Latest news with #Hegseth-led
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
The White House Is Delighted With Events in Los Angeles
The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. The last time President Donald Trump tried to send military forces into American streets to put down civil unrest, in June 2020, Pete Hegseth was positioned outside the White House with a Kevlar helmet and riot shield. Major Hegseth's mobilization as part of a District of Columbia National Guard unit summoned to restore order in the nation's capital, where protests had erupted following the police murder of George Floyd, occurred as Pentagon leaders scrambled to avert what they feared could be a confrontation between active-duty U.S. forces and their fellow Americans. Today, Hegseth is second only to the president in directing the administration's use of the National Guard and active-duty Marines to respond to unrest over immigration raids in Los Angeles. And this time, the military's civilian leadership isn't acting as a brake on Trump's impulse to escalate the confrontation. The Hegseth-led Pentagon is an accelerant. The administration's decision to federalize 4,000 California National Guard forces, contrary to Governor Gavin Newsom's wishes, and to dispatch 700 active-duty Marines to the Los Angeles area, marks a break with decades of tradition under which presidents have limited their use of the military on American soil. If there are any internal misgivings about busting through yet another democratic norm, they haven't surfaced publicly. Indeed, officials at the White House told us they are satisfied with the way the L.A. confrontation has unfolded. They believe that it highlights their focus on immigration and law and order, and places Democrats on the wrong side of both. One widely circulated photo—showing a masked protester standing in front of a burning car, waving a Mexican flag—has been embraced by Trump supporters as a distillation of the conflict: a president unafraid to use force to defend an American city from those he deems foreign invaders. 'We couldn't have scripted this better,' said a senior White House aide granted anonymity to discuss internal conversations. 'It's like the 2024 election never ended: Trump is strong while Democrats are weak and defending the indefensible.' Democrats, of course, take a different view, and say the administration's actions have only risked triggering further violence. Retired officers who study how the armed forces have been used in democracies told us they share those concerns. They point to the damage that Trump's orders could do to the military's relationship with the citizens it serves. 'We should be very careful, cautious, and even reluctant to use the military inside our country,' Bradley Bowman, a former Army officer who heads the defense program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracy, told us. Conor Friedersdorf: Averting a worst-case scenario in Los Angeles State and local authorities typically use law-enforcement personnel as a first response to civil disturbances or riots, followed by National Guard forces if needed. Retired Major General Randy Manner, who served as acting vice chief of the National Guard Bureau during the Obama administration, said the federalizing of California Guard forces—putting them under presidential rather than state control, a move allowed with certain limits—pulls those service members away from their civilian jobs and makes it harder to complete planned training or exercises. 'Basically, the risk does not justify the investment of these forces, and it will negatively impact on readiness,' Manner told us. Retired officers we spoke with also drew a distinction between the involvement of National Guard and active-duty forces. Whereas National Guard troops assist citizens after natural disasters and have the advantage of knowing the communities they serve, active-duty forces are primarily trained to 'see the enemy and neutralize the enemy,' said Mark Cancian, a retired Marine colonel now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. 'When you're dealing with U.S. citizens, no matter what they're doing, that's not the right mindset.' 'This is not Fallujah,' Bowman added. 'This is Los Angeles.' Juliette Kayyem: Trump's gross misuse of the National Guard This morning, Hegseth made his first congressional appearance since his bruising confirmation process, appearing before a House committee. His tone with Democrats was at times combative. When Representative Betty McCollum, a Minnesota Democrat, asked the defense secretary what the cost of the California deployment would be, he declined to provide a figure and instead pivoted to criticism of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz for the state's response to the violence that followed Floyd's killing in 2020. (Military officials said later they expected the Los Angeles deployment, as envisioned, to cost roughly $134 million.) 'If you've got millions of illegals, you don't know where they're coming from, they're waving flags from foreign countries and assaulting police officers, that's a problem,' Hegseth told lawmakers. Trump, for his part, told reporters that anyone who tries to protest at the Saturday parade celebrating the 250th birthday of the U.S. Army will 'be met with very big force.' He also said that he wouldn't hesitate to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would permit him to employ the military for law enforcement or to suppress a rebellion, if he believed that circumstances required. Speaking to troops at Fort Bragg in North Carolina later in the day, the president promised to stop the 'anarchy' in California. 