As previously detailed by the Washington Examiner, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine is an adherent of Aurelian stoicism. Caine speaks precisely in public, celebrating the military’s mission and its inherent values of service and courage. Not so Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.
Hegseth continues to purge respected officers on a whim, most recently Gen. Randy George, the Army’s chief of staff. The motive for these firings is unknown but often seems rooted in Hegseth’s inability to deal with internal debate. But the military doesn’t like it. Nor does Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, an official who is highly respected by the military. He has made plain his disagreement with Hegseth’s firing of George.
Nor does Hegseth value military professionalism. Though it may seem unimportant, Hegseth badly undermined military discipline when he cancelled an Army review into Apache gunship aircrews who departed from their training plan to hover outside Kid Rock’s house. We should lament these actions even as we lament the DEI fetish with which the Biden administration infected the U.S. military.
Then there are Hegseth’s increasingly ridiculous rants from the Pentagon podium.
Hegseth appears to believe these antics will help him secure the 2028 GOP presidential nomination. Instead, they are only undermining the Trump administration’s credibility. Whether his recent bluster about how the U.S. was fighting Iran “without mercy,” a threat that put the recently downed U.S. Air Force officer at excess risk beyond the already extreme risk he faced, or his silly play on Franklin the Turtle, Hegseth is displaying an unseriousness especially unfit to his critically important office. Each day Hegseth offers up a new clownish or cringe-inducing antic.
This week has seen two such examples.
On Wednesday, Hegseth offered up a prayer that he claimed was based on the Ezekiel 25:17 Biblical verse and not, as it was, a play on that same verse from the movie Pulp Fiction. Hegseth referenced the SANDY1 call sign of the command element responsible for the mission in which a U.S. Air Force officer was recently rescued from Iran. As he put it, “They call it CSAR 25:17, which I think is meant to represent Ezekiel 25:17… ‘And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to capture and destroy my brother, and you will know my call sign is Sandy1 when I lay my vengeance upon thee. Amen.’”
If Hegseth knew the prayer was a play on Pulp Fiction, he obviously would have said so. Still, this error would not be noteworthy were it not that it is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Hegseth’s sense of being some kind of Shakespearean theologian. Consider Hegseth’s next Biblical misrepresentation on Thursday. Hegseth declared:
“I thought, our press is just like these pharisees. Not all of you, not all of you, but the legacy Trump hating press. … The pharisees scrutinized every good act in order to find a violation, only looking for the negative. The hardened hearts of our press are calibrated only to impugn. I would ask you to open your eyes to the goodness, the historic success of our troops, the courage of this president, and this historic moment for a deal that could end the Iranian nuclear threat, the incredible battlefield victory laid before your eyes, the not one, but two incredible rescue missions. Miracles, you might say.”
Put aside Hegseth’s gross oversimplification of the pharisees as described in the Bible. His implication that by scrutinizing Trump and the war in Iran, the media are somehow heirs to those who persecuted Jesus is idiotic. It also hurt President Donald Trump by reminding everyone of the president’s post earlier this week of an artificial intelligence-generated picture presenting him as Jesus. Trump deleted that post after absurdly claiming that he thought the picture presented him as a Red Cross doctor.
The theatrics extend even where Hegseth would be far better served by quietly taking big wins. At a press conference following the successful rescue of a U.S. Air Force officer downed in Iran, for example, Trump, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and other administration colleagues focused on praising the military. Hegseth, however, waltzed into a weird attempt at poetry, comparing the rescued officer to Jesus. In that same press conference, Hegseth falsely claimed that the U.S. had total command of the Iranian sky (a claim obviously belied by the original downing of the F-15 fighter jet and by the heavy fire that U.S. rescue aircraft took).
AMERICA’S NATO AND ISRAEL ALLIANCES ARE IMPERFECT, BUT IMPORTANT
Leadership starts at the top.
Unfortunately, Hegseth’s leadership of the Department of War evinces the antithesis of that which young officers are taught at West Point, Annapolis, Colorado Springs, New London, and Kings Point. In turn, Trump should tell Hegseth that he has two choices. Either he drops the theatrics or he finds another job.