As a civilian advisor to both the intelligence community and certain parts of the DoD, I gained immense respect for the intelligence, competence, and loyalty of those in command positions and their immediate staff. These are serious people with serious responsibilities, and I'm reasonably sure that they can outmaneuver and outlast this incompetent boob. These are professionals who deal with complexity every day, challenges that don't have soundbite solutions. They are well aware that anyone who claims to be exceptionally intelligent and immediately understands the issues at hand isn't just incompetent; they're dangerous. These aren't the first dumbass idiots they've had to tolerate, and they won't be the last.
Somehow I think I’ve missed you recently. Good to have you back (or maybe my paying attention!) with spot-on analysis and reporting. 😊 as always, many thanks!
Pete Hegseth had very limited experience as a low-level officer with no pertinent training in management. Other recent Secretaries of Defense (well, not Cheney) have earned advanced degrees and undergone years, or decades, of actual combat, and understood the workings of the Pentagon from top to bottom and inner ring to outer. Most of them could be defined by three simple words (words that not one person in the Trump regime, from Trump to Hegseth to "Big Balls," understands): intelligence, integrity, and patriotism.
His life has been spent failing upwards, through alcoholism, rape, and incompetence, making him a perfect avatar for Faux Noise but unqualified for any other imaginable job on earth.
Brian has clearly articulated the current chaos in the Office of the Secretary.
Lost in the miasma are the two key functions once performed only by and for the Secretary;
1) Ensuring that US weapons systems that are allowed into production actually work as planned. For this he used to rely on a very independent Director of Operational Test and Evaluation, and
2) Establish REQUIREMENTs for forces and equipment (budgets) that are cost-effective in the overall context of national security planning. For this previous Secretaries have relied on the independent assessments of the Office of Systems Analysis/Program Analysis and Evaluation (The office who brought you the Pentagon Papers). This degree of fact-based planning has clearly been sacrificed in the current chain-sawing of responsible military programming/budgeting.
Brian. Thanks for this great summation of Hegseths bender at the Pentagon. It is quite fitting that I can use terminology for DOD that I learned in the service......ClusterFuck.
You describe Hegseth as an ideologue, but you don’t identify his ideology. You are being too kind, implying that the problem is that he lacks military experience. You are not being truthful enough with us, readers who look to The Contrarian for straight talk, not avoidance.
White supremacism is nasty business. Of course, Hegseth is a lousy leader. But, it seems from your essay that connecting those dots is one step too far. Republican Senators gave their approval to a White Supremacist taking lead of our military. They didn’t connect the dots either it seems (or, perhaps I’m being too generous).
You don’t mention the ways Hegseth has targeted people in the military who are not white heterosexual males—to fire them (female leaders), remove their history and honors from our memories (Black and Latino leaders), and to force transgender soldiers to leave the military.
I very much appreciate The Contrarian’s attention to language, as in this recent piece, which perhaps should add “ideologue” to the list of what not to say. “White supremacist” would be more truthful.
Surely, the hollowing out of the pentagon is related to the mean, dismissive, unjust and small-minded treatment of the human beings—based on their identities and color of skin, gender, etc.—who work/worked there. But you don’t give even a sentence to this failure of Hegseth’s leadership, as if it is secondary to true military matters.
An easy to remember definition of leadership is that it focuses on vision, people and systems. Hegseth has failed as a leader of vision and systems because he doesn’t know squat about the military. Hegseth’s failure as a leader of people is unconscionable because white supremacism is unconscionable. And yet his white supremacism—and loyalty to Trump—is why he was chosen to lead the military. We are lost unless we come to grips with this.
A train wreck in real time. I could not have said it better!
Thanks Michelle
The writing is very good. Pete Hesgeth is deranged.
Thanks Barbara
As a civilian advisor to both the intelligence community and certain parts of the DoD, I gained immense respect for the intelligence, competence, and loyalty of those in command positions and their immediate staff. These are serious people with serious responsibilities, and I'm reasonably sure that they can outmaneuver and outlast this incompetent boob. These are professionals who deal with complexity every day, challenges that don't have soundbite solutions. They are well aware that anyone who claims to be exceptionally intelligent and immediately understands the issues at hand isn't just incompetent; they're dangerous. These aren't the first dumbass idiots they've had to tolerate, and they won't be the last.
Thanks for your service, Roger
Somehow I think I’ve missed you recently. Good to have you back (or maybe my paying attention!) with spot-on analysis and reporting. 😊 as always, many thanks!
So kind of you, Wendy!
Pete Hegseth had very limited experience as a low-level officer with no pertinent training in management. Other recent Secretaries of Defense (well, not Cheney) have earned advanced degrees and undergone years, or decades, of actual combat, and understood the workings of the Pentagon from top to bottom and inner ring to outer. Most of them could be defined by three simple words (words that not one person in the Trump regime, from Trump to Hegseth to "Big Balls," understands): intelligence, integrity, and patriotism.
His life has been spent failing upwards, through alcoholism, rape, and incompetence, making him a perfect avatar for Faux Noise but unqualified for any other imaginable job on earth.
Brian has clearly articulated the current chaos in the Office of the Secretary.
Lost in the miasma are the two key functions once performed only by and for the Secretary;
1) Ensuring that US weapons systems that are allowed into production actually work as planned. For this he used to rely on a very independent Director of Operational Test and Evaluation, and
2) Establish REQUIREMENTs for forces and equipment (budgets) that are cost-effective in the overall context of national security planning. For this previous Secretaries have relied on the independent assessments of the Office of Systems Analysis/Program Analysis and Evaluation (The office who brought you the Pentagon Papers). This degree of fact-based planning has clearly been sacrificed in the current chain-sawing of responsible military programming/budgeting.
Thanks Gene.
Brian. Thanks for this great summation of Hegseths bender at the Pentagon. It is quite fitting that I can use terminology for DOD that I learned in the service......ClusterFuck.
SNAFU
Trump sees chaos as a feature, all right. He thinks it hides, or at least distracts from, his incompetence and malice.
I know our adversaries have been watching and waiting. It’s frightening to think about
You describe Hegseth as an ideologue, but you don’t identify his ideology. You are being too kind, implying that the problem is that he lacks military experience. You are not being truthful enough with us, readers who look to The Contrarian for straight talk, not avoidance.
White supremacism is nasty business. Of course, Hegseth is a lousy leader. But, it seems from your essay that connecting those dots is one step too far. Republican Senators gave their approval to a White Supremacist taking lead of our military. They didn’t connect the dots either it seems (or, perhaps I’m being too generous).
You don’t mention the ways Hegseth has targeted people in the military who are not white heterosexual males—to fire them (female leaders), remove their history and honors from our memories (Black and Latino leaders), and to force transgender soldiers to leave the military.
I very much appreciate The Contrarian’s attention to language, as in this recent piece, which perhaps should add “ideologue” to the list of what not to say. “White supremacist” would be more truthful.
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/fascism-and-the-english-language-132
Surely, the hollowing out of the pentagon is related to the mean, dismissive, unjust and small-minded treatment of the human beings—based on their identities and color of skin, gender, etc.—who work/worked there. But you don’t give even a sentence to this failure of Hegseth’s leadership, as if it is secondary to true military matters.
An easy to remember definition of leadership is that it focuses on vision, people and systems. Hegseth has failed as a leader of vision and systems because he doesn’t know squat about the military. Hegseth’s failure as a leader of people is unconscionable because white supremacism is unconscionable. And yet his white supremacism—and loyalty to Trump—is why he was chosen to lead the military. We are lost unless we come to grips with this.
Surprisingly readable tear-down of a wrongful person in such an important position.