Posted on 11/26/2024 9:13:57 AM PST by timza
... rather than drag his Commander in Chief through what’s guaranteed to be a confirmation mess.
Should Hegseth not proceed as his potential CinC intends, or should he second-guess his CinC? (see Gen Milley)
Imo, one of Trump's initial selection filters is the question, "What is there that leads me to think this candidate is not a potential backstabber?"
He looks good and likes women. Isn’t that enough? Let’s move on.
Yes it is. And his chief qualification is that neither he, nor Trump, is a swamp creature who answers to the likes of you.
“Given his problems with women, how can our allies and adversaries trust anything he says?”
___________________________________
You are kidding, right??
Putin has a mistress. Macon (sp?) dated his teacher.
XI has mistresses.
And every dang democrat has had or does have a mistress or boy-toy on the side.
That’s a red herring at this point.
Don’t get me started on the RINOs...
Who are you talking about? Billy, Bobby, Teddy or Johnny?
Fortunately, Puritans don't run our military.
I’d say he matches up well to someone like Rumsfeld who was SecDef twice
“...Born in Illinois, Rumsfeld attended Princeton University, graduating in 1954 with a degree in political science. After serving in the Navy for three years, he mounted a campaign for Congress in Illinois’s 13th Congressional District, winning in 1962 at the age of 30.
Rumsfeld accepted an appointment by President Richard Nixon to head the Office of Economic Opportunity in 1969; appointed counsellor by Nixon and entitled to Cabinet-level status, he also headed up the Economic Stabilization Program before being appointed ambassador to NATO.
Called back to Washington in August 1974, Rumsfeld was appointed chief of staff by President Ford. Rumsfeld recruited a young one-time staffer of his, Dick Cheney, to succeed him when Ford nominated him to be secretary of defense in 1975.”
And for what it’s worth, you could level the same accusation at Trump.......
Big position, Whitaker will do well there and provide him credentials for future growth
He looks like General Idi Amin.
Don’t put words in my mouth, please. You’re implying that I’m a critic of Trump. I voted for the man three times. I’m a critic of any politician when I think he’s made a mistake that could hurt the country. That includes Trump.
Hegseth has never managed a huge, complex organization like DOD. Not even close. Any inspirational leadership he could have brought to the office is tainted by his personal behavior. I wouldn’t want him as a brother in law, much less as being in charge of the most powerful military force in history.
The fact is that Trump’s biggest blind spot has been in choosing his supporting team. Look at his first administration, beginning with Jeff Sessions, an utter disaster whose ineptitude ultimately led to two impeachments. Then Bill Barr. I think there were only two cabinet members who served the full four years. How many Chiefs of Staff did he burn through? Trump said he was blindsided by the revelations of Hegseth’s personal problems. Is that a good start, not disclosing potentially damaging information to your future boss, letting him hear it from third parties? Trump should have dumped him right then. You can’t have secrets from the boss in such a critical position.
Hegseth can’t possibly be the best of all possibilities for SecDef. I want Trump to succeed. If Hegseth is confirmed I believe he won’t be able to deliver the support that Trump needs. He’s another Matt Gaetz.
I genuinely appreciate your service, and I expect most of what I say will not be a surprise to you.
Hegseth, if confirmed, is not going to be running the details of the Pentagon. He is going to have subordinates who do that, and bring him information on which to base his decisions.
He is a combat veteran, I feel confident he has significant skill in leadership. He knows what the mission is (he will get that from Trump directly, who will no doubt let him do his job the way he sees fit.). He also, as a combat veteran, possesses the skill to size people up and measure them. It is a known and valuable characteristic of people who are classified as combat leaders, “door-kickers” who can size up a group of people at a glance and have the lay of the land.
You were a Major, so I expect you know all this.
One thing to keep in mind-you do know that there was a significant rift between decorated Generals such as Milley, Mattis, and Kelley and Trump? Did you ever wonder why there was a rift?
One of the major causes was that when Trump wanted to find out the situation on the ground in Afghanistan, he didn’t bring in the Flag Officers who all think they are the first ones who should be consulted. He brought in a dozen or so enlisted men who had served in combat in Afghanistan to find out what they thought about the situation.
And Trump specifically ordered that no officers should be present, so he could get honest opinions on what the enlisted personnel thought of the situation.
