By Col. Kurt Schlichter, USA ret | Town Hall
While the nomination of Pete Hegseth stunned me at first, upon further reflection its genius became clear. Donald Trump isn’t bringing Pete Hegseth, a decorated Infantry major and longtime Fox host, into the Pentagon to don the green eye shades and closely manage every element of the military behemoth like a reborn Robert McNamara.
Trump hired Hegseth to channel George Patton and apply a jump boot to the buttocks of our deadweight military along with an injection of combat arms leadership and attitude.
The combat arms are different than the other branches of the Army. In the combat arms – particularly Infantry, Armor/Cavalry, and Special Forces – extremely aggressive and uncompromising leadership is the standard.
After all, these are the folks who close with the enemy and kill them.
There’s talk about how Pete Hegseth will need to win over the DoD bureaucracy, but that’s not what combat arms officers like Hegseth do. He’s not going to be about winning over bureaucrats and flag officers. Commanders command. When the Army gives you command of a unit, you sign a memorandum stating that you formally “assume” command. When you put your John Hancock on the paper, you’ve got the job, but you’re not the commander yet. You are not the commander until you take command.
The combat arms is a land of wolves, people. It’s all predators. And you better bring a whip and a chair because they will eat you alive. Of course, the Pentagon is a land of wolves too, but these are fat, toothless wolves more concerned with their petty prerogatives and pending pensions than with accomplishing the mission.
In the combat arms, if you show weakness, if you show hesitation or doubt, your men are going to look at you, shake their heads, and you’re going to fail.
When you take command, you take it. No one’s going to give it to you, and if you can’t keep it, your men are going take it away from you. It’s nothing personal. You’re just not good enough. You’re soft and you’re weak and you’re going to get them killed.
As an infantry officer, Pete Hegseth understands that instinctively. And that’s the attitude he needs to fix the Pentagon’s biggest problem, which isn’t procurement, the lack of coherent strategy, or even DEI. It’s the collapse of the warrior culture, a culture that must be dedicated to only one thing – stacking the bodies of America’s enemies.
We need to make the military lethal again.
Now, they are going to erect obstacles and set traps for him, but as a combat arms officer, he understands how to defeat them through fire and maneuver. The first step is to establish that he’s the boss. Somebody’s going to get up in his face. Maybe it’s on purpose, to test his resolve by telling him, “Well, sir, we don’t do it that way,” or “You can’t do that,” or “It can’t be done,” and then they wait to see how he reacts. Or maybe they’re just dumb. There’s always one guy in every command group like that, one problem child who, through malice or incompetence, won’t get with the program.
Let me tell you the story of Captain Teddy, not his real name. Our battalion commander was Bill Wenger, the best battalion commander I’ve ever seen and a contributor here at Townhall. We were doing a battle command exercise, and the command group – all the infantry company commanders – gathered to back–brief then-Lieutenant Colonel Wenger on how we would execute his plan to defend against the notional enemy.
Captain Andy said, “Sir, my company is going to defend here, here, and here in this way.” Captain Russ said, “Sir, my company is going to defend here, here, and here in this way.” Captain Kurt Schlichter said, “Sir, my company is going to defend here, here, and here in this way.” And Captain Teddy said, “Sir, my company is going to attack…”
Yeah, that went poorly.
There’s always that one guy. Note that Captains Andy, Russ, and Kurt all became colonels. And Captain Teddy? He later received the most scathing officer evaluation report notation I’ve ever seen: “During the Los Angeles riots mobilization, Captain Teddy’s infantry company performed admirably under the able leadership of his executive officer.”
But Captain Teddy served a purpose. He was the cautionary example. Hegseth has got to make some examples. You have to be able to slit throats to survive as a combat arms officer.
And Pete Hegseth has that skill set, a skill set he’s going to need in the Pentagon. They’re going to come at him and tell him what he wants can’t be done. They’re going to mislead him, lie to him, and scam him. He’s got to make examples fast.
Luckily, there’s always one guy in every command group who will step forward and volunteer to be the human sacrifice. Whether he’s a scheming, Machiavellian Courtenay Massingale or a Captain Teddy who loses his left boot, there’s going to be someone early on who fails to accomplish Pete Hegseth’s intent. Secretary of Defense Hegseth needs to plant this guy’s head on a pike in the Pentagon parking lot.
