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PaperclipPerfector  19d ago (text post)   35137 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025

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Anything I'd see from the media I would completely disregard.

Hegseth (while young) is a warfighter's warfighter. I think a large part of the military will be very very happy to have his priorities entrenched in the SecDef.

I would suspect a large part of the military signed up because of particular personality traits and some of those are reflected in Hegseth.

That said, he has his flaws and he might flame out. We'll see.

Hegseth is a third temple kook, that's not good.

(I meant to do a bigger post about this but never got around to it) Sure, Hegseth is a "warfighter". He's still not qualified, though. I'm not talking about cheating on his wife, and cheating on his second wife, both of which blatantly violate the UCMJ, and although that's already very selectively enforced, this really can't help. Nor am I talking about his reported alcoholism (also a UCMJ issue), which many sources had claimed led to him being forced out of leading a veterans organization. Nor am I talking about allegations he abused his wife, nor allegations of sexual assault (which I don't think had enough evidence to be worth considering here anyway). All of those are modifiers - things that might make you not hire someone who you'd otherwise hire. It's just, directly, his lack of experience. Any given 'warfighter' wouldn't make a good secdef, you need to manage an incredibly large bureaucracy, which is a distinct skill, and also just make good decisions. There's just no strong reason to pick him instead of many other very qualified candidates. Fox news host?

I agree with criticisms of Biden's Lloyd Austin pick - he's obviously a diversity hire. When you pick the best black person, instead of the best person, you'll get a worse person, and in critical leadership positions that matters! It'd matter even without HBD, with which the best black person will usually be significantly worse than the best person. But, if you believe that, that it's very important to pick the best person, how do you get Hegseth? Austin was at least qualified:

Shortly after brigade command, he served as Chief, Joint Operations Division, J-3, on the Joint Staff at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. His next assignment, in 2001, was as Assistant Division Commander for Maneuver (ADC-M), 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized), Fort Stewart, Georgia. As the ADC-M, he helped lead the division's invasion of Iraq in March 2003.[9] Leading the fight from the front, Austin traveled the 500 miles from Kuwait to Baghdad in his command and control vehicle. The division reached Baghdad and secured the city.[14][15] Austin was awarded a Silver Star, the nation's third highest award for valor, for his actions as commander during the invasion.

On December 8, 2006, Austin was promoted to lieutenant general and assumed command of XVIII Airborne Corps, Fort Bragg, North Carolina.[17] In February 2008, Austin became the second highest ranking commander in Iraq, taking command of the Multi-National Corps – Iraq (MNC-I). As commander of MNC-I, he directed the operations of approximately 152,000 joint and coalition forces across all sectors of Iraq.[18] He was the first African American general officer to lead a corps-sized element in combat.[15] Austin assumed the mission during the period when the Surge forces were drawing down. He expertly oversaw the responsible transition of forces out of the country while ensuring that progress continued on the ground.

Austin became the commander of CENTCOM on March 22, 2013, after being nominated by President Obama in late 2012.[37][38][39] Austin was preceded as CENTCOM commander by General James Mattis, whom Austin would later succeed as secretary of defense. In his capacity as CENTCOM Commander, General Austin oversaw all U.S. troops deployed and major U.S. military operations around the area of Middle-East and Central and South Asia. The area consisted of 20 countries including Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Egypt and Lebanon.[40]

Whereas Hegseth 'served first as an infantry platoon leader and later as civil-military operations officer' and then 'returned to active duty in 2012 as a captain' in Afghanistan. And then went into politics, and then became a Fox News host. All that should be respected, but qualify you to be secdef?

You cited credentials. Are they worth a damn or just a signal that for example Lloyd played politics really well? I think the primary goal with Hegseth was to pick someone far away from the blob. Necessarily that meant picking someone who doesn’t have the credentials but hopefully has innate competency.

Are they worth a damn or just a signal that for example Lloyd played politics really well?

I think there's still a significant meritocratic element left in the military! And that's not just credentials, those are roles he occupied where he did command a lot of people.

Necessarily that meant picking someone who doesn’t have the credentials but hopefully has innate competency.

I wouldn't have complained if they'd picked, like, a very successful founder/CEO to modernize the military. That'd be great, actually. Instead they picked a Fox News host. "hopefully has innate competency" ... isn't very convincing tbh

I guess the best defense of Hegseth is that he seems reasonable smart with a strong vision. Question is does he have managerial chops.

Any given 'warfighter' wouldn't make a good secdef, you need to manage an incredibly large bureaucracy, which is a distinct skill, and also just make good decisions

He can always ask Elon for help.

Elon's solution to an incredibly large bureaucracy is to fire most of it, then deal with the credibly large bureaucracy which remains.

And what is your opinion on the pentagon and dod needing this kind of shakeup?

Imo there's clearly a lot wrong there. But this is one of the places where 'fire 80% of the people' isn't a good idea. It's often +EV, but a 20% chance of destroying twitter is fineE, it's just one website, while being ready for a conflict three months from now is critical. What you'd basically want to do IMO is let most of the bloated but currently working stuff continue to exist while you build something better.

while being ready for a conflict three months from now is critical.

Is the us ready for conflict 3 months from now? From my understanding the building and maintaining of carriers are way behind schedule, the recruiting targets are not met, the war in Ukraine showed some supply chain issues - like the ability of US to manufacture a specific artillery piece barrels at 30 per month, and Ukraine burning trough 400 ...

IMO the US military is entering a dangerous period where it's actually less ready in the near future than it is now. 80s cold war stuff is getting used up in Ukraine faster than anything new can be produced, veterans from the Iraq war are retiring while they're struggling with new recruitment, and more ships are being decomissioned than commissioned. That's probably not something that any SecDef can actually fix in the near future.

Who wouldn't want to cut into the poster child of waste and corruption since Eisenhower that routinely happens to "lose" billions of dollars in mazes of programs and initiatives?

I kinda want to ask the opposite question, what sane person thinks that US military spending is in any way reasonable? Not anybody that's ever interacted with the US military, that's for sure.

While the military is often brought up as an implicit gotcha (the message being "See, Republicans, it's not programs we like that are busting the budget, it's your precious toy soldiers"), I'm with @zeke5123a here -- they certainly need that sort of shakeup.

Yes Chad

What does "qualified" in your eyes even look like?

I gave an example with Austin, I think that's a pretty central example of qualified. The bios of other recent secdefs from wikipedia are also good examples.

What you're describing is credentialism not qualification and the fact that characters like Austin were able to consistently fail upwards is what many would argue to be the root problem.

Taking "qualified" literally: proven ability (experience) to function as a HQ officer, at the very least.

In civilian terms, he's a foreman turned TV host who's been appointed to be a CEO of a multinational corp.

I can't disagree with you. He has the flaws you've outlined. There should have been someone better that would be willing to potentially burn their reputation in order to strip DEI from the Dept of Defense and make other needed reforms.

There should have been someone better that would be willing to potentially burn their reputation in order to strip DEI from the Dept of Defense and make other needed reforms.

There are a lot of conservatives in the military, I find it very unlikely there weren't people willing to do that.

SecDef can't be recruited directly from the uniformed military - that whole pesky "civilian control of the military" thing.

The traditional Republican way was to appoint someone with business experience including running something with a large number of non-elite grunt-level staff.

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