'We will liberate Los Angeles and make it free, clean, and safe again,' he said. 'We will not allow an American city to be invaded and conquered by a foreign enemy.' Some Republicans have privately expressed worry that Trump may overplay a winning hand. Even in the West Wing, two people we spoke with tried to downplay the incendiary rhetoric from Trump and Hegseth. They stressed that, to this point, National Guard forces have been in a defensive posture, protecting federal buildings. Although they believe that Trump has the political advantage at the moment, they acknowledged there would be real risks if U.S. troops got involved in violence. 'We don't know who would get blamed but no one wins if that happens,' one senior aide told us. 'No one wants to see that.' Hegseth's support for using active-duty troops in Los Angeles stands in contrast to what his predecessor did in 2020. At that time, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, along with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley, scrambled to block Trump's desire to employ active-duty forces against the demonstrators protesting racial violence. The president had mused about shooting protesters in the legs, Esper wrote later. To satisfy his boss while also avoiding a dangerous confrontation, the defense chief called active-duty forces from Fort Bragg to Northern Virginia but sought to keep them out of the fray. Tom Nichols: Trump is using the National Guard as bait In his 2024 book The War on Warriors, Hegseth described how his experience as a D.C. Guardsman in 2020 crystallized his views about the divide between military personnel and what he saw as the degenerate protesters who were lobbing bricks and bottles of urine at the citizen soldiers. When the D.C. Guard was again summoned seven months later, to help secure the 2021 inauguration following the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, Hegseth was told to stand down because fellow Guardsmen suspected that one of his tattoos was a sign of extremism. (Hegseth has maintained it is part of his Christian faith.) Hegseth was angered by his exclusion and resigned from the Guard. That experience remains with him as he attempts to reshape the military, and its role in society, in line with Trump's worldview. As he has written: 'My trust for this Army is irrevocably broken.' Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
3 days ago
- Politics
- Atlantic
The White House Is Delighted With Events in Los Angeles
The last time President Donald Trump tried to send military forces into American streets to put down civil unrest, in June 2020, Pete Hegseth was positioned outside the White House with a Kevlar helmet and riot shield. Major Hegseth's mobilization as part of a District of Columbia National Guard unit summoned to restore order in the nation's capital, where protests had erupted following the police murder of George Floyd, occurred as Pentagon leaders scrambled to avert what they feared could be a confrontation between active-duty U.S. forces and their fellow Americans. Today, Hegseth is second only to the president in directing the administration's use of the National Guard and active-duty Marines to respond to unrest over immigration raids in Los Angeles. And this time, the military's civilian leadership isn't acting as a brake on Trump's impulse to escalate the confrontation. The Hegseth-led Pentagon is an accelerant. The administration's decision to federalize 4,000 California National Guard forces, contrary to Governor Gavin Newsom's wishes, and to dispatch 700 active-duty Marines to the Los Angeles area, marks a break with decades of tradition under which presidents have limited their use of the military on American soil. If there are any internal misgivings about busting through yet another democratic norm, they haven't surfaced publicly. Indeed, officials at the White House told us they are satisfied with the way the L.A. confrontation has unfolded. They believe that it highlights their focus on immigration and law and order, and places Democrats on the wrong side of both. One widely circulated photo—showing a masked protester standing in front of a burning car, waving a Mexican flag—has been embraced by Trump supporters as a distillation of the conflict: a president unafraid to use force to defend an American city from those he deems foreign invaders. 'We couldn't have scripted this better,' said a senior White House aide granted anonymity to discuss internal conversations. 'It's like the 2024 election never ended: Trump is strong while Democrats are weak and defending the indefensible.' Democrats, of course, take a different view, and say the administration's actions have only risked triggering further violence. Retired officers who study how the armed forces have been used in democracies told us they share those concerns. They point to the damage that Trump's orders could do to the military's relationship with the citizens it serves. 