Which is scarier –Hegseth or the combined brainpower of the Senate Armed Forces Committee?
Watching just a bit of the Hegseth hearings before the Senate AF Committee, it is clear that many on that committee understand exactly what is at stake. Hegseth will be a US secretary of defense offense who will obey Donald Trump, won’t be bought by the same old companies, but can probably be contained by other means. His assigned mission in the Pentagon will be to disrupt, delay and deny — and Senators were sweating their real concern about a potential disruption of the district kickbacks and reduction of state defense investments, their nervousness thinly disguised by statements about doing right by the soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines.
Both Hegseth and the members of the Committee seem unfamiliar with various parts of the Constitution, and come across as unprepared. It’s probably a match made in heaven. Curiously, Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin made a lot of sense. Of course, he’s a plumber and a rancher, both careers Americans have far more need of than “US Senator.” Another point of light: Hegseth’s written statement included a sly, if sophomoric, callback to the days of Rumsfeld, asserting “I know what I don’t know.” This is on its face silly — but it reminds us that the Senate easily confirmed secretaries of defense in our lifetimes that have been far more dangerous and anti-American than Hegseth will ever be.
I doubt Hegseth, or any other secretary of defense that this Senate can confirm, will be much of a disruptor. It is the job of Congress to cut spending, to hold the executive branch accountable, and end the illegal wars, the odd overseas assassination, and genocides that nearly all of them support to some degree. Most of them have no intention of doing their job. If this hearing is any guide, we can confirm only that the US Senate and House will do what they always do — give the Pentagon more money than even that rapacious cesspool of waste and fraud asks for, and mandate inappropriate, unneeded, and unsupportable defense programs that have little or nothing to so with actually protecting our country, or American interests.
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