Instead of a message about honorable service or sacrifice, the hundreds of American generals and admirals gathered this morning at Quantico received a blunt directive from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth: their job is simply to kill people and break things.
“War is merely the continuation of politics by other means.”
-Carl von Clausewitz’s 19th-century military treatise On War (German: Vom Kriege)
I’ve read everything available so far on the recent meetings and SecWar comments, and there is nothing, as a 23 year combat veteran, that gives me pause. This is old language revisited, specifically curated to show the stark differentiation between the pre-woke, pre-DEI military ethos and refocus back to Lethality. Anyone who has followed the decades long discussions about the proper use and capabilities of our Defense Forces, Mission Creep, World Policing, etc. will immediately understand this as a simple reset to the true and correct use of the military: Fight and Win America’s Wars! Anyone who other reading is not know the history, or to be deliberately trying to assign nefarious intentions.
“The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.”
What did we do in Somalia? In Vietnam? in Afghanistan? In Iraq? In Libya? In Syria? Did our men and women defend the values or people of America? No. They broke things (mostly other civilizations) and killed people. There hasn’t been a conflict since WWII wherein the American military was fighting for the American people and their interests. This administration is merely openly acknowledging what has been this country’s policy since WII. I know a lot of Vietnam Veterans and I don’t think any of them are under the delusion they stood guard over democracy or protected freedom or represented the best of the American ideals. My husband is a GWOT veteran and if you ask him why he fought he will tell you it was for oil and to fund the CIA, he’s not under the delusion that the blood he lost and spilled in Iraq was over a noble cause or a service of the public good.
Our public policy since WWII turned our military into pointless killers, it’s nice to see that reality acknowledged instead of glossed over with pretty euphemisms like spreading democracy.
We send our sons and daughters to kill the sons and daughters of other people mostly for the monetary gain of politicians who don’t care about anyone’s sons and daughters. We did it in Vietnam and tried convincing them they were morally right and we lost a generation of young men to drug abuse, alcoholism, and homelessness. We repeated the debacle with their sons and grandsons in GWOT and they are killing themselves at record rates and that’s when they aren’t falling into drug abuse and alcoholism. We tried telling them they were warriors and heroes, didn’t achieve much. If we want to prevent moral injury the best way to do it is to keep our men and women at home and to only let loose the dogs of war when the homeland is under direct threat.
This is absolutely terrifying. When will people wake up to the complete lack of ethics this administration possesses? And this question comes from
A truly disillusioned lifelong Republican.
“War is merely the continuation of politics by other means.”
-Carl von Clausewitz’s 19th-century military treatise On War (German: Vom Kriege)
I’ve read everything available so far on the recent meetings and SecWar comments, and there is nothing, as a 23 year combat veteran, that gives me pause. This is old language revisited, specifically curated to show the stark differentiation between the pre-woke, pre-DEI military ethos and refocus back to Lethality. Anyone who has followed the decades long discussions about the proper use and capabilities of our Defense Forces, Mission Creep, World Policing, etc. will immediately understand this as a simple reset to the true and correct use of the military: Fight and Win America’s Wars! Anyone who other reading is not know the history, or to be deliberately trying to assign nefarious intentions.
“The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.”
-General George S. Patton
What did we do in Somalia? In Vietnam? in Afghanistan? In Iraq? In Libya? In Syria? Did our men and women defend the values or people of America? No. They broke things (mostly other civilizations) and killed people. There hasn’t been a conflict since WWII wherein the American military was fighting for the American people and their interests. This administration is merely openly acknowledging what has been this country’s policy since WII. I know a lot of Vietnam Veterans and I don’t think any of them are under the delusion they stood guard over democracy or protected freedom or represented the best of the American ideals. My husband is a GWOT veteran and if you ask him why he fought he will tell you it was for oil and to fund the CIA, he’s not under the delusion that the blood he lost and spilled in Iraq was over a noble cause or a service of the public good.
Our public policy since WWII turned our military into pointless killers, it’s nice to see that reality acknowledged instead of glossed over with pretty euphemisms like spreading democracy.
We send our sons and daughters to kill the sons and daughters of other people mostly for the monetary gain of politicians who don’t care about anyone’s sons and daughters. We did it in Vietnam and tried convincing them they were morally right and we lost a generation of young men to drug abuse, alcoholism, and homelessness. We repeated the debacle with their sons and grandsons in GWOT and they are killing themselves at record rates and that’s when they aren’t falling into drug abuse and alcoholism. We tried telling them they were warriors and heroes, didn’t achieve much. If we want to prevent moral injury the best way to do it is to keep our men and women at home and to only let loose the dogs of war when the homeland is under direct threat.