Defense Secretary Hegseth: A Grave National Security Risk
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is a grave national security risk.
He has done more damage to the world’s best military than any of our foreign adversaries.
His purge has decapitated the top ranks of our military, leaving a large void in the ranks of senior officers. More than 80 generals and admirals have been purged from the U.S. military by Hegseth, who has either blocked their promotions or forced them into early retirement. The New York Times reports that the purge has removed about 10 percent of the military’s top-ranking officers.
Despite giving lip service to wanting a meritocracy in the military, Hegseth’s actions belie his words. He has fired or removed from promotion some of our best generals and admirals, without explanation, apparently because they don’t fit his debased and warped views of military leadership.
Published reports indicate that more than half of these 80-plus generals and admirals were Black or female, suggesting Hegseth has an apparently deeply ingrained bias against women and Black leaders. Before becoming secretary, he had said that women should not serve in combat and had called for the firing of Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General C.Q. Brown, a Black leader whom he fired shortly after taking office, and other generals he associated with so-called “diversity initiatives.”
The New York Times reported: “Mr. Hegseth’s purge does not appear to be driven by job performance, but rather is part of a broader effort by the defense secretary to fashion a force, particularly at senior levels, that is aligned with his political and ideological views, according to military officials.”
Meanwhile, most of the Republican senators and representatives have sat there in cowardly silence as Hegseth destroys military career after military career – removing general and admiral after general and admiral, without providing public justification.
Hegseth’s removal of top military leaders is unprecedented. So is his recent extraordinary polygraphing of approximately 50 members of the U.S. military’s Joint Staff to find a leak to the media. The New York Times noted: “Mass polygraph tests have never been administered to the top ranks of the U.S. military in modern history.”
Former Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall has called out Hegseth for his inept performance. Kendall said that he’s never seen anyone try to politicize the military like Hegseth has done.
And as Hegseth floated with close friends that he was considering a run for President, he reportedly “campaigned … in Iowa for Representative Zach Nunn, stepping into the political arena in a way previous leaders of the Pentagon have avoided.”
Hegseth blocked the promotion of General Christopher T. Donahue to be the top U.S. military officer in Europe, again without explanation. General Donahue was considered one of the finest generals in the Army and a top leader in modernizing the service. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, had written an “effusive endorsement” of General Donahue. Hegseth ignored it and ended Donahue’s career.
The Times also reported that Donahue and former Army Chief of Staff General Randy George led the Army’s effort to adapt to a future battlefield dominated by drones and artificial intelligence, and that officers whose promotions Hegseth later blocked (including George as well as Donahue) had played important roles in the modernization effort.
Perhaps the explanation for Hegseth’s firing of generals and admirals lies in his own compromised military career.
Mr. Hegseth left the Army after he was barred from serving at President Biden’s inauguration when concerns were raised about his tattoos.
“The military I loved, I fought for, I revered spit me out,” Mr. Hegseth wrote in a 2024 book. Mr. Hegseth blamed the Army’s generals, whose ranks he believed were “bloated,” and he wrote, it was time to “clean house.”
So, it appears that Hegseth is operating as a vengeful and petty former officer out to get even with generals who he believed had wronged him.
He is misusing and abusing his power to punish generals for his debilitating and destructive management and the active harm he is doing to the Defense Department.
In addition to decapitating top leaders of the military, Hegseth has screwed up big time in his leadership of the war with Iran – which was supposed to last four to six weeks and is now in its seventh month with no end in sight. He has also reportedly left the country unprepared. Recent reporting has identified severe depletion of Patriot, THAAD, Tomahawk, and other critical missile inventories with some systems potentially taking years to return to prewar levels.
Hegseth has shown himself to be a small-minded, insecure, and vengeance-seeking defense secretary who is way over his head.
In deciding the fate of generals and admirals, Hegseth pretends that he knows what he is doing, but he does not provide any basis to believe that he has any understanding of what it takes to be a successful general or admiral, much less a successful leader of the Pentagon.
Hegseth is a disgrace to the men and women who volunteer to serve and protect our country. It is way past time for Hegseth to leave his job and stop endangering the nation’s military and national security.
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Fred’s Weekly Note appears on Thursdays in Wertheimer’s Political Report, a Democracy 21 newsletter. Read this week’s newsletter, and other recent editions, here. And subscribe for free here and receive your copy each week via email.
