Pete Hegseth wants us to call him the Secretary of War.
One problem with that idea is that it’s not up to him. The name of the Department he is screwing up to a fare-thee-well every single damn day is established by statute and only Congress can change it.
Another problem, however, is that if he really wanted an accurate title it would probably be Secretary of White Supremacist Christian Nationalist Compensation for Having a Tiny D--k. Which is too long for a standard business card.
Besides, there is another title he has earned and deserves: that of Former Secretary of Defense.
Now, yet again, our Secretary of Brain Dead Racist, Sexist Bro-osity has demonstrated his extraordinary unfitness for the job to which he was appointed and, perhaps even more astonishingly, confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
It is an ugly, ugly story that is typical for the Fox News Ken doll that addled-serial-draft-dodger Donald Trump thinks looks like a warrior leader but who actually more resembles one of the male escorts favored by the elderly rich women guests found poolside at Mar-a-Lago.
In the middle of a war, he fired the Chief of Staff of the Army, General Randy George.
Let me repeat that. In the middle of a war, he fired the Chief of Staff of the Army. And he did it to quell an incipient mutiny among an ever growing group of top brass who are fed up with Hegseth.
He fired him because Gen. George reportedly resisted going along with Hegseth’s striking of the names of two Black and two women officers from a general officer promotion list. Those who Hegseth blocked were just the latest among a growing number of lack and female senior officers whose careers were cut short because of the Secretary’s virulent racism and repugnant sexism.
The impact of the Secretary’s actions has been, according to one former general with whom I spoke, “to rob the military of experienced leaders at a time of war while also demoralizing it and producing division and dissent at the worst possible moment. It is both a gigantic failure of leadership and of judgment.”
Gen. George, one of the military’s most respected leaders, also, according to the New York Times, expressed displeasure with Hegseth’s micro-managing Army personnel matters. His anger at our smarmy Secretary of Hair Gel is according to multiple reports symptomatic of broader displeasure with and deepening contempt for the military’s top civilian leader.
Hegseth, of course, since arriving at the Pentagon has conducted a campaign that he says targets “wokeness” and “DEI” but in actuality has produced deep resentment throughout the military as he systematically has attacked and devalued the contributions of the roughly one-third of service members who are people of color and the nearly 20 percent who are women.
He hasn’t helped matters by also imposing his extremist religious views on a force that is approximately a third non-Christian. (It should be noted that this week he also fired the chief chaplain of the army, Major General William Green, who also happened to be a Black man.)
Hegseth, who sports tattoos associated with Christian nationalism, has promoted the views of his own personal pastor, Brooks Potteiger of the Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship in Goodlettsville, Tennessee. The pastor has made headlines by suggesting that Texas Democratic senatorial candidate James Tallarico should be “crucified.”
Hegseth hosts evangelical worship services on a monthly basis. One pastor promoted the idea that women should not be allowed the right to vote. In another instance, Hegseth shocked Pentagon observers by likening the current war with Iran to a Holy War and prayed for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.” He then went on to add, “We ask these things with bold confidence in the mighty and powerful name of Jesus Christ.”
It was such an ugly outburst that it produced a response from the Pope himself who said on Palm Sunday, that God “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war,” then quoting the Bible with, “Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen—your hands are full of blood.”
He has accompanied these inflammatory breaks with military tradition by also limiting the perspectives supported by the military’s chaplains, “marginalizing” those who don’t share his religious views and micromanaging issues such as the nature of the insignia they wear. Within the military, according to the Washington Post, the view is that his actions are “dangerous” with one noted retired officer saying his actions are “totally violative of everything that transpired before it.”
Of course, Hegseth’s errors and abuses at DoD have been manifold since his arrival.
When he revealed battleplans in a Signal chat, he committed an infraction that would have gotten any other member of the military fired and/or court-martialed. He regularly has insulted senior officers including when he gathered them all together for a meeting at Quantico, Virginia also attended by the President to promote his agenda of ending the “woke military,” establishing new grooming and fitness standards and generally p–sing off everyone present. According to one report, it was characterized variously as “abhorrent” and “an abomination” and by others as having created “a risk to national security and a cost to the American taxpayer.”
Worse still, Hegseth, who got the job in part because of his defense of soldiers who were accused of war crimes, has both denigrated rules of engagement guided by the law and directed officers to attack and kill civilians without due process as part of the U.S. campaign against pleasure craft in the Caribbean.
He has also presided over multiple illegal actions, including the illegal attack on Venezuela and the illegal war in Iran. More war crimes are promised too by Trump who has outlined plans to attack civilian power generation facilities in Iran. Rather than pushing back on such actions, Hegseth has sought to silence dissent from officers who objected to them by forcing out, in the case of the Caribbean campaign, the head of U.S. SOUTHCOM, Admiral Alvin Holsey, who also happens to be African-American, and by seeking to punish former military officers now in the U.S. Senate, including Senator Mark Kelly, who had called upon the U.S. military to resist following illegal orders (as the law demands.)
Beyond the above, Hegseth has presided not only over possible war crimes but also catastrophically ill-conceived ideas, such as, again, the current war in Iran which our own intelligence community suggests is failing to achieve many of its stated goals—from depleting Iran’s missile capability to producing sought-after regime change.
In other words, the Secretary of Lethality and Lame Public Displays of Physical Fitness is failing at his current job in just about every way possible (as he has in his multiple past failed employment stints). With him at the helm, the military is weaker, our national security is at greater risk, our readiness is falling, we are failing to achieve our strategic goals, our alliances are foundering, our allies are angry at us and our enemies are growing stronger every day.
There is not just one reason Hegseth should be fired. There are scores of them. And each is, individually, in and of itself, shocking and demands immediate action—which they might get were the president of the United States not both clueless and, if anything, guilty of even more violations of law, his oath of office, common sense and human decency than his Secretary of Who Says I’m a Racist, I Drink Johnny Walker Black?
As a consequence, the responsibility for defending us against our own Secretary of Defense now falls to others. First, as the president prepares his obscene $1.5 trillion defense budget request, leaders of conscience on Capitol Hill must make it clear that not one penny will be approved if Hegseth remains in office. Next, those in the military who see the damage he is doing must speak up.
Traditional norms of behavior need to be set aside. This is a crisis that could do lasting damage to the country and to the military. Finally, all of us need to make it clear via all the channels available to us that this national abomination and embarrassment must go. (I mean Hegseth, but it is, of course, equally true of his boss.)
