Live-streaming now. No more DEI focus. Go after troops bitching anonymously online. Cut out the nonessential education. Tougher boot camp “they can put their hands on recruits,”
And of course “no more rules of engagement. You break things and kill people for a living.”
Will be interesting to see how quickly and thoroughly details leak out, especially following the Pentagon’s recent desire for a media loyalty pledge.
What’s old is new again???
Asking for a friend.
Woodrow Wilson’s secretary of war Josephus Daniels called for “Every battleship a university,” But screw that. We’re focused on war now. Who wouldn’t enlist for that?
One night in 1956 a drunken DI came back to the barracks at Parris Island and marched his company into the swamp, killing more Marines than the Spanish army had in 1898. Who wouldn’t enlist for that?
I happened to watch some of John Wayne’s No Substitute for Victory the other day. There is an ignorant belief that we lost in Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan while we won in Germany and Japan because (and simply because) we could kill every German and Japanese until any German and Japanese wouldn’t fight back.
Now it’s Trump’s turn to go on. And on and on…
I’ve never been in the military and won’t pretend to have any deep understanding of the culture.
But just as a purely logistical concern…
So you don’t want any “fat generals”. OK. The really smart officer who runs a very high tech department.. something to do with cryptography or missile trajectories… They can’t do five pull-ups, or whatever. So now they’re gone. Anyone want to explain to me how this helps anybody except our military adversaries?
I admire professionalism and the military folk I know have a lot of it. But when will they say very simply and publicly, “These people don’t know what they’re doing, they’re cowards and nobody should follow them anywhere.” ???
I suppose Mark Milley did so, very politely, and it didn’t make much impact. Oh well.
Why comment on Trump’s cognitive decay? Res ipsa loquitor And boy, is the loquitorin’ ugly!
For too large a swath of the country, DJT’s insanity has been thoroughly and unbelievably normalized.
But I am agape and aghast watching this idiotic, narcissistic media whore blow himself in front of our nation’s top military brass and the world.
And he really seems to have found himself his own personal Theodor Morell:
This is truly unbelievable.
I remain flabbergasted, and dumbfounded that this Hegseth, just knowing what little we really know of him, would be entrusted with this department. It’s insanity that they were so intent on satisfying trump’s every diseased whim that they would give him the keys. The clearer thinking brass have to be experiencing all kinds of anxiety about now.
I remember thinking about this when he was nominated. I think I would like to experience, at least once in my life, what it’s like to walk around with such an inflated sense of self, such complete arrogance, and such little self-awareness of my own flaws, that I could credibly think to myself, “yeah. Despite no prior experience or relevant qualifications, I can run the Department of Defense.”
I mean - I’d probably be an unbearable ass for as long as that lasted, but I’d love to know what it feels like.
I’m trying to imagine a U.S. President asking me to take any Cabinet position. It would take every ounce of self-control for me to not respond, “are you out of your f#%king mind?!?”
loquitur, ¿no?
If I was Kegbreath, I’d be keeping my head down and my mouth shut, knowing that it was a miracle that I ever landed a gig like that and would do whatever it took to keep the job. This shitty podcaster is being chauffeured around and flying in his jet like an entitled prick.
He’s doing the only thing he knows how to do: Put on a show that appeals to the rubes.
As Lincoln said, for those that like that sort of thing, that’s the sort of thing they like. I don’t get the no beard requirement or physical fitness requirements for generals. Would Kegsbreath have fired Eisenhower if he couldn’t do 20 pushups on demand? It the primary asset of an individual is his mind and experience, who cares if he can do a mile run in blazing heat?
I’m not sure I’m with you on that one. Having once been a troop, it there are fitness and appearance standards for troops, everyone in the chain of command had better meet them. Anything else leads to serious discipline and morale problems.
Also, making the senior troops meet the same standards as everyone else, helps to keep things from getting too out of hand.
Does that include the Secretary of Defense War, and the Commander-in-Chief? 
Some African-Americans (and others) get nasty razor bumps if they shave too often. It is a known medical condition, and this new requirement is a known and open attempt at racial discrimination.
No. They are not troops, by definition. Civilian control of the military is pretty fundamental.
When I was in, back in the early '80s you could get a special waiver if you had that condition, but there was always some asshole in the chain of command who would give people guff about it. That nonsense lightened up when we got a black officer over our unit.
They’ve removed those waivers, government by asshole.