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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   35785 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025

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Has the Trump/Elon government made any moves to ensure the military is on-side? There's been a fair bit of left media labelling their actions with DOGE etc as a "coup" (eg https://x.com/micsolana/status/1888346474007670971) and last I checked, while the majority of the military votes Republican, the generals are largely woke-left and I'm a little (though not extremely) concerned they could be moved to act if the left-wing media noise heats up. I'm not sure if Hegseth has had time to do anything yet.

Anything I'd see from the media I would completely disregard.

Hegseth (while young) is a warfighter's warfighter. I think a large part of the military will be very very happy to have his priorities entrenched in the SecDef.

I would suspect a large part of the military signed up because of particular personality traits and some of those are reflected in Hegseth.

That said, he has his flaws and he might flame out. We'll see.

(I meant to do a bigger post about this but never got around to it) Sure, Hegseth is a "warfighter". He's still not qualified, though. I'm not talking about cheating on his wife, and cheating on his second wife, both of which blatantly violate the UCMJ, and although that's already very selectively enforced, this really can't help. Nor am I talking about his reported alcoholism (also a UCMJ issue), which many sources had claimed led to him being forced out of leading a veterans organization. Nor am I talking about allegations he abused his wife, nor allegations of sexual assault (which I don't think had enough evidence to be worth considering here anyway). All of those are modifiers - things that might make you not hire someone who you'd otherwise hire. It's just, directly, his lack of experience. Any given 'warfighter' wouldn't make a good secdef, you need to manage an incredibly large bureaucracy, which is a distinct skill, and also just make good decisions. There's just no strong reason to pick him instead of many other very qualified candidates. Fox news host?

I agree with criticisms of Biden's Lloyd Austin pick - he's obviously a diversity hire. When you pick the best black person, instead of the best person, you'll get a worse person, and in critical leadership positions that matters! It'd matter even without HBD, with which the best black person will usually be significantly worse than the best person. But, if you believe that, that it's very important to pick the best person, how do you get Hegseth? Austin was at least qualified:

Shortly after brigade command, he served as Chief, Joint Operations Division, J-3, on the Joint Staff at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. His next assignment, in 2001, was as Assistant Division Commander for Maneuver (ADC-M), 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized), Fort Stewart, Georgia. As the ADC-M, he helped lead the division's invasion of Iraq in March 2003.[9] Leading the fight from the front, Austin traveled the 500 miles from Kuwait to Baghdad in his command and control vehicle. The division reached Baghdad and secured the city.[14][15] Austin was awarded a Silver Star, the nation's third highest award for valor, for his actions as commander during the invasion.

On December 8, 2006, Austin was promoted to lieutenant general and assumed command of XVIII Airborne Corps, Fort Bragg, North Carolina.[17] In February 2008, Austin became the second highest ranking commander in Iraq, taking command of the Multi-National Corps – Iraq (MNC-I). As commander of MNC-I, he directed the operations of approximately 152,000 joint and coalition forces across all sectors of Iraq.[18] He was the first African American general officer to lead a corps-sized element in combat.[15] Austin assumed the mission during the period when the Surge forces were drawing down. He expertly oversaw the responsible transition of forces out of the country while ensuring that progress continued on the ground.

Austin became the commander of CENTCOM on March 22, 2013, after being nominated by President Obama in late 2012.[37][38][39] Austin was preceded as CENTCOM commander by General James Mattis, whom Austin would later succeed as secretary of defense. In his capacity as CENTCOM Commander, General Austin oversaw all U.S. troops deployed and major U.S. military operations around the area of Middle-East and Central and South Asia. The area consisted of 20 countries including Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Egypt and Lebanon.[40]

Whereas Hegseth 'served first as an infantry platoon leader and later as civil-military operations officer' and then 'returned to active duty in 2012 as a captain' in Afghanistan. And then went into politics, and then became a Fox News host. All that should be respected, but qualify you to be secdef?

Any given 'warfighter' wouldn't make a good secdef, you need to manage an incredibly large bureaucracy, which is a distinct skill, and also just make good decisions

He can always ask Elon for help.

Elon's solution to an incredibly large bureaucracy is to fire most of it, then deal with the credibly large bureaucracy which remains.

And what is your opinion on the pentagon and dod needing this kind of shakeup?

Imo there's clearly a lot wrong there. But this is one of the places where 'fire 80% of the people' isn't a good idea. It's often +EV, but a 20% chance of destroying twitter is fineE, it's just one website, while being ready for a conflict three months from now is critical. What you'd basically want to do IMO is let most of the bloated but currently working stuff continue to exist while you build something better.

while being ready for a conflict three months from now is critical.

Is the us ready for conflict 3 months from now? From my understanding the building and maintaining of carriers are way behind schedule, the recruiting targets are not met, the war in Ukraine showed some supply chain issues - like the ability of US to manufacture a specific artillery piece barrels at 30 per month, and Ukraine burning trough 400 ...

IMO the US military is entering a dangerous period where it's actually less ready in the near future than it is now. 80s cold war stuff is getting used up in Ukraine faster than anything new can be produced, veterans from the Iraq war are retiring while they're struggling with new recruitment, and more ships are being decomissioned than commissioned. That's probably not something that any SecDef can actually fix in the near future.

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