I spent over two hours (valuable time that I will never get back) recently watching the clown show of our Secretary of Defense and our President embarrassing our nation in front of the world and insulting the intelligence and years of training that went into our military’s top brass.
I can’t say that I know what Pete was thinking when he decided to demand that all of our nation’s top generals and admirals drop the duties they were performing and travel to Quantico (some with staff and security details in tow) to listen to an “important” directive from the “Secretary of War”. I think that he believed that they needed to hear directly from him, that they finally had leaders who understood how to wield “the strongest, most powerful, most lethal and most prepared military on the planet.”
What followed was a 45 minute “Ted Talk” filled with Pete’s fantasy of what a testosterone infused, macho dominated, white Christian inspired killing force should look like. His order is that every member of every branch of our military will be held to the “highest male standards”, peak proficiency, fitness, discipline, and readiness. No beards, no long hair, everyone must look professional.
Here is what he said about DEI policies within the military: “But in many ways, it’s not their fault. It’s not your fault. As foolish and reckless as the woke department was, those officers were following elected political leadership. An entire generation of generals and admirals were told that they must parrot the insane fallacy that, “quote, ”our diversity is our strength.” Of course, we know our unity is our strength. They had to put out dizzying DEI and LGBTQI+ statements. They were told females and males are the same thing, or that males who think they’re females, totally normal. They were told that we need a green fleet and electric tanks. They were told to kick out Americans who refuse an emergency vaccine. They followed civilian policies set by foolish and reckless political leaders.”
“This administration has done a great deal from day one to remove the social justice, politically correct and toxic ideological garbage that had infected our department, to rip out the politics. No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses, no more climate change worship, no more division, distraction, or gender delusions, no more debris. As I’ve said before and will say again, we are done with that shit.”
The Secretary also said that the military’s focus on eradicating “toxic leadership” will change. According to Hegseth: “the definition of toxic has been turned upside down, and we’re correcting that. That’s why today, at my direction, we’re undertaking a full review of the department’s definitions of so-called toxic leadership, bullying, and hazing, to empower leaders to enforce standards without fear of retribution or second-guessing.”
You get the drift. Most of what the Secretary spoke about could have been communicated via memo or Zoom meeting, and would have saved the 800 admirals and generals a lot of wasted time and travel and saved us taxpayers probably over $3 million (a very conservative estimate). This was, quite simply a performance, not only that, but this whole exercise was a gigantic national security risk! We had nearly our entire military leadership, including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Secretary of Defense and the Commander-in-Chief ALL IN ONE PLACE. I suspect that there are a number of our enemies who wish they had been prepared for such a massive opportunity.
Now for my summary of the President’s speech: In many ways it was pretty much the opposite of the Secretary’s speech. It was undisciplined, it was rambling, it was one hour and 11 minutes long, it was incoherent, but like the Secretary’s, it was scary. The scary parts were when the Commander in Chief said that our inner cities “are a big part of (our) war” with “animals shooting at firemen” and that “we are under invasion from within”. These enemies are “no different than a foreign enemy but more difficult in many ways because they don’t wear uniforms (and) at least when they are wearing a uniform, you can take them out.” “As President I will never hesitate to defend our people from threats of violence, from the horrible plague that is taking place from within.” It appears that these are things that he thinks should be addressed by the military.
I imagine that if I were a career officer in the US military and I had to listen to the rantings of my Commander-In-Chief for over an hour, I would be having some very serious concerns about the future of the military, the country and myself, and I would be very uncomfortable that I may be called on to commit my troops to this kind of duty.