Friends,
This week, the top brass of America’s military — more than 800 four-star generals, lieutenant generals, major generals, and admirals — were summoned from their posts around the world to a conclave in Quantico, Virginia. The apparent reason? To listen to “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth and their commander-in-chief, Donald Trump.
Hegseth delivered a diatribe against political correctness, beards, fat generals, and women in combat missions. Trump gave a long, rambling, incoherent mess of a speech.
It seemed unlikely that the military’s top brass were summoned merely for this.
But if not, what was the real purpose of this unprecedented gathering? Other than Hegseth’s and Trump’s bonkers speeches, we don’t know. Was the event also used to distribute highly sensitive information? To enable face-to-face communications about pending changes in the use of military force? To get buy-in from the top brass for an agenda that had to be communicated in person?
Here are several of the views I’ve gleaned from military-watchers I trust about the real purpose of this gathering:
This post has been syndicated from Robert Reich, where it was published under this address.