Late last month, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth told an unprecedented gathering of generals, admirals, commanders, and senior NCOs that from this moment on, the only mission of the newly named Department of War is this: “warfighting, preparing for war, and preparing to win, [and being] unrelenting and uncompromising in that pursuit.”
It was a message that needed to be heard by the 800 or so men and women gathered at Marine Corps Base Quantico, because for the past four years, under the Biden administration, America’s military leaders had prioritized DEI and wokeness over unit cohesion and combat readiness.
Clearly, that is about to change if Hegseth’s words are rendered into reality.
“Our number one job…is to be strong so that we can prevent war in the first place,” Hegseth said. “The President talks about it all the time. It’s called ‘peace through strength,’ and as history teaches us, the only people who actually deserve peace are those who are willing to wage war to defend it. That’s why pacifism is so naïve and dangerous. It overlooks human nature and disregards human history.
“Another way to put it is ‘peace through strength,’ brought to you by the warrior ethos.” Hegseth continued.” And we are restoring both. As President Trump has said, and he’s right, we have the strongest, most potent, most lethal, and most prepared military on the planet. That is true, full stop. Nobody can touch us. It’s not even close. This is mainly due to the historic investments he made during his first term, and which will continue in this term. But it’s also true because of the leaders in this room and the incredible troops that you all lead.”
As someone who spent almost four years on active duty with the U.S. Army Security Agency in the mid-1960s, Hegseth’s comments were music to my mellowed ears.
For the past four years, I have been appalled by how diversity, rather than unity, has been the defining catchphrase in our military.
“Diversity is our strength,” was the exhortation so often heard from some military leaders. But as Hegseth told his audience: “Of course, we know our unity is our strength.”
The military is not a warm and fuzzy reflection of a self-indulgent and laid-back society. It is different. For it to be effective and lethal, it must be unified into a cohesive warfighting force. The military is not the appropriate venue for conducting experiments in societal engineering.
At least, that’s the way it was presented to me when I was enduring eight weeks of demanding basic training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, under the stringent tutelage of Drill Sergeant Monroe Harrington. Sgt. First Class Harrington was a leathery and exacting Korean War veteran who often yelled: “Suffer here, so you won’t get your asses shot off over there.”
He was clearly referring to Vietnam. And what he said made sense. The harsher and more challenging things were in basic training, and the more you learned and retained, the better your chances were at surviving in battle.
“You are here to learn to do two things,” Sgt. Harrington barked. “Number one: kill the enemy. Number two: survive.”
Kill the enemy came to mind a few years ago when I listened to Hillary Clinton tell a Georgetown University audience that Americans needed to “empathize with and respect our enemies.”
Sgt. Harrington would have been appalled and disgusted. His favorite Army officer was none other than Gen. George S. Patton.
“I never served under him, but I would have followed that man into hell,” Harrington told us once during an all-night bivouac. “He was an officer who knew what to do with his enemies.”
And, he might have added, it wasn’t to respect or empathize with them.
Indeed. After Clinton’s speech, I could almost hear Gen. Patton bellowing epithets from the grave. Patton was notorious for his epithets.
Patton, the no-nonsense American general known as “blood and guts” who helped push the Germans out of North Africa and Sicily during World War II and who drove the U.S. Third Army deep into the heart of Germany, said this about America’s enemies:
“May God have mercy on my enemies because I won’t.”
That’s poles apart from what Clinton had to say about America’s enemies and how we should deal with them:
“This is what we call smart power…showing respect, even for one’s enemies, trying to understand and, insofar as psychologically possible, empathize with their perspective and point of view,” she said.
I can imagine what Patton would say about “smart power” and the preposterous notion that we should have respect for and empathize with our enemy’s point of view.
He no doubt would have used one of his favorite words: Bullshit!
I wonder how Hillary’s statement might have resonated if she had made it during World War II after the world learned what the Nazi’s did in death camps like Auschwitz and what the Japanese did in places like Nanking, China?
Oh, but the war against radical Islamic terrorists like Hamas, Hezbollah, and state sponsors of terrorism like Iran is different, some might argue. Really? You mean, slaughtering innocent aid workers and educators, murdering Christians and Jews, and even butchering Muslims who don’t adhere to radical Islam is not the same?
Murder is murder, no matter who commits it, how it’s committed, or in what decade it is committed. Empathy and respect be damned.
