I was one of those many, many retired officers who thought it was great when Pete Hegseth walked in and told an assembly of hundreds of generals and admirals that they suck and are fat, and they needed to unsuck and get unfat. Well, he was a little more polite than that, but not much. Of course, when their subordinates screw up in a massive way like these generals and admirals have over the last three decades, these generals and admirals would not have sugarcoated it. There would be no talk of feelings, no hugging. They would nuke their delinquent subordinates until they glowed. Some of the flag officers— the ones with a future in a military devoted to winning wars— appreciated this refreshing dose of toxic masculinity, but far too many of them channeled Margaret Dumont and are now scrambling to the press like little weasels to leak the anonymous equivalent of, “Oh, well, I never!”
It’s embarrassing: “Pete Hegseth was mean to us, and we aren’t going to be friends with him anymore! We’re totally gonna write a whole page on him in the slam book!”
No, really. The Washington Times got the scoop from these feminine cowards who donned the camouflage of anonymity to slag their boss instead of pulling their stars from their epaulets and slamming them on his desk. Nobody resigns anymore; they just gossip and talk smack behind people’s backs. It’s like Mean Girls with a camo color palette: The aggression is passive, and these generals and admirals have won the same number of wars as Regina, Karen, and Gretchen. The big difference is that what these flag officers can’t make happen is not “fetch” but “victory.”
Let’s review some of the achievements of the generals and admirals who are mad because Pete Hegseth doesn’t appreciate their awesome awesomeness:
- No unequivocal victories in wars in over 30 years.
- The Afghanistan rout and the utterly unnecessary death of 13 service members, plus the maiming of many more.
- A Pentagon more concerned with promoting social pathologies than promoting hard-core warfighters.
- The decline of the Navy in terms of numbers, focus, and seamanship, including ships regularly ramming into each other.
- Flat-out discrimination against people of pallor who have penises.
- DEI idiocy that took away training focus and undermined morale and unit cohesion.
- The utter betrayal of our troops over COVID, including the dismissal of thousands of service members who refused to take a vaccine that everybody now concedes doesn’t do what it promised to do.
- Recruiting numbers in the toilet because the normal young people who usually make up our military accurately sensed that they were despised and would be betrayed by their leadership.
- A veteran community so disgusted by what happened to their beloved military that they began advising young people against enlisting.
Yeah, that’s quite a résumé. Very impressive. Never have so many been so arrogant with so few accomplishments and so many unmitigated failures.
As reported by the Washington Times, they’re very upset with Pete Hegseth because he doesn’t meet their exacting standards:
“Multiple high-ranking officers point to his September 30 speech at Marine Corps Base Quantico as a turning point, calling it a 'massive waste of time' and ‘embarrassing.’ Critics say the former Fox News host operates with a ‘junior officer’s mentality,’ fixating on issues like facial hair standards and press access rather than broader strategic concerns.”
That’s just one paragraph, but it shows why their puny play to indict our Secretary of War is really an indictment of themselves. “Multiple high-ranking officers” participated in this whisper campaign against their boss? It goes without saying that if their own subordinate officers showed this kind of disgusting disloyalty, they would call in a napalm strike on these quislings and be right to do so. But apparently, these vital and important norms that must be protected at all costs don’t apply to the vital and important norms advocates.
That they consider a superior personally explaining the commander’s intent to his subordinates a waste of time, or even “embarrassing,” is troubling to say the least. I wasn’t trained to command by memorandum or Zoom; I was trained to command by commanding, and the people who trained me were the guys who won Desert Storm. Yes, you can actually unequivocally win a war, which these generals and admirals don’t appear to understand. They’re more concerned with their hurt feelz.
Oh, and this “junior officer mentality” business—talk about revealing. Of course, Pete Hegseth was a major, a field-grade officer, which is not a junior officer, but these three- and four-star generals aren’t really connected to actual soldiers. Nor are they connected to basic concepts like discipline, which I guess is now to be disregarded as merely something junior officers are concerned with.
No.
Discipline is the foundation of everything the military does. We have standards, including things like no facial hair and not having your belly pouring over your belt like Niagara Falls, for a reason. An undisciplined force is a force that will fail in battle, but battle is not what these generals and admirals are concerned about. They are more concerned with their own personal power and prestige and with grasping the next rung on the ladder. This is why we lose.
During my infrequent visits to a local Space Force base, I was disturbed to see a lot of spacemen waddling about, looking like camouflage beach balls. Don’t even get me started on the hair. That is indiscipline. But the weekend before last, I visited Camp Pendleton, where the Marines were – by the way, if an artillery shell had blown up prematurely over I-5, I probably would’ve noticed and snapped a photo of it since it allegedly happened right by where I and hundreds of others with cameras were. (That said, I await the results of the investigation.) Well, those Marines were not fat. Their hair did not look like a squirrel’s nest. They were not unshaven. No, they looked like a bunch of guys who wanted to go out and stack bodies. It warmed my heart; there goes my junior officer mentality again.
Maybe Pete Hegseth would spend more time on “broader strategic concerns” if he didn’t have to fix all the foundational foul-ups by these whiny flag officers.
Wait, there’s more:
“Current officers describe an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty, with talent ‘bleeding’ from the services through firings, early retirements, and resignations. They claim promotions and removals often happen for ‘unknown reasons’ based on ‘favoritism’ rather than merit, contradicting Hegseth’s stated goal of a meritocracy. His inner circle has dramatically shrunk, with sources saying he now relies primarily on spokesman Sean Parnell, his wife, and his brother rather than utilizing Pentagon expertise.”
An atmosphere of fear and uncertainty? Good. People who suck should be afraid and uncertain. In civilian life, we call this “accountability.” See, we expect success rather than perfect attendance out here in the real world. It’s about time the Pentagon adopted this innovative management technique. As for talent “bleeding” from the services, what’s the name of the talented potential Patton who’s been punted by Pete Hegseth? All I see getting tossed are a bunch of leakers, half-steppers, and DEI cheerleaders. It’s hilarious to watch the same clowns pining for meritocracy when it was they who eagerly promoted the notion that promotion should be based on where your great-great-grandfather came from and your genital status. Good for Pete for trashing that garbage paradigm.
And as for his “inner circle shrinking” and foregoing “Pentagon expertise (sic),” why the hell would he trust the same people who are sticking him in the back in the press? But, of course, Secretary Hegseth is not alone. There are a lot of good people in the American military who want to be part of a war-fighting organization instead of a gender-freak clusterfark.
Further, there are tens of millions of vets who are ecstatic about Pete Hegseth making America’s military great again. And, of course, he’s got the support of President Donald J. Trump, who, to the great consternation of these pompous perfumed princes, is our commander-in-chief. Pete is not alone; we’ve got his back, and if his enemies had superior combat power, they wouldn’t have to shamefully slink to the nearest reporter with their anonymous gossip to nibble at his ankle like a Parris Island sand flea.
Pete Hegseth showed strong, decisive leadership at that September 30 conclave with the generals, just as he has shown strong, decisive leadership since taking over as SecWar. Hell, he showed more personal leadership during that visit to Camp Pendleton, when I watched him wrangle his 37 children into sitting still on a helicopter ride, than I’ve seen over the last couple of decades from all of these back-biting, be-medaled, bitter buffoons with stars on their shoulders.
Sure, there are still a bunch of timeservers inside the Pentagon who want to go back to the old days of managed decline and unearned prestige. They need to check their watches and see what time it is. There’s been a change of command, with a new command climate. If you can’t stand the Hegseth heat, get out of the Pentagon.
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