Pete Hegseth ’03 seems to be a brazenly brash bit of a blowhard. The blowhard is that person who “talks too much and too loudly, especially in a boastful or self-important manner.” The public should expect, in the pivotal role of his title, that he knows whereof he speaks.
However, PAW reports that "in his tenure as defense secretary, [he] has presided over a campaign attempting to restore a ‘warrior ethos’” to his department. The historic nation-state military apparatus abandoned that warrior ethos long ago, going back centuries.
The soldier is a product of standardized rigorous training, operating within a structured military organization. The warrior, in contrast, embodies a more individualistic approach to combat, often within tribal or clan-based societies.
In the fourth Century B.C.E., Titus “Torquatus” Manlius (renowned general of the Roman Republic), ordered his son executed, for disobeying military discipline and engaging in warrior-like single combat. Centuries later, General George S. Patton Jr. (in his famous D-Day speech addressing the Third Army), noted that “an Army is a team; it lives, eats, sleeps, and fights as a team. This individual hero stuff is a lot of horse s--t!”
Both Patton and the military machine of the Roman Empire are universally recognized (and respected) authorities on the topic of warfare. Pete Hegseth as a politics major undergrad, maybe not so much, though perhaps an otherwise well-informed person.
Pete Hegseth ’03 seems to be a brazenly brash bit of a blowhard. The blowhard is that person who “talks too much and too loudly, especially in a boastful or self-important manner.” The public should expect, in the pivotal role of his title, that he knows whereof he speaks.
However, PAW reports that "in his tenure as defense secretary, [he] has presided over a campaign attempting to restore a ‘warrior ethos’” to his department. The historic nation-state military apparatus abandoned that warrior ethos long ago, going back centuries.
The soldier is a product of standardized rigorous training, operating within a structured military organization. The warrior, in contrast, embodies a more individualistic approach to combat, often within tribal or clan-based societies.
In the fourth Century B.C.E., Titus “Torquatus” Manlius (renowned general of the Roman Republic), ordered his son executed, for disobeying military discipline and engaging in warrior-like single combat. Centuries later, General George S. Patton Jr. (in his famous D-Day speech addressing the Third Army), noted that “an Army is a team; it lives, eats, sleeps, and fights as a team. This individual hero stuff is a lot of horse s--t!”
Both Patton and the military machine of the Roman Empire are universally recognized (and respected) authorities on the topic of warfare. Pete Hegseth as a politics major undergrad, maybe not so much, though perhaps an otherwise well-informed person.