As Pete Hegseth Honors Abbey Gate Heroes, NYT Launches Bizarre Hit Piece Targeting Him
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As a substantial slice of America’s electorate passed the fifth anniversary of the Abbey Gate suicide bombing wondering when justice would finally arrive for the people whose incompetence and dereliction of duty made that debacle possible, the New York Times had bigger fish to fry. According to that paper the real issue was not the deeply embedded, bone-deep slovenliness of our corps of flag officers/general officers which was focused on mismatched genitalia and filling in the correct boxes for promotions rather than warfighting. No, the real problem is Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.
As Pete Hegseth was presenting three U.S. Marines with long overdue awards for heroism on August 26, 2021, awards that had been suppressed on the orders of the Biden administration, presumably because recognizing heroism on that day would point a condemning finger of guilt at Lloyd Austin and his inner circle, (see ‘Had to Be Ordered to Stand Down’: DoW Honors ‘Valor’ of Marines Who Defended Abbey Gate – RedState and Sean Parnell Honors Service Members Killed on Abbey Gate Anniversary, Makes Shocking Revelation – RedState), the New York Times declared Hegseth had left the U.S. military “rudderless.”
Hegseth removing FOGOs who were not up to the task or who had a reputation for “wokeness” has rubbed the professional media class the wrong way. I previously posted on this reaction (see The Reaction to GEN Donahue’s Firing Indicates Hegseth’s Action Was Correct and Timely – RedState) and noted, “Holding a senior rank is not a sinecure. It isn’t a personal bauble. It is a trust, and part of that trust is loyalty to the President and the Secretary of War, as well as fealty to the Constitution. You can’t be faithful to the Constitution while surreptitiously fighting the policies of the commander-in-chief.”
The most notable thing about the NYT piece is that in the political bubble occupied by the writers, nothing happens if there isn’t a politically correct 4-star pushing the buttons.
https://x.com/peterbakernyt/status/2092652265098108930
One measure of the vacuum at the top of the Army is the number of four-star generals serving in its ranks. As recently as January 2025, when Mr. Hegseth took office, there were 10 four-star generals on active duty. The service currently has five, the fewest in decades.
Some of those positions are commands focused on regions of the world, like the Middle East or Asia, and are being filled by senior officers from other services. Some have been eliminated.
Others, like the job overseeing the Army’s Transformation and Training Command, have been empty for months. Last summer, Mr. Hegseth selected Gen. David M. Hodne to lead the command and then fired him eight months later without explanation.
The command is responsible for training and equipping the Army’s ground units, including its Patriot antimissile crews. The Patriots are the main defense against Iranian ballistic missiles fired at U.S. bases in the Middle East.
I have a news flash for the NYT. If we are at the point where we need 4-star clout to train soldiers to use Patriot missiles, then we are beyond the point of no return.
More to the point, the 8.3 million men who served in the U.S. Army during World War II, about 6 million Army and 2.3 million Army Air Corps, rated a total of 17 officers at the 4- or 5-star rank. It is hard to believe the approximately 454,000 active duty soldiers in today’s Army need ten 4-stars pushing them around.
Hegseth seems motivated by the famous quote from French war correspondent and novelist Jean Lartéguy:
“I’d like France to have two armies: one for display, with lovely guns, tanks, little soldiers, fanfares, staffs, distinguished and doddering generals, and dear little regimental officers who would be deeply concerned over their general’s bowel movements or their colonel’s piles: an army that would be shown for a modest fee on every fairground in the country.
“The other would be the real one, composed entirely of young enthusiasts in camouflage battledress, who would not be put on display from whom possible efforts would be demanded and to whom all sorts of tricks would be taught. That’s the army in which I should like to fight.”
Under Biden we were well on our way to achieving a military that was the punchline to a joke. Hegseth is trying to jerk it into reality. If that means taking a page from General George C. Marshall’s “plucking board” in the pre-World War II Army then that has to happen. In the case of Marshall, he knew we were headed for war and he knew that the corps of senior officers, promoted entirely based upon seniority, was not up to the task. In his first six months as Army Chief of Staff he forced the retirement of nearly 200 officers deemed to be not up to the task of leading troops in combat.
Losing a handful of generals and general officer billets has not left the Army rudderless. Rather, to extend the naval metaphor, the culling of the herd has removed the “sea anchor” that was hindering the Army’s progress from a DEI consumed organization into a fighting force feared by our enemies.
There is a footnote to this story that we should take heed of.
Even though the Army hasn’t been hit a lot harder than other services by Hegseth’s cuts, this article is a series of gripes about Army cuts. I don’t think it is a coincidence that this hit piece appeared about the time the rumored departure of Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, who allegedly never meshed with Secretary Hegseth in style or substance.
This is not an accusation that Driscoll is behind the story, but from the tenor of the story and the complaints voiced it is definitely sourced by someone in Driscoll’s office.
The bottom line is that general officers serve at the pleasure of the President, and, to a great extent, that “pleasure” is contingent on how well they support their service secretary and the Secretary of War. Hegseth can’t make the changes that need to be made if he must work with and through a cadre of FOGOs who are beholden to the previous system and loyal to the last administration. There is no evidence that any of the services have suffered because a few generals or admirals have been defenstrated.
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