The Secretary of Offense
A brief history of Pete Hesgeth, and why he should worry you
Now that Donald Trump has taken office, we can see the true shape of his plans. Far from the promises he made to end the wars and put America first, Trump’s cabinet is full of Zionist warmongers, corporate raiders and “establishment” Republicans who have made a career out of pushing the same sort of disastrous policies which have gotten us into this situation in the first place.
While it is still early it seems like Trump’s cabinet is going to escalate the war in the Middle East to the greatest possible extent. Already, we are hearing rumors of Trump favoring a strategy of “maximum pressure” against Iran, the only force standing against complete Zionist-American hegemony in the region. The Zionists are gearing up their long awaited war with Iran, and it seems that Trump is going to give them everything they need.
For his part, wanted war criminal Bibi Netanyahu has realized what Trump’s support means. He can finally execute his long awaited plan to create “Greater Israel”, a new empire which would stretch from the Nile to the Euphrates like the biblical prophecies say. Of course, as the so-called “State of Israel” is not a state of the “Israeli” people, but rather a state of the Jews, millions of people living in the new Zionist empire would be ruthlessly cleansed to make way for more European settlement.
On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates— the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.”-Genesis 15:18-21
While anyone who has been paying attention could tell you that Trump would support the Zionist entity to the hilt, it seems like he is even planning to escalate the War in Ukraine. His peace plan would call for a European army on the border as peacekeepers, while providing Ukraine with 20 years worth of arms and financial support. At best, this would just kick the can down the road a few decades, at worst, it will be only a brief reprieve until the unhinged regime in Kiev decides to launch another bloody crusade. In any case, it is not a permanent solution to the war in Ukraine and everyone knows it.
Far from an end to the war like was promised, it appears that the profitable inertia of war has taken over and Trump’s new plan is simply to continue Biden’s disastrous policies, but with added intransigence. Trump will not only continue arming Ukraine, but he will push America’s vassal states in Europe to increase their defense spending to 5% of GDP, more than double their current spending, in order to escalate the war. Trump’s plan seems to be replacing American support with European, forcing the NATO vassal states to bear the burden of Ukraine’s increasingly insane war.
As if there was ever any doubt, it has become very clear that Trump was simply lying about his intentions.
While the ruling class is throwing a tantrum about the proposed appointment of Tulsi Gabbard to be director of national intelligence, spouting off the same unproven, unprovable rumors of her being a Russian asset, there is very little concern for some of Trump’s other picks. This is because they are the typical establishment warmongers who will continue to operate the machinery that turns the blood of the world into endless profits for the arms dealers and Wall Street vultures.
Perhaps the most concerning is Trump’s pick for Secretary of “Defense” Pete Hegseth, a former commander at America’s illegal black site at Guantanamo bay. There, he oversaw the illegal detention and torture of thousands of innocent people. Many of them are still being held today, as they cannot be released out of fear that they would sue the government and reveal their torture to the masses, but they cannot be charged as there is no evidence they have done anything wrong.
It speaks to the utter depravity of American society that this is hardly mentioned even by critics of Hegseth. The horrific crimes of America’s 20+ year ongoing “war on terror” have been whitewashed to such an extent that even the so-called opposition party acts like they do not exist. Of course, this is understandable. If they were forced to come to terms with these crimes, they would have to grapple with their own extreme complicity in them.
The fact is, the ongoing atrocities of the War on Terror were done with massive bipartisan support. To wit, the war would not and could not have happened without Joe Biden and his then secretary of staff Tony Blinken going to bat to rally Democratic support. Although his role cannot be overlooked, Biden was far from the only