Hegseth Is Stripping the Military of Talent, Money, and Morale

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It starts with the generals and goes straight through political waste and fraud in his ballooned-up budget and ends with a demoralized force of soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines. That will be Pete Hegseth’s legacy when he’s gone, and it will take at least a decade and probably more to repair the damage he has done to our nation’s security.

The New York Times reported last week that Hegseth “has fired or blocked the promotions of more than 80 generals and admirals.” The Times called it a “purge,” and that’s what it is. Ten percent of the military’s high-ranking leadership has been pushed out by Hegseth without cause. 

Not one general or admiral who has been fired or refused a promotion has been told why, and none were accused of dereliction of duty or any other offense that would normally cause an officer to be forcibly removed or not promoted.

Hegseth has torn up the careers of senior officers in our military for purely ideological reasons. One brigadier general who was recently removed from a promotion list for the two-star rank of major general discovered he wasn’t promoted because Hegseth wrongly believed that he had fostered a mentorship program for female paratroopers and had led an all-women airborne jump. Both programs had been promoted by the previous commander of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, not the brigadier general whom Hegseth had ordered taken off the promotion list, according to the Times. 

Hegseth apparently thought he was getting rid of a “woke” officer and denied a promotion to the wrong man, who was widely considered one of the top combat commanders in the Army.

Let me explain how wrong all this is. 

Officers spend their entire careers trying to reach the rank of general. The men and women currently serving as generals in the Army, and those who are waiting to be promoted to general — all of them — have served in combat units in Iraq and Afghanistan. They have been in the military for 20 or more years. They have moved their families all over the country and in many cases to several countries overseas, often preventing their wives or husbands from having careers because of their frequent reassignments, not to mention the fact that their children sometimes attend six or more schools during their kindergarten to 12th grade years.

Being promoted to general is a capstone to a long and often arduous career. But the brigadier general rank is kind of a general-in-name-only. There are few command opportunities for brigadier generals, and they are not afforded privileges that come with two-star rank and higher, such as aides and staff cars and personal drivers. 

Two-star and above generals are also afforded personal staff who help to arrange a general’s schedule of official duties, and they are allowed travel on official aircraft such as helicopters and military-grade private jets including Gulfstreams and Lear-type jets. They are also assigned to the best quarters on Army posts and receive other privileges such as landscaping, grass cutting, and reserved parking spaces marked by their names and ranks.

This is what Hegseth just denied to long-serving officers when he struck seven of 18 brigadier generals in the Army from the promotion list for two-star rank. 

Of the seven stricken from the list, two were women and two were Black. The Times reported this past week that “more than half” of the officers affected by Hegseth’s firings and promotion list removals have been Black or female. 

Hegseth has written two books criticizing the US military’s policies on people of color and women, saying that women shouldn’t serve in combat and Black soldiers have been promoted to meet so-called “DEI” quotas. Both attitudes are an anathema in a military force that is 40 percent female and people of color. 

Hegseth’s firings and meddling with promotions are producing a senior officer corps that is much more white and male than ever before, and that is saying something, because generals and admirals have always been largely white and male.

The effects of Hegseth’s racist and misogynist attitudes are terrible for individuals in the services, and they are just as bad for the country’s national security and its military budget. 

Officers who achieve the rank of general or admiral have attended multiple military schools and have usually been sent to civilian colleges to get master’s degrees that are associated with their specialties. Officers in the logistics areas of the service get degrees in business and accounting. Officers who are going to serve in combat units overseas get master’s degrees in international relations and in the study of specific areas such as China and the Middle East.

All this costs lots and lots of money. When Hegseth fires a general or an admiral, or when he orders that someone not be promoted to general officer rank and forces them out of the service because they have been “passed over,” as the military saying goes, all the experience and schooling they got over two decades-plus is wasted.

