Hegseth’s big gathering of top military brass and my experience in the car business

Most of us who have either deadlines or quotas to meet, have been summoned by our bosses and upbraided for failing to meet them.  If I could deal with it as an 18 year old in the car business in a much more vulgar fashion, military leaders should certainly be able to deal with it now.

When I was selling cars in college, there was a Saturday morning ritual:  The mandatory 8.30 AM sales meeting.  The dealership didn’t open until nine, which offered the General Manager the opportunity to gather his troops together and berate them for a half hour before the busiest day of the week.  Most of the time, I’d peeled myself off whatever dorm or apartment room floor I was sleeping on barely an hour before, jumped in the shower, threw on a jacket, and dragged myself bleary eyed, desperate for a coffee and bracing myself for a beatdown.  Rarely, if ever, were these meetings pleasant.  The world in general was much rougher thirty years ago and the car business in New Jersey was rough even by those standards.  My father, who was also in the business and worked with me at times, used to say they should update the draft with a mandatory two years in the car business rather than the military.  The General Manager, whoever it was when I must’ve had a dozen or more over the span of my career, didn’t deliver anything resembling a pep talk, pumping us up to be as successful as we can be, stroking our egos and telling us we could do it if we tried.  This was not a positive affirmation.  There was no carrot.  There was only a big stick.  Thus, we were usually treated to an expletive filled rant, berated for the poorness of our performance to date, warned that we would be fired if we didn’t immediately do better, as in starting that afternoon, and told that excuses would not be tolerated.  I remember one Saturday morning in particular.  I was working at a Nissan dealership located between Toyota and Mazda in an auto mall on Route One in Avenel, NJ, right beside Rahway Federal Prison, almost in its ugly shadow, where the exterior scenes from Syvelster Stallone’s Lock Up were filmed, a fitting metaphor if ever there was one.  The GM was a New Jersey Italian who could’ve played Tony Soprano’s stunt double.  He was big, well over six feet with a huge frame, and gruff even in a decent suit, looming over us like a mob boss in truth.

For reasons I will never understand when it was always better to simply keep your mouth shut and nod as though the boss was imparting the sagest wisdom imaginable, one of the other salesmen tried to object at this meeting and this meeting only. The salesman in question was a soft-spoken, generally nice guy, decent enough at his job though perhaps a little shy for the role, but never one to cause problems until he insisted that the job at this particular store was harder than it should be because the Nissan Altima wasn’t as nice as a Toyota Corolla and was more expensive than a Mazda 6, two of our key competitors in the market.  In his opinion, people with the means bought the Toyota while those looking to save went with the Mazda, and it was really easy to do when they could walk between the stores looking for their Goldilocks deal.  Perhaps needless to say, this isn’t what the GM wanted to hear, far from it.  Before responding, he stared at the guy for a moment. We were seated and he was standing in one of those classic face turning red, steam about to shoot out of his ears moments combined with an underlying confusion.  After all, he’d hired this guy to sell Nissans, as in convince the customer the Altima was the best in its class, better than the Toyota and worth every penny more than the Mazda, not cede the units to the competition.  Then, he erupted, towering over us in our seats like a vulgar volcano, “That’s because you’re a weak piece of shit,” he screamed.  “The Altima is a nice fucking car.  Our customers come in driving five, ten, fifteen year old clunkers with the doors practically falling off, the paint chipping, and rusting.  To them, the Altima is a Mercedes Benz.  It  would be an honor and a privilege for them to drive out in a new one.  It’s a nice fucking car,” he repeated as everyone was shocked into silence. I think the salesperson who questioned him might have tried to hide under the table, unable and unwilling to respond for obvious reasons.

