Veterans Know Why Hegseth Must Become SECDEF

Topic: Perspective

In periodic respites from my ongoing 2024 Election reviews, I have written about President Trump’s Cabinet selections. The first time I wrote about them, I did so because people were busy losing their minds because social media has driven society to the brink of insanity and perpetual emotional collapse. No one met the ridiculous conservative purity tests or had a perfect enough personal life to be accepted. Some of them used to be (emphasis intended) members of the Army of Darkness itself, the Democrat Party. I, of course, countered with rationale as to why various establishment figures may have been selected for positions, simple logic outlining that no matter how badly you may want someone in the Cabinet that they’ll still need 51 votes in the U.S. Senate, and my sincerely held position that you have no movement at all if said movement doesn’t convince people on the other side to change sides.

Such is the world of change agents. If the entrenched political bureaucracy and administrative state (deep state) would have had their way, Hillary Clinton would have been elected president in 2016, served one term and given way to health, and been replaced with an establishment Republican who would have been gladly embraced by the right side of the American political equation as a break in a twelve-year streak of Democrat presidents. That Republican candidate would have divvied up government for his buddies, doled out ambassadorships and Cabinet slots for those next in line, and continued the reckless pattern of domestic governance and foreign chaos for eight more years.

Then came Donald Trump, who set back the global plan for world domination by at least 20 years, if not forever (that depends on how the next four years unfold). He is a change agent. If you ever find yourself doubting that, ask yourself why the governments of the world conspired to unleash a lab-designed virus on the world in 2020 so they could make last-minute rule changes to how the election would run and crater the economy to ensure Trump faced as much of an organic headwind as possible in seeking reelection. Then ask yourself why, once it became apparent Trump would again seek the Presidency, the crooks in our government first attempted to thwart his candidacy by weaponizing the corrupt judiciary, and then when that failed, tried to have him shot at least once.

Just because Trump is a change agent doesn’t mean he won’t make decisions that you disagree with. He has the unfortunate duty to maintain certain alliances you don’t trust or believe in. You may remember when Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq with an iron fist. As evil as he was, he is widely thought to have brought stability to the Middle East, even though it was a cold stability. As soon as Dubya ran into Iraq like Leeroy Jenkins and turned it into a parking lot, the Middle East transformed into a catastrophe that made the preceding half-century seem like a time of regional unity and bliss. So, as things are, Trump needs to maintain membership in various groups and in alliances with various nations you may not be in favor of, if indeed he is going to make ground where we truly need to – domestic reforms.

Want to know why I’m not concerned in the least about Marco Rubio as Secretary of State? First and foremost, he will serve at the pleasure of the President of the United States. He may well be on a short leash, and even if he isn’t, Trump is known to swap people out like a manager handling a bullpen full of relievers.

Alright Marco, thanks for getting us into the seventh inning. Time to bring in a lefty to get out of this jam, then we are gonna go to our closer for a six-out save. Give me the ball.

Rubio will receive his Senate approval and assume his duties as America’s top diplomat in an age in which America may become more isolationist than it has been at any point since the 1930s. He will be a smiling, young, Latino face representing the goals of the administration on a foreign stage, and those goals most certainly, as evidenced by the appointments of Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence, Kash Patel for Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense, do not include abiding by the established doctrines of the John S. McCain School of Global Thermonuclear War and Military Expansionism.

A nation turning inward and breaking from the neoconservative global ruling class has no choice but to reform itself domestically, because after all, the government exists for Americans, not for citizens of other nations. That is why we called the entire experiment self-government, and the founders drew up a blueprint for appropriate representation of the people via a Republican form of government (as in a Republic, not the Republican Party, which merely purports to stand for viewpoints reflecting support for a Republican form of government).

Everything the Trump administration appears to be doing regarding Cabinet picks concentrates its greatest leverage on reforming domestic institutions. Don’t like that ambassador choice to the Central Confederated People’s Socialist Democratic Dictatorship of Don’t-drink-the-water-stan? Well, that’s too bad, and someone had to take the job. Upset that the person who is going to have her name on the side of cigarette packs used to support COVID junk science? Well, that won’t change your life much, nor will it force you to inject experimental products you don’t want in your body.

