Your Independent Journal from the Heartland
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is extremely inept, so it is fascinating that he is fixing people that he sees as being unqualified because they are products of DEI and “wokeness,” when he is obviously one of the worst choices Trump could have made to try and correct America’s “war” problems.
Hegseth is very upset about the U.S. “losing” the Afghan “War” (but what would a “win” have entailed?). He puts the blame on “wokeness.” He wants to go back to go back to the days of “real men” fighting “wars,” no transgenders allowed, no DEI people of color allowed.
What could be more detrimental to the U.S. “war” machine than a Defense Secretary who is stuck in a World “War” II mindset. Hegseth is obsessed with push-ups and pull-ups, the need to get the troops into manly shape. As if push-ups and pull-ups culd have helped the U.S. military “win” in Afghanistan. Hegseth and Trump are so far behind when it comes to modern “warfare.”
President Zeleinskyy of Ukraine is working in and seeing how rapidly the modern “battlefield” is changing. In a speech at the U.N. in September, he said, “We are now living through the most destructive arms race in human history, because this time it includes artificial intelligence. It is only a matter of time before drones are fighting drones, attacking infrastructure and attacking people all by themselves — fully autonomous and no humans involved except the few who control AI systems.“
This is the future, but Hegseth is obsessed with push-ups and pull-ups. Send your buffed “warrior” troops out on the “battlefield” to be slaughtered by fully autonomous A.I.-driven drones.
Every single general at that meeting in Virginia, whether male or female, transgender, gay, straight, Black, White, Brown, would be a better Defense Secretary than Hegseth. Every single one of them.
It is going to be very hard for the U.S. to “win” future “wars” when our leaders’ primary preoccupation is their bigoted attacks upon certain members of the military and also their old-school “war” fighting approach of getting the troops in peak “war” fighting shape.
Their approach comes from a longing for and a romance of U.S. “wars” of the past. But “war,” like stupidity, keeps evolving, Trump and Hegseth are stuck in the past.
FRANK ERICKSON, Minneapolis, Minn.
