Every few decades, America ends up with a Secretary of Defense whose tenure becomes a cautionary tale. Rumsfeld’s mismanagement of Iraq. McNamara’s sterile metrics and disastrous Vietnam escalation. Louis Johnson’s budget hacks that left us unprepared for Korea. Each one left scars. Each one earned their place in the history books.
But none of them arrived in the job with as little preparation or understanding of the role as Pete Hegseth. And that is the real story of this moment. For the first time, the United States has a Secretary of Defense who is, by near-universal assessment among defense professionals, unqualified from day one. Not questionable. Not inexperienced. Unqualified.
Hegseth didn’t need years to unravel strategic credibility. He did it immediately.
Brief aside from Mary Geddry: Secretary of War Crimes and the Ministry of Poisoned Air - Hegseth’s kill orders, Trump’s anti-climate crusade, billionaire baby bonds, and the CDC’s anti-vax makeover, your daily tour through America’s authoritarian renovation project.
One more...
This incessant disrespect coming from Trump and his underlings isn’t random. It’s the whole point.It’s dominance theater. It’s a loyalty test. It’s chaos as a tactic.
They tear down norms, mock institutions, and belittle anyone who pushes back because contempt is how authoritarian-minded movements signal power and keep followers unified.
What’s “wrong” with them is simple:
They’re driven by insecurity, a craving for control, and a culture that rewards cruelty over competence. That’s why the behavior keeps getting worse…it’s not weakness slipping through, it is the operating system.
Why is this incessant disrespect attractive to his supporters? Because it feels like power. For people who feel ignored or left behind, a leader who insults critics and breaks norms looks like someone fighting on their behalf. It is emotional politics, not rational politics.
Disrespect becomes a show of strength. Cruelty reads as authenticity. Every outrageous moment feels like payback against institutions or groups they believe have dismissed them.
They are not drawn to policy. They are drawn to the feeling of revenge wrapped in the idea of empowerment.
It is in a word:
Regressive.
It signals a slide backward into emotionally stunted politics where tantrums look like strength and cruelty feels like empowerment.
Or to be clearer:
• Performative
• Immature
• Infantilized
Moving on...
A Job That Requires Mastery He Has Never Demonstrated
The Department of Defense is the largest and most complex organization on Earth. It requires a leader who can manage 3 million personnel, oversee the most expensive budget in the federal government, interpret intelligence from multiple agencies, interact with dozens of allied militaries, and maintain the institutional stability that prevents nuclear miscalculations.
Hegseth has never run a federal department, never handled a global budget, never overseen a chain of command larger than a battalion, and has never demonstrated fluency in modern defense strategy. His background is a combination of cable television, political activism, and military service that is honorable but far from what the job demands. Prior secretaries often disagreed with generals, sometimes disastrously, but they at least understood the terrain they were operating on. Hegseth is a tourist in a role that cannot survive tourism.
The “Secretary of War” Stunt Says More Than He Intended
Within days of settling into the Pentagon he rebranded himself with an old title: “Secretary of War.” It was meant to project strength. Instead it signaled something else. A lack of awareness of the civilian nature of his role. A return to language abandoned for good reason after World War II. A view of the military as a political weapon rather than a stabilizing institution. The job demands sobriety. He delivered theatrics.
That alone would have been concerning. Then came something far worse.
Carelessness With Sensitive Military Communications
The December news cycle was dominated by reports that Hegseth used a commercial messaging app to discuss operational details regarding a missile strike. No Secretary of Defense in living memory has made such an elemental mistake. Not McNamara in Vietnam, not Rumsfeld in Iraq, not a single SecDef during the Cold War.
There is a difference between making strategic errors in complex wars and mishandling classified information because you never fully understood the protocols in the first place. One is tragic. The other is reckless.
Alienating the Professionals Who Keep the Country Stable
The Department of Defense is built on norms that protect civilian control while maintaining professional continuity. Hegseth has broken those norms faster than any modern predecessor.
Reports of tension between himself and senior military leadership are already surfacing. Morale is strained. Policy discussions are overloaded with ideological rhetoric. Internal confidence is low. This is not how a functional Pentagon looks. This is how institutions begin to wobble.
Every prior SecDef had disagreements with the generals. The difference is that previous secretaries were taken seriously even when they were wrong. Hegseth entered the building without that baseline credibility. And credibility once lost is almost impossible to regain.
He May Surpass Rumsfeld and McNamara for All the Wrong Reasons
Rumsfeld was arrogant, but he understood the machinery of government. McNamara was disastrously technocratic, but brilliant, and capable of self-reflection. Their failures were large, but they emerged from experience.
Hegseth’s failures are different. They come from absence. Absence of depth. Absence of strategic fluency. Absence of administrative competence. Absence of respect for the institution. And an absence of the hard-earned knowledge required to make life-and-death decisions that affect the entire planet.
He may not yet have triggered a disaster on the scale of Iraq or Vietnam, but it is early. And the warning signs are already louder than most Americans realize.
The Most Dangerous Secretary of Defense Is the One Who Doesn’t Know What He Doesn’t Know
A Secretary of Defense can survive being wrong. The system is built to handle that.
It cannot survive a leader who operates at the edge of his depth on every issue. The margin for error in this job is microscopic. The stakes are planetary. The secretary sits atop the nuclear chain of command. This is not a role where political theatrics can substitute for competence.
Yet here we are, with a Secretary of Defense calling himself “Secretary of War,” stumbling through protocols, and alienating the professionals who actually keep the country secure.
History will not be kind to this moment. And it shouldn’t be.
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