I had the pleasure and honor, in my one deployment to a combat zone, to have served under one of the U.S. Army's last warrior generals - "Stormin' Norman" Schwarzkopf. His plan for Desert Storm was simple and effective, a plan that would have warmed the heart of General George Patton; we literally held the Iraqi Army by the nose and kicked them in the rear. The execution of the plan was likewise flawless, at least until the political powers reined us in before the job was done - we went in with a massive force, kicked some and took some, and went home.
The American military has suffered a lot of abuse since then, starting with President Clinton's "peace dividend" and continuing with President Obama's purge of the leadership and, most recently, Joe Biden's push to DEI the military. But that's changing now; on Saturday, we saw the swearing-in of a new Secretary of Defense, one who has smelled the smoke and seen the elephant, and he's looking at the Pentagon and seeing that a major housecleaning is in order. On Saturday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, in a statement to our service members, laid out his priorities. And they're good priorities.
“It is the privilege of a lifetime to lead the warriors of the Department of Defense, under the leadership of our Commander in Chief Donald J. Trump,” Hegseth said in a statement to the military. “We will put America First, and we will never back down.”
Hegseth vowed to promote Trump’s mission of achieving peace through strength in three ways: Restore the warrior ethos, rebuild the military and reestablish deterrence.
“All of this will be done with a focus on lethality, meritocracy, accountability, standards, and readiness,” he wrote. “I have committed my life to warfighters and their families. Just as my fellow soldiers had my back on the battlefield, know that I will always have your back.”
“We serve together at a dangerous time. Our enemies will neither rest nor relent. And neither will we,” the Army veteran continued. “We will stand shoulder to shoulder to meet the urgency of this moment.”
That's the proper outlook. DEI has no place in the military. Our military is not a jobs program for anyone suffering from the mental delusion du jour. It has to be a meritocracy, one based on fixed, unchanging, and high standards - standards not only of strength, skill, and endurance but also standards of devotion to duty, dedication, patriotism, and honor.
Yes, honor. Without a sense of honor, an army is just a rabble.
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This has to be done, and done quickly. The first step should be a ruthless examination of anyone with stars on their shoulders; there are too many saggy-midsection generals in the Pentagon who should be replaced with warfighters up from the ranks. People who, like Pete Hegseth, have seen the elephant, and who still have dust or mud on their boots.
I've quoted the Greek philosopher Heraclitus before, but my favorite bit of his wisdom bears repeating:
Out of every one-hundred men, ten shouldn’t even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior and he will bring the others back.
I think Pete Hegseth has a pretty good notion of what a warrior is and why we need them. I think he has his eye fixed on the right goal: To make the United States Armed Forces once more lethal, effective, highly trained, and unbeatable - to build a force focused solely on closing with and destroying the enemy by fire, maneuver, and shock effect. We should never deploy them lightly; we should only send our forces into conflict when there is a compelling U.S. interest involved, but when there is, the bad guys should be quivering in terror from the moment the first troops land in the theater of operations.
That's what we need. The invertebrate Lloyd Austin didn't seem to understand that. I think Pete Hegseth does.
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