'We should be very careful, cautious, and even reluctant to use the military inside our country,' Bradley Bowman, a former Army officer who heads the defense program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracy, told us. Conor Friedersdorf: Averting a worst-case scenario in Los Angeles State and local authorities typically use law-enforcement personnel as a first response to civil disturbances or riots, followed by National Guard forces if needed. Retired Major General Randy Manner, who served as acting vice chief of the National Guard Bureau during the Obama administration, said the federalizing of California Guard forces—putting them under presidential rather than state control, a move allowed with certain limits—pulls those service members away from their civilian jobs and makes it harder to complete planned training or exercises. 'Basically, the risk does not justify the investment of these forces, and it will negatively impact on readiness,' Manner told us. Retired officers we spoke with also drew a distinction between the involvement of National Guard and active-duty forces. Whereas National Guard troops assist citizens after natural disasters and have the advantage of knowing the communities they serve, active-duty forces are primarily trained to 'see the enemy and neutralize the enemy,' said Mark Cancian, a retired Marine colonel now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. 'When you're dealing with U.S. citizens, no matter what they're doing, that's not the right mindset.' 'This is not Fallujah,' Bowman added. 'This is Los Angeles.' Juliette Kayyem: Trump's gross misuse of the National Guard This morning, Hegseth made his first congressional appearance since his bruising confirmation process, appearing before a House committee. His tone with Democrats was at times combative. When Representative Betty McCollum, a Minnesota Democrat, asked the defense secretary what the cost of the California deployment would be, he declined to provide a figure and instead pivoted to criticism of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz for the state's response to the violence that followed Floyd's killing in 2020. (Military officials said later they expected the Los Angeles deployment, as envisioned, to cost roughly $134 million.) 'If you've got millions of illegals, you don't know where they're coming from, they're waving flags from foreign countries and assaulting police officers, that's a problem,' Hegseth told lawmakers. Trump, for his part, told reporters that anyone who tries to protest at the Saturday parade celebrating the 250th birthday of the U.S. Army will 'be met with very big force.' He also said that he wouldn't hesitate to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would permit him to employ the military for law enforcement or to suppress a rebellion, if he believed that circumstances required. Speaking to troops at Fort Bragg in North Carolina later in the day, the president promised to stop the 'anarchy' in California. ' We will liberate Los Angeles and make it free, clean, and safe again,' he said. 'We will not allow an American city to be invaded and conquered by a foreign enemy.' Some Republicans have privately expressed worry that Trump may overplay a winning hand. Even in the West Wing, two people we spoke with tried to downplay the incendiary rhetoric from Trump and Hegseth. They stressed that, to this point, National Guard forces have been in a defensive posture, protecting federal buildings. Although they believe that Trump has the political advantage at the moment, they acknowledged there would be real risks if U.S. troops got involved in violence. 'We don't know who would get blamed but no one wins if that happens,' one senior aide told us. 'No one wants to see that.' Hegseth's support for using active-duty troops in Los Angeles stands in contrast to what his predecessor did in 2020. At that time, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, along with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley, scrambled to block Trump's desire to employ active-duty forces against the demonstrators protesting racial violence. The president had mused about shooting protesters in the legs, Esper wrote later. To satisfy his boss while also avoiding a dangerous confrontation, the defense chief called active-duty forces from Fort Bragg to Northern Virginia but sought to keep them out of the fray. Tom Nichols: Trump is using the National Guard as bait In his 2024 book The War on Warrior s, Hegseth described how his experience as a D.C. Guardsman in 2020 crystallized his views about the divide between military personnel and what he saw as the degenerate protesters who were lobbing bricks and bottles of urine at the citizen soldiers. When the D.C. Guard was again summoned seven months later, to help secure the 2021 inauguration following the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, Hegseth was told to stand down because fellow Guardsmen suspected that one of his tattoos was a sign of extremism. (Hegseth has maintained it is part of his Christian faith.) Hegseth was angered by his exclusion and resigned from the Guard. That experience remains with him as he attempts to reshape the military, and its role in society, in line with Trump's worldview. As he has written: 'My trust for this Army is irrevocably broken.'
