US needs ‘Department of Offense, not Defense’ to intimidate foes: Nikki Haley

Hawkish Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley has called for the creation of a “Department of Offense” instead of Defense to enable the US to instill fear in their foreign enemies and better enforce Washington’s belligerent foreign policy.

The southern Indian-American university professor, who was addressing a campaign event in Iowa’s Cedar Rapids on Friday, claimed a stronger military can restore US credibility.

“We’ve got to be smart, and we’ve got to be ready,” Haley said. “I’m tired of talking about a ‘department of defense’. I want a ‘department of offense’. Every enemy needs to fear us.”

Haley claimed Biden’s botched withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan in 2021 and the takeover by the Taliban, in addition to his administration’s recent prisoner-swap deal with Iran, had emboldened America’s enemies.

She also claimed that a strong US government backed by a formidable military could have prevented Israel’s war on Gaza, as well as the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

She called on the US government to back the Israeli regime in its onslaught on Gaza by providing the Zionist forces with “whatever they need whenever they need it.”

The hardliner Republican politician said that Washington’s objective must be to help the Israeli regime eradicate the Palestinian resistance movement.

The goal is to “eliminate Hamas, not weaken them,” she insisted.

She also called for stopping funding to colleges where its students and/or employees held pro-Palestinian rallies. 

Haley, a former governor of South Carolina who served as US ambassador to the United Nations under the previous US President Donald Trump, advised the current administration not to be hoodwinked by the release of two American prisoners of war held by Hamas.

“They are doing this to earn favor with America because they want to try and look good in the eyes of America,” she said. “Don’t fall for it.”

On October 7, Israel began raging a catastrophic war in the Gaza Strip after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas launched Operation Al-Aqsa Storm in response to decades of violence against Palestinians and repetitive incursions into the al-Aqsa Mosque.  

The multi-front surprise operation by Hamas, marking an intelligence failure by Israel, resulted in the death of 1,300 Israeli settlers and soldiers. Hamas also held dozens of the Israelis as prisoners of war in Gaza.   

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Haley’s call for a more aggressive military comes as the US annual military budget is more than $830 billion, which exceeds the world’s next nine largest defense budgets combined.

Also, the US military runs some 750 bases in 80 countries, and it has a long history of regime-change programs and military interventions in countries around the world.

Haley owned as much as $250,000 in Boeing stock as of a financial disclosure filing in May.

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