On Friday’s broadcast of C-SPAN’s “Ceasefire,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) said that he won’t vote for a supplemental without a public order on returning the presence of American troops to the Baltics and Poland.
Bacon said, “I feel better that the president countermanded the orders from the Pentagon, saying, no, you’re not going to leave this armored brigade out of Poland. They withdrew it, and the president said, no, you’re going to have to have 5,000 troops in Poland. So, that gives me a positive perspective that this will happen. But I’m also — I see the reality in the Pentagon right now. The Pentagon, civilian leadership — the military leadership’s been great — but the civilian leadership here, they want to reduce our presence in NATO. And it’s a terrible time to do this, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And the armored brigade they took out was the closest brigade to Russia, and some of those units were in Lithuania and Estonia. So, now we have no troops in Estonia and Lithuania. We still have some in Poland, but it’s about half. It’s a terrible message. These countries are on the frontlines. They’re scared of what Russia’s doing, and our troops were a deterrence against Russia. And so, Russia is seeing our actions. I think they perceive it as weakness. And our allies are saying, why are we taking out forces closest to Russia and the countries that are our best allies? They’re spending over 5% of our GDP. So, I have concerns that there’s a lack of commitment from the Pentagon to get this done.”
He continued, “So, I am playing hardball. If they want my support for a supplemental, they better have a public order on how they’re going to return these troops back to Poland and the Baltics.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
Read the full article here