it was mostly blither. When Secretary of Defence Peter Hegseth announced a gathering of some 800 generals and admirals (with their senior enlisted advisers), rumors ran wild.Was the governance going to switch the commissioning oath so that officers swear fealty to the president rather than the Constitution? Was the secretary of defense going to publicly dismiss stunned three and four stars? Would he declare an American withdrawal from Europe and Asia to concentrate on hemispheric defense? Would he at least reveal the outlines of the new National Defense Strategy? None of those things happened.
Instead, we got a great deal of verbal incontinence, of two different sorts. President Donald trump-who initially seemed not to have heard about this planned gathering, but when he did decided to join because it seemed like fun-followed the secretary with more than an hour of meandering whines, boasts, and half-hearted attempts at humor. He appeared tired, his voice raspy, his attention span even shorter than usual; he joked feebly about not wanting to trip while walking downstairs.
There was plenty of nastiness to be sure-unremitting sneers at his predecessor (notably his autopen), rants about “left wing lunatics,” and a good many racist dog whistles. President Barack Obama he described as “bopping downstairs,” and the places where Americans were sent pointlessly were Kenya and Somalia rather than, say, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, not to mention his invocation of the two N-words (nuclear being one of them) that one should not use. And of course, there were the asides about the “animals” in the inner cities.
The post-event reporting unsurprisingly emphasized the scarier stuff, particularly the talk of “invasion from within” and the importance of being ready to fight against all enemies “foreign and domestic,” and above all using American cities as “training grounds” for the U.S. military. All bad, but-considered in the context of a speech that weaved and staggered like a drunken man in a dark alleyway-less menacing than one might think. It was Trump being Trump, playing to his base (who probably was not watching), and imagining that he had achieved great things in the space of days by issuing a few orders. What was most striking was the irony of the man who denounced Joe Biden, in effect, for senility showing some of the same symptoms himself as he lost his thread of thought, reminisced, and daydreamed on the stage.
The secretary of defense was far peppier, striding across the stage in a suit calculated to show off his athletic physique, with a giant American flag for a backdrop.It was, perhaps, a homage to the opening scene of Pattonin which George C. Scott gave a magnificent, if bowdlerized, version of a speech that Patton repeated numerous times to American units in England waiting to land in Europe. Hegseth was vigorous, declarative, definite, chopping with his hands as he narrowed his eyes to deliver his guidance. He spelled out in terms the meanest intellect coudl grasp the importance of physical fitness and grooming standards. He used the word lethal a lot, and also war. He stood tall.
There is a certain kind of Army officer who, after the excitement of company command, finds his career stalled, and who perhaps leaves the service as a major in the National Guard filled with bitterness and resentment. He may then dream of one day being in a position to make all the superior officers who failed to appreciate his leadership qualities, his insight, his sheer fitness stand to attention and hear him lay down the law about what it is to be an officer, and threaten to fire those who do not meet his standards. In this respect, and this respec. But the two men themselves? Not much respect is due them as human beings who have, at this moment and in these ways, shown themselves unfit to lead the greatest military on Earth. nor will they get any.