I began yesterday as I have so many other mornings with a single thought…What the fuck???
Tuesday’s
WTF was prompted first by Secretary of Defense WAR! Pete Hegseth’s
harangue of our military’s assembled flag officers and their senior enlisted
advisors followed by remarks from President Trump. I imagine for many of them the assembly was
two hours of their lives they will never get back.
Hegseth’s talk was the predictable kinetic, motormouthed display of performative masculinity. He decried DEI, wokeness, “climate change worship,” political correctness, men in dresses, men with beards, low esprit de corps, low physical fitness standards, out of shape personnel, “fat” generals and admirals at the Pentagon, nation building, a lack of warrior ethos, a supposed war on warriors (at which point Hegseth inserted a plug for his magnum opus of the same name), and even the term “defense” itself. Nothing new here.
This doesn’t mean there weren’t parts of the speech that are cause for real concern. One is Hegseth’s disdain for rules of engagement. Clearly, this is a dangerous attitude toward the law of war. Hegseth seems to imply that in the future servicemembers will be shielded from war crime prosecutions. That is a truly bad message to send to the rank and file, though the audience in front of him surely were unconvinced.
He also promised that leaders would be protected from frivolous complaints from within the ranks. This will almost certainly create a chilling effect on legitimate complaints to include allegations of abuse by colleagues and superiors.
On a related topic, Hegseth promised that initial entry training will be toughened up in the interest of making every servicemember a rifleman. (I’m not sure whether this skill is relevant if you’re, say, a submariner or part of a bomber crew, but I do not share Hegseth’s brilliant military mind.) Training should be scary and tough and should instill “healthy fear.” In the future, training cadre will be allowed to put hands on trainees to discipline them. At a time when it’s hard to attract qualified recruits, I’m sure this policy will improve the picture.
More ominous still was when Hegseth put his misogyny on full display. I can’t speak to the thoughts of the female officers in attendance, but they cannot have been impressed. It is pretty evident at this point Hegseth envisions a significantly truncated role for women in the military. In the future, he crowed, women will have to meet the same physical fitness standards as men or they will be eliminated from combat roles. Just as bad is the implication that the elimination of diversity programs will make our armed forces predominately white.
The few camera shots of the audience showed row upon row of stonefaced people. Hegseth’s applause bait lines fell flat. As a veteran, as a former officer, he should have expected this up front. It was a policy speech from a superior, not a political rally. You stand at attention when he enters the room, and you stand at attention when he leaves. There was probably also the annoyance factor at work with some of them, particularly those who came from overseas or otherwise traveled long distances in service of a stupid publicity stunt.
The worst was yet to come though it didn’t seem that way at first. After Hegseth’s hyperactive onstage jackassery, the president’s speech came as almost a relief. Trump shuffled to the podium and launched into the self-pitying, self-aggrandizing word salad typical of the president’s public utterances. Then, he began to philosophize on the role of America’s military. Turns out, the fight is not against foreign adversaries. Unbeknownst to many of us outside the MAGAverse, we are being invaded as he spoke. The armed forces’ present mission is to fight the “enemies from within.”
Ah, yes, the ubiquitous yet invisible enemies within, the bugbear of authoritarian movements everywhere. What the president was effectively saying is that the American military’s enemy to be fought are certain Americans. Hence, the recent and wholly unnecessary National Guard interventions in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C, and Memphis, and coming soon to Chicago and Portland.
One of the stated reasons has been that the troops are there to safeguard ICE as they round up people for deportation. ICE’s sudden expansion has been characterized by some progressive critics as a nascent political police doing the administration’s extralegal bidding. What the military’s role in this will be is anybody’s guess, though Trump made it clear that America’s cities are to be its future “training ground.” Together with Hegseth’s new emphasis on “lethality,” it ought to worry the most levelheaded observer.
And all this because last fall we were frustrated at the cost of groceries...
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