Retired Green Beret general and New Hampshire Senate candidate Don Bolduc told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview that Americans must unite against Iran, and politicians must stop politicizing the issue.
“This is a time we come to the table and operate as Americans,” said Bolduc, a retired U.S. Army brigadier general. He continued:
Americans need to unite and come together. We don’t need to be arguing with each other about what the president did. The president actually did something that should have been done a long time ago. [Qasem Soleimani] has been a menace and danger to stability in the Middle East and across the Levant, extending that instability to western Afghanistan, where Iran has been involved using proxies since the beginning of the war there. All the way to Africa, what they’ve done has effects in Europe, and so, we need to come together as Americans, and we need to identify Iran as an enemy.
“If we’re going to fight with each other, if we’re going to politicize this, we’re not going to get anywhere. This is an embarrassment to our country, not to be together on this and supporting our president,” he added.
Bolduc served 36 years in the military in every continent and in every major war since the first Gulf War. He was one of the first Green Berets who rode into Afghanistan on horseback to successfully topple the Taliban regime after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York City and has served in multiple high-level positions at the Pentagon.
Bolduc recommended that the U.S. not go to war against Iran but to increase pressure on them diplomatically, economically, and militarily to force them to the negotiating table.
“What we really need to do is isolate them politically, ratchet up the isolation economically. We need to increase our sanctions. We need to cyberattack them into oblivion,” he said.
He also recommended using special operations forces to disrupt Iran-controlled militia groups’ activities.
“This doesn’t require a large military response. All it requires is special operations forces going on the ground, disrupting, degrading, and neutralizing proxy forces right now because their leaders, their planners are dead, and now they are scrambling. And this is the opportunity that we need, and we need to do it now,” he said.
“We can do this without turning it into a war. That is how Iran operates anyways. Their backs are up against the wall, and they know it. We need to shove them up against the wall, not just put their backs up against the wall. We need to keep them there, pin them there until they call ‘uncle.’ And then, we bring them to the table, and we figure it out,” he said.
However, Bolduc said politicians are focused on politicizing Iran instead of helping the president.
“They’re too busy pointing fingers and trying to politicize and get reelected. And that’s wrong. This is a time we come to the table and operate as Americans,” he said.
Bolduc started his military career as a private at Fort Carson, Colorado, with the 4th Infantry Division. He then went to the 82nd Airborne Division. Afterwards, he went to college, completed the ROTC program and became an officer. His first overseas assignment was in Korea.
Since then, he’s served with the 10th, 5th, and 3rd Special Forces Groups, served in Iraq, Grenada, Afghanistan, and in various policy positions at the Army’s headquarters, the Joint Staff, and the Office of the Secretary of Defense. In Afghanistan, he helped to develop the village stability operations and Afghan Local Police programs, believed to be the only successful counterinsurgency programs in Afghanistan.
His last assignment was as commander of special operations forces for U.S. Africa Command; he retired in 2017.
Bolduc was one of the rare senior military leaders to go public with struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder, helping to destigmatize PTSD and suicide and providing an example for junior soldiers to step forward and seek help.
His campaign has recently released a campaign video in which he discusses his struggles with coming home from war as a soldier and commander who led troops into battle, sometimes with ensuing fatalities.
Bolduc said he wants to continue serving America and believes the political establishment has become ineffective.
“I am running for office in large part because of the ineffective leadership that we see in the United States today,” he said. He called the current New Hampshire senator, Jeanne Shaheen (D), “ineffective” and “establishment.”
He said that after the military, when he and his wife were working in New Hampshire on veterans’ issues, he had a difficult time getting ahold of her.
“I saw firsthand the poor constituent support in that very critical area, given the problem we have with our veterans’ medical care, transition with our service members to civilian life, the suicide rate, the homeless rate, the unemployment,” he said. “So that’s an area where she’s made a lot of promises and broken a lot of promises.”
He said Shaheen neglected the rural areas of New Hampshire and catered to special interest groups. He also criticized her for being overly partisan and voting with the establishment 97 percent of the time. He said she is so tied with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) that she thinks she is “Massachusetts’ third senator.”
“God bless her for the service she’s given to the state. I want to thank her very much for that. It’s not that she’s a bad person. She just has lost her way. We need a change,” he said.
Bolduc said he is for smaller government, lower taxes, lower national debt, the Second Amendment, strong border security, and affordable education. He also said he can put his decades of experience in the military toward devising effective foreign policies and better care for veterans.
“I got skin in the game, and I want to work for the people of New Hampshire and work for the people of America,” he said.
Bolduc was recently endorsed by SEALPAC, the political action committee founded by Rob O’Neill, the Navy SEAL who shot and killed Osama bin Laden.
“I have fought for our country, and now I want to fight for America as their U.S. senator, and I just want people to know that. I want to work for them, and I think that’s a big distinction between myself and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen.”
To learn more about his campaign, go to www.donbolduc.com.
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