Secretary of Defense Hegseth calls rare meeting of General Officers and Admirals.

[texassapper]

Originally Posted by Jacuzzme

If he is/was what his nick indicates, it’s one of the most difficult courses in the military. You gotta be a little crazy too, the avatar is not far reality.

Originally Posted by Tiny

Hmm, Combat engineer for VF-31? Not sure that makes since since VF-31 was carrier based.
It's way too early to tell how history will view Hegseth.

Originally Posted by Tiny

If memory serves me correctly, the board member posted that Sapper was the surname of one of his ancestors who came to the New World long before there was a USA. So maybe the avatar’s the thing to focus on. Serving in VF-31 would be equally impressive anyway.

Aww so nice to be remembered... but you're all wrong. You will never in a million years be able to figure out what I did in the military because honestly I don't know anyone that walked the same path the whole way... every year there are maybe 2-3 guys that spend their time on the same trail to completion. Meeting another one of me in the wild is insanely small world stuff.

btw: Sapper school is not that difficult it is actually one of more entertaining schools in that they let you play with explosives on Sams dime. Lost in the Woods is a shit post though... Hood was way better but my favorite post doesn't even exist anymore.

My ties to Tomcatters are more emotional than service connected. I could tell you, but it would just make you cry anyway.

And yes my ancestors have been here since 30 years after the founding of the Massachusetts bay colony. My 11(coulld be 10th I forget)th Great Grandfather came over as an indentured servent and served 15 years before gaining his freedom.

[Why_Yes_I_Do]

Originally Posted by texassapper

...Lost in the Woods is a shit post though... Hood was way better but my favorite post doesn't even exist anymore...

Regarding why it doesn't exist anymore.
Is that because you were good at your job?

[Jacuzzme]

Originally Posted by Tiny

If memory serves me correctly, the board member posted that Sapper was the surname of one of his ancestors who came to the New World long before there was a USA. So maybe the avatar’s the thing to focus on. Serving in VF-31 would be equally impressive anyway.

I wasn’t trying to denigrate any branch or person. I mistakenly assumed the nick and avatar indicated an army sapper, the only sapper I’ve heard of until you posted the links.

[victoryformation]

NY Times (Mon, 10/6/25, Pg. A14):
"About three-quarters of American youth do not meet the minimum requirements to serve, according to the Pentagon."
It's a sad state of affairs!
(The addiction to social media and phones ... has created an out-of-shape, shit-4-brains, functionally-illiterate generation!)

[Tiny]

Originally Posted by Jacuzzme

I wasn’t trying to denigrate any branch or person. I mistakenly assumed the nick and avatar indicated an army sapper, the only sapper I’ve heard of until you posted the links.

I didn't think you were. We were both off in our assumptions, but right in the belief that texassapper has the chops to be taken seriously in this thread. More seriously than me anyway.

[texassapper]

Originally Posted by Why_Yes_I_Do

Regarding why it doesn't exist anymore.
Is that because you were good at your job?

No... Politicians thought the land was worth more in private developers hands than in the US Governments. I'm sure pockets were lined

Originally Posted by Tiny

I didn't think you were. We were both off in our assumptions, but right in the belief that texassapper has the chops to be taken seriously in this thread. More seriously than me anyway.

Meh. I achieved nothing of note. Sous, Koch, Ponce, Steve, Donnie, and Dream were all better men than me by far... and all gone before they should have been.... and ALL FOR MUTHERFUCKING NOTHING. Every GO involved in the GWOT and Astan should be flogged and dismissed from the service.

[texassapper]

Here's one thing that makes Hegseth better than his predecessors.

Barracks Task Force

For too long troop has been living in shit infrastructure. I'd actually let my kids enlist under this administration...

[Tiny]

Thanks for getting the thread back on track texassapper, before biomed makes his evening rounds.

I don't know jack about this topic, and I'm not particularly a fan of Peggy Noonan. But her article in last week's Wall Street Journal was an entertaining read. While she blasts Hegseth, you'll probably agree with a little of this regardless of which side you're on.

