Defense secretary’s speech touching on physical fitness and doctrine of lethality was seen as ‘egotistical’ and ‘dangerous
The Guardian: Naveed Shah, a veteran and activist who served as an enlisted public affairs specialist – an army journalist – uncharacteristically found himself searching for words to describe the address of the newly styled secretary of war to flag officers on Tuesday.
“A lot of the words that are coming to me aren’t fit to print,” said Shah, policy director for Common Defense, a veterans advocacy organization. “The people in that room who have served for 20, 30-plus years in uniform do not need Pete Hegseth to tell them about warrior ethos. . . .Certainly, addressing the troops could be useful or beneficial, but to call 800-plus generals and senior enlisted advisers from around the world into this room just before a government shutdown? It’s not just bad optics or strategy,” Shah said. “A bad cold could have threatened our entire chain of command.”
Amy McGrath, a retired navy fighter pilot and former Senate candidate, described Hegseth’s comments about women as disparaging. “He claimed the military needs to ‘return to the male standard’ in combat jobs (of 1990!), but here’s the truth: there has never been a separate male and female standard” she wrote on Instagram. “When women entered combat roles, one standard was set, and we’ve been meeting it ever since. You can either do the job or you can’t. Period.”
Tamara Stevens, a former navy cryptological technician, said she found Hegseth’s discussion of “lethality” more alarming than anything else, given the context that Trump provided later with comments about using deployments to American cities as a training ground.
“Basically, he’s saying that we’re no better than Hamas because people are joining because they want to break things and they want to kill people,” she said. “I mean, for anyone that’s been in the military, he’s not qualified to be secretary of defense. He’s barely qualified to be a host on Fox News.