But if you’re upset about the fact that the government spies on you unlawfully, you’ll like Gabbard in charge of 18 intelligence agencies and their respective mission scopes and budgets. If you’re ready to see accountability for the FBI, then I can think of no one better than Patel, who has floated the idea of turning the existing agency headquarters into a Deep State Museum and sending agents to Minot, Garden City, Arkadelphia, and everywhere in between and forcing them to follow up on suicide bomber threats instead of cookie-baking grandmas who share Trump memes. Finally, if you’re like me, and you’re a veteran sick to death of watching your once-proud service branch turn to shit, then you should be exuberant over the nomination of Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense.

If you’re a long-time reader of this journal, you may think I understand political statistics and voter trends better than anyone in the world. That is possibly correct, and I say so as humbly as possible – but a close second for my primary specialty understanding is my understanding of how current service members and veterans think and feel about a variety of topics, especially ineffective management and leadership. Veterans are extremely cynical people because all of us have watched an entire battalion stand in line from 0700 hours until the flag goes down at 1700 to get a damn vaccine, rather than seeing the unit accomplish all tasks and duties, including the shots, in the same time frame because effective middle managers (sergeants and lieutenants) figured out how to break the tasks into manageable components. For all their issues, traumas, and cynicism, veterans know a scam when they see one – and that is why there is no one more qualified than a post-9/11 veteran to tell you that our conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have not been carried out for the purposes sold to us when we were younger and full of red-blooded American spirit, ready to go take the gospel of American democracy to the unevangelized savages of the third world who still wipe their asses with their hands and stone women for learning how to read (tell that to the next man-hating feminist you run across).

The military has grown softer and softer over the decades. My father, before he attended Officer Candidate School, went to basic training at Fort Dix, New Jersey, in 1962. He told me about having to low crawl more than 100 yards through a gravel parking lot just to earn the right to stand in line for chow, which had to be wolfed down in five minutes or less in square dining technique at the seated position of attention. Some 46 years later, when I got my commission, things were better for officers and enlisted personnel alike, but there was still accountability for being a train wreck. I saw several lieutenants get processed out before they ever reached their assigned unit because they couldn’t handle three simple things – right time, right place, right uniform – the most basic duties of a soldier that, if successfully handled, go a long way in guaranteeing successful fulfillment of mission.

I had standards I met. Given freedom to do my own physical fitness routines when deployed, I had to ensure I passed the P.T. test when the time came, and that I came in underneath a certain weight. I had to exercise personal responsibility and avoid any legal troubles if I wanted to get promoted, and I was responsible for everything my soldiers subordinate to me accomplished – or failed to accomplish. Do you want to know how much of a shitshow the military is today? Pour yourself another whiskey and follow along:

Recently, I spoke with a friend of mine named Dan, who is an avid reader of this journal and a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Reserve. I am withholding his last name for reasons you’ll understand once you read beyond this sentence. We met in 2008 when we were both going through training, and served again together several years later at another duty station. He did his time in Iraq as I was doing mine in Afghanistan, and we eventually worked together in the Oil and Gas industry as civilians when we both left active duty. Dan is the prototype of how you would draw up an officer. He is rigidly traditional and devoutly Catholic, which earned him the nickname BCD, or Big Catholic Dan, back in the day with our group of friends. He has been married as long as I’ve known him and has five well-disciplined, respectful children who say ”yes, sir” and do what they’re told, and BCD himself stands about 6 feet, 5 inches tall and isn’t afraid to tell you what he thinks.

Anyway, Dan does the battalion commander gig in person a couple days a month at drill, and administratively as duty and time demand throughout the month. An officer in this sort of command position (battalion) commands several hundred soldiers arranged into companies, including an array of majors, captains, and lieutenants, and their own subordinate enlisted soldiers. The battalion typically possesses equipment valued in the tens of millions of dollars range, all itemized and signed over to some poor sap who will have no choice but to sell his soul to the Devil himself if he loses the items he took responsibility for.

Dan let me in on the sad state of affairs he has fallen victim to. Apparently, Dan, the statuesque battalion commander in charge of unit discipline and standards, doesn’t smile enough, is intimidating to soldiers, and issues evaluations of underperforming soldiers that aren’t of the “everyone gets a trophy” variety.