Macho-Macho Man
The new Defense Secretary believes that the US military has lost its “Warrior Ethos”. What does that mean? Pete Hegseth thinks that our military has gone “soft”, worrying more about our societal issues like gender identity, race and ethnic diversity than being “Warriors”. Our modern forces, where the ability to pilot a drone over Afghanistan from Virginia is as important as a High Altitude, Low Opening parachute jump over Korea, now “depends” on being a “Warrior” according to the Secretary. (I’m humming the tune “Macho, Macho, Man” by the Village People in the background).
Hegseth is waging a war on the US military, a war against the dreaded “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion”, better known by the initials “DEI”. Hegseth seems convinced that racial and ethnic minorities, women, gay and transgendered soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and Guardians (members of the Space Corps) are weakening our defenses.
So it’s no surprise that the two highest women in the US Defense establishment, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Franchetti and Commandant of the Coast Guard Admiral Fagan, were fired. It also shouldn’t surprise anyone that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Air Force General Brown was fired as well. He’s Black, and he spoke out during the George Floyd controversy.
Old Confederates
What kind of “Warriors” is Hegseth looking for? Is his military to be dominated by “good ol’ boys,” white men, who “know” how to fight? How far is Hegseth willing to go?
Fort Bragg in North Carolina was named after the failed Confederate General Braxton Bragg. For over a century, the military celebrated the Confederate “lost cause”, naming bases and facilities after generals in “gray”. Recently, Fort Bragg was renamed by Congressional order, Fort Liberty. But that offended Hegseth’s sense of Warrior Ethos (I guess he remembers Chickamauga, but forgets all of Bragg’s failures). So he renamed Liberty back to Bragg, with a “fig leaf” of pretending the name honors a World War II Silver Star recipient, Ronald Bragg.
Firing the women and the Black man, reviving good ol’ Fort Bragg, started to right Hegseth’s world. But to really build his “Warrior Ethos” military, he wants a thorough cleansing of the military image. Posters of women and minorities in combat roles were ripped down throughout the country. The words “gay” and “transgendered” were scrubbed from the military manuals and online materials. He wants our Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines (and Guardians too) totally focused on being “Warriors”. I guess that means they are supposed to be mostly White men, who like women – to Hegseth that clearly matters (ask the woman he “enjoyed”, or assaulted, in 2017).
Erasing History
So I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that the “thought police” of the civilian defense establishment, (kind of like the DOGE kids) reached out to change history. The “thought police” are busy erasing the history of the Tuskegee Airmen, the courageous black men who broke the color barrier for fighter pilots in the US Army of World War II. And while they’re “changing history”, they are attacking another fundamental fact of World War II.
You see, one of the most famous aircraft in history has a “DEI” name: the Enola Gay. On August 6th, 1945, a US B-29 bomber took off from Tinian Island, a speck in the Pacific Ocean. It was piloted by Colonel Paul Tibbets, the commander of the 509th Bomb Group. The four engine aircraft was bound for Japan, to drop the first atomic bomb, nicknamed “Little Boy” on Hiroshima.
Tibbets was well aware of the gravity of this action. He even replaced the normal pilot of the B-29, taking direct control himself. And he renamed the particular aircraft that would go down in world history after his mother, Enola Gay Tibbets.
We all know “the rest of the story”.
Wrong Thoughts
But what is the Defense Secretary going to do? Here, written in a flash of light and the instant death of thousands is his most hated word: Gay. Can there be anything more “macho” more “warrior”, than dropping an atom bomb? But there it is, “Enola Gay” burned into American and World memory. The “thought police” tried to scrub that too. I hope there are good security guards at the Air and Space Museum on the Mall in Washington, DC. There might be a “military operation”, maybe using Seal Team Six, to break in and strike out the “Gay” painted on the nose of the still proud B-29.
There is no evidence that being a woman, or a gay man, or a transgendered person, impacts the modern military. What it does effect, is the mind of a man who sees the military as only those “Warriors” on the battlefield as “manly men”. It was wrong when Confederate admirers kept the US military segregated through World War II until President Truman forced the change in 1948.
It was wrong when women were denied combat roles before the 1990’s, a wrong not righted fully until 2016. And it was wrong when a soldier, sailor, or Marine had to hide their sexual preference, first completely, then under Clinton’s “don’t ask, don’t tell”, until 2011.
And Pete Hegseth’s “Warrior Ethos” cleansing is wrong now.
