Of dust and boots
Great headline.
A Novice Defense Secretary Lectures the Brass on What It Takes to Win
Subhead:
Senior officers, summoned from around the world, are entrusted to manage complex military operations. They got a lecture on fitness and grooming standards.
From the tv guy.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has long maintained that the U.S. military badly needed a leader with dust on his boots to shake up a force that has gone soft and “woke.”
On Tuesday, he faced a room of hundreds of generals and admirals, whom he had summoned from across the globe, and made the case that he was that leader.
Because yeah, there’s nothing like a tv talking head for leading experienced military officers into a better tougher more gunly tomorrow.
Much of his address focused on the kinds of issues he would have dealt with as a young platoon leader in the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq or as a company commander in the Guard. He talked about grooming standards. “No more beards, long hair, superficial, individual expression,” he told the brass. “We’re going to cut our hair, shave, shave our beards and adhere to standards.”
He preached the importance of physical fitness. “Frankly, it’s tiring to look out at combat formations, or really any formation, and see fat troops,” he said. “Likewise, it’s completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon.”
It’s all so simple. Look like a movie soldier and you will be like a movie soldier. Appearance is everything.
To some, Mr. Hegseth’s speech was poorly matched to his audience of senior officers who in most cases are responsible for complex military operations such as the maintenance of nuclear submarines, America’s global alliances or the development of complex air-tasking orders, such as the one needed for the strikes on Iran’s nuclear program earlier this year.
Well yes ok, but still, they have to look the part.
The military officers assembled in the room listened silently. It is likely, though, that at least some of them were seething at his suggestion that their collective failure to enforce basic standards had caused, or even contributed to, the military’s failings in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“I mean, first of all, that’s like an insane insult to his senior officers, who all made their bones fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan,” said Elliot Ackerman, who led Marines in the second battle of Falluja and served with a Marine special operations unit in Afghanistan. “Those guys have got a lot more dust on their boots than he does.”
And, I’m guessing, a lot more brains in their skulls than he does.
Mr. Hegseth’s speech mirrored his leadership style over his first eight months in office, during which he has focused less on meeting with his foreign counterparts around the world and more on doing pull-ups and early morning runs with troops that are posted on the Pentagon’s social media feed.
You mean…he’s a lightweight? Well who saw that coming?
That was my first thought on reading the part where he said he had dust on his boots. And brains in the skull? I think you’re setting a really low bar with Hegseth, though it’s possible he could count a few more brain cells than Trump.
If they really want someone with ‘dust on their boots’, they should hire an Oklahoma farmer. They would have A LOT of dust on their boots…especially the Okies who lived through the Dust Bowl.
Hegseth is such a lightweight, he has to be careful not to go out when there is a breeze.
Will this also apply to Capt. Bonespurs? I’m guessing not. After all, there is a well-established historical precedent of the top leadership falling rather short of the
Aryanmilitary ideal.*Had this standard been employed by the Rebel Alliance, it might have prevented the senseless death of (the unfelicitously named) Jek Porkins.
That “Deus Vult” tattoo is a superficial, individual expression. Or maybe not so superficial, as it got Hegseth banned from Biden’s inauguration.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Hegseth#Military_service_(2003%E2%80%932006,_2010%E2%80%932014,_2019%E2%80%932021)
He resigned in 2024? It took him over three years to resign in protest at being left out of Biden’s inauguration? That’s some quick decision making right there.
There is a teeny-tiny pebble of a good idea under all that rubble.
Obviously, I agree that this whole thing is preposterous. But there’s at least something to be said about military dress and discipline standards slipping. I looked into this because the military is probably the most common career among crossdressing men, and the campaign to end the “trans in the military ban” represents the moment around the mid-oughts that liberal allies of gays, sensing the gay rights war was winding down to a victorious close, began shifting their focus over to transgender “rights”. They wanted to keep the momentum going, to keep their activist juices flowing.
The flawed reasoning was that, because the military had once unjustly banned same-sex attracted men and women from service, it followed that it was also unjust to prevent soldiers choosing which sex they’re classified as for any and all military purposes. It started with coverage for cosmetic surgeries and special allowances for dress, then a push for cross-sex dormitory and shower access, with the eventual finish line envisioned as across-the-board replacement of sex with “gender identity” in all aspects of military organization.
But these two things were completely different:
The argument for allowing gays & bisexuals to serve in the military was that they were perfectly capable of adhering to the same code of conduct as everyone else. Lifting the ban on LGB people in fact served to remove an extra, outdated, unnecessary set of rules that had been carved out against us — it universalized the military’s standards between the mainstream majority and the marginalized minority, both simplifying the code of conduct, and eliminating an unjust piece of discrimination at the same time.