Here is what else happens. The officers of lower rank are watching all this happen and wondering if they are wasting their time trying to become a general, especially female and Black and Latino officers. Many of the generals and admirals who have been removed by Hegseth or had their careers ended by not being promoted are highly decorated, with medals for valor and exemplary service. What do those medals mean when you’re fired for no reason? 

Officers who have served with distinction must be wondering why they have endured so much disruption for their families, when it can all be ended by a single stroke of a pen by a disreputable person such as Hegseth. 

Why bother serving 20 or 25 years, in many cases doing jobs that put their lives in danger, if their careers can be ended because of racism or misogyny or simply because Hegseth believes wrongly that you are “woke” or not ideologically pure according to his and the Republican Party’s warped standards?

And then there is the issue of Hegseth’s incredible mismanagement of the war on Iran. He has nearly emptied US stocks of offensive and defensive missiles and caused the deaths of 18 soldiers in the Middle East on US bases that were inadequately defended because of Hegseth’s policies. He has overextended the service of sailors and airmen and soldiers who have been overseas far longer than is reasonable militarily. See: USS Abraham Lincoln. 

Who wants to sign up to serve under a president and a secretary of defense who are so utterly incompetent and corrupt that a third-rate military force such as Iran’s has run our military out of the Middle East and shut down the world’s most strategic passage for oil and other precious cargo, the Strait of Hormuz?

Hegseth is sending military morale into the sewer of his own political extremism and corruption. Several recent defense contracts have been signed with companies for development of drones and exploitation of precious metals in which Donald Trump’s sons own interests — thus Trump himself benefits, because he and his sons are inseparable under the umbrella of the Trump Organization. 

Do Hegseth and Trump think this naked self-dealing has gone unnoticed by service members who are doing dangerous jobs and earning $75,000 a year in pay and benefits? Or even general officers who earn $180,000 to $200,000 a year? 

Do Trump and Hegseth think that soldiers and sailors don’t read the news and see them palling around with defense and tech executives who earn in the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars a year? Do they think service members don’t know who contributed millions to Trump’s bogus ballroom? 

What about Hegseth starting to appear in Iowa, giving political speeches in support of Republican candidates for the midterm elections? No other secretary of defense in the history of this country has involved himself in partisan politics as Hegseth has, which has given rise to talk about him wanting to run for the presidency in 2028. 

Every Pentagon contract he approves is suspect because of his involvement in Republican politics, and every officer, noncommissioned officer, and enlisted service member knows this like they know their own names.

On top of all this, Hegseth just slashed the Pentagon’s office of Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response, in charge of preventing targeting that might wound or kill civilians and investigating incidents where that happens. The regional office at Central Command, which oversees the war on Iran, was just reduced from 10 staff members to one under Hegseth’s orders. 

Hegseth is obsessed with “lethality” and has dismissed the idea of protecting against civilian casualties as “tying the hands” of the military. The Pentagon has still not released the results of the investigation of the bombing of the girls school in Iran on the second day of the war that resulted in as many as 180 civilian casualties, nearly 100 of them schoolgirls. But Hegseth has managed to require every male service member over 30 to have his testosterone level tested.

Does Hegseth believe that soldiers and sailors and pilots want the bombs they drop and the missiles they fire to kill civilians and children rather than enemy soldiers and equipment? If he does believe this, he is even more insane than we think he is.

Hegseth and the Toddler in Chief he works for are ruining the United States military and damaging our national security to a degree that will take decades to recover from. He is creating a cadre of senior military officers who are so afraid for their careers that they cannot lead effectively. 

Trump and Hegseth are losing the war they started with Iran. If you want to know why, all you have to do is look at what they have systematically done to wound and end the careers of generals and admirals.

As a service to our readers, we curate noteworthy stories through partnerships with outside writers and thinkers. A graduate of West Point, Lucian K. Truscott IV has had a career spanning five decades as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. His columns appear in the Lucian Truscott Newsletter. This column has been adapted with the author’s permission.