Hegseth dodges bullet but wants troops to believe they did, too

Observers are reporting that absent Democrats likely torpedoed Thomas Massie's attempt to impeach Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in the House last night. The vote to refer his eight articles of impeachment to the judiciary committee for a sure death, passed 211-204.

Hegseth and his compadres in the Pentagon are no doubt feeling vindicated since he spent Tuesday morning boasting of his handling of the war policies in Yemen, the Caribbean, Venezuela, and in particular, Iran. In order to do this he had to engage in some serious fabrications about the state of the war: that it was "won," that Iran's military is "in ruin," the "ironclad blockade (is) unbroken," that "we control the Strait of Hormuz." It is worth watching in full.

"For the first time in American history, a cabinet secretary overseeing America's military is being attacked not for losing conflicts with our enemies, but for winning them," Hegseth declared. That reporters were threatened ahead of time in the briefing room ahead of the morning spectacle meant that he received no questions asking him to explain or issue evidence for his more audacious flights from reality.

Worse than all of that is that Hegseth used active duty service members and veterans as props for his own play for survival and suggested they would be next if Massie's "personal manifesto driven by ego and resentment" wasn't stopped. He did this while invoking Veterans Day.

To quote from his briefing:

"As it happens, tomorrow is Veterans Day. This year, the operators of Absolute Resolve and the warriors of Epic Fury will mark it for the first time. They stand shoulder to shoulder with the pilots of Midnight Hammer, and the sailors of Rough Rider who went before them. They answered the call, they executed, they won. And on the eve of Veterans Day, these resolutions tell every one of them that their service was a crime. Their service was not a crime. These are heroes, and no politician in Washington will tell them otherwise while I hold this office."

"This (Massie) resolution is the next step," he continued. "Put the secretary on trial today, and the men and women who carried out those orders tomorrow. If they want to come for the warriors, they're going to have to come through me."

But no one was "coming for" the military soldiers, sailors, Marines, or airmen executing the current war policies. Massie was coming for Hegseth. As Massie exhaustively explained in the eight articles of impeachment, the secretary stands accused of acting "in a manner grossly incompatible with his duties and the rule of law" in the context of the U.S.Constitution — which Hegseth promised to serve when he raised his right hand on January 25, 2025.

"Massie's impeachment resolution has nothing to do with the troops, it's not only peak hyperbole but also peak politicization of the force to insinuate that the troops would be under any kind of legal threat," Jim Webb, who served with the U.S. Marines in the Iraq War, told RS.

Hegseth is of course engaging in the tried and more often failed method of hiding behind members of the U.S. military in order to avoid accountability — in this case, for a war policy that is so unpopular with the American people that they are sending the biggest new freshman class since 1933 to Washington with the mandate of shutting it down. That he is using Veterans Day to deflect should be an insult to all veterans across the country, whether they support him or not. The holiday is not for politicians to argue the rightness of their policies; it is to acknowledge the sacrifices of men and women who carried out their duties regardless of the rightness — or wrongness — of those policies.

Webb points out that if anyone has put troops at risk, it's Hegseth, and Congress has the power to investigate it.

Massie wants "Hegseth to account for committing those in his charge to a war that not only was not in the American interest, but also one which his troops were not prepared for. That's the complete opposite of how leaders are supposed to act," charged Webb. "It has been clear from before we attacked Iran that it was a bad idea, so a true leader would speak truth to power in that regard, and would have stood between his people and that decision."

As for reading the room, Hegseth has spent so much time in the bubble, firing anyone who disagrees, and talking at the military about testosterone and God, kicking teeth and lethality, that he might have missed some big clues about "his warriors" along the way. In one recent poll of active-duty service members, veterans, and military families nationwide, 49% said they did not approve of the Iran war. As for push-up Pete, some 50% said they disapproved of how he was handling his job, and that number went up to 54% among active duty members in the poll, according to the cross tabs provided to RS.

Moreover, 57% of all respondents said they disapproved of military strikes against so-called drug boats in the Caribbean. Overall, 64% said veterans and military families "are being left behind by politicians and society," and 51% (including 55% of active duty) disagreed that morale in the ranks is better under the Trump Administration, i.e., under Secretary Hegseth.

Now the sampling was small and this is one poll, but it is just a reminder that the military community is not a monolith. According to exit polling from last week's midterms, 10% of those who voted were veterans. Of them, 41% voted Democrat, while 57% voted Republican.

Hegseth should know better. The conservative veterans organization that he led a over a decade ago, Concerned Veterans for America, came right out with this statement after it was obvious the war in Iran had fueled the blue wave last week: "Americans clearly showed that sound foreign policy is a pressing priority and that voters’ desire to end the reckless war in Iran is particularly linked to ongoing economic consequences felt at home."

This does not sound like veterans who want to to be used as props. Hegseth served in Afghanistan. He has no doubt heard the voices of those veterans who now question if their service was "worth it"; he knows many of them counted on Donald Trump to prevent Washington from sending men and women into another war they cannot explain. "(Operation) Epic Fury has never been that, and it never will be," Hegseth insisted on Tuesday.

Joe Kent, another veteran of the 9/11 wars (11 tours of combat duty in Army Special Forces), has a completely different take. He resigned his position in the Trump administration because he could not support "that" war again. Unlike Hegseth, who wants us to believe veterans are afraid of being targeted by Massie's impeachment articles, Kent was and is motivated by a completely different fear.

"I was like, I am not going to be the GWOT veteran that gets the next generation in the exact same war that I fought in, that I knew was based on a lie," he said to a public audience in Austin last month. "When I saw that happening, I was like, I have to leave. I just can't. I can't be here."

That doesn't sound like the kind of veteran who thinks any criticism of the Trump war policies is "taking issue with the troops."

If anything Hegseth is likely to double down on what he now sees as a winning communications strategy, particularly if Democrats try to resurrect an impeachment under the new congress. His Pentagon spokesman and friend Sean Parnell didn't waste time in reinforcing it.

"The referral of these baseless impeachment articles to the House Judiciary Committee marks total victory for Secretary Hegseth, the Department of War, and the American warfighter," Parnell posted. "From the beginning, this effort has been a political exercise devoid of merit, evidence, or seriousness. It collapses under the weight of Secretary Hegseth’s record of restoring the warrior ethos, delivering results, and putting the mission first. The American people see through it."

We could say the same about politicians who use veterans and the rank and file for grandstanding, or worse, for cover. But that is for another day. This day is supposed to be for them.