It is said that Kelly was irate at this, typical from a gasbag general. He thought everything should filter through him, providing the President with information likely supplied by Perfumed Princes concerned with their next star, all fed information by a platoon of ass-kissing officers.
Conservatives who love this country are far beyond about caring how high or low on the totem pole a man is, and we REALLY don’t give a flying crap about who he spent time in bed with. We have a country that needs saving, and we want someone who is not going to be turned into a pushover for other people’s agendas as soon as he sets foot in Washington DC. He doesn’t come across as that kind of person.
What is not necessary is the handle on the details of a budget, the administrative lag of an extended bureaucracy, how many women or minorities are promoted to flag rank.
He doesn’t need to know how to manage the budget. He will find loyal and knowledgable people to do that for him. He isn’t one of those jackasses who run the show but need to know every detail so they can micromanage everything and screw it up. He will find competent people he trusts, and he will depend on them to do their jobs, the same way he did in combat. We don’t need someone who can manage a budget. There are tens of thousands of people who can do that.
What they need is someone to give them direction and let them do their jobs. He will do that.
He is someone who understands the mission is to put ordinance on target. Everything else is just fluff. If we have to depend on our military (and we no doubt will have to) we need someone like him to root out the rot.
We need someone who will put an instant stop to the mandatory DEI training going on. Every second spent on that steaming pile of dog-squeeze is a second spent not keeping equipment up to date so airplanes can fly, training watch standers to be competent on the bridge of a naval vessel at sea, and training soldiers in combat to put ordinance on target.
That is what we need, and we need it right now. Not today. Not tomorrow. We need it YESTERDAY.
You should already know this but to jog your memory Chris Miller was acting Secretary of Defense near the end of Trumps term. He did a good job.
Another name that springs to mind is Ezra Cohen Watnik who previously served as Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. He’s another Trump loyalist.
We should be beyond caring. As was the case with General Patton, a flawed man if there ever was one, with our country (and military) in its current extremity, we need someone who will aggressively go toe-to-toe with our enemies in and out of government and this country.
Hegseth is that man. He won’t be bought. And he gives not a crap about “the way things have been traditionally done”.
That he may have slept with some woman, or in Patton’s case, slapped a soldier, is less important than his role as an agent of change in a military that is sorely in need of one.
It may be too late to save our country. But if we are going to save it, we need people like him.
Both US Grant and WT Sherman resigned their commissions as Army Captains and returned to civilian life.
They both seemed to do pretty well without the normal course of career progression and military schooling when placed in positions of much higher responsibility.
Re: 13 - Hard to believe, but I agree with you!
Well, you know what they about - broken clock and I are right a couple times a day!
Grant was pretty amazing. I read his memoir a few years back, and there was a lot about that man I did not know.
And he was an excellent writer who wrote with clarity and humor, where appropriate!
I particularly enjoyed his story about his first experience with buying and selling horses as a young boy (perhaps 12 or 13 years old, IIRC) for his father, as well as his description of his hatred of handling mules, which he disliked intensely!
Do you think even a quarter of the senior DoD leadership over the last four years could answer these questions.
Good heavens, what a thread full of nail biting.
If you want to know who Pete is, read his latest book, The War on Warriors. It’s written as if he knew he would be nominated, and he offers a set of solutions that will clean up the Pentagon for generations. He excoriates, Austin, Milley, and the current head of the Joint Chiefs, Brown.
What do Milley, Austin, and Brown have in their resumes to recommend them over Pete, who is a straight shooter? If a record of rising through the ranks by kissing politician’s butts is your criterion, you’d choose them over Pete. He’s been messed over by the Pentagon, and if he gets the job his command of DoD will be personal, ruthless, and sweeping.
As to personal life. Kavanaugh was practically an alter boy, and they made him out to be a rapist. I say get Pete through just as Kavanaugh made it to the SCOTUS.
Then get out of the way.
Read the book. Pete is one of us. Not a RINO. Not a politician.
Whatever you do, do NOT join the press and RINOS in attacking him.
The issue of answering those questions? Every single graduate of a company grade officer course could probably answer the questions. Also every graduate of the Command and General Staff College. That wouldn’t qualify them to be a badass SecDef.
Pete could either answer those questions. And if not, he’d take a morning off and learn the answers. That wouldn’t qualify him to be SecDef, though.
The principles he espouses in The War on Warriors, if he lived them as SecDef, DO qualify him for the job.
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