The Thug of War
Pete Hegseth’s colleagues at the Pentagon are calling him 'Dumb McNamara,' and Biden’s secretary of state almost, sort of feels bad about enabling a genocide.
On this day in 1945, US forces secured the island of Iwo Jima, at the cost of nearly 7,000 American lives and more than 18,000 Japanese killed. Now, GOP hawk Lindsey Graham gleefully cites the battle, one of the costliest of World War II in the Pacific, as proof that the US will easily take Kharg Island from Iran.
Hi, all. It’s Swin and Andrew, again. Swin is heading to Minnesota at the end of this week to cover, among other things, what is expected to be a huge “No Kings” rally in St. Paul. Bruce Springsteen says he will be there too, because he wants “to meet the moment.” Good for him. If you’re in the Twin Cities area this week, feel free to drop him a line at asawin@zeteonews.com. 🙂
Now let’s get started… In today’s ‘First Draft,’ Pete Hegseth has a new nickname inside the Pentagon, ICE misled about immigration court arrests, and Antony Blinken admitted he “could have done better,” even as he defended giving Israel weapons to carry out its genocide.
‘Dumb McNamara’
Donald Trump’s so-called “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth has earned himself a new nickname, current and former US officials tell us. Among various staffers and officials working within the august confines of the Pentagon and Department of Defense, the former ‘Fox & Friends’ co-host and “death and destruction”-obsessed Trump acolyte is known as “Dumb McNamara.”
This is, of course, a reference to former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, an architect of American military escalation in Vietnam who, despite his disastrous record, maintained a reputation as a brilliant, shrewd thinker. It is exceedingly hard to find anyone in the corridors of Washington power – or anywhere on the planet – who would label Hegseth a brilliant mind.
However, the nickname “Dumb McNamara” has spread within the US government due to Hegseth’s cheerleading of the war and bombing blitzes – overzealous bloodlust and enthusiasm for military fiasco that reminds American officials of, well, a very stupid version of Robert McNamara. “We negotiate with bombs,” Hegseth said Tuesday. “You have a choice, as we loiter over the top of Tehran.”
Oh, it was over the top, alright…
Trump has seemed eager to shift some credit (or blame, depending on who you ask) for his disastrous war in Iran to Hegseth. Earlier this week, the president said, “Pete, I think you were the first one to speak up. You said, ‘Let’s do it.’”
It’s Trump’s war, to be sure, but as things continue to go south, it’s easy to see the president’s Iran bloodbath getting framed as “Hegseth’s war,” in the way Vietnam famously became “McNamara’s war.”