Presidents have always sent people to lead the Pentagon who respect the institutions and personnel of the armed forces, not least because Americans tend to bristle at any sign that an administration does not unreservedly support the men and women of the U.S. military. (Just ask Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, both of whom were castigated for such supposed disrespect.) In his first term, Donald Trump sent General James Mattis, a veteran of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and then, when Mattis quit, he appointed a long-serving defense professional, Mark Esper.
But this time, the president found a perfect instrument of destruction to send across the Potomac: Pete Hegseth, a Trump sycophant who served in the military, topped out at the mid-level rank of major, and left full of bitterness and resentment toward a military establishment that clearly didn’t value his brilliance and fortitude.
The halls of the Pentagon are apparently strewn with rakes these days, and Hegseth has managed to step on almost all of them, including security blunders, needless fights with the press, and envious, unmanly whining about the medals on the uniform of Senator Mark Kelly, a veteran of higher rank and far greater achievement than Hegseth himself. Like Trump, Hegseth thinks his job is to get even with people he views as enemies: When Hegseth pulled more than 800 senior officers into an auditorium to give them a long and pointless harangue, it was not only disrespectful, it was cringe-inducing, like watching the angriest kid in your high school coming back 20 years later as the principal and unloading his adolescent gripes at all the teachers in the staff lounge.
Now, however, Hegseth is in new and far more dangerous territory. The Washington Post reported last Friday that, back in September, Hegseth ordered the killing of the survivors of the first strike against what the administration says are terrorist-controlled drug boats. If this report is accurate, it means that Hegseth issued what is called a “no quarter” order, a crime in both American and international law.
So far, the president and the secretary have not disputed the facts, instead fumbling about with classic Beltway-style “non-denial denials.” Today, the White House admitted that the second strike did in fact take place, but on the orders of Special Operations Command chief Admiral Frank Bradley, which seems to be setting Bradley up as a scapegoat. Spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said today that “Hegseth authorized Admiral Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes,” adding that Bradley “worked well within his authority and the law directing the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated.”
This seems implausible. Bradley is an experienced officer who by virtue of his rank and position would be intimately familiar with the laws of armed conflict. He would have to know that such an order is likely a war crime, and any senior officer would want civilian leadership to sign off on an order with such potentially immense consequences, especially on the very first strike. (If the admiral actually did give the order on his own, that’s little comfort; it would mean Hegseth’s Defense Department is even more dysfunctional and out of control than anyone might have guessed.)
If either Hegseth or Bradley gave such an order—or if Hegseth issued the order and Bradley carried it out—both could be guilty of murder and war crimes. The United States, after World War II, prosecuted German and Japanese officers for similar offenses. (Yesterday, in fact, was the 80th anniversary of the execution by firing squad of Heinz-Wilhelm Eck, a Nazi U-Boat commander who sank a civilian steamer and then killed the survivors.) Such a possibility is horrendous enough, but Hegseth has since responded to these grave accusations with the crass juvenility characteristic of the toddlers who run this administration.
On Sunday, the secretary of defense of the United States of America posted a meme on X depicting Franklin, the cartoon turtle who is a beloved children’s book character, as a special forces operator killing people on boats. He added a comment: “For your Christmas wish list…” Just to make the point, the secretary tagged the X account of SOUTHCOM, the Southern Forces Command that has had to carry out the strikes, as if blowing up boats and killing the survivors was a joke to be shared with a chuckle and a backslap.
Perhaps Hegseth thinks that sinking boats on the high seas is funny. Maybe he just wanted to own the libs and all that. Or maybe he thought he could disrupt the gathering war crimes narrative, like the school delinquent pulling a fire alarm during an exam. Or maybe he just has poor judgment and even worse impulse control (which would explain a lot of things about Pete Hegseth). No matter the reason, his choice to trivialize the use of American military force reveals both the shallowness of the man’s character and the depth of his contempt for the military as an institution.
Posting stupid memes after being accused of murder is not the response of a patriot who must answer to the public about the security of the United States and its people in uniform. It is not the response of a secretary of defense who values the advice of the officers who report to him. It is not the response of a human being who comprehends the risks—and the costs—of ordering other people to kill helpless men clinging to the wreck of a boat.
It is, instead, the response of a sneering, spoiled punk who has been caught doing wrong and is now daring the local fuzz to take him in and risk the anger of his rich dad—a role fulfilled by Donald Trump, in this case.
Institutions, for a time, can cope with buffoonish leaders. While the secretary has been festooning the Pentagon with new “Department of War” signs, adults in the building have tried to conduct some of the nation’s geopolitical business. Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll, for example, is likely the Defense Department point man for Ukraine because Hegseth has made a fool of himself too many times to be taken seriously by American opponents. (The Russians would have to suppress the smirks on their faces if Hegseth were sent to Moscow or Geneva for anything more than a grip-and-grin photo opportunity.)
But Hegseth is still the secretary of defense. He can be kept out of important meetings and excluded from rooms where policies are being debated, but his authority to order the military into action means he can still risk American lives and get people killed. In a remarkable paradox, Hegseth’s formal power and personal incompetence—to say nothing of his apparently nonexistent moral compass—means he remains dangerous even if he is otherwise insignificant.
[Read: 20 U.S. boat strikes in three months]
Enough of this. Trump is president and has the right to stay in office for his term, even if he thinks fallen warriors are “losers” and “suckers” who have no purpose beyond serving his needs as props and pawns. He again showed how little he regards military lives this weekend when he was asked if he would attend the funeral of Sarah Beckstrom, the young West Virginia National Guardsman killed in Washington last week. He said he would think about it, and immediately then made her death about him by adding that he won big in West Virginia in the last election, as if that were relevant to whether he owed her his presence at her funeral.
Pete Hegseth, however, was elected by no one. He is an unprofessional—and sometimes unstable—appointee who does not seem to comprehend the seriousness of the office he occupies, does not respect the senior officers who serve this country, and does not seem to care at all about the people of the U.S. military, except that he’s worried that too many of them are fat—or women. Hegseth is unqualified, incompetent, and should have been fired months ago.
The secretary is unlikely to resign, but Trump has a record of throwing people under the bus when they are no longer of use to him, and Republicans should increase the pressure on him to fire the most unqualified secretary of defense in U.S. history. Let them and all Americans say to Hegseth what the British politician Leo Amery said to Neville Chamberlain as Europe began to crumble under the Nazi offensive in 1940: “Depart, I say, and let us have done with you.” Channeling Oliver Cromwell from centuries earlier, Amery added: “In the name of God, go.”
In the name of God, Pete Hegseth, go.
The post Pete Hegseth Needs to Go—Now appeared first on The Atlantic.
