{"id":55384,"date":"2025-10-01T15:59:49","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T23:59:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=55384"},"modified":"2025-10-01T15:59:49","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T23:59:49","slug":"fat-generals-are-the-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/01\/fat-generals-are-the-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"Fat Generals Are the Problem!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reprinted from Bracing Views<\/a> with the author\u2019s permission.<\/i><\/p>\n

The military historian Dennis Showalter once told me that he didn\u2019t care about the amount of fat around a general\u2019s belly \u2013 he cared about the fat between a general\u2019s ears. It was a telling quip, and one that highlights the shortsighted nature of Pete Hegseth\u2019s emphasis on fitness and military bearing to the generals and admirals he assembled yesterday<\/a>.<\/p>\n

(By the way, what about Trump as commander-in-chief. Is he going to exercise and lose weight? Good luck with that one, Pomade Pete.)<\/p>\n

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Pomade Pete Hegseth, Self-declared Secretary of War<\/p><\/div>\n<\/picture>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Of course, physical fitness is important in military settings, especially if you\u2019re at the pointy end of the spear, as they say in the military. But America\u2019s senior leaders today are not \u201cboy generals\u201d like George Armstrong Custer in the U.S. Civil War. They are men and women in their fifties and early sixties, presumably promoted for their integrity, knowledge, insight, skill, and experience, not because they can still run sub-six minute miles or perform 100 pushups.<\/p>\n

(Aside: It might be time to buy stock in Ozempic and similar drugs used for weight loss.)<\/p>\n

Recall all the media praise showered on William Westmoreland, David Petraeus, and Stanley McChrystal. These three generals were lauded for their physical fitness and military bearing, their \u201cspartan\u201d qualities as warriors. And they all demonstrated strategic mediocrity in fighting and losing the Vietnam, Afghan, and Iraq Wars. They may not have had flabby bellies, but they had flabby minds.<\/p>\n

Hegseth is all about \u201cwarrior\u201d image over substance. Don\u2019t get me wrong: I think everyone should exercise if they can, and being substantially overweight isn\u2019t healthy. When I was in my early forties and a lieutenant colonel, I ran with the troops and did pushups and sit ups. But there\u2019s a lot more to military effectiveness than being \u201ca lean mean fighting machine.\u201d<\/p>\n

But I\u2019ll admit I\u2019m burying the lede here. Trump and Hegseth\u2019s message to senior leaders was far more disturbing than complaints about a fat and woke military. Here\u2019s what I sent to a friend about this:<\/p>\n

The \u201cnational security\u201d state has kept our country in a state of permanent war since 1947. Trump and Hegseth are just ripping the facade of \u201csecurity\u201d away and replacing it with \u201cwar.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cPeace\u201d is the word that dare not speak its name. And \u201cwar,\u201d of course, has come to the streets of America, with troops deployed to Portland next. Add that to the many police who got their initial training in the military and the rapid expansion of ICE along with detention centers and it\u2019s obvious how the war on terror has truly become global since now the focus is on terror in America.<\/em><\/p>\n

We are reaping what we sowed…<\/em><\/p>\n

I was then asked for a more formal comment and came up with this:<\/p>\n

The statements of Trump and Hegseth show that the \u201cglobal\u201d war on terror was and is truly global (as well as permanent) because that war has now come home to America\u2019s cities. Now places like LA and Portland are to be pacified by American \u201cwarriors\u201d and warfighters, with detention centers (concentration camps) for those who resist. President Dwight D. Eisenhower was never more right or prescient when he noted, \u201cOnly Americans can hurt America.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Trump and Hegseth see America\u2019s streets as a battleground for the U.S. military against \u201cthe enemy within<\/a>.\u201d The real enemy to democracy, of course, is the very deployment of troops to the streets. American colonists launched a revolution 250 years ago partly because they didn\u2019t want the king\u2019s troops among them as enforcers.<\/p>\n

Anyone who doesn\u2019t see the fundamental dangers of Trump and Hegseth\u2019s actions to democracy and our Constitutional rights truly has some flab between their ears.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author\u2019s permission. The military historian Dennis Showalter once told me that he didn\u2019t care about the amount of fat around a general\u2019s belly \u2013 he cared about the fat between a general\u2019s ears. It was a telling quip, and one that highlights the shortsighted nature of Pete Hegseth\u2019s emphasis […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":290,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[758],"class_list":["post-55384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"0","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":"Hegseth's Absurdity Masks a Far Scarier Issue"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/290"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55384"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55388,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55384\/revisions\/55388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55384"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=55384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}