Hegseth pushes to remake the military in his preferred image

Before a captive audience of hundreds of senior military officers on Tuesday morning, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth asserted his vision for how the US military will physically look and act, and offered a stark conclusion: If you don’t agree, resign.

“The sooner we have the right people, the sooner we can advance the right policies … but if the words I’m speaking today are making your heart sink, then you should do the honorable thing and resign,” he said.

The right policies, according to Hegseth, center on his broader campaign against past efforts that he has deemed “woke” aimed at promoting diversity or accommodating troops — the specifics of which were made official in 10 directives sent out to military leadership as he spoke.

There will be no “fat troops” or “fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon,” Hegseth said. Troops will be clean shaven, and the military will offer few if any exemptions, either for religious or medical needs. There will be only male physical standards for combat jobs, and if that means there are no women in those roles, “it is what it is,” Hegseth said.

The directives largely roll back efforts made over the last decade attempting to eradicate toxic culture in the military, both to decrease harmful behaviors like harassment, but also to meet practical needs of getting people in uniform and keeping them there longer as the military branches faced years of struggles filling the ranks.

Many major reforms were described by the officials who implemented them as driven by that need; when former Defense Secretary Ash Carter opened up combat roles to women in 2015, he said the military “cannot afford to cut ourselves off from half the country’s talents and skills” if it wanted to succeed in national defense.

And while the military had made changes in recent years in an attempt to lessen instances of harassment, discrimination or toxic leadership by creating reporting mechanisms so that troops would come forward, Hegseth said those efforts went too far and were undercutting commanders.

“The definition of ‘toxic’ has been turned upside down, and we’re correcting that,” Hegseth vowed on Tuesday, adding that the Defense Department would be undertaking a review of words like “hazing” and “bullying” which he said had been “weaponized.”

‘Stupid rules’

Hegseth called for troops to ignore “stupid rules of engagement.” Rules of engagement are directives governing how and when force can be used by the US military.

“We unleash overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy,” Hegseth said. “We also don’t fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement.”