Secretary of War Pete Hegseth hauled every U.S. flag officerāgenerals and admirals, more than 800 of themāinto Quantico. Not a Zoom, not a memo, not a mil-spec Teams call where everybodyās muted and nobody knows it. In person. Fly in, sit down, look the man in the eye.
Why? Because he wanted to deliver a change of era, not just a change of policy.
There was plenty of speculation beforehandāsome of it silly (coup, anyone?). I told you last week the simplest answer was the right one: he was going to reset the culture of the U.S. military. And thatās exactly what he did. Trump showed up and spoke too, but letās be honestāhis improv rallies donāt land like a disciplined, written, memorized commanderās brief. Hegsethās remarks were the speech Iāve been praying to hear from a SecDefāor in this case, a Secretary of Warāsince before the Obama years.
From Defense to War
Hegsethās core thesis was simple enough to tattoo on a forearm: we fight wars to win. Defense is constant; war is rare, decisive, and done on our terms. We do not hobble warfighters with needlessly restrictive rules of engagement. We intimidate, demoralize, hunt, andāif necessaryākill the enemies of the United States. Full stop.
Thatās not bloodlust. Thatās clarity. And clarity saves livesāours.
The Standards Are Back (and Some of You Wonāt Like It)
This is where some folks in that auditorium started sweating through their Class As.
Hegseth rolled out ten directivesāthink of them as the ā1991 Test.ā If you served back then, you know the vibe: meritocracy, combat readiness, no social engineering, no endless PowerPoints replacing range time.
One combat standard. Every designated combat-arms job returns to the highest male standard of performanceābecause physics doesnāt care about feelings. Women who meet the standard? Welcome. But thereās no āpink PT chartā in a firefight.