During military address, Hegseth lost respect and Trump starts to show Biden-like decline

In a bizarre move on Tuesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and President Trump called in our top 800 military leaders from their stations around the world to lecture them on such things as beard standards, firefighters getting shot off their ladders, and the quality of the paper used in official documents. 

Hegseth made it a point of emphasis to rant about how the military had strayed from the “warrior ethos”, claiming that standards had been lowered in order to accommodate women, particularly in combat roles. 

I’m no military leader and I never served but my instincts tells me that lecturing seasoned generals who have generations of combined military experience about how they’ve been failing to embody a “warrior ethos” is not the best way to gain their respect – a misstep exacerbated by the fact that Hegseth has far less authority to speak on such matters than any of the officials in the room. 

I suspect that most of the audience were less likely to be inspired by Hegseth’s tough-guy manly approach than find it obnoxious and a waste of their time. These weren’t simpletons he was talking to – they are highly experienced generals that have better things to do than to listen to childish rhetoric. They are also unlikely to find it inspiring to refer to them and the military they lead as fat and unqualified. According to Hegseth, “Fat generals and admirals walking around the Pentagon is not a good look.”

Hegseth’s misguided obsession with the state of grooming and physical training in the military was bewildering to some in attendance. According to one officer present at the speech who spoke to The Atlantic, “It’s something I would expect from a captain or a major. I don’t want the secretary of war to be focused on baseline PT [physical training] stuff.”

Much of Hegseth’s speech worked to confirm to civilians and military officials alike that he’s in over his head and ill-suited for such a complex role. 

As amateurish as all of these statements are coming from the Secretary of Defense, a particularly worrisome segment was Hegseth’s tirade against rules of engagement. Rules of engagement are ad hoc guidelines applied to our troops about how they’re permitted to act during missions. 

“We unleash overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy. We also don’t fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality and authority for warfighters,” said the Secretary. 

Rules of engagement are meant to prevent the indiscriminate killing of civilians and the atrocities we’ve seen play out during war. They aren’t optional or overbearing doctrines, they are mandated in virtue of being a civilized society that can operate in our interests while respecting the value of human life. According to our thoroughly unqualified Secretary of War Crimes, attempting to limit the loss of innocent lives is stupid and politically correct. 

This dismissive attitude toward having to care about our bombs landing on children disqualifies Hegseth from leading our military all on its own. A warrior ethos is vice when it causes us to treat faithfulness to decency as weakness.

Being lectured by a classified war plans leaker was not enough punishment for these woke generals seeing that they then had to listen to an hour-long speech by Trump that was characterized by aimless rambling that starts to remind one of Joe Biden’s mental decline. 

Early last year I wrote multiple times about Biden’s obvious cognitive issues so I feel I’m professionally obligated to do the same here. Time will tell whether these are genuine signs of neurodegenerative disease but Trump spoke slowly and quietly while seeming to give up on sentences and thoughts at times. 

Almost whispering, Trump said, “And you know, we want war because we want to have no wars, but you have to be there. And you know, sometimes you have to do it. I have settled so many wars since we’re here.”

It’s unclear where he got the 92% figure given that Mexico owns more of the gulf coastline than the US. 

“I rebuilt our nuclear,” he told those in charge of our nuclear weapons. “I moved a submarine or two, I won’t say about the two, over to the coast of Russia, just to be careful because we can’t let people throw around that word. I call it the ‘n’ word, there are two n words and you can’t use either of them. You can’t use either of them. And frankly, if it does get to use, we have more than anybody else.” 

Biden had similar trouble speaking in grammatical and coherent sentences. It’s natural to assume that the audience was unamused about having to leave their command posts to listen to such pointless speeches or the prospect of taking unfiltered orders from these great orators. 

With all of the global challenges that America is facing, it seems that we will not be enjoying the benefits of minimally competent leadership – our top military commanders are now fully aware of that.

Rafael Perez is a columnist for the Southern California News Group.