Yahoo
07-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Hegseth Brings the Culture War to Combat
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's appointment today of his personal lawyer, Timothy Parlatore, as a Navy commander in the Judge Advocate General's Corps reflects not just the norm-breaking approach that Hegseth is bringing to the job, but an odious philosophy of warfare. Like his new boss at the Pentagon, Parlatore has a pattern of providing support to soldiers accused of grave misconduct, even war crimes. He notably represented Eddie Gallagher, a Navy SEAL court-martialed on charges including the murder of a captured fighter (though he was found guilty only of one, lesser charge), along with a second SEAL accused of serious sexual offenses. Elevating a lawyer with this record does not bode well for the armed services Hegseth hopes to build. The fundamental challenge of military leadership lies in creating cohesive teams that can work together in an environment of mortal risk and, when called upon to do so, use lethal force themselves. The task is challenging, to say the least, and presents the dangerous temptation of taking a shortcut to such team building by denigrating those not on the team. The most obvious means of such othering involves using exclusionary criteria—race and gender, but also less visible traits such as sexual orientation—to promote unit cohesion. Although this makes team cohesion and battlefield effectiveness easier to achieve in the short term, professional soldiers resist this approach because its negative focus on identity ahead of standards ultimately results in undisciplined and unreliable forces. Hegseth has long made clear his opposition to women serving in combat roles, but no argument for excluding them for an inability to meet military standards is sustainable. Women have proved, over 20-plus years of conflicts, that not only can they make the grade, but they are essential to the U.S. military's combat capability. The undeniability of this fact is presumably why Hegseth has largely backtracked on his opposition. Instead, he's chosen to demean the much smaller population of transgender service members. Although they have amply demonstrated honorable service and the ability to meet military standards, he has repeatedly denigrated them and is now enforcing President Donald Trump's executive order that denies transgender service members' capacity to be 'honorable, truthful, and disciplined.' A more limited version of the order, simply restricting accommodations for transgender service members, was an option, but this blew straight past that. Instead, their unjustified, wholesale exclusion from the military is now another example of othering by the Hegseth-led Department of Defense. The language of the order—that transgender identity is a 'falsehood' that contradicts 'biological truth'—sets the tone for seeing these service members as less than human. It mimics the worst way Americans have sometimes talked about our enemies in war. This type of dehumanization may help soldiers in the act of killing, but it also opens the door for unrestrained violence and war crimes. Hegseth's penchant for othering is not limited to women or the transgender population. In remarks and books, he has also made clear his disdain for Muslims. He went so far as to say that 'Islam itself is not compatible with Western forms of government.' How offensive such a record of statements might be to the thousands of American Muslims serving in the U.S. military seems not to have occurred to the new defense secretary. [Tom Nichols: Who's running the defense department?] Hegseth's willingness to find enemies within is of a piece with his firing of senior military lawyers and his overall approach to war. During his time as a TV host, Hegseth relentlessly lobbied for those accused or convicted of war crimes to be pardoned. One case involved Lieutenant Clint Lorance, who, in his first three days of leading a platoon in Afghanistan, repeatedly filed false reports to his leaders, threatened innocent Afghan civilians with violence, and gave an order to kill two unarmed Afghan men. The soldiers under his command had been operating in the area for months, and many had deployed several times. They were, to use a term of Hegseth's, 'dusty boots' soldiers in every sense. They themselves were disgusted by Lorance's conduct and reported it up their chain of command; 14 of them later testified against Lorance at his court martial. In Hegseth's portrayal, however, this outcome was somehow an example of military lawyers exerting undue influence on the battlefield and constraining service members in a way that put them at risk. Lorance was convicted of murder charges in 2012, and served six years in prison before Trump pardoned him in 2019—something that Hegseth and his Fox News colleagues had clamored for. Lorance's war crimes were precisely the result of the dehumanization of enemies—without and within—that the U.S. military has long sought to discourage. It is the opposite of the disciplined toughness that our uniformed leadership has historically cultivated; it is also wildly ineffective. The soldiers who had to operate in the aftermath of Lorance's actions described an environment in which they had completely lost the trust of local Afghans. As a consequence, they faced an embittered population more willing to support the Taliban. For Hegseth and Parlatore, the nuances of assessing who is friend or foe on the basis of how they act appear to be an unwelcome distraction. Crude binaries based on identity are so much simpler—whether they determine who is permitted to serve in our armed forces or who is a potential target for killing. Hegseth likes to emphasize military standards, yet shows a reckless disregard for the very benchmarks of discipline and combat effectiveness that have guided the American military for generations. This culture warrior's identity politics will ultimately make the U.S. military weaker. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
