Hegseth’s Absurdity Masks a Far Scarier Issue
The military historian Dennis Showalter once told me that he didn’t care about the amount of fat around a general’s belly—he cared about the fat between a general’s ears. It was a telling quip, and one that highlights the shortsighted nature of Pete Hegseth’s emphasis on fitness and military bearing to the generals and admirals he assembled yesterday.
(By the way, what about Trump as commander-in-chief. Is he going to exercise and lose weight? Good luck with that one, Pomade Pete.)
Of course, physical fitness is important in military settings, especially if you’re at the pointy end of the spear, as they say in the military. But America’s senior leaders today are not “boy generals” like George Armstrong Custer in the U.S. Civil War. They are men and women in their fifties and early sixties, presumably promoted for their integrity, knowledge, insight, skill, and experience, not because they can still run sub-six minute miles or perform 100 pushups.
(Aside: It might be time to buy stock in Ozempic and similar drugs used for weight loss.)
Recall all the media praise showered on William Westmoreland, David Petraeus, and Stanley McChrystal. These three generals were lauded for their physical fitness and military bearing, their “spartan” qualities as warriors. And they all demonstrated strategic mediocrity in fighting and losing the Vietnam, Afghan, and Iraq Wars. They may not have had flabby bellies, but they had flabby minds.
Hegseth is all about “warrior” image over substance. Don’t get me wrong: I think everyone should exercise if they can, and being substantially overweight isn’t healthy. When I was in my early forties and a lieutenant colonel, I ran with the troops and did pushups and sit ups. But there’s a lot more to military effectiveness than being “a lean mean fighting machine.”
But I’ll admit I’m burying the lede here. Trump and Hegseth’s message to senior leaders was far more disturbing than complaints about a fat and woke military. Here’s what I sent to a friend about this:
The “national security” state has kept our country in a state of permanent war since 1947. Trump and Hegseth are just ripping the facade of “security” away and replacing it with “war.”
“Peace” is the word that dare not speak its name. And “war,” of course, has come to the streets of America, with troops deployed to Portland next. Add that to the many police who got their initial training in the military and the rapid expansion of ICE along with detention centers and it’s obvious how the war on terror has truly become global since now the focus is on terror in America.
We are reaping what we sowed …
I was then asked for a more formal comment and came up with this:
The statements of Trump and Hegseth show that the “global” war on terror was and is truly global (as well as permanent) because that war has now come home to America’s cities. Now places like LA and Portland are to be pacified by American “warriors” and warfighters, with detention centers (concentration camps) for those who resist. President Dwight D. Eisenhower was never more right or prescient when he noted, “Only Americans can hurt America.”
Trump and Hegseth see America’s streets as a battleground for the U.S. military against “the enemy within.” The real enemy to democracy, of course, is the very deployment of troops to the streets. American colonists launched a revolution 250 years ago partly because they didn’t want the king’s troops among them as enforcers.
Anyone who doesn’t see the fundamental dangers of Trump and Hegseth’s actions to democracy and our Constitutional rights truly has some flab between their ears.
Bracing Views 
We all know the saying, “the only thing needed for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing”
We need good men with high ranks in the military to refuse to serve Trump and stand with their pledge to the Constitution.
We the people should be out in great numbers protesting on the streets. I see no hint of this from my observation post on the sidewalk in my town, and this is a town that went 92% for Harris against Trump. And Harris is preparing to run again. NOOOOOOOOO! The DP learns nothing, the DP “leaders” cringing as Trump grabs for more power.
I have been concerned that Trump would declare martial law before the midterms but did not think the move was about to take place. After the address to the troops the preparation is underway.
To think the Civil War was fought to free the slaves and here we are with bigotry making a move to make America white again. The ugly in American society never goes away. I thought after the Vietnam War years that it would be held at bay, but the resurgence that has been sweeping away what I consider to be progress is breathtaking. Where is our Lincoln? Where is our Frederick Douglass? Where is our John Brown? Where is our Willilam Lloyd Garrison?
Is there nobody in our government that will stand up and defy Trump? What about an eminent person in pubic life? The net is flooded with podcasts, but where is the person who can move the public like the giants of old? Is there any celebrity that will push for liberty and justice for all? Jimmy Kimmel dared to make fun of Trump, he did not speak directly against him, yet look at the punishment it brought.
Does anyone honestly believe this will all blow over? Liberty and justice for all is in great danger and America males are flooding the offices where ICE is recruiting. We are on the precipice, but not on the streets. Shame!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Martin Luther KIng, Jr., Riverside Church in NYC, in his “Beyond Vietnam” sermon, 1967: “I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government.”
I am beyond sick and tired of this country’s militarism, its touting that bullets, bombs, and missiles are its default approach to and understanding of the world, “if a hammer is your only tool, then the only problems you see are nails.”
It probably reaches far, far back in this country’s DNA, but a thesis of mine is that things could have taken a different turn after the devastation of WWII (you know, the one after the one “to end all wars”?), when perhaps we could have established and helped enforce (sans arms) a different, peaceful, prosperous world order – yeah, I know, how naive can I get, but gee, weren’t the founding of the UN and the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights sufficiently aspirational in light of what, 60+ civilian and military dead from the war? – but for the capitalist/free-market venerating/communist paranoid/racist/condescending/power-clinging Wall St. establishment confirming and setting us further down the path of bullets, bombs, and missiles (and assorted – and sordid) other niceties, grossly exaggerating, if not actually initiating, the Cold War?
The result of this being the obscene $1+ trillion per year military budget, certain to go up year after year, adding to an already out-of-control national debt, which in about 20 years time will lead to happening to us what we purportedly caused in the Soviet Union, collapse due to inability to keep pace with military spending, although the Soviet Union fell apart for other reasons, non-directly military-related, just as the case with us.
I was never a Beatles fan, don’t own a single album, the American popular songbook being more to my liking, but I did, and still do, respond to George Harrison’s “All we are saying is give peace a chance.”
LikeLike