WASHINGTON, D.C. — Secretary of War Pete Hegseth last week traveled to the U.S. Southern Command area of responsibility, meeting with sailors aboard the USS Iwo Jima and Air National Guardsmen in Puerto Rico as the military intensifies operations against drug traffickers designated as foreign terrorist organizations.
“The secretary spoke to service members about their contribution [to] protecting the homeland from narco-terrorists who poison the American people,” Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell said during the War Department’s weekly update Friday.
Aboard the Iwo Jima, Hegseth praised sailors for what he called their front-line role in defending national security. “What you’re doing right now, it’s not training,” he told them. “This is a real-world exercise, on behalf of the vital national interests of the United States of America, to end the poisoning of the American people.”
Hegseth was joined by Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during a stop at Muñiz Air National Guard Base near San Juan, Puerto Rico. There, he told Guardsmen their mission is “critically important to American citizens, to American families [and] to communities that have been ravaged by violence … ravaged by drugs and ravaged by violent gangs and criminality [due to] a porous Southwest border and drugs pouring into our country.”
President Donald Trump in January signed an executive order designating cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, authorizing the U.S. military to confront cartel-linked threats. “Narco-terrorists will find no safe harbor in international waters or anywhere in our hemisphere,” Parnell said.
The week also marked the 24th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Hegseth hosted Trump at a Pentagon observance ceremony, recalling the attacks in New York, Pennsylvania, and at the Pentagon itself.
“Twenty-four years ago, Islamist terrorists massacred nearly 3,000 innocent American lives in New York City; Shanksville, Pennsylvania; and right here at the Pentagon,” Hegseth said. “The building you see behind me — the War Department — was targeted in an act of savage evil. And today, on these hallowed grounds, we gather to honor those victims and heroes with the resolve to never forget.”
Hegseth said the conclusion of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq places a renewed responsibility on future generations. “We must teach our children that the price of freedom, [which] we love, is eternal vigilance,” he said. “Prepare them to defend this nation by the ballot, the wallet and when necessary, the cloth of our country.”
The War Department also confirmed the death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, recently appointed by Trump to the U.S. Air Force Academy Board of Visitors.
“I would … like to take this moment to honor the great Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated on [Sept. 10] while engaging in the free exchange of ideas on a college campus in Utah,” Parnell said. “His work to revive patriotism among young people set off a movement that has secured him a place as a legend in American history.”
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