By Joe Labarbera
Former infantry major in the U.S. Army and served in the U.S. Marine Corps
The mission of the Infantry is to “Locate, close with and destroy the enemy through fire and maneuver and repel enemy assaults with fire and close combat” and that is what Major Pete Hegseth did for his country.
Major Pete Hegseth is exactly what the Department of Defense needs at this juncture.
As the far left, the institutional high priests, and “Wokists” attempt to portray this combat tested officer as inadequate and unconventional, I wish to argue his virtues and his visions as being exactly what America’s profession of arms needs at this time, told from my viewpoint as a 54-month combat veteran of American’s longest war, and a career combat arms officer myself.
Major Hegseth is a proven and combat tested officer, choosing this risky and challenging profession as he graduated Princeton University, going into a prestigious investment banking job, to become a leader of combat troops and fight, in the context of violent actual combat, in the longest war in American History.
He volunteered to leave a safe and secure career to fight on the battlefield.
As someone who served in the profession of Arms from 1995-2016, it is very rare to find Ivy league alumni or financial elites like Major Hegseth serving in ground combat operations.
The world of the military’s combat arms is exclusively a working-class demographic, led by officers from middle to upper middle-class backgrounds, with large emphasis on collegiate sports and outdoor pursuits like hunting and shooting.
Being a combat arms officer is a largely unforgiving and lonely role, where many bad officers are weeded out.
In my observation, with some exceptions, those with Ivy league or great wealth pedigree who enter the profession of Arms tend to serve in roles that avoid the high-risk demands of leading 18, 19-year-old fighting men in dangers path.
Hegseth asked for, competed for, and won the opportunity to commit to this largely thankless and high-risk path of service.
Hegseth could have done far less to earn the title “Veteran” with far less risk of sweat and blood, but instead, he went into the most exhaustive and demanding of jobs—Infantry officer.
Hegseth and I both experienced, along with most of “Generation X” the “leftifying” of the military culture.
We saw the profession of arms sacrificed to corporate undertones followed by left wing agendas that the leaders at that time, devoid of combat experience and focused on their own career success, bent the knee too at the expense of our military’s lethality.
These compliant and institutional bureaucrats, masquerading as Generals, lost Iraq and Afghanistan at the strategic levels while men like Hegseth won it at the tactical levels.
The peacetime raised Generals were too sycophantic to address realities to our government and put their post-retirement futures ahead of what would have led to not just victory on the battlefield but a long-term marriage between an epitomized military profession with an institution that resembles the values of our nation and civilization.
Under Obama, we saw
- the rise of leftist ideology infect the institutional military and
- causing the rise of weak officers while purging strong ones;
- proposing extreme changes the media portrayed as progress,
- overturning time-tested military paradigms, such as combat being a role exclusive to men,
- to faith leaders/chaplains playing a strong role in the morale of troops,
- to selection and promotion being based on assessing reliability in combat, and
- the ability to conduct realistic high risk training safely.
These officers traded the tested virtues of the ancient profession of arms with left wing inspired changes requiring enforced compliance to succeed: women in combat, compelled submission to transgenderism, a rejection of religious faith, depriving Soldiers of faith from competent chaplain services, and racial quotas for promotion and selections— all of this being part of a collective paradigm that rewarded those compliant with regulation rather than commitment to the profession or to the men in one’s command.
While this was happening, there was an overarching culture of risk aversion in training that in my view, was linked to the other cultural shifts.
The Colonels and Generals of the late 90s were largely inexperienced in combat, had survived the reduction in force cuts of the early 90s, and had learned the wrong lessons from their overbearing and intense Vietnam vet mentors.
They had learned to be risk adverse and eschew responsibility for adequately training their men, and to rely on the military’s schools for the quality of their troops, seeing their professional success as simply promotion and evaluation reports, without an internal compass for what a true military professional was.
To those such as Hegseth and I, the Generation X of the Officer Corps, we were left holding the bag.
We had to train and prepare the 18–21-year-old Infantrymen to withstand the brutal shock of combat amidst an institution that was increasingly abandoning its obligation to train and prepare them from a moral and psychological sense, and in many cases a professional sense.
Turbulence in personnel changes leading up to a deployment, politically correct training, subverting the chain of command for hysteria-based complaints, and a complete abandonment of accountability in many units signified the leftist purge of the officer corps.
Major Hegseth is the reformer we need to replace the damage done by the Obama, far left democrats on our military.
Hegseth’s changes will prevent future mistakes and will rectify the mistakes made in Iraq and Afghanistan by neo-cons and neo-liberals, and to reverse the toxic culture that arose during the era Generation X was raised in the profession of arms.
He will have the challenge of many Generals and retired Generals seeking to sabotage him, he will have the left wing come after him to destroy him, yet he has the courage and discipline to withstand the oncoming wounds.
Hegseth can be a reformer, a heroic leader of our future greatness. Let our prayers be with him as he is standing for those of us who sacrificed our youths, lives and limbs in the wars post 9-11.
We saw by the disgraceful retreat from Afghanistan and the submission to insane, soul jeopardizing requirements that the General officer corps and the DoD hierarchy abandoned the troops and the profession.
Let Hegseth stand for us who fought, who took the risks, took the unforgiving purges by these said Generals and politicians, and watch how he revitalizes and reforms our forces to stand equally and proudly with their ancestral forbearers.
Joseph Labarbera, the Sussex County Republican Chairman, was an infantry major in the U.S. Army and served in the U.S. Marine Corps
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