Break It Down!
If you live in current-day America, you probably know there is an “imagine that” moment, or two, or ten, daily…that’s every single day. Today, I’ve picked one; the saga of the Department of War’s alleged “double-tap” of a boat of said to be narco-terrorists in the Caribbean on September 2. The controversy, if you believe there is one, revolves around a Washington Post story that attributed the call for a second attack on the boat, after it was disabled, to Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth. According to the story, Hegseth is alleged to have said, “Kill the all.”
Initially, Hegseth denied it, and in doing so, characterized the claim as fake news, manufactured by partisan Democrats. Interestingly enough, as time unfolded, that assertion melted into, it happened, but Hegseth, and shockingly, his boss, Donald Trump, knew nothing about it. They both, after the initial story disintegrated, blamed…I mean, attributed the decision for the second attack to Navy Vice-Admiral Frank Bradley.
Though it’s not surprising Trump and Hegseth conveniently found someone to throw under the bus, they did not do so until their cover story failed to hold up to scrutiny. Once even Republicans in Congress started questioning whether Hegseth’s version was counterfactual, and if so, was it also either illegal or unconstitutional, a new narrative was required. On Tuesday, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, a Republican, excoriated Hegseth for defending a second military strike on survivors of an initial attack on an alleged drug boat, after he had previously dismissed the report as fake news.
At one point yesterday, Paul, speaking to reporters at the Capitol said, “Secretary Hegseth said he had no knowledge of this, and it did not happen. It was fake news. It didn’t happen. And then the next day, from the podium of the White House, they’re saying it did happen. The Senator went on to say, Hegseth was either “lying to us” about his knowledge of the strike or “he’s incompetent and didn’t know it happened.”
Without a doubt, Paul suggested he thinks Hegseth is lying to the American public. He added, “So as a country, are we just going to let people lie to us, to our face? Are we going to let them kill people who they call enemies anytime in the world? Are we going to let them like when someone is stranded and holding on to the scraps of a boat put a second bomb on them? I think it’s outrageous and should be universally condemned.”
Let’s not lose the irony of this moment. A few months ago in early fall, Hegseth called virtually the entirety of military brass to meet at Marine Base Quantico, in Virginia. In that meeting he lectured them, he lambasted them, he lit into them in the most demeaning of ways. Near the end of his diatribe, aimed at impressing an audience of one, Donald J. Trump, he invited anyone not on board with his instructions, to retire from the military. But that was just one of the outrageous takeaways. He declared:
“We also don’t fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality and authority for warfighters.”
Be mindful, this meeting, and those comments came after the attack on the boat. Taking into account hindsight, it is almost as though, he was low key bragging about the dastardly deed and camouflaging it in an olio of “warrior ethos” and “fog of war.”
Many people think they want the glory and success of being a “beast” but are unwilling to put in the hard work, practice, and mental toughness required to achieve it. It highlights the difference between wanting a result and being willing to endure the difficult process of the “hunt,” the “grind,” or the “practice” needed to get there. It was all good until it wasn’t. When the home team, aka, a number of Republicans, joined Democrats in questioning the legitimacy of his actions, the Secretary of War, or of Defense, or of whatever, appeared to have a case of second thoughts.
As I watched him back pedal from his aforementioned bravado, I was reminded of a phrase attributed to motivational speaker, Eric Thomas, who is credited with having said, “Everybody Wants to be a Beast…Until It’s Time to do Beastly Things!”
I’m done; holla back!
Read my blog anytime by clicking the link: https://thesphinxofcharlotte.com/. Find a new post each Wednesday.
To subscribe, click on Follow in the bottom right-hand corner of my Home Page at http://thesphinxofcharlotte.com; enter your e-mail address in the designated space, and click on “Sign me up.”
Subsequent editions of “Break It Down” will be mailed to your in-box. Consult the links below for more detailed information on a variety of aspects relating to this post:
https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/02/politics/rand-paul-hegseth-boat-strike
BREAK IT DOWN! 