07-03-2025
- Politics
- Atlantic
Hegseth Brings the Culture War to Combat
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's appointment today of his personal lawyer, Timothy Parlatore, as a Navy commander in the Judge Advocate General's Corps reflects not just the norm-breaking approach that Hegseth is bringing to the job, but an odious philosophy of warfare. Like his new boss at the Pentagon, Parlatore has a pattern of providing support to soldiers accused of grave misconduct, even war crimes. He notably represented Eddie Gallagher, a Navy SEAL court-martialed on charges including the murder of a captured fighter (though he was found guilty only of one, lesser charge), along with a second SEAL accused of serious sexual offenses. Elevating a lawyer with this record does not bode well for the armed services Hegseth hopes to build. The fundamental challenge of military leadership lies in creating cohesive teams that can work together in an environment of mortal risk and, when called upon to do so, use lethal force themselves. The task is challenging, to say the least, and presents the dangerous temptation of taking a shortcut to such team building by denigrating those not on the team. The most obvious means of such othering involves using exclusionary criteria—race and gender, but also less visible traits such as sexual orientation—to promote unit cohesion. Although this makes team cohesion and battlefield effectiveness easier to achieve in the short term, professional soldiers resist this approach because its negative focus on identity ahead of standards ultimately results in undisciplined and unreliable forces. Hegseth has long made clear his opposition to women serving in combat roles, but no argument for excluding them for an inability to meet military standards is sustainable. Women have proved, over 20-plus years of conflicts, that not only can they make the grade, but they are essential to the U.S. military's combat capability. The undeniability of this fact is presumably why Hegseth has largely backtracked on his opposition. Instead, he's chosen to demean the much smaller population of transgender service members. Although they have amply demonstrated honorable service and the ability to meet military standards, he has repeatedly denigrated them and is now enforcing President Donald Trump's executive order that denies transgender service members' capacity to be 'honorable, truthful, and disciplined.' A more limited version of the order, simply restricting accommodations for transgender service members, was an option, but this blew straight past that. Instead, their unjustified, wholesale exclusion from the military is now another example of othering by the Hegseth-led Department of Defense. The language of the order —that transgender identity is a 'falsehood' that contradicts 'biological truth'—sets the tone for seeing these service members as less than human. It mimics the worst way Americans have sometimes talked about our enemies in war. This type of dehumanization may help soldiers in the act of killing, but it also opens the door for unrestrained violence and war crimes. Hegseth's penchant for othering is not limited to women or the transgender population. In remarks and books, he has also made clear his disdain for Muslims. He went so far as to say that 'Islam itself is not compatible with Western forms of government.' How offensive such a record of statements might be to the thousands of American Muslims serving in the U.S. military seems not to have occurred to the new defense secretary. Tom Nichols: Who's running the defense department? Hegseth's willingness to find enemies within is of a piece with his firing of senior military lawyers and his overall approach to war. During his time as a TV host, Hegseth relentlessly lobbied for those accused or convicted of war crimes to be pardoned. One case involved Lieutenant Clint Lorance, who, in his first three days of leading a platoon in Afghanistan, repeatedly filed false reports to his leaders, threatened innocent Afghan civilians with violence, and gave an order to kill two unarmed Afghan men. The soldiers under his command had been operating in the area for months, and many had deployed several times. They were, to use a term of Hegseth's, 'dusty boots' soldiers in every sense. They themselves were disgusted by Lorance's conduct and reported it up their chain of command; 14 of them later testified against Lorance at his court martial. In Hegseth's portrayal, however, this outcome was somehow an example of military lawyers exerting undue influence on the battlefield and constraining service members in a way that put them at risk. Lorance was convicted of murder charges in 2012, and served six years in prison before Trump pardoned him in 2019—something that Hegseth and his Fox News colleagues had clamored for. Lorance's war crimes were precisely the result of the dehumanization of enemies—without and within—that the U.S. military has long sought to discourage. It is the opposite of the disciplined toughness that our uniformed leadership has historically cultivated; it is also wildly ineffective. The soldiers who had to operate in the aftermath of Lorance's actions described an environment in which they had completely lost the trust of local Afghans. As a consequence, they faced an embittered population more willing to support the Taliban. For Hegseth and Parlatore, the nuances of assessing who is friend or foe on the basis of how they act appear to be an unwelcome distraction. Crude binaries based on identity are so much simpler—whether they determine who is permitted to serve in our armed forces or who is a potential target for killing. Hegseth likes to emphasize military standards, yet shows a reckless disregard for the very benchmarks of discipline and combat effectiveness that have guided the American military for generations. This culture warrior's identity politics will ultimately make the U.S. military weaker.