Foul language aside, the General Manager wasn’t wrong, especially when he added that he had the much more difficult position of convincing potential customers that the Ford Pinto was a nice car back when he was a salesperson himself. There’s an old expression of going to war with the army you have, not the one you want.  When you sell something, you can only go to market with the products in inventory, not some imagined product that would be better and cheaper.  I was reminded of this following Secretary of Defense, now Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth’s speech to a large assembly of generals and other military leaders, some 800 of them, on Tuesday.  On stage was a young, energetic, ridiculously fit man, talking to an audience that wasn’t so much, many were old, frumpy, if not overweight and obese, telling them so to their faces for perhaps the first time in their lives.  “You kill people and break things for a living. You are not politically correct, don’t necessarily belong always in polite society.  You are different. We fight not because we hate what’s in front of us, we fight because we love what’s behind us.  If the words I’m speaking today are making your heart sink, then you should do the honorable thing and resign.”  Considering that the United States military hasn’t officially won a war since before I was in college and had the pleasure of these Saturday morning meetings (technically, I started in the car business at fourteen and attended a handful with my father as an assistant before then), the average person probably thinks these words needed to be said.  “From this moment forward, the only mission of the newly restored Department of War is this: warfighting, preparing for war and preparing to win, unrelenting and uncompromising in that pursuit not because we want war, no one here wants war, but it’s because we love peace. We love peace for our fellow citizens. They deserve peace, and they rightfully expect us to deliver. Our number one job, of course, is to be strong so that we can prevent war in the first place… Either you protect your people and your sovereignty or you will be subservient to something or someone. It’s a truth as old as time.  And since waging war is so costly in blood and treasure, we owe our republic a military that will win any war we choose or any war that is thrust upon us. Should our enemies choose foolishly to challenge us, they will be crushed by the violence, precision, and ferocity of the War Department. In other words, to our enemies, FAFO.”

While acknowledging that “America is the strongest,” the Secretary claimed, “we need to get stronger and quickly. The time is now and the cause is urgent.”  He went on to note the importance of logistical and industrial factors, “restoring and refocusing our defense industrial base, our shipbuilding industry and onshoring all critical components,” before switching to the main focus of the speech.  This “speech today is about people and it’s about culture. The topic today is about the nature of ourselves, because no plan, no program, no reform, no formation will ultimately succeed unless we have the right people and the right culture at the War Department.  If I’ve learned one core lesson in my eight months in this job, it’s that personnel is policy. Personnel is policy.” In that regard, the “best way to take care of troops is to give them good leaders committed to the warfighting culture of the department, not perfect leaders, good leaders, competent, qualified, professional, agile, aggressive, innovative, risk-taking, apolitical, faithful to their oath and to the Constitution.”  “In combat, there are thousands of variables, as I learned in Iraq and Afghanistan, and as so many of you did in so many more places,” he continued, “Leaders can only control about three of them. You control how well you’re trained, mostly how well you’re equipped, and the last variable is how well you lead. After that, you’re on your own.”  Because of this dynamic, top military brass “have a sacred duty to ensure that our warriors are led by the most capable and qualified combat leaders. This is one thing you and I can control, and we owe it to the force to deliver,” but “For too long, we have simply not done that. The military has been forced by foolish and reckless politicians to focus on the wrong things. In many ways, this speech is about fixing decades of decay, some of it obvious, some of it hidden, or as the chairman has put it, we are clearing out the debris, removing the distractions, clearing the way for leaders to be leaders. You might say we’re ending the war on warriors.”

To do so, Secretary Hegseth proposed an end to what he called woke ideology and politics that has infected the military, “No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses. No more climate change worship. No more division, distraction or gender delusions. No more debris,” and “The new War Department golden rule is this: do unto your unit as you would have done unto your own child’s unit. Would you want him serving with fat or unfit or under trained troops or alongside people who can’t meet basic standards, or in a unit where standards were lowered so certain types of troops could make it in, in a unit where leaders were promoted for reasons other than merit, performance and warfighting? The answer is not just no, it’s hell no.”  In his telling, this can only be achieve with a “ruthless, dispassionate and common sense application of standards,” both physical and professional that “must be uniform, gender neutral and high. If not, they’re not standards. They’re just suggestions, suggestions that get our sons and daughters killed.”  In particular, he was focused on the distinction between combat and non-combat units, meaning that there are plenty of roles in the military for people who cannot meet these standards, but those roles are not on the front line, under fire, in combat, where people are getting killed. “When it comes to combat arms units, and there are many different stripes across our joint force, the era of politically correct, overly sensitive, don’t hurt anyone’s feelings leadership ends right now. At every level, either you can meet the standard, either you can do the job, either you are disciplined, fit and trained, or you are out.”  To support these goals, he issued ten new directives, among them a return to the highest male standard only by unit, a combat field test “for combat arms units that must be executable in any environment at any time and with combat equipment,” a “service fitness test at a gender-neutral age normed male standard scored above 70 percent.” Crucially, these standards apply to leadership as well, because  “it’s completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon and leading commands around the country and the world. It’s a bad look. It is bad, and it’s not who we are.  So, whether you’re an airborne Ranger or a chairborne Ranger, a brand new private or a four star general, you need to meet the height and weight standards and pass your PT test.”  Further, “every warrior across our joint force is required to do PT every duty day” and this “also means grooming standards. No more beards, long hair, superficial individual expression. We’re going to cut our hair, shave our beards, and adhere to standards.”

