MARINE CORPS AIR STATION MIRAMAR, Calif. \u2014 Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told Marines here Tuesday that they should expect to return to their service’s maritime roots and said future missions will not involve forcing American values “down anybody’s throat.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hagel spoke to several hundred Marines and thanked them for their service in Afghanistan. Now that their mission there is complete, their role likely will shift away from the land-based deployments they’ve experienced during the past 13 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“One of the focuses that we have had over the last couple of years \u2014 will continue to have \u2014 is to get the Marines back to the original purpose of our Marine Corps \u2014 your maritime service, your full-spectrum operations \u2014 and we’re doing that. We will continue to do that,” Hagel said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Future missions will focus on helping allied nations to solve their own problems rather than trying to craft American-made solutions for them. Partner nations and allies should have the capabilities and institutions to defend themselves, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We’re doing it with our partners, our allies all over the world so that they have capabilities. They have the capacity. They have the institutions to defend themselves. <\/span>We’ll help. We’ll support. We’ll be their allies, but we can’t take on all of the challenges by ourselves,” Hagel said. “They must do it as well.” Hagel said.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Hagel’s visit to Southern California is part of a three-day trip across the country to meet with soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. After resigning in December, Hagel is expected to leave office in February and said he wanted to make some final visits to thank them for their service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hagel’s remarks were often philosophical as he reflected on the increasingly complex challenges the U.S. nited States <\/span>faces around the world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n “The other part of what I’ve learned on this is you can’t force the United States’ value system and our values and our standards and our structures and our institutions down anybody’s throat,” he said. “And we make huge mistakes when we think we can go around and make many USAs all over the world. It just won’t work, never has worked.” he said.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n “Help them; human rights, freedom, people having rights to decide their own lives for their own families and opportunities. That’s universal. How they do that, how they structure that, that should be up to them, not to us or anybody else,” Hagel said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He later added: “You cannot force things in life. If you try to, you’ll make a huge mistake. You’ll make a huge mistake. … The United States in a lot of our foreign policy over many years, the mistakes we’ve made is because we have tried to force things.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hagel was an Army infantry sergeant in Vietnam, where he earned two Purple Hearts during a combat deployment in 1967 and 1968. He is the first defense secretary to have significant experience as an enlisted service member.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During his remarks to Marines, Hagel also referenced the forcewide effort to crack down on sexual assault and compared it to the way Marines support each other in combat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “We’ve got to take care of each other. We don’t take care of each other just on the battlefield, but we’ve got to take care of each other in dorms, in bars, on bases, at parties. You take care of each other, you trust each other, you have to rely on each other, again not just in war. This is a family and we let each other down if we don’t do that,” Hagel said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In final visit to the area as defense secretary, Chuck Hagel tells Marines they will return to the sea, will not force U.S. values on other countries<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":94077,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[15,88],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3125],"class_list":["post-94273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-your-military"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"2H3SOODZGRC45NJFNONO4ILPPU","arc_canonical_url":"\/2015\/01\/14\/hagel-says-marines-will-return-to-maritime-roots\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n