Latest / DEEP INSIGHT / Veterans debate Hegseth's lecture to America's generals

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Veterans debate Hegseth's lecture to America's generals · DEEP INSIGHT

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: The one thought I had listening to this forty five
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: minute speech was don't we have bigger fish to fry,
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: like China, like drone warfare, like Russia on the march.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: I cannot imagine that people's beards rise to the level
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: of dragging all the military admirals and generals into Quantico
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: for a lecture. I'm not understanding this.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: Sounds like you're into the beardos.
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  Speaker 1: I don't get it.
• 0:27
  Speaker 3: I think you're right, and I think that's the problem.
• 0:29
  Speaker 3: It's it's unprecedented, it's unacceptable. It's overtly political and partisan.
• 0:35
  Speaker 3: And if you watch that speech, whether you were general
• 0:37
  Speaker 3: or just someone on TV, you'd think that our enemies
• 0:39
  Speaker 3: are fat generals, the city of Portland, Trump's political enemies,
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: and DEI. And it's a really low point for the
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  Speaker 3: division that's supposed to exist between our partisan politics and
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  Speaker 3: our military. The shining part of it, that silver lining,
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  Speaker 3: if you will, is that the generals kept their military bearing.
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  Speaker 3: They didn't applaud they were stoic, and they showed why
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  Speaker 3: they are the guardrails that are protecting our military and
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: much of our democracy from what is a very extreme
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  Speaker 3: political agenda that from Hegseth sounded kind of like a
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  Speaker 3: culture war ted talk rather than a proper, respectful address
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  Speaker 3: to our senior military leader.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: I want to play a little bit more from Hesa.
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  Speaker 1: This is where he's talking about those pesky rules of engagement.
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  Speaker 4: We are preparing every day. We have to be prepared
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  Speaker 4: for war, not for defense. We fight to win. We
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  Speaker 4: unleash overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy. We also
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  Speaker 4: don't fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the
• 1:34
  Speaker 4: hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt, and kill
• 1:38
  Speaker 4: the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and
• 1:42
  Speaker 4: overbearing rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality, and authority.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: For warfighters, Troy, I mean, is the argument here, Let's
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: go back to barbarian warfare, where there are no rules
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: of engagement. Everything goes, you know, no such thing as
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: a war crime. You can do whatever you want. Is
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  Speaker 1: that the argument?
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  Speaker 2: The warfare is fundamentally something that is very hard to
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  Speaker 2: write down in the international law, the law of war.
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  Speaker 2: I would say what we heard here today was not
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  Speaker 2: a speech for the punting class, or the journalist class,
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  Speaker 2: or even the generals and admirals in that room. I
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  Speaker 2: think it was a speech for the warrior class. And
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: he spoke about the warrior class a lot in his
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  Speaker 2: book on his show, and he's building that military. And
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  Speaker 2: by warrior class, he means the few families across this
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  Speaker 2: country and the same towns that have since we've become
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  Speaker 2: an all volunteer force, have consistently bored the brunt and
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  Speaker 2: the sacrifice, especially in the post nine to eleven era
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  Speaker 2: of that service. And I think he's speaking directly to them.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: And these are the sixty five percent of the veteran
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  Speaker 2: population that voted for the Trump Dance ticket for President Trump.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: And that's why. What is the message? What's the message
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  Speaker 1: to them? Is the mess again? I think my question
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: is the messages no con When he says the stupid
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: rules of engagement, Let's also remember that this is the
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  Speaker 1: Pete Hesith who lobbied President Trump to pardon people who
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: were convicted of war crimes. So is that what we're saying,
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  Speaker 1: We're okay with war crimes now?
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  Speaker 5: And obviously we're okay with war crimes. We support a
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  Speaker 5: country that's committing atrocities.
