OPINION — “I think we are at an existential moment. I’m not trying to be hyperbolic here when it comes to the DoD (Defense Department). I think we are at a shit-or-get-off-the-pot moment. We are at a tipping point for total institutional corruption and [Donald] Trump has a chance to reverse that…because what the military did…was they committed a Bud Light. In search of a non-traditional constituency they offended the core constituency, so there aren’t enough lesbians in San Francisco to man the 82nd Airborne. And trying to cater to that, they lost the boys from Tennessee, Kentucky and Oklahoma – the traditional dudes who did it because they loved their country or they wanted the adventure or they wanted to try tough things, or they needed an up-and-out of their community. Whatever it is, they’re like, if I wanted to do the woke crap, I could go to the local community college or local college. I don’t need it here,” meaning in the military.
That was Peter Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be Secretary of Defense, during an extensive two-hour interview on the Shawn Ryan Show and Podcast that was taped prior to the election and aired November 7, and has since drawn 1.4 million YouTube viewers.
Ryan, a Navy Seal and subsequent CIA contractor, served in both Iraq and Afghanistan – as did Hegseth – and their conversation brought out views from the nominee, not only on the military, but also on foreign and domestic policies that will need further exploration when he appears for confirmation before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Hegseth’s claims of a “woke” military
For example, during the Kelly interview, Hegseth said that in his view, the “woke” period really began during the Obama administration.
“You saw the trans stuff come in at the end,” Hegseth said. “You saw the women in combat…Because they [the Obama administration] looked around at the bureaucracies that they controlled in Washington, and the one that they didn’t control – Obama spent a disproportional amount of time focusing on the Pentagon. They were skeptical of leadership and eventually brought in political appointees and generals who would do their bidding the way they wanted.”
As a result, Hegseth said, “As you know, in a top-down organization, this changes the ethos of the whole thing…The Army that I enlisted in, or the Army I swore an oath to in 2001, and was commissioned in 2003, looks a lot different than the Army of today because we are focused [now] on a lot of the wrong things.”
Hegseth said that various events – the 2020 George Floyd riots, the demonstrations in Washington, and the January 6, 2021 rioting at the Capitol – became “the pretenses for the DoD with the political appointees who’ve long since been burrowed in, and generals who are all in for the politically correct agenda.”
Hegseth described Generals Mark Milley and Lloyd Austin as having “kept their heads down during Trump,” leaving out the fact that Trump had appointed Milley in 2018 to serve as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Instead, Hegseth said that after Trump left the White House in 2021, “Guys like Milley, guys like Austin, they were right there, waiting in the wings, ready to go…They went all in on DEI [Diversity, Equity, Inclusive training] and CRT [Cultural Race Theory training] and focusing on Patriot extremism [in the military].”
Hegseth went on, saying, “My assessment is that it is a top-down, bottom-up problem in that you’ve got top-down political generals who’ve gained rank by playing by all the wrong rules that cater to the ideologues in Washington, D.C., and so they’ll do any social justice, gender, climate, extremism crap because it gets them checked to the next level and gets them closer to the political appointees who don’t know anything about the military really, other than they want a new first here and a new first there and can we get the first trans this or whatever, that’s just nonsense.”
He called the forcing out of military personnel who refused to take the Covid vaccine “a purge of people of conscience. If you have enough of a conscience, whether it’s faith, belief or whatever, purge out; patriot extremism, purge out. So there was a big push of a lot of those people in the middle out.”
What about the future?
At one point, Hegseth said, “If Trump does win, and goes at it, it may be our last sort of chance to save this institution and turn it back to what it was because it is a top-down organization. You put a SecDef [Secretary of Defense] in there, who’s focused on all the right things…and focus on war fighting, lethality and training — and standards, real standards, not equity but equality, you can do it.”
At another point during the Ryan interview, Hegseth said, “First of all, you’ve got to fire the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.”
That’s Air Force General Charles Q. Brown. Hegseth may not remember — or may not know — that it was Trump, back in August 2020, who not only appointed Gen. Brown to be Air Force Chief of Staff, but held Brown’s swearing-in ceremony in the Oval Office at the White House. There, having noted that Brown’s nomination had been approved by the Senate 98-to-0, Trump told Brown, “You have had an incredible career, and this is a capper, and I just want to congratulate you. And it’s an honor to have you in this very fabled office and to have you in the White House. And thank you very much for being here, and congratulations to you and your family on a job well done.”
Along with Gen. Brown, Hegseth said, “Any general that was involved in the administration, that was involved in any of the DEI and woke shit [has] got to go. Either you are in for war fighting and that is it; this is the only litmus test we care about. You’ve got to get DEI and CRT shit out of the military academies so you are not training young officers to be baptized in this type of thing.”
These Hegseth views on the military need exploration when Senate confirmation hearings take place.
Hegseth and the world
The Senators should also take a close look at Hegseth’s foreign policy views. For example, during the Shawn Ryan conversation, Hegseth was asked if he were concerned about nuclear war. His initial answer was, “Yes, in a general sense I guess.”
