Like
the Republican Party whose senators will make
Pete Hegseth the next U.S. Secretary of War,
Hegseth is a bad joke. The Democratic minority
in the horribly unrepresentative Senate is a
joke you might hear at an amateur mic night.
Hegseth
is a guy who has reportedly shouted “Kill all
Muslims.” Nobody asked him if he had done that
or if he agreed with it — not even when he
claimed to have been labeled an extremist
purely for having a Christian tattoo. He’s a
guy who has told troops in Iraq to disobey an
order and shoot on sight rather than only when
threatened. No senator asked who was included
in acceptable targets or why. He’s said the
Geneva Conventions should be ignored. One
Republican senator asked him how many pushups
he could do and how many human genders there
are.
Several
asked if he’d be sure to spend a lot on
weapons. (He would.) While Hegseth denounces
government spending and has appeared in
photographs wearing “Big Government Sucks” on
his chest, on Tuesday he repeatedly claimed —
falsely and laughably — that Congress had cut
military spending during Biden’s years in the
White House. Asked by Senate Armed “Services”
Chairman Roger Wicker if spending less than 3%
of GDP on militarism endangered the United
States (Wicker seemed to falsely suggest that
the United States does spend less than that)
Hegseth agreed.
He
agreed despite repeatedly pretending — just
like each of his predecessors — that he would
cut spending and make the Pentagon pass an
audit (not in order to have any idea whether
it is spending too much or too little, but
just because it’s a thing you say on these
occasions). Nobody mentioned the latest Trump
standard of 5% or bothered to consider that
the more nations spend on war the more wars
they get, or that — even if that were not
true, even if war spending prevented wars, as
myth would have it — the amount needed would
have nothing to do with the size of an
economy.
Despite
ever increasing military spending for many
years, Senator Wicker opened the proceedings
on Tuesday by promising more warmongering than
ever and suggesting that civilian leadership
of the military was a problem to be mitigated
by putting a “war fighter” in charge.
Hegseth
let us know that there is no racism in the
U.S. military, that every story of his public
drunkenness and sexual abuse is a lie, and
that — contrary to everything he’s said and
written — he thinks women should have a fair
share of the slaughter.
Accused
of rejecting international law by Ranking
Member Jack Reed, Hegseth opened by shredding
the separation of church and state. Senator
Kevin Cramer later told Hegseth that he had
earned his support just by saying “Jesus
Christ.” (To which I immediately responded by
screaming “Jesus Christ!”)
Reed,
to his credit, asked about Hegseth’s past
support for pardoning war criminals. Hegseth,
during the hearing, openly said that he wanted
every last member of Hamas killed. Nobody
objected in the least or asked whom he counted
as members of Hamas.
The
most popular line of questioning was about
women and their role in the military — on
which Hegseth conveniently reversed his
traditional view. He claimed there was a
conspiracy against him in the media. He
avoided answering a lot of questions, and had
refused to meet with all but one Democratic
senator beforehand. Chairman Wicker refused to
allow more than one round of questioning.
The
new Democratic Senator from Michigan Elissa
Slotkin opened by bragging about having been
in the CIA in Iraq helping to destroy that
country. Then she asked whether Hegseth would
disobey an illegal order (obviously she
herself would not), and Hegseth refused to
answer. She asked if he had discussed using
the military domestically. He refused to
answer except to refer to using it at the
Mexican border, which seemed fine to her. So
she asked if he would use the military for
detentions, and he refused to answer.
Hegseth
frequently did promise to “return the Pentagon
back to war fighting” and to establish a
“warrior ethos.” He said that last bit often
enough to have made some big bucks if “Warrior
Ethos” were a breakfast cereal that had hired
him for advertising. What does he think the
Pentagon has been doing? He claimed on Tuesday
that Trump had changed the rules to allow more
killing in Iraq, but also claimed that Trump
had waged no wars, but also claimed that
because of Biden he, Hegseth, would need to
bring war-fighting back to the Pentagon.
Did
Hegseth cost past organizations a fortune?
Did
he suggest that leftists and Democrats are
enemies of the state? Did he cheat on his
wives? We knew all these answers going in and
coming out. And why Senator Tim Kaine is so
interested in Hegseth’s wives is beyond me.
The hearing added little.
Senator
Mazie Hirono did ask if Hegseth would refuse
an order to shoot protesters in the legs (an
idea Trump seems to get all the credit for
despite Biden’s fondness for it), or an order
to invade Greenland or Panama. Hegseth notably
refused to answer any of those questions.
Fun
times ahead, world!
