No matter what Hegseth says or wants — it’s the 21st Century now and the world he longs for no longer exists.
From 1975 to 1979, I attended The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina. At the time, the college was all-male; women were not admitted, and this did not change until 1996, when the Supreme Court ruled that it had to admit women.
Upon graduation, I entered the Navy, which was also primarily a male-dominated organization. Women were not allowed to serve on combat ships, and the then Secretary of the Navy went to extreme lengths to ensure ships had that designation. So, it was a comfortable world, one I was quite familiar with. That Navy existed for some 15 years more until, following the Tailhook Scandal of 1991, the laws were changed. As a result, I commanded a mixed-gender squadron, one of the first carrier-based squadrons in the Navy to do so. ( To allow women to sea, there had to be some significant changes to the berthing structure, and that took some time to effect across the fleet.)
Truth in advertising, I was one of those who wanted to keep the all-male structure. At the time, I felt it was easier to administer a unit with only one sex. In some ways, I still share that sentiment. The dynamics of male-female interactions with young adults aged 19–27 were indeed challenging. However, what I did not understand at the time, and many others still do not, is that American society had changed and that the people, through their elected representatives, had willed this change, whether I liked it or not.
With the advent of social media, there are now avenues where people can repeatedly express that sentiment, and no group does more loudly and longer than Citadel Graduates. They even have an expression for it, returning to “The Old Corps,” where the “system” was tougher.
And the plebe system that I endured was tough, and at the time, I thought it made me tougher. In the view of almost 50 years of hindsight, however, much of what we endured was silly and counterproductive, as well as downright cruel.
Here is an example: A series of posts on my college’s alumni forums has bemoaned the fact that The Citadel no longer has cadets eating family-style. They eat cafeteria-style in the mess hall at staggered times because the building can no longer hold the entire Corps in one sitting. Many folks look back fondly on family-style eating, although for the life of me, I do not understand why. Depending on whose table you were assigned to as a freshman, you could either feast or be starved. I had the misfortune of being starved on several tables early in my plebe year. Considering what the Navy and my parents were paying for my education, it was, in fact, outright robbery for them and for me. It’s why I can’t get up in arms about the change. If returning to family-style eating is returning to denying 18-year-olds food and nutrition, then to hell with it. Keep the cafeteria line running. The simple truth is that the “system” should probably never have been that way. Hell, even the Marines don’t starve their recruits at boot camp, and their system is most assuredly tough.
There were many other issues — including the problem the college struggled with of physical hazing. I, among many others, took my share of beatings, although in our time it was nowhere near as brutal as it was during the Vietnam years, where the hazing had gotten out of control. ( If you read Pat Conroy’s novel, The Lords of Discipline, you can get a good idea of what it was like then.)
There is a cohort of my fellow alumni who continue to look back on those days with nostalgia and yearn for a return to the past. What they miss is that academically and militarily, the college is far better today than it was then. The college offers a wider variety of majors and more academic rigor than it did during the 1970s and is doing a better job of preparing students for the world they will actually enter, rather than the idealized world these individuals hold up to them.
Why do I bring this up and take the time to explain it? Because that is basically what our worthless Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, did yesterday with his embarrassing speech to the assembled group of generals and admirals. Hegseth’s message can be distilled down to two sentences:
- He wants women out of the armed forces and is going to do what he can to make that happen.
- While denying it, he is determined to return the officer corps to being a primarily White Anglo-Saxon group of people.
Now you can argue that second point perhaps, but I stand by it. If anything, that is what his rants about DEI are about. Also, don’t kid yourself, his edicts about beards are targeted at African Americans. Beards are not allowed, save for special forces, but when medically prescribed, beards can be grown with a doctor’s permission. The majority of people who do so are not white, however. As a Sailor who came into the Navy when beards were allowed, I have never understood why people are so opposed to them. If I were CNO, I would have allowed them again.
My personal opinion is that Hegseth’s message is more misogynistic than racist — but the racist underpinnings are there. If you read the whole transcript of what he said, it’s disturbing in the extreme.
Consider:
Hegseth gave carte blanche to the American military to commit war crimes. By doing so, he has made us no better than the people we are in opposition to. It will backfire immensely. And it will get Americans killed needlessly. The whining about “restrictive ROE” is nothing more than saying, “I want to kill anyone I can, regardless of their status as combatants or not”. That really worked out well for us at MyLai, didn’t it?
The changes to the IG process are equally disturbing. What he is going to do is give a free pass to hazing, rape, and sexual assault, and serious infractions of monetary rules. Because now he has opened the way for retribution and attacks on whistleblowers.
“Promotions based on merit only”. What does that even mean? Having sat on a selection board, it is clear Hegseth does not understand the process at all. Nor does he understand how commanding officers are supposed to advocate for their people. It’s a dog whistle for, “ women and black people are promoted solely based on their sex or race”.
“The enemy within “ language is a direct attack on the Constitution and Posse Comitatus. Surely Citadel graduates can understand that? And if you think Soldiers belong on the streets of American cities is OK, then you are too far gone as a person, and may God have mercy on your soul.
Hegseth longs for “a return to 1990”. As one who was on active duty in 1990, and Hegseth was not, he clearly does not understand that we are now in the 21st Century. That world no longer exists, and wasn’t as great as he thinks it was. (Perhaps he wants to go back to cannibalizing aircraft for parts because our supply chain was broken.)
Even if Hegesth had it in his power to restore the combat exclusion laws, he couldn’t do it. It would decimate unit readiness. In the Army, 21% of the soldiers are Black or African American, totaling 95,149 troops. Women constitute 19% of the force.
I suspect Hegseth thinks he can make it untenable for either to stay and slowly change the demographics by attrition. If he believes that, he is clearly deluded. For one thing, there is not the same incentive to join the service as there was 50 years ago. Furthermore, the changes that Congress has made to the retirement system have incentivized getting out as soon as the fun stuff stops. ( Flying, Sailing, Jumping out of planes, etc.) The combination is devastating because it means you are losing the people you need to staff the primary headquarters.
The services talk a lot about a “war for talent”. Elon Musk talks about how “AI” will be the wave of the future. The military can’t pay the salaries that rich companies can, and AI, in turn, will reshape the way the workforce looks in the future.
Short of a return to mandatory national service (the draft), one cannot get there from here doing what Hegseth wants. And he is too stupid to realize that.
I think Jack Hopkins is right. The meeting on Tuesday was not about grooming standards. It was about sycophancy:
What he was really saying: “We’re drawing a new line. If you don’t look like us, think like us… fight like us…you’re gone.”
Fitness was the metaphor. Loyalty was the real metric.
Nobody hates discipline. Nobody hates combat readiness.
But when Hegseth spits out “warrior culture” and “no more woke,” what he means is: “We will erase every trace of modern pluralism from the military.”
And by having Trump show up, he underlined exactly how much he wants the current leadership to feel threatened.
Hegseth longs for a world that no longer exists. As do most conservatives these days. Make America Great? What they are really doing is making America irrelevant.
If these bastards get their way — a massive brain drain will ensue. The good people will say, “fuck this shit, I did not sign up for this”, and leave. The people who stay? Incompetent and evil. You won’t like that service at all.
Especially when they come to kill you.
That is the brave new world they want to lead us into. The idealized world that Hegseth and my fellow Citadel Alumni want is not coming back. We, as a nation, either make progress or die. There is no middle ground.
Whether they like it or not. The “Old Corps” is not coming back.