Hegseth Is a Bad Joke

Like the Republican Party whose senators will make Pete Hegseth the next U.S. Secretary of War, Hegseth is a bad joke. The Democratic minority in the horribly unrepresentative Senate is a joke you might hear at an amateur mic night.

Hegseth is a guy who has reportedly shouted “Kill all Muslims.” Nobody asked him if he had done that or if he agreed with it — not even when he claimed to have been labeled an extremist purely for having a Christian tattoo. He’s a guy who has told troops in Iraq to disobey an order and shoot on sight rather than only when threatened. No senator asked who was included in acceptable targets or why. He’s said the Geneva Conventions should be ignored. One Republican senator asked him how many pushups he could do and how many human genders there are.

Several asked if he’d be sure to spend a lot on weapons. (He would.) While Hegseth denounces government spending and has appeared in photographs wearing “Big Government Sucks” on his chest, on Tuesday he repeatedly claimed — falsely and laughably — that Congress had cut military spending during Biden’s years in the White House. Asked by Senate Armed “Services” Chairman Roger Wicker if spending less than 3% of GDP on militarism endangered the United States (Wicker seemed to falsely suggest that the United States does spend less than that) Hegseth agreed.

He agreed despite repeatedly pretending — just like each of his predecessors — that he would cut spending and make the Pentagon pass an audit (not in order to have any idea whether it is spending too much or too little, but just because it’s a thing you say on these occasions).  Nobody mentioned the latest Trump standard of 5% or bothered to consider that the more nations spend on war the more wars they get, or that — even if that were not true, even if war spending prevented wars, as myth would have it — the amount needed would have nothing to do with the size of an economy.

Despite ever increasing military spending for many years, Senator Wicker opened the proceedings on Tuesday by promising more warmongering than ever and suggesting that civilian leadership of the military was a problem to be mitigated by putting a “war fighter” in charge.

Hegseth let us know that there is no racism in the U.S. military, that every story of his public drunkenness and sexual abuse is a lie, and that — contrary to everything he’s said and written — he thinks women should have a fair share of the slaughter.

Accused of rejecting international law by Ranking Member Jack Reed, Hegseth opened by shredding the separation of church and state. Senator Kevin Cramer later told Hegseth that he had earned his support just by saying “Jesus Christ.” (To which I immediately responded by screaming “Jesus Christ!”)

Reed, to his credit, asked about Hegseth’s past support for pardoning war criminals. Hegseth, during the hearing, openly said that he wanted every last member of Hamas killed. Nobody objected in the least or asked whom he counted as members of Hamas.

The most popular line of questioning was about women and their role in the military — on which Hegseth conveniently reversed his traditional view. He claimed there was a conspiracy against him in the media. He avoided answering a lot of questions, and had refused to meet with all but one Democratic senator beforehand. Chairman Wicker refused to allow more than one round of questioning.

The new Democratic Senator from Michigan Elissa Slotkin opened by bragging about having been in the CIA in Iraq helping to destroy that country. Then she asked whether Hegseth would disobey an illegal order (obviously she herself would not), and Hegseth refused to answer. She asked if he had discussed using the military domestically. He refused to answer except to refer to using it at the Mexican border, which seemed fine to her. So she asked if he would use the military for detentions, and he refused to answer.

Hegseth frequently did promise to “return the Pentagon back to war fighting” and to establish a “warrior ethos.” He said that last bit often enough to have made some big bucks if “Warrior Ethos” were a breakfast cereal that had hired him for advertising. What does he think the Pentagon has been doing? He claimed on Tuesday that Trump had changed the rules to allow more killing in Iraq, but also claimed that Trump had waged no wars, but also claimed that because of Biden he, Hegseth, would need to bring war-fighting back to the Pentagon.

Did Hegseth cost past organizations a fortune? Did he suggest that leftists and Democrats are enemies of the state? Did he cheat on his wives? We knew all these answers going in and coming out. And why Senator Tim Kaine is so interested in Hegseth’s wives is beyond me. The hearing added little.

Senator Mazie Hirono did ask if Hegseth would refuse an order to shoot protesters in the legs (an idea Trump seems to get all the credit for despite Biden’s fondness for it), or an order to invade Greenland or Panama. Hegseth notably refused to answer any of those questions.

Fun times ahead, world!