Para Bellum?
By Mitch Berg
I caught part of Secretary Hegseth’s speech yesterday.
I can see where the whole “Make the military a military again” think might get liberals exercised – they tend to see the military as a social program with some regrettable weapons involved.
The part I heard sounded like it could have been an answer to Edwin Luttwak’s “Pentagon and the Art of War”, in which the historian noted that the Pentagon was overgeneraled, and heavily focused on maintaining a bureaucracy capable of re-fighting World War 2.
Over generaled? At the height of the Cold War, the US millitary had roughly one flag rank officer (general or admiral) per 2,500 or so troops.
Today it’s close to one per 1,000.
The parts I heard – re-instating male-centered standards for combat arms troops (infantry/armor/cavalry/artillery/combat engineering and the like) in particular – landed with this non-veteran.
Although I suspect the real audience was in Moscow and Beijing (Teheran caught the early show).
Now, Trump’s bit about sending the military to fight “in the city?”
Shiny new quarter says he knows it’s preposterous – but he’s trying to get Democrats to support criminals against, ahem, the US military as well as the citizens of those cities. Hard to see where that’s a bad ideal politically, even if it’s balderdash legally (outside the POTUS’s Article 1 Section 8 power to protect federal facilities and operations – which will no doubt get defined to a fine sheen in court).
You can, of course, count on Big Left to get the wrong point…:
…although to be fair it’s only Rupar, and he’s too stupid to understand that here, Hegseth was right. The only military that deters aggression is the one people are afraid to test.
Russia didn’t give to farts in the breeze about the German, French or Italian militaries – full of overweight NCOs and planes that don’t fly and units without armored vehicles because NATO turned into a “peacekeeping” force from 1993 to 2020 – when he attacked Ukraine. Poland, maybe, but Poland can’t wage an independent war against Russia by itself, much to Poland’s chagrin, I suspect.
October 1st, 2025 at 8:59 am
When I hear Trump wanting to send troops into cities, I have to ask “has he never heard of posse commitatus prohibitions?”. Personally, I am also wondering if he and Hegseth are overcorrecting–I can see, in a case of real war, how things might go better for our armed forces if those around them see a female face or two. Probably not so much for trans faces, though.
In other words, making our armed forces optimally effective is not just a matter of lethality, but of whether people around them accept them, or whether they try to kill them. We learned that pretty well in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
October 1st, 2025 at 9:33 am
I suspect SECWAR is conducting 1 on 1 interviews with some of the flag officers, persuading them to retire while it still looks good.
If you’re having trouble logging in to the comment section of SitD/Wordpress
try deleting the (4 to 10) browser cookies associated with SitD, refresh the page and try again. It works consistently for me.
October 1st, 2025 at 3:22 pm
Hegseth must be doing something right, because recruiting for all branches have jumped significantly, with the Army hitting their annual goals two months ago. I do believe that Trump getting back into office made many young people feel like they would be supported. The sons of two of my friend’s, actually reenlisted right after he was sworn in. They were planning to get out if Kameltoe won.
October 2nd, 2025 at 9:40 am
Thanks Mac! I always forget about deleting cookies.
Rupar: That’s a feature, not a bug, moron. I swear that idiot really needs to move to Sweden and forget about the USA. He’d be so much happier there.