The Free Press
Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick to run the Pentagon, is locked in a fierce nomination fight. Mired in accusations about his personal life, Hegseth is dug in. And a big part of his pitch to the Republicans who will control the Senate come January is that he will be a different kind of defense secretary than the country has had in recent administrations. Here’s how he put it to Sean Hannity on Fox News on Monday:
Return the Pentagon to the warfighters. Get in there and clean out all the social justice, politically correct garbage on top, and get back to lethality, war-fighting, accountability, meritocracy, and readiness. . . . Return to that and it changes the culture of the institution.
Warfighters, in fact, is the word he uses again and again in describing the kind of soldier he will work for if confirmed as defense secretary. In his recent book, The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free, he writes, “Higher headquarters crush your soul. They are bureaucratic, political, and mind-numbingly boring. I wanted to get back out on the gun range, back on the drill floor, out with soldiers.” For Hegseth, these are the “warfighters” whose banner he claims to carry.
But as a co-host of Fox’s signature morning show, Fox & Friends, Hegseth used his platform to champion a particular kind of warfighter, one that should make even his Republican supporters nervous: service members convicted of or accused of war crimes.
The first of these, Mathew Golsteyn, was an Army officer who summarily executed an Afghan and later burned his body in a trash pit. The second, Clint Lorance, was also an Army officer who gunned down two Afghan civilians—and was turned in by his men. The third, Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher, was also turned in by his men after slitting the throat of an Iraqi prisoner. Hegseth lobbied Trump, publicly and privately, on behalf of these men during Trump’s first term, and it paid off. In 2019, Trump pardoned Golsteyn and Lorance. He also intervened in Gallagher’s case, allowing him to retire with full benefits and to remain a SEAL, overriding Naval Special Warfare Command, which had recommended his dismissal.
After the pardons, Hegseth, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan as an officer in the Minnesota National Guard, said on Fox & Friends, “This is very heartening for guys like me and others in the service who look at the previous administration, whether it was the trading terrorists to get a deserter in Bowe Bergdahl, who basically got a slap on the wrist, or a pardon of Bradley Manning. I mean, you had a culture of coddling and not defending the warfighter. Trump’s done a total 180 on this. It’s amazing.”
Were the Obama administration’s actions on behalf of Bergdahl and Manning worthy of criticism? Sure. Bergdahl, who the Army accused of desertion, was freed after five years in captivity in Afghanistan when the administration released five Taliban prisoners from Guantanamo. And Manning (now known as Chelsea Manning) leaked classified information to WikiLeaks, only to have her sentence commuted by Obama.
Still, whatever you think of Obama’s handling of the two cases, they’re not remotely comparable to pardoning two convicted war criminals and granting clemency to a third. To Hegseth, crimes become license for crimes. This is poison in any society, and it will be poison in our military.
Hegseth pushes an “us” versus “them” view of the military. And it’s wildly inaccurate. Where do the combat veterans who fought alongside Golsteyn, Lorance, and Gallagher—and felt compelled to turn them in—stand? Does Hegseth not view them as warfighters too?
Hegseth claims to speak for “guys like me and others in the service,” but his audience isn’t the troops. It’s the polarized right wing that wants to bring the culture wars into the U.S. military. We have an all-volunteer force, so most Americans do not serve. Those without that experience are easily fooled into thinking those in uniform, particularly those in frontline units, are all of one political persuasion. This is not true. And if Hegseth is the warfighting leader that he says he is, then he knows it. If you’ve ever served in any infantry or other frontline unit, you know that our military isn’t all MAGA and it isn’t all woke. It’s American. And as a point of pride, military officers don’t discuss their political views. Partly as a result, the military has avoided the culture wars that have infected so much of American society. Anyone who would profit from the divisions in civilian society by soiling the ranks of our military with those same divisions isn’t fit to lead it.
On Friday, Hegseth asserted on X that it was time for a secretary of defense “who has. . . Led in combat. Been on patrol for days. Pulled a trigger. Heard bullets whiz by. Called in close air support. Led medevacs. Dodged IEDs.” Only the most militarily illiterate person could take this statement seriously. Three of the last five secretaries of defense can claim more time in a combat zone and are more highly decorated for valor than Hegseth. Lloyd Austin, Biden’s secretary of defense, earned a Silver Star in Iraq. This is our nation’s third highest award for valor, and Austin’s citation describes how he “remained at the vanguard of every decisive engagement” during the march to Baghdad. Trump’s first secretary of defense, James Mattis, was my division commander in Iraq. Stories of him fighting through ambushes around Fallujah were legendary. Chuck Hagel, Obama’s last secretary of defense, served as an enlisted man. He boasts two Purple Hearts from Vietnam. Yet Hegseth suggests that none of these past secretaries qualify as warfighters.
Hegseth is trying to turn the military against itself. It is a divisive, amoral game to play. It’s the same one that raised his public profile, taking him from a largely unknown advocate for veterans to the couch on Fox & Friends, and now to the cusp of an E Ring suite in the Pentagon.
In recent days, much has been made of Hegseth’s reported infidelities and alcohol consumption. Coming home from war is tough. Some veterans turn to drink. Many marriages don’t make it. Clearly, Hegseth went through a rough patch in his transition to civilian life. By one account, as his first marriage was dissolving, he told his brother-in-law that he was “a fucked-up individual.” Today, the people closest to him, including his mother and wife, insist he’s no longer that person. He is, however, the same person who opportunistically built his own brand by rebranding war criminals as “warfighters” while simultaneously calling into question the service of actual warfighters who didn’t excuse war crimes. That, to use Hegseth’s words, is a pretty “fucked-up” strategy. It’s the same strategy of division and innuendo that has fueled his nomination for secretary of defense.
The challenges facing the Department of Defense have never been greater. We face myriad enemies across the globe, from Putin to Xi to the Ayatollah. Threats in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East demand sweeping reforms to the military’s force structure if we are going to be ready to fight and win the next war.
But Hegseth seems more interested in another type of war. If placed at the helm of the Pentagon, Hegseth and his “warfighters” wish to prosecute a culture war. And in doing so, he will set America on course to lose the next real one.
Elliot Ackerman is a retired Marine who was awarded the Silver Star, the Bronze Star with Valor, and a Purple Heart during his five deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq. Read his piece, “The U.S. Isn’t Ready for a Modern War.”
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