Of standards in general, he also ordered an immediate review across the entire military, comparing current standards to those in 1990, before we last won a war.  In addition, Secretary Hegseth officially ended “the walking on eggshells and zero defect command culture. A risk averse culture means officers execute not to lose instead of to win. A risk averse culture means NCOs are not empowered to enforce standards. Commanders and NCOs don’t take necessary risks or make tough adjustments for fear of rocking the boat or making mistakes.  A blemish free record is what peacetime leaders covet the most, which is the worst of all incentives. You, we as senior leaders, need to end the poisonous culture of risk aversion and empower our NCOs at all levels to enforce standards.”  Moving forward, promotions across the joint force will be based on one thing: merit; colorblind, gender-neutral, merit based. The entire promotion process, including evaluations of warfighting capabilities, is being thoroughly reexamined.”  Earlier in the speech, he identified the harsh reality underlying these new directives, likening the current state of our military to the broken windows theory of policing, if “you let the small stuff go, the big stuff eventually goes, so you have to address the small stuff. This is on duty, in the field and in the rear.”  He also took aim at potential detractors, “Upholding and demanding high standards is not toxic. Enforcing high standards, not toxic leadership. Leading warfighters toward the goals of high, gender-neutral and uncompromising standards in order to forge a cohesive, formidable and lethal Department of War is not toxic. It is our duty consistent with our Constitutional oath.  Real toxic leadership is endangering subordinates with low standards. Real toxic leadership is promoting people based on immutable characteristics or quotas instead of based on merit. Real toxic leadership is promoting destructive ideologies that are an anathema to the Constitution and the laws of nature and nature’s God, as Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence.”

Ultimately, “War does not care if you’re a man or a woman. Neither does the enemy, nor does the weight of your rucksack, the size of an artillery round or the body weight of a casualty on the battlefield who must be carried…this is you versus an enemy hell bent on killing you. To be an effective lethal fighting force, you must trust that the warrior alongside you in battle is capable, truly physically capable of doing what is necessary under fire.” Under normal circumstances, the larger gathering would be seen as unusual, but the comments and ideas not controversial.  Even setting aside recent failures in the War on Terror, culminating with our humiliating retreat from Afghanistan in 2021, the best – and the US military certainly retains its title as the best in the world – are always striving to get better, not sitting on their laurels and losing focus in other, non-essential areas.  Of course, these aren’t normal times and rather than acknowledging how this philosophy might address challenges and improve our-war fighting capability while saving livings, progressives largely condemned the speech as racist, sexist, and designed solely to serve MAGA.  Zeeshan Aleem, writing for MSBNC summarized these threads neatly.  After bemoaning that Secretary Hegseth had arranged the meeting “only to dress them down” and insisting the Army Ranger turned War Secretary’s “main qualification for Trump’s Cabinet seems to have been his time working for Fox News,” he declared, “Hegseth’s speech was also outrageous as an ideological statement. If nothing else was clear, it was that Hegseth wants to politicize the military and turn it into a swashbuckling corps of bloodthirsty MAGA warriors — and at a time when the president is trying to turn the troops against American citizens.” Incredibly, he even took issue with the fundamental notion that the military is designed to “kill people and break things for a living” without saying why else it exists, objected to the idea that peace can only be attained to strength because freedom from war is a “human right” or something, then went on to accuse the Secretary of “an attempt to politicize the military in a manner unprecedented in the modern era — even as he repeatedly framed his actions as de-politicizing the armed forces.”

Somehow, this is the case in his warped view because he’d fired obviously underperforming officers, as was his right as War Secretary and wanted to end the “woke department.”  He concluded, “Some people joked on social media that Hegseth’s speech could’ve been an email. But then he would’ve missed the opportunity to turn his extremist statements into a televised spectacle packed with moments that would go viral online. He would’ve missed the opportunity to humiliate military brass — and to make his case that the military ought to view itself as a handmaiden of Trump’s MAGA project.” Beyond the sense of performative outrage and innuendo that has pervaded most commentary since President Donald Trump retook office on January 20, it seems obvious yet again that the media and the enlightened in the establishment simply don’t live in the real world.  While I have never served in the military, most of us who work for a living, having either deadlines or quotas to meet, have been summoned by our bosses and upbraided for failing to meet them.  If I could deal with it as an 18 year old in the car business in a much more vulgar fashion, military leaders should certainly be able to deal with it now.