What if President Roosevelt had gone to Congress seeking a declaration of war following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and said:
“We must have empathy for the Japanese who did this to us,” instead of what he actually said, which was: “Yesterday, Dec. 7, 1941 – a date which will live in infamy – the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”
Enemies are enemies. Empathizing and respecting their perspective is a ludicrous thing to say. It is especially preposterous for anybody who wants to occupy the White House and become the Commander-in-Chief of the military.
Thankfully, the current occupant is a far cry from the feckless and ineffective leader he replaced.
Patton understood that the way to win a war was to fight it, not chatter about it while giving a speech. The last thing he would have counseled is for American leaders to engage in fearful hand-wringing and hope those who want to destroy us will somehow come to love us if only we are benign, compassionate, and work harder to understand their perspective.
In a 1944 speech to the Third Army, Patton told his men this:
“We want this war over with. The quickest way to get it over with is to go get the bastards who started it. The quicker they are whipped, the quicker we can go home.”
I suspect Hegseth had Patton in mind when he was talking to that room full of generals, admirals, and senior NCOs.
In fact, I know Patton was on Hegseth’s mind, along with other tough-as-nails generals, when he spoke of the warfighting ethos he intended to instill in America’s military.
“The new compass heading is clear: Out with the Chiarellis, the McKenzies, and the Milleys, and in with the Stockdales, the Schwarzkopfs, and the Pattons,” Hegseth said. “More leadership changes will be made, of that I’m certain. Not because we want to, but because we must. Once again, this is a matter of life and death. The sooner we have the right people, the sooner we can advance the right policies. Personnel is policy.
“To that point,” Hegseth continued, “basic training is being restored to what it should be: scary, tough, and disciplined. We’re empowering drill sergeants to instill healthy fear in recruits, ensuring that future warfighters are forged. Yes, they can shark attack, they can toss bunks, they can swear, and yes, they can put their hands on recruits. This does not mean they can be reckless or violate the law, but they can use tried and true methods to motivate recruits, to make them the warriors they need to be. Back to basics, at basic training as well.”
Somewhere, wherever he may be, Sgt. Harrington is applauding and yelling “Hooah!”
Sgt. Harrington was great at instilling a healthy fear in recruits. He sure scared the hell out of me. Once, during hand grenade training, I was getting ready to throw a grenade to a target area some 40 feet away.
As I cocked my arm to toss the grenade, Sgt. Harrington yelled, “If you drop that grenade, I will kick your ass!” I wasn’t sure what would have been worse: dropping the grenade and blowing us both up, or getting my ass kicked by Sgt. Harrington.
But I digress.
The point of what Secretary of War Hegseth was saying to the brass sitting before him is this: When you are attacked, no matter what your political affiliation may be or on which side of the political aisle you may sit, you basically have two options: you either capitulate because you are afraid to fight, or you respond with “extreme prejudice,” as we used to say in the Army.
Regrettably, the last administration appears to have resurrected a third option — one that was proven woefully ineffective in 1938. It was called appeasement. And Adolph Hitler laughed all the way to the Eagle’s Nest.
After Hillary Clinton’s ill-advised and placatory remarks, you could almost hear the terrorists hooting and whooping in their desert bunkers and strongholds.
I wonder how Patton might have dealt with the brutal Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthis terrorists who have slaughtered their way through the Middle East.
I can’t imagine him telling the men of the Third Army to respect and empathize with that vicious rabble; to try to understand why they hate America or why they are slaughtering Jews and torturing Israeli and Western hostages.
Here’s a little-known fact. After Patton read the Koran and observed North African Muslims during WW II, we have an idea what he thought of Islam. In his book, War as I Knew it, published posthumously in 1947, he wrote:
“What if the Arabs had been Christians? To me, it seems certain that the fatalistic teachings of Mohammed and the utter degradation of women are the outstanding causes for the arrested development of the Arab. He is exactly as he was around the year 700, while we have kept on developing.”
Not a particularly politically correct statement, given today’s hyper-sensitive environment. Nor is it a sentiment that would make the apologists for Islamic radicals and terrorists happy.
And I am sure Islamic suicide bombers would never have embraced one of Patton’s most famous statements:
“No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other dumb bastard die for his country.”
Amen, General. And “Hooah!”
–30–
If you enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing to ForeignCorrespondent and tell your friends to subscribe. “It’s free—what a deal!” If you’ve received this from a friend and would like to be added to our distribution list for future blog posts, simply enter your email in the notifications box to sign up:
https://ronaldyatesbooks.com/category/foreign-correspondent.
You can also find my commentaries on Substack at https://ronyates.substack.com/ and the American Free News Network at https://afnn.us.
Please feel free to comment: We genuinely love hearing from you!