But then Hegseth went on: “I just found over inflated from the beginning this idea that Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine was going to lead to nuclear war, or war across the [European] continent. I’ve always felt from the beginning…this feels like Putin’s give-me-my-shit-back war…I [this time meaning Putin] feel like you’ve [the U.S. and NATO] been pushing pretty hard and we used to have the former Soviet Union and we’re pretty proud of that and Ukraine was a part of it, and all these other countries [i.e. Belarus, Georgia]. And now I [Putin] want my shit back, and I think I’m at the right time where I’m powerful enough to do it.”
Hegseth went on: “You’re [the U.S. and NATO] not quite on my border yet, and Biden’s AWOL [absent without leave] so I’m[Putin] going for it. And just as I did under my minor incursion under Obama, I got what I could, I got Crimea. Now I waited under Trump and now I’m going to get more.”
Hegseth went on about hearing from friends that Putin would then go all the way to Poland. But, said Hegseth, “I think he [Putin] knows enough to know he’s probably not going much further than Ukraine. And I don’t think he’s a suicidal maniac who’s hell-bent on bringing on Armageddon to nuclear warfare.”
As for the current situation, Hegseth said, “If Ukraine can defend themselves from that [meaning Russian invaders], great. But I don’t want American intervention driving deep into Europe and making him [Putin] feel like he’s so much on his heels that he does have to [use nuclear weapons], because early on [during the Russian Ukraine invasion] he was talking about nukes, if you remember.”
His other concern, Hegseth said, was “Iran having nuclear weapons. And that was always a bright line for us because nuclear weapons in the hands of radical Islamists, whether Sunni stripe or Shia stripe, who believe their martyrdom rhetoric, the extent to which they do, changes the whole calculation.” Hegseth went on. “Like if al-Qaeda had a nuke, what would they do with it? They’d use it.”
Then, reverting to Iran: “Because the mullahs in Iran, in Tehran – do they really believe that, you know, 70,000 martyrs in Iran is worth the destruction of Israel? I don’t know, but should we find out? Or that destruction of the United States or a major American city. I’ve taken very seriously for a long time this idea that…we can’t tolerate an Iranian bomb because I think Islamists with [a nuclear] bomb is different than Communists with [a nuclear] bomb…but for different reasons.”
The Senators on the Armed Services Committee clearly must explore Hegseth’s views on nuclear weapons – not just in the hands of Russia and Iran, but also North Korea, China, and perhaps even Israel, India and Pakistan.
Tours of duty
Parts of Hegseth’s career that need further exploration are his times on active duty, since they offer some insight into his current views.
An ROTC graduate from Princeton in 2003, he started service in Guantanamo Bay in 2004 with a National Guard unit handling perimeter guarding for the prison facility; then to Iraq in 2005 as an Infantry Platoon Leader in Baghdad in 2005, and in 2006 as a Civil-Military Operations officer in Samarra; and finally, deployment to Afghanistan with the Minnesota Army National Guard from 2011 to early 2012, where he was the senior counterinsurgency instructor at the Counterinsurgency Training Center in Kabul.
During his Shawn Ryan interview, Hegseth described getting a briefing from a military lawyer in 2005 in Baghdad on the rules of engagement. Hegseth said the lawyer told him and his fellow servicemen that they could not shoot someone carrying a rocket-propelled grenade unless it was pointed at them. “I remember walking out of that briefing, pulling my platoon together and being like, ‘Guys, we’re not doing that. You know, like if you see an enemy and they, you know, engage [shoot at the enemy] before he’s able to point his weapon at you and shoot, we’re going to have your back,’” Hegseth said.
One other video interview, this time with Jack Carr on October 19, another ex-Navy Seal, illustrates Hegseth’s willingness to ignore Trump’s actions while criticizing others for doing the same thing.
The subject here was Afghanistan where, based on his 2011-2012 service there, Hegseth said, “I went into Afghanistan optimistic and I left very pessimistic.”
He told Carr, “Once you start to signal that we’re out of here [Afghanistan] with a date certain, which is exactly what happened — remember they set up a date…September 11, 2021, the 20th anniversary was the deadline. Remember that – the dumbest stuff I ever heard.”
What Hegseth ignored was that it was then-President Trump who, after private U.S. negotiations with the Taliban, had agreed in February 2020 to set a date certain, May 1, 2021 for removal of all U.S. forces from Afghanistan. However, because many preparatory steps had not been taken, President Biden in April first moved the date back to September 11, but weeks later, after the Taliban objected, reset the removal of all U.S. troops to August 31, 2021, when it did take place.
Hegseth himself, when he started his brief campaign on March 1, 2012, for the GOP nomination as Senator from Minnesota, said at a news conference that it was time for the United States to gradually withdraw troops from Afghanistan, but added that making withdrawal dates public would be counterproductive.
As I have tried to show, there is a lot more to know about Peter Hegseth, beyond his private life, that Senators ought to know before they vote on his suitability to be the next Secretary of Defense.
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