Pete Hegseth Is Too Egotistical to Know How Incompetent He Is

Brutal news accounts this week provide more proof of what we already knew: The chaos he’s creating is making the country weaker, not stronger.

A flurry of reports from various media outlets is revealing how the unqualified secretary of defense is damaging national security with his incompetence and slavish devotion to MAGA ideology. The New York Times reported on how numerous senior positions within the Army have gone months without leadership since Hegseth fired them. The Washington Post reports that the firing of Gen. Randy George, the Army chief of staff, in April was a result of George dragging his feet on terminating the investigations of Army aviators who violated safety regulations in order to “buzz” Kid Rock’s mansion.

Additionally, ProPublica reported that Hegseth overrode military leadership who warned him not to terminate the Civilian Harm and Mitigation Response program last year. The secretary of defense did not regard preventing civilian casualties as a worthy goal of the military and eliminated the program entirely. As a result, when the United States struck Iran, it hit a school for girls, killing more than 100 and inciting international condemnation. U.S. strikes in Yemen killed at least 150 civilians. These events drive anti-American sentiment in the region and push potential allies away.

This couldn’t come at a worse time. We are witnessing, in Ukraine, a revolution in military technology and fundamentally how we think about war. Iran has grasped it, and China is leaning hard into drones and AI........

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