The “trans in the military” campaign had the opposite objective: it sought to add exemptions and make fundamental changes to the rules, effectively tacking on special privileges for trans-identifying personnel, to the detriment of everyone else.
Of course, this is what trans activists are doing right across society: “trans allies” naively think they’re universalizing and simplifying the normative framework of society by eliminating what they perceive as an extra, outdated, unnecessary set of rules and norms surrounding biological sex, when they’re inadvertently doing the bidding of a group of trans-identifying people who want the opposite of any kind of social uniformity between the sexes. Most trans-identifying males don’t want utopian sex-blindness, they want a society with a robust sense of sexual differentiation: they want to preserve different rules and norms for men and women — but base them on their imaginary “gender identities”, which would trample all over everyone else’s observation of material reality.
In the military’s case, as in the case with society at large, some — though not necessarily all — of the rules that involve sex differences (like housing and medical provisions, for example) are far from unnecessary or out-of date; they’re highly practical and beneficial to everyone.
Since extra rules to accommodate trans-identifying personnel were added, beginning under Obama, more and more exemptions began to creep in. Loosening standards to accommodate religious headgear led to loosening standards surrounding facial hair for men for “religious or medical” purposes, but the rules got so lax that almost any man could find an exemption if he wanted to. Nobody needs a shaving waiver for a supposedly medically serious case of razor burn that lasts years. But nobody needed a waiver to get fake tits, either, so… In for a penny, in for a pound. The principles behind uniforms and codes of conduct were beginning to crack. It started with medically-diagnosed “trans” beliefs, then it was “sincerely held” religious beliefs; now it’s sometimes just fashion and subculture.
The military is a unique domain in that tribal cohesion is such a critical component. Military training by necessity drills men and women to place their allegiance to their fellow soldiers above all their other allegiances, and that’s the point of ensuring they all dress alike and follow the same code of conduct. It’s also vital that soldiers can immediately distinguish their allies from their opponents, which is why visual “sameness” is vital. No flashy hairstyles or hipster mustaches. No big turbans. No face makeup. Definitely no military-issue, “medically necessary” fake tits.
I regret to say I agree with a line in Trump’s executive order from January that reiterates the military’s “high standards for troop readiness, lethality, cohesion, honesty, humility, uniformity, and integrity.” Cohesion, uniformity, honesty. It may be possible to privately maintain a trans identity while still adhering to these standards. But I think if one brings too much of their personal “gender identity” to work — which in this case can be a literal battlefield — they’re demonstrating that they’re not suitable for the armed forces. The army’s certainly not for me. I don’t want to be “lethal” and I hate subjugating myself to a tribe. But I understand that that kind of thing is absolutely necessary — for them.
But I’m still ok with minor accommodations for differences, within reason, if they can be shown to benefit the whole. If a bit of accommodation for religious headgear or facial hair can be shown to be safe and beneficial on a case-by-case basis, that’s ok by me. (Say, a Muslim Arab translator or technician embedded within a troop, who wouldn’t otherwise be able or willing to do the job, for example.)
So this looks like a case where a reasonable principle of inclusion began to creep into unreasonable overreach, and that in turn has triggered a massive backlash far back the other way.
Isn’t that the shape of almost every flashpoint in the culture war? Left tries to be nice, then goes too far and triggers nasty backlash. Nice things no longer had by anyone.
And isn’t it the case that so many, many, many of these flashpoints originate in that moment when “gay allies” turned into “trans allies” instead? Perhaps we should stop waiting around for the next Reichstag Fire moment. It already happened, and it was “gender identity”.
Colin @ 3 – I did not know that! Interesting.
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Presumably then, Hegseth would prefer armed forces that were ‘unwoke.’ That would be a mob of ultra-powerful sleepwalking zombies, unquestioningly obedient but otherwise totally clueless.
It is the stuff of nightmares and horror movies.
Omar, Hegseth is the stuff of nightmares and horror movies, so I guess it’s appropriate.
I went to Social Security Office today; no one should have to stare at pictures of Trump and Vance while applying for something that says ‘I’m old’. It’s too much for one day.
Among the many areas of concern in this nonsense meeting was this:
So, dump those annoying rules of engagement, let’s just have the military commit war crimes, and pardon all those people convicted of war crimes.
In Wellington’s army they’d just have hung the bastards… You do bad things to the enemy and then they do bad things to you. Dealing with the likes of ISIS is murkier.
Jeeeeezus – I missed the call for atrocities.