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  Speaker 1: Right, but I mean the United States military.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what he's saying he's saying. The rules are
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  Speaker 3: actually written down. They're called the Geneva Convention, and most
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  Speaker 3: of the modern world and Western world abides by them
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  Speaker 3: because it's a code of conduct. It's what holds us
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  Speaker 3: above the standards of our enemies. But the audience was
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  Speaker 3: not the warrior class. It wasn't the generals, it was
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: the TV cameras, it was the base, and maybe it
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  Speaker 3: was the world in some way, because they wanted to say, look,
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  Speaker 3: we have control over the most powerful military on the
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  Speaker 3: planet and there's nothing that the Democrats or the moderate
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: Republicans or anyone else can do. So it was a
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  Speaker 3: giant flex of their culture, war, of their ideology of
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  Speaker 3: the way they want to reimagine not just the military,
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: but the country. That's really what the was, and that's
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  Speaker 3: why I think it's such a low point for our military,
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  Speaker 3: because they're again being dragged into some of the most
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  Speaker 3: divisive issues of our time.
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  Speaker 2: For over two decades, we've been fighting wars to fight them,
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  Speaker 2: not to win them, and we need to build a.
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  Speaker 3: Military you and I not to win.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: We we fought to win, but the politicians and a
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  Speaker 2: lot of senior leadership did not fight to win.
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  Speaker 3: One of those A lot of those single leaders did
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  Speaker 3: not exaggerated veterans who served them, did.
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  Speaker 2: Not follow the doctrine that goes in with overwhelming force,
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  Speaker 2: it felt. But we stayed there, used for twelve years,
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  Speaker 2: and we abandoned. We had the fall of Saigone on
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  Speaker 2: live TV with people falling out of airplane.
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  Speaker 3: Right.
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  Speaker 1: Are you arguing that there was not the use of
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  Speaker 1: overwhelming force when we bombed the crap out of a rock?
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  Speaker 1: Is that really the argument?
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  Speaker 2: No, the argument is that we fought for twenty years.
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  Speaker 2: We did take out terrorist networks. We take we took
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  Speaker 2: out the network and the leader who attacked this city
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  Speaker 2: in the largest terrorist at in world history, and we
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  Speaker 2: also engaged in nation building and these were very abstract.
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  Speaker 1: Has a problem with the war? I mean, I just
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  Speaker 1: I'm not understanding why is that a problem for the
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  Speaker 1: war fighters and not the politicians who decided that the
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  Speaker 1: answer to that problem was war, A war that we
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  Speaker 1: could that didn't make sense to fight. We couldn't amend.
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  Speaker 1: Govern I was interact. That's a political problem, it seems
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  Speaker 1: like to me, not a military problem.
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  Speaker 5: When I was in governor, I was Interact five times
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  Speaker 5: Afghanistan three times. We had a chance to visit with
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  Speaker 5: lots of troops, including some special operators. And one of
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  Speaker 5: their complaints among others in terms of the rules and engagement,
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  Speaker 5: weren't always war crimes. They weren't advocating for war crimes,
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  Speaker 5: ball and fairness. They were just saying simple things like
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  Speaker 5: we can't even do particular raids at night in certain
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  Speaker 5: compounds or situations. Now that's a common sense thing. They
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  Speaker 5: like the stealthy nature of nighttime raids, but they felt
• 5:48
  Speaker 5: they were being held back in certain circumstances, not all.
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  Speaker 5: There were certainly plenty of nighttime raids, and that's just
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  Speaker 5: one example. Maybe there are some rules of engagement that
• 5:55
  Speaker 5: could be reviewed and improved upon.
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  Speaker 3: And there are some people who said, we want to
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: go into mosques. And there's this kind of twist that
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: if you hadn't been hamstrung by these restrictive rules, we
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  Speaker 3: would have won in Afghanistan, we would have won in Iraq,
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  Speaker 3: we would have won in Vietnam. That's a reframing of
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  Speaker 3: history because there were so many other factors that inhibited
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  Speaker 3: our ability to win both the war and the peace.
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  Speaker 3: And there's plenty of political blane to go around for
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  Speaker 3: leaving US there for twenty years. But the idea that
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  Speaker 3: we're not lethal enough in Portland or now in places
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: like Venezuela or Iran where there's no congressional approval, no
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  Speaker 3: congressional consultation, is a manipulation of the public understanding of
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: what our military does.