that every nation on earth has an interest in solving, it shouldn't just be up to the american navy and us taxpayer to fix this issue. Libya is Europe's back yard and they've worked hard over the last decade to demonstrate that they want to take a bigger role in their own region, so let them.
What the senator should do is say 20 years after the soviet union collapsed, and 10 years after invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, I've taken a step back and these programs are no longer needed or effective and the saved resources will enable us to deal with the deficit and focus on more important priorities like china ect.
FOKLAES
FOKLAES,
When are you running?
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