Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has revealed an alarming attribute as he carries out President Donald Trump's war against Iran, noted New York Times columnist Frank Bruni.
The 45-year-old Pentagon chief has made clear at his weekly press briefings that he considers every bomb and missile the United States launches at Iran is sent in Jesus' name — and Bruni recoiled at Hegseth's enthusiasm for Trump's threats to annihilate Iran's entire civilization.
"I guess a zealot, by nature, can’t hide — too extreme are his convictions, too grand his designs, too consuming his arrogance," Bruni wrote. "And so, over recent weeks, Pete Hegseth has fully revealed himself."
"He brandishes assertions about God’s will with the exaggerated brio of an electronics merchant pressing fliers on pedestrians passing by his new megastore: Have I got a holy war for you," Bruni added. "Embrace the death. Exult over the destruction. What only looks like hell is a ticket to heaven."
Of course, not everyone agrees – most notably, Pope Leo XIV has publicly and specifically rebuked the Trump administration’s religious framing of the war on Iran, pointedly saying "God does not bless any conflict" – but Hegseth pounds his chest and brays about the divine approval for American actions in the Middle East, Bruni wrote.
"In normal times, under a normal president, we would gasp at the messianic, bellicose timbre of a government video, distributed last year, that wed a montage of our military arsenal to a soundtrack of Hegseth’s voice reciting the Lord’s Prayer," Bruni wrote. "It didn’t merely imply that ours was an army of God. It trumpeted that — with unsettling fervor, with chilling grandiosity."
"Hegseth’s is a gospel of carnage, and I have so many questions about it," he added.
The Pentagon chief threatens "no quarter, no mercy" against U.S. enemies, which Bruni said is the antithesis of Christ's teachings, and he wondered how Hegseth felt empowered to cast unforgiving judgment on anyone who does not hew to his own version of faith.
"Hegseth exemplifies vanity, and I’m not referring to the shirtless photos and shellacked hair," Bruni wrote. "I mean the insistence that his way is His way and the only way. That God has bestowed a unique blessing on America, whose might proves its right and whose killing is a kind of grace."
"What a strange religion," he added. "But then there’s so much about Hegseth — and America right now — that I find bizarre."
