The Bunker: Hegseth’s Last Stand

This week in The Bunker: A tone-deaf and increasingly isolated defense chief sprays his baleful and hateful rhetoric at much of the nation; Congress may yet rouse itself and finally start asking tough questions about Hegseth’s fate and the Iran war; the Pentagon’s prized procurement priorities are on the ropes; and more. And a humble and heartfelt toast to all those who have worn the uniform of the U.S. military on this Veterans Day.

HEGSETH’S ALAMO

Fighting words from the defense secretary

It is only the looming threat of impeachment that could push Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in front of the cameras in the Pentagon press briefing room on November 10. He had ducked its spotlights since May 5, even as the U.S. military forces under his command launched an undeclared (and continuing) war against Iran in February. But enough lawmakers have had enough. Following the massacre of Republican majorities in both houses of Congress last week, outgoing Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY) re-introduced eight articles of impeachment on November 9, focused mainly on Hegseth’s conduct of the war.

The defense chief denounced Massie’s effort as “sabotage” and said it tells U.S. military personnel “that their service was a crime.” He superglued himself to American troops, arguing that criticism of him was tantamount to criticism of those wearing U.S. military uniforms. Hegseth’s briefing was a plea to keep his job made to an audience of one, President Trump, who hailed his performance.

The dark tone was predictable. On November 5, Hegseth issued a brooding video rant, two days after the Democratic landslide in the midterms. It was a starkly partisan attack on his fellow Americans. He brazenly delivered his unprecedented barrage from the steps leading into the Pentagon, his rechristened “Department of War” sign looming over his shoulder.

For history buffs, it also echoed the letter written by Republic of Texas Army Lieutenant Colonel William Barret Travis shortly before the Alamo he was defending fell to Mexican attackers in 1836. The parallel is particularly striking given the Lone Star State’s political transformation last week from bright red to deep blue. As Travis wrote 190 years ago:

I have sustained a continual Bombardment & cannonade. … The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion, otherwise, the garrison are to be put to the sword. … I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, & our flag still waves proudly from the walls — I shall never surrender or retreat.

But Hegseth isn’t fighting Mexican President Antonio López de Santa Anna’s 1,500 soldiers. Instead, in his video, he enumerated the following foes, in this order: the Pentagon’s “failed leaders” he has vanquished; “the Democrats and the deep state radicals [who] really hate us;” the “Marxist ideology” of diversity initiatives he has squelched; trans troops; the “Pentagon bureaucracy” he has tamed; and, of course, the press, which “is free in America, but not free to roam our classified spaces here at the Pentagon.” (Point Of Order: Reporters have never been allowed in the Pentagon’s classified spaces.)

“The Democrats … really hate us”?

Really?

All of them?

After machine-gunning down these perceived homegrown dangers, Hegseth finally got around to mentioning … Iran. You know, the failed war he encouraged President Trump to launch eight months ago (he also hailed the chief 10 times during the 5:47 video). That oh-by-the-way war has cost 23 U.S. troops their lives, the Pentagon close to $50 billion, and U.S. taxpayers, eventually, perhaps more than $1 trillion. And it hasn’t accomplished its key initial goals — Tehran’s forswearing nuclear weapons and regime change.

Hegseth closed his junior-high bullying by saying the U.S. military will fight “all enemies, foreign and domestic.” But he emphasized his domestic foes. It is beyond disheartening to see the chief of the most powerful military force the world has ever known train almost all of his rancid rhetorical firepower on his fellow citizens. And to have U.S. taxpayers pay for it.

NOVERSIGHT

Where’s Congress?

We’ve had a stealth Congress when it comes to the war in Iran. Granted, Trump launched it without warning back in February, so lawmakers couldn’t debate it beforehand. But since then, his team has done little to explain the strategy underpinning the administration’s shifting goals, and how the deployment of U.S. military force is going to accomplish them.

“We have no idea what the strategy is moving forward in Iran,” Representative James Comer (R-KY), chairman of the House Oversight Committee and a strong Trump supporter, said November 6. And no wonder — Hegseth has kicked the press out of the Pentagon, and he hasn’t held a briefing for reporters on the war in more than six months.

Given that paucity of information, you might expect Congress, even one where Republicans have held the majority in both houses, to demand answers. But you would be wrong. Instead, lawmakers have fled from the political battlefield like cowards eager to avoid a fight, unlike those brave Texans at the Alamo.

Democrats will take over in January. They got a bipartisan boost to their effort to impeach Hegseth when Massie, who lost to a Trump-backed primary challenger in May, introduced his impeachment resolution. The Project On Government Oversight backs impeachment, but the House delayed taking any quick action when it voted late November 10 against proceeding. It’s more important that the new Congress summon Hegseth & Co. to the Hill to detail (1) why we’re still at war with Iran, (2) what we plan to accomplish, and (3) how.

There will be plenty of time to reconsider impeachment in the new 120th Congress if Hegseth and the U.S. military’s high command can’t answer that third question.

ABOUT THOSE PENTAGON PRIORITIES

Defense Department’s pipe dreams get clogged up

President Trump’s schemes to build a Golden Dome aerial defense shield and his Golden Fleet battleship were on life support before last week’s midterm elections. In their wake, the incoming Democratic majority on Capitol Hill will play a role akin to that Munchkin City medical examiner in The Wizard of Oz:

As coroner, I must aver,

I thoroughly examined her.

And she’s not only merely dead,

She’s really, most sincerely dead.

The Pentagon’s 2027 budget request (PDF) for $1.45 trillion — $441 billion more than 2026, a 44% increase — isn’t going to happen (the ’27 fiscal year began October 1). That’s due, in part, because of a bipartisan belief that such a sum could never be smartly spent. And also because $350 billion of that $1.45 trillion was kludged into a so-called reconciliation bill that would need only GOP votes to pass. The ensuing scaling back is going to require a wholesale rejuggling of the Pentagon’s bloated spending plans.

But Hegseth, in his video harangue, insists he needs every penny of his “historic and vitally important” $1.45 trillion budget:

The Department of War must be funded to meet the moment right now. That includes a generational investment, a reconciliation bill of at least $350 billion to keep this department, our country, way ahead in a dangerous world. We need every vote from every patriotic member of Congress.

Beware when patriotism and spending are viewed as one and the same.

Once again, Hegseth sounded like Travis at the Alamo:

I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism & everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch … If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible & die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his country — Victory or Death.

Travis, alas, didn’t get the support he needed. He and most of his troops died at the Alamo.

Hegseth should count his lucky stars. He’ll physically, if not politically, survive this fight. But his $1.45 trillion defense budget is toast.

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