Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth summoned more than 800 military leaders from all over the world to a base in Quantico, Virginia, on Tuesday morning — only to dress them down. Pacing back and forth against the backdrop of a giant American flag in the highly unusual (and televised) convening of military brass, Hegseth declared it “completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals” in the military. Even though Hegseth’s main qualification for Trump’s Cabinet seems to have been his time working for Fox News, he told the military leaders assembled before him that many of them hadn’t earned their promotions, but were only advanced because of their race or sex. “We’ve promoted too many uniformed leaders for the wrong reasons: based on their race, based on gender quotas, based on historic so-called ‘firsts,’” he said.
Hegseth wants to politicize the military and turn it into a swashbuckling corps of bloodthirsty warriors.
It would be wrong for any defense secretary to try to publicly humiliate the leaders of the military the way Hegseth did Tuesday, but it’s all the more outrageous that he did so given the lightness of his resume and the multiple personal scandals that nearly derailed his nomination (and would have quashed it a normal political era). But Hegseth’s speech was also outrageous as an ideological statement. If nothing else was clear, it was that Hegseth wants to politicize the military and turn it into a swashbuckling corps of bloodthirsty MAGA warriors — and at a time when the president is trying to turn the troops against American citizens.
Hegseth’s remarks served as a manifesto for his vision for transforming the Defense Department into the “Department of War.” He summarized it fairly well in this line, essentially commanding the military to view themselves as brutes who should embrace the Trump administration’s reactionary backlash to multiculturalism: “You kill people and break things for a living. You are not politically correct, and don’t necessarily belong always in polite society.”
Hegseth hammered home that President Donald Trump’s aversion to nation-building and prolonged interventions should not be confused with an aversion to severe use of force. “The only people who actually deserve peace are those who are willing to wage war to defend it,” Hegseth said, seemingly suggesting that freedom from war should not be considered a human right.
He said that the U.S. military’s rules of engagement had been too constraining. “We unleash overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy,” he said. “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.” Those comments certainly seem to align with the Trump administration’s foray into unprecedented lethal strikes on boats in the Caribbean that it claims are carrying drugs.
Another plank of the speech was that “woke” ideas had diluted the country’s military readiness. “No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses,” he said. “No more climate change worship, no more division, distraction or gender delusions.” He insisted that the Defense Department had been led astray by inclusivity measures, and delivered odd, cringe-inducing slogans to hammer home the point. “We need you locked in on the M, not the D, the E or the I— not the DEI. Not the D-I-E of dying. By that, I mean the M, military.” Hegseth’s speech was an attempt to politicize the military in a manner unprecedented in the modern era — even as he repeatedly framed his actions as de-politicizing the armed forces. He defended his firing of military leaders and openly spoke about ideological litmus tests: “My job has been to determine which leaders simply did what they must to answer the prerogatives of civilian leadership, and which leaders are truly invested in the ‘woke department’ and therefore incapable of embracing the War Department and executing new lawful orders.” Hegseth didn’t explain how he determines this, but Trump went on stage later and pledged that he would fire any generals he disliked “on the spot” — and that the military was also meant to be used against “the enemy within.” Some people joked on social media that Hegseth’s speech could’ve been an email. But then he would’ve missed the opportunity to turn his extremist statements into a televised spectacle packed with moments that would go viral online. He would’ve missed the opportunity to humiliate military brass — and to make his case that the military ought to view itself as a handmaiden of Trump’s MAGA project.
Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for MS NOW. Previously, he worked at Vox, HuffPost and Politico, and he has also been published in, among other places, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Nation, and The Intercept. You can sign up for his free politics newsletter by clicking the link at the top of this bio. 
