Secretary of War Vows to Restore Strength and Standards to U.S. Forces

By Tyler O’Neil | Commentary, The Daily Signal

I’ve witnessed many moments of “America is back” catharsis this year, but few have been quite as inspiring as Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s declaration that he will strive to make every unit the efficient killing machine that he’d be proud to see his own son enlist to join.

Speaking at the Marine base in Quantico, Virginia, Tuesday, Hegseth didn’t just discard what he rightly described as the “debris” of wokeness at the War Department—he also laid out a clear litmus test as he looks to whip the military into tip-top shape: what he called the new War Department golden rule.

“Would I want my eldest son, who is 15 years old, eventually joining the types of formations that we are currently building?” the secretary asked.

“Do unto your unit as you would have done unto your own child’s unit,” he said. “Would you want him serving with fat or unfit or undertrained troops? … Or in a unit where standards were lowered so certain types of troops could make it in?”

“The answer is not just ‘No,’ it’s ‘Hell, no!’” Hegseth said.

Speaking as the father of a young boy, I wholeheartedly agree.

Americans viscerally grasp just how important it is for the military to be able to effectively kill the enemy when the calculus boils down to the question of who dies, my son or the enemy’s son.

That’s the fundamental question when war breaks out, and no amount of woke sermonizing will get moms and dads to say they’d rather see the “first black woman commander” or the “first transgender admiral” more than welcoming their son home alive from proud service in combat.

Hegseth instinctually grasps that the real problem with wokeness in the military isn’t that it’s offensive or that Americans didn’t vote for it, though both of those complaints are true. The real problem is how corrosive this ideology is to the fundamental mission of the War Department: preventing war from breaking out, or, failing that, winning as quickly and decisively as possible.

The war secretary noted his platoon motto: “Those who long for peace must prepare for war.”

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