Here are some excerpts,

The Embarrassing Pete Hegseth
The Pentagon needs sober, judicious leadership, not a drama queen who makes things jarring and fevered.

...When you are driven by a sense of urgency you must still try to act like a normal person—normal in your comportment, which means sober, judicious. Not like some pumped-up drama queen who makes everything more jarring and fevered, and who comes across as the living answer to the question, “What would it look like if Captain Queeg took Adderall?”

Which gets us to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. His unprecedented extravaganza this week, in which he summoned hundreds of generals and admirals from around the world to Virginia’s Quantico Marine Base to listen to him speak, shouldn’t be lost amid the government shutdown.

It was, as a former general said by phone, “just flat-out bizarre.” It was embarrassing to watch. He made everyone in the audience look smaller, which made their profession look smaller. How does that help America?

Mr. Hegseth instructed them as if from a great height. What he told them is that the woke progressive era in the U.S. military is over. He will have a reset to the “warrior ethos.” “No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses. . . . We are done with that s—.”

OK. Understood. Understood, in fact, since he was appointed. Mr. Hegseth could have reiterated all this by secure video conference, or just sent a video.

Instead he dragged commanders from their stations to be his audience. So he could pose with a giant American flag behind him like George C. Scott in “Patton,” only Scott delivered a great speech. Mr. Hegseth gave a TED Talk, a weirdly self-reverential one. He paced the stage like a strutting, gelled bantam, like an amped-up actor with rehearsed gestures and expressions and voice shifts.

“You might say we’re ending the war on warriors. I heard someone wrote a book about that.” Mr. Hegseth is author of a book called “The War on Warriors.” I guess he wants us to buy it.

There was braggadocio: “To our enemies, FAFO. If necessary, our troops can translate that for you.” He used “lethal” and “lethality” a lot, like a young Hollywood scriptwriter dreaming up some mad right-wing Army officer because he watched “Platoon” too much as a child, as perhaps Mr. Hegseth did. The frantic drama: “This is a moment of urgency, mounting urgency.” “We became the Woke Department.” “It’s completely unacceptable to see fat generals.”

The retired general later sighed on the phone and said: “I would like you to note that his hero, Norman Schwarzkopf, was fat. And George Patton wasn’t exactly a gazelle.” Sound military leadership has little to do with physical fitness and everything to do with strategic judgment.

Mr. Hegseth also seemed preoccupied with reimposing the military’s height requirement. There goes young Napoleon.

What are we doing in this dangerous world having the head of the Defense Department prance around like this and embarrass the generals he used as his backdrop? Why do his highly placed defenders in the administration think this is good for the White House, or even for Mr. Hegseth?

He is right that the U.S. military must be free of demands extraneous to its mission of keeping us and, yes, the world safer. They are the only Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines we have. We can’t jerk them around with our sudden cultural fevers, they aren’t a welfare agency, our defense structure can’t be the cultural left’s plaything. All of that got out of whack and carried away in the years leading up to and after 2020.

Here we must note we are a nation divided by algorithms. If your algorithm knows you as conservative and interested in military matters, you got a lot of videos of young soldiers and sailors acting out the past few years, and of service branches tweeting out showy political sentiments. You felt understandable alarm. If your algorithm knows you as liberal and not interested in military affairs, you haven’t seen that content, and will have been surprised by Mr. Hegseth’s reference to “dudes in dresses.” We are all getting different versions of reality every time we look at a screen, and it’s hurting us.

Mr. Hegseth is right that woke progressive policies have no place in a merit-based, competitive military, but the military follows the orders of civilian leaders. In any case it should have crossed his mind that he himself, when in service, never reached anywhere near the rank of those he was talking down to. They made military service their profession, stuck with it, rose and aren’t paid like TV hosts. All of them could leave and be better paid as board members and consultants. It wouldn’t be shocking if after Mr. Hegseth’s speech some of them moved up their retirements.

A correction to the past five or 10 years was inevitable and is legitimate. But you don’t want it to be an overcorrection; you want it done competently and with calm moral confidence....


https://www.wsj.com/opinion/the-emba..._article_pos10