I don't mind the secretary of defence being a warhawk. His job isn't to start a war but to get the military ready for war, and maintain that war readiness, and give advice IF we can go to war in situations when the President asks him for that option. He will have a plethora of generals under him preparing wldifferent types of war plans, and will also make plans that actively work against The Department of State's best plans, as well as conpliment them.
You sorta want a gung ho "I will F'in murder you" kind of guy in that position. You can have your doves too, but in lesser roles in the DOD. More room for them in The State Department, but you still want a mix there. Main concern is the mindset of the president who has say. It's only if the President is incapacitated that the Secretary of Defence has no one in charge of him, and that's only until the VP (or next in the line of succession) takes the oath of office.... which is supposed to happen very quickly, but somehow Biden has been incapacitated for years and is still President. We clearly have a constituional weakspot there that can use a new amendment to tweak it.
As the US leads several international alliances such as NATO, we gotta keep our military scary looking in order to keep the peace. Deterence is a very healthy prop for peace when surrounded by psychopaths. Keeps them honest. Notice Russia didn't invade Kiev until after Biden screwed up in Afghanistan.... making it too obvious you are not interested in smaking anyone down makes you look incrediably weak to such men as Putin and Xi.
@hippyjoe1955 No, it isn't. You are neither making a deduction or a inference. You are instead projecting something from yourself, such as a presumption, onto me.
You literally just stumbled into this thread and started making projections non-existent here about your own beliefs and worldview, and insisted it is present here. It isn't- neither inference or deduction was used by you, and it is obvious to nobody save yourself whatever your insistence otherwise.
@Dignaga Says more about your own blindness than anything else. You are a cultural elitist who mistakenly thinks that your culture is superior to everyone else in the world.
Look at Austin. Gets sick, gets hospitalized, never lets Biden know. Fails to stay in the. Chain of Command. An extremely ill thought out and very dangerous action on his part.
We need IMO a Secretary of Defense who will have a military that if the event comes, will be ready to go to war.
As a veteran I think our military is being used as a social engineering experiment. And appreciate the fact that our adversaries sees this and are responding accordingly.
As far as “ War hawk”; stop and realize our adversaries are very much war hawks and are actively engaged in that mind set.
I'm not sold on Hegseth as a person but the Secretary of Defence doesn't actually decide if and when the US will go to war. His job is to make sure the military is capable of fighting any war the POTUS and Congress should decide to fight. You must admit that the US military is a joke at the moment. It couldn't even beat the Houtis.
I'm not sold on Hegseth as a person but the Secretary of Defence doesn't actually decide if and when the US will go to war.
It is Trump, the US President, who decides when we go or not go to war.
His job is to make sure the military is capable of fighting any war the POTUS and Congress should decide to fight.
Warfighting capability is a martial art. This expertise is the province of military combat commanders who, traditionally, are graduates of West Point Military Academy. Hegseth graduated from Princeton where he studied politics. Combat performance of the US armed forces has been dismal after WW2. We had never won a war since Korea even when led by General MacArthur. Vietnam was a mess even when we were fighting rice paddy farmers with superior firepower. It was the same dismal performance in the Mid-East fighting goat-herders. We never had to face down a comparably armed adversary head on in any contested area until now: hiding behind Ukranians to fight Russia. I doubt Hegseth is any better than our good-for-nothing Joint Chiefs of Staff. Hegseth was picked by Trump to fire them and remove women and alphabeth people from the ranks of fighting men.
It couldn't even beat the Houtis.
The US has a sick foreign policy. Our military can be likened to a gun wielded by a nutjob.
@NativePortlander1970 Why does America need need protecting? Do you carry a gun with you wherever you go? Are you constantly afraid that someone would harm you?
