Reality doesn’t always line up with our wishes. For Pete Hegseth, this lesson has been learned the hard way. Six months into his war with Iran, top military officials are warning the Secretary of Defense that prolonged fighting would be “unsustainable,” according to new reporting from The Washington Post.
These officials are echoing sentiments that have been repeated for months within the administration. Gen. Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had advised the White House before the conflict that a large-scale military confrontation with Iran posed serious risks, particularly because of the U.S.’ depleted munitions stockpiles and a lack of support from regional partners.
Rather than heed these warnings, Washington foreign policy elites chose to proceed with a reckless disregard for the facts, guided by an ideological drive to reshape the world in our image – or, perhaps more accurately, Israel’s. Pete Hegseth is one such ideologue, as demonstrated by his rhetorical record throughout the conflict.
The administration’s entire approach to this war has been stylistically Hegsethian. The tirades against the press, the administration’s unceasing – and undue – confidence, and the rigorous enforcement of a strict narrative are all hallmarks of Pete Hegseth’s brutish approach, rather than the calculated strategy one may expect to see from Marco Rubio or JD Vance.
Hegseth’s style plays to the instincts of an older generation of Republican voters, one which believes that to even question the military is to commit a grave offense. Older cohorts of conservatives – which tend to be the Republican Party’s most consistent base – are fervently supportive of the war.
As soon as the first bombs were dropped, the narrative was enforced. The case for war was not an intellectually rigorous one, but this is a common feature of government propaganda. It primarily exists not to convince the American public to support a policy, but to emotionally manipulate them. To this end, the war’s initiators must act with a level of bravado and confidence capable of convincing the average person that “this person knows what he’s doing.” It doesn’t mean he does, however. This distortion has been perfectly embodied by the rocky past six months at Hegseth’s Pentagon.
Hegseth has built a reputation for his aggressive style. During press conferences in the Iran war’s early stage, he made a habit out of using emotionally charged language to evoke an “us vs. them” mentality within Americans. On March 2, Hegseth called this war “our retribution,” saying “the regime who chanted ‘death to America’ and ‘death to Israel’ was gifted death from America, and death from Israel.” In a press conference a few days later, Hegseth seemed to fetishize violence, describing the U.S. operation as “death and destruction from the sky, all day long.”
In a display of his grotesque lust for power, Hegseth also said “we are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.”
There has been a severe shortage of seriousness from this administration in its messaging on this conflict. In a 60 Minutes appearance just days after the war was launched, Hegseth shrugged off concerns about the risks of this engagement, saying “nobody’s putting us in danger.” He followed this dismissive statement with an even more unsettling one, threatening that “the only ones that need to be worried right now are Iranians that think they’re going to live.”
Devoid of any substance, Hegseth’s statements amount to little more than letters to Santa. He is essentially “making a wish” and pretending it’s a sound assessment of military reality. Yes, troops were and continue to be in danger. Due to a shortage of defensive munitions, U.S. troops at bases across the Middle East have been placed at greater risk of being hit by Iranian missiles. 18 American troops have been killed since the war began.
In another outburst, Hegseth scolded Rep. John Garamendi (D-CA) in an April 29 congressional hearing for daring to question the war’s length. “Shame on you,” Hegseth said.
“The way you stain the troops,” he went on, “calling this a quagmire two months in… handing propaganda to our enemies.” Hegseth urged that “statements like that are reckless to our troops.”
“Who are you cheering for here?”
Behind the aggressive diction is a man without a plan. Accusing others of wrongdoing – for simply questioning his policy, mind you – helps deflect from the fact that he launched a war that has been an unmitigated disaster. It wouldn’t be a Washington crisis without the routine unwillingness to aim critique inward. The blame must always be shifted – no matter how illogically – to those who opposed the policy. Consider John McCain angrily telling Ron Paul “let us win” in 2008, implying that Paul’s anti-war advocacy had somehow contributed to the failures of the Iraq War.
This degree of blame-shifting is not usually a side-effect of victory. In Hegseth’s case, it is the result of having been trapped in a state of denial from beginning to end. First came the denial that there was any chance the Iranian regime would survive, and the assumption that his cartoonishly optimistic predictions would not come back to bite him. Now comes the denial that this disaster had anything to do with the decisions he personally made.
One of the war hawks’ fundamental miscalculations is that power equals strategy. As has been demonstrated in Iran, bombing can become ineffective, and Hegseth’s bellicose remarks alone cannot change that. Bravado and bluster are no substitute for rational thinking. In situations this dire, we are in desperate need of cool heads who can see reality clearly. Ideological militarists – guided by ghastly rhetoric rather than a coherent strategy – have led us down a bad path. We would be wise to acknowledge reality before it smacks us in the face.
Nolan Denaro is a political analyst, writer, and host of “The Quest For Clarity” podcast, available on YouTube and Spotify. He is a columnist at Antiwar.com, and his work has been published by Responsible Statecraft, the Libertarian Institute, The Daily Caller, and the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He writes on U.S. foreign policy, economics, and current events, with a particular focus on war and imperialism. He writes opinion pieces on his Substack, and you can follow him on X @nolandenaro. Nolan can be reached for correspondence at nolansdenaro@icloud.com.
