“It was silent,” one of them noted afterwards, “so silent we could have heard the famous pin drop.” But no pin fell, and Trump—the man who is always rewarded with deafening applause—slunk off stage with his head down.
For days we had heard the drumrolls. Something big was in the making. Eight hundred generals and admirals had been summoned home to listen to the two self-anointed orators, and all obeyed. Some came from South Korea, others from Okinawa, Guam, and Hawaii. Some were on board mighty aircraft carriers in the Pacific, the Indian Ocean, and beyond, but were flown to the nearest port and onward to Washington, D.C., capital of God’s own country. Naturally, a large retinue of aides and secretaries travelled with them.
This assembly of sharp-minded military leaders expected Hegseth and Trump to say something sensible about the world situation—about America’s relations with China, Russia, and other powers. Perhaps a new strategy? A negotiating initiative? A peace proposal? A victory announcement?
But they were quickly disappointed. Hegseth, 45, of Norwegian descent, opened the spectacle, striding onto the stage in his trademark blue suit. “Good morning, and welcome to the War Department!” Then he announced something the seasoned officers of course did not know: “To secure peace we must prepare for war.”
Let us assume the generals and admirals had on average thirty years of service. That meant the room contained 24,000 years of military experience. Did it occur to Hegseth that someone present might know a little more about war than he did?
For the next forty-five minutes the freshly minted Secretary of War (supposedly the only one of his kind in the world) paced back and forth, full of grand words and grander gestures. Since war was near, his War Department could no longer tolerate the sight of “fat generals and fat admirals” wandering Pentagon’s corridors. A few meters away, behind a curtain, sat his overweight boss, Donald Trump.
“No more beard-wearers,” Hegseth continued. “The age of exaggerated and ridiculous beard profiles is over. In short: if you don’t shave and look professional, it’s time to find a new post—or a new career.”
The order means Sikhs, Muslims, and others with beards must shave as soon as possible, within ninety days at the latest. Those who use a greasy hair pomade, like former alcoholic Pete Hegseth himself, may relax. It is tempting to add that the general who won the American Civil War, Ulysses S. Grant, wore a great and flourishing beard. So did President Abraham Lincoln, who governed in the same period.
Hegseth’s main message was that the U.S. Armed Forces, the most powerful in the world, must stop behaving like kittens when in action. They must fight with every means, without restraint, unhampered by what he called idiotic laws and rules. “War is war. Period.”
Thus, in a few words, he told us that America would no longer abide by the laws of war or humanitarian conventions. The oldest of these, the Geneva Convention of 1864, arose after a battle in Italy five years earlier that left 6,000 dead and 40,000 wounded. A brave Swiss, Henri Dunant, mobilized the local population to aid the wounded, saving many from certain death. Their motto was “we are all brothers”—tutti fratelli in Italian.
Today, nearly all the world’s nations are bound by these conventions and their updates. I suspect Hegseth has never heard of them, nor of Henri Dunant.
Trump too entered the stage to triumphant music, only to be visibly dismayed by the lack of ovations. The officers did rise, but then sat back down in silence. No one moved a muscle when he began to crack his usual jokes. They were no more inspired when he pointed out how important it was to walk firmly on stairs. Biden, after all, had stumbled and fallen more than once, but not he: “Again, America is respected as a country. We were not respected under Biden. They saw him fall on stairs every single day.”
Trump now had a golden opportunity to tell the generals his view of the world. But he failed. He seemed unprepared, his mind wandering here and there, mumbling, never weaving a coherent thread.“He reminded me of a drunkard who had wandered into an alley,” wrote columnist Eliot A. Cohen in The Atlantic. Was Trump simply tired that day? Or did he rely on the cheap punch lines that usually ignite his unlettered MAGA base?
The sober generals, at any rate, were not impressed.
He moved on to describe conditions in his own country, where his predecessors, the wicked Democrats, had ruined city after city: Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Memphis, and Portland, Oregon, to name but a few. All were in “bad shape”; therefore he would “straighten them out, one by one.”
“Last month I signed an executive order to train a rapid-reaction force to crush unrest,” he said. “This is going to be a major assignment for some of you in this room. For this is a war, too. It is a war from within. We are under invasion.”
What were the generals and admirals thinking at that moment? Some may have felt a burning urge to retire early—if only they could.
The U.S. military was established to defend the nation against external enemies, while the police uphold law and order at home. The National Guard has both civilian and, in special cases, military tasks, but remains under the authority of the states, not the president. Yet Trump heralded a new era here as well: “I told Pete (Hegseth) that we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military National Guard.”
Yes—he wants confrontation. And once things get hot enough, he will have yet another excuse to tighten his grip.
That is exactly how a dictator or fascist-in-waiting thinks. The transitions are gradual, and the laws and norms once taken for granted suddenly no longer apply. Along the way, constitutional organs are disabled—the elected assemblies, the courts, even the Supreme Court. One morning you wake to discover that the free media you grew up with no longer exist. New voices inform you that overnight the country has acquired a new authority, the Government for Law and Order, and that all citizens must keep still and await the rulers’ next decree.
America has not reached that point yet. But what lies ahead may be more unsettling than we like to believe.