Secretary Hegseth needs to embrace the healing power of relief for cause. He needs to relieve people, not just let them retire when they screw up. You get to retire at the last rank where you performed successfully. You send a few four–stars packing back to Fort Living Room as three–, two– or even one– stars, and you’ll start seeing the culture change but quick.
Pete Hegseth doesn’t need to be grinding over the details of the DoD. That’s one of their plays – bury him so deep in managerial crap that he can’t get his head above water and actually change things. He needs to delegate the details. Donald Trump is going to appoint top-flight assistants to help, and he’s going to go out and hire some more.
What Hegseth needs to do is be the leader the United States military needs by becoming the personal embodiment of the United States military.
He is straight out of central casting: good-looking, fit, well-spoken, tough, smart, and – yes – whole-heartedly supportive of Western civilization, manifesting in the Jerusalem Cross he has tattooed on his chest.
We need more extremists like him in the military – extremists in support of freedom, liberty, and the United States of America.
Every problem the military suffers from traces back to one root cause, the loss of warrior culture and the subsequent collapse of morale.
Napoleon said it best: “In war, the moral is to the physical as ten to one.”
That’s the first thing that needs to be fixed in our military, and it’s the fastest fix. How? Throw all the DEI garbage out the window. Stop embracing a loser mentality. Focus on one thing and one thing only – killing as many of our enemies as we can as quickly and brutally as possible. This is the best way to avoid wars and the best way to keep wars short if we can’t avoid them.
Pete Hegseth is being sent to the Pentagon not to manage but to lead. As a combat arms officer, he has a unique ability to do that.
Now, just because you’re a combat arms officer doesn’t always mean you’re suited for high-level leadership. Look at Lloyd Austin. He’s a clown. That photo of him walking around in a face shield and mask made him into a laughingstock.
Nobody’s inspired by him. Nobody wants to follow him over the top. And nobody misses him when he disappears for days at a time. That’s not leadership. That’s failure. And that kind of failure gets us fiascos like Afghanistan and embarrassments like having the Houthis toss missiles at us for the last year. There are dead Americans who have not been avenged. That just assures us of more dead Americans.
Pete Hegseth must come in with a crack team of loyal warriors who know what right looks like and have a commission to root out the rot. They can spread out across the military map and start fixing what’s wrong if they have his backing. And there’s a lot of wrong to fix.
And SecDef Hegseth will fix recruiting by making the military a destination for Americans who want to serve their country as warriors rather than as guinea pigs in a petri dish of San Franciscan social pathologies.
He will take care of the troops instead of abuse them. He will win back the support of vets who are now warning young people away from enlisting. And he will make the military normal again. Nobody, but nobody, joins the military for the chance to salute a man dressed as a woman and address him as “Ma’am.” They join to serve their country and kick some ass.
Pete Hegseth can do it. He can do it through uncompromising combat arms leadership that refuses to take “No” for an answer and tosses out anybody who cannot or will not perform.
The non-hackers and half-steppers are already terrified. They are already trying to stop his nomination. Once he gets confirmed, they will keep at it, but Hegseth has been shot at before, and that’s going to be good training for the Pentagon – although in war, the enemy is generally to your front, and at the Pentagon the fire is going to be coming from behind, aimed at his back.
Hegseth can do it. He can do it the way combat arms officers from company to division level do it. Take charge, assemble a solid team, and refuse to accept anything less than the standard. To be the commander, you have to command. “This is what I want; make it happen or pack up.” That’s how combat arms officers think. That’s how combat arms officers win.
Every Republican senator, and all the Democrat senators for that matter, need to vote to confirm him.
The failed military-industrial complex and its allies will try to John Tower him with personal slanders and cheesy lies. The regime media is already defaming him.
The hell with that. It’s all garbage. He’s not going to back down. He’s not going to retreat – when we were at Fort Benning, which will always be its name, Infantry officers weren’t taught to retreat.
Props to President Donald Trump for nominating combat arms officer Pete Hegseth, a leader who embodies the motto of the Army Infantry School – “Follow me!”
Follow Kurt on Twitter @KurtSchlichter. Get the newest volume in the Kelly Turnbull People’s Republic series of conservative action novels set in America after a notional national divorce, the bestselling Amazon #1 Military Thriller, Overlord! And get his new novel about terrorism in America, The Attack!
