Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's desperate efforts to control the narrative on the Iran war have succeeded only in revealing how little control over the situation he has, a columnist argued Saturday.
This withering rebuke of Hegseth's actions against military journalists and service members who have reported untenable conditions, as the war drags into its seventh month, came courtesy of Salon analyst Sophia Tesfaye.
"Rather than addressing any systemic failures on the part of the department, Hegseth’s command structure has resorted to authoritarian retaliation," wrote Tesfaye.
"The silencing of the press and scapegoating of desperate sailors does not hide Hegseth’s mess."
Tesfaye detailed several ongoing scandals that Hegseth has proved unable to control, from the Pentagon's firing three journalists at its military newspaper Stars and Stripes to the suicide attempts reported aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln.
Rather than curb criticism, Hegseth has made the military newspaper a household name as the fired publisher, editor-in-chief and a reporter pursue legal action against the federal government — and revealed something significant about the Trump administration, Tesfaye argued.
"Hegseth’s purging of the publication’s editorial leadership, under the fraudulent guise of insubordination, for making troubling information public is a signal that the administration’s public relations take precedence over the lives and wellbeing of American service members," she wrote.
"This is how an insecure political operation behaves when the facts catch up with its propaganda."
Hegseth has also failed to convince the public as that a sailor who attempted suicide by jumping overboard the Lincoln was guilty of "malingering" — the disciplinary charge that sailor now faces, argued Tesfaye.
Outrage has only mounted as military families report their loved ones suffer food shortages and terrifying exhaustion aboard the Lincoln, slated soon to return to the U.S, she concluded:
"The war’s abysmal poll numbers show the American people see through the fog of Hegseth’s propaganda."