The Wisdom of SecDef Douchenozzle
Description
Claire—I’ve never served in the military, and I’m well aware that my views about Pete Hegseth and his Tailhook Time Machine speech at Quantico lack the authority of experience. So I asked friends who’ve served to give me their thoughts.
Our reader Robert McTague, who spent more than 24 years on active duty and retired as a Lieutenant Colonel, sent me the reply below. I asked him if I could publish it in full, and he graciously gave me his permission. I’ve lightly edited a few sentences for clarity. Any mistakes, therefore, are mine, not his.
Robert McTague
Hegseth comes across as a bit of a car salesman (or, as The Bulwark opined, like Tom Cruise’s motivational speaker character in Magnolia), but I don’t have that big of an issue with that. Other SECDEFs have had notorious image issues and reputations for arrogance. The substance of what he said in his opening mostly ranged from fine to fairly relevant.
I have no freaking idea where he thinks he’s going to get all the money to build these extra platforms he mentioned—more troops (super expensive), more munitions, more drones, more Patriots, more submarines, more B-21 bombers— we’re talking about hundreds of billions of dollars in new expenditures, at least. But if that’s the intent (and this could come from the idea of preparing for a war with China, which we definitely should be thinking about), then I’m on board with that part. On the plus side, he won’t need most of those platforms to fight against, say, the Massachusetts State Police, so maybe his mind is at least somewhat in the right place.
On ending promotions based on race and gender, that was a bit of a bugaboo the entire time I was in service. Many believed that some degree of racial profiling informed our promotions, at least for officers and senior NCOs. But I never found anyone—including among the people who actually sat on boards from two of the services—who could explain to me how this was occurring, or in what numbers.
That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. I’m just skeptical about how often and to what effect. I became less concerned, over my time in service, that it was a real issue. Moreover, I remember being told in the mid-’90s that factors such as race and gender had informed promotions until then, but were being discontinued.
Did I know people, especially in the ‘90s, who caused me to wonder if maybe they were promoted due to their race? Yes. But I’d be hamstrung to prove it in a court of law. Meanwhile, I knew at least as many people who I’m 100-percent positive were promoted because they were a general’s son. Or because they were being sheltered by a patron saint (such as a four-star) who ensured they at least made colonel (despite, say, bad things in their files and reputations).
The single biggest counter-merit thing I ever saw in the military was nepotism (some of it mind-bogglingly egregious). But I didn’t hear one mention of that in this speech. Maybe it’s because all those Civil War legacy families in the Army from the former Confederacy would scream bloody murder. (Yes, I have things in writing that confirm they’re worried the Army might “lose” these precious assets if we don’t—<sniffle, sniffle>—de-wokify.) And no, I’m not leaning into that for effect. The Old South establishment Army community has been shrieking like banshees the past few years.
Next was the fat thing. Look, there has always been some friction, some level of concern about this, the entire time I was in the Army. (One source of the problem, by the way, might be our own chow halls—not exactly repositories of healthy eating). This was true even during periods when recruiting was going very well. When I was a basic training battalion XO, we were told that only about 27 percent of America’s 18- to 25-year-olds could pass the PT test and meet the height-weight standards required to start basic training. That was 18 years ago. So I have to wonder—where are we going to find all these fit people?
But more to the point, Hegseth’s ire seems directed at senior NCOs and officers who he deems to be fat. Okay, fine. If there is a standard, sure, it ought to be applied. But I’m here to tell you that once officers get in the colonel and general range, no one really gives a shit. What we give a shit about is whether or not these people can do their fucking job.
A few examples: When we fought OIF actual, the CFLCC1 C3 was JD Thurman (who was, by the way, from a ridiculously general-laden military family, and no one had any issue with that). Let’s just say JD was diabetic, had a pacemaker and was not svelte. I’d guess he hadn’t done a PT test in years. As he once replied to our PA, who was forever chastising him about things like eating plates full of potatoes, “Damn it, Doc, I’m here for my brain, not my body—just keep me alive.” The man was handpicked by LTG McKiernan to be the operations chief for the entire land invasion. Would Pete Hegseth go back in time and remove JD from that slot because he’s a little too pudgy? Dunno about that.
Two more examples: General Schumacher, the former JSOC and Delta Force commander, was brought back on active duty to be Chief of Staff of the Army. He was quite the widebody (and leader. And killer. And all-around badass). There was BG Harrell who commanded US SOF forces during the land invasion of Iraq. He too was notably large. Both were men who, in their younger years, were running more miles before 9:00 am than I used to in a week—and consuming 3 to 4,000 calories a day while doing it.
Later, when they were too old to be operators, things like injuries (or just insane levels of wear and tear) and age caught up with them, their metabolisms slowed down, and they predictably got heavy. There wasn’t a damn thing they could do about it. (I knew several old SF and Ranger types like this). My buddy who was in Delta with them, all the way back in the days they’d been skinny, didn’t think one bit less of them at that age because they had gotten large. It just doesn’t fucking matter.
I had an FDO who had always fought weight issues, was getting out of the Army, and notably large—and was also, hands down, the best FDO in our battalion. Would I have sat him out from deploying, two years later, to fight a ground war because of his weight? No—I’d have been fighting heaven and earth to keep him, because he was the best. But that’s just me (and, I suspect, every other battle commander in my battalion at that time). But he doesn’t want any more “fat generals.” Alrighty then. Show me one iota of evidence that this will improve the capabilities and likely future fortunes of our force in war, and I’m already onboard. I’ll wait for that, though.
Next agenda item were the beards. Apparently, the services have had a Civil War renaissance in recent years, because Pete’s tired of the beards. Soooo many beards, apparently (I checked—there aren’t. It’s just in his list of personal pet peeves).
For the uninitiated, the forbidding of beards in the US military was primarily driven by considerations regarding NBC use, the zero-sum logic being that beards can prevent a good seal on gas masks, hence, no more beards. It certainly had nothing to do with grooming or societal standards. That was the retrofitted justification, because beards had already been banned for a generation or two. So no, it’s not about appearance standards. Many contemporary NATO forces allow beards (the gas mask thing isn’t that big a deal, and it’s perfectly manageable so long as the beard isn’t on the neck).
Some classmates have already noted that “the Left” has complained that this effort targets black soldiers. I would be skeptical of that … except that yes, I believe that is entirely true. The reason I believe it is that in the Army at least, this is a long-standing, well-known issue with African-American male soldiers in service.
My personal experience, however, was that while a significant
United States
