U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth must realize his key warrior ethos is off base, or face "peril," according to a retired military officer on Saturday.
Robert McTague, a retired military officer who did two tours in Iraq, and also served in Kuwait, Qatar, Korea, Croatia, Romania, and Turkey, said that Hegseth "comes across as a bit of a car salesman" in his pitch before top generals from around the world.
Regarding some of Hegseth's proposals, McTague found that they weren't cost efficient.
"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," he wrote.
McTague went on to note that Hegseth neglected a key part of what makes the military not a meritocracy.
"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," he wrote on Saturday. "Maybe it’s because all those Civil War legacy families in the Army from the former Confederacy would scream bloody murder."
"But probably the biggest issue," McTague said, was "with Hegseth opening the door on leader behavior."
"First, the idea that the modern military has castrated itself and can longer yell, enforce punishment, etc. is hogwash. There was a survey once of hundreds of members of something like 50 or 70 consecutive classes at West Point. Interestingly (and probably predictably), the vast majority of those surveyed, in every single class, was thoroughly convinced that the class after them—not years or decade, one—had it easier than they did," he wrote.
The retired official added, "I think the whole 'we need to be able to kill things' message and tone were misleading, childish, and misguided, with subtle notes of fashy (will to power, y’all) and here’s why: We live in a frighteningly complex world, with layers and layers of things that, no matter how much will and savagery you want to muster, matter. Ignore at your own peril. Ask Bibi."
"And this idea that our military has failed (um, when?) because we couldn’t be bada-- enough is entirely fictional. Ask the Russians how that whole 'We don’t give a f---, kill with impunity' thing is going for them right now," he said. "Bad strategic decisions aren’t bad because we never truly invested in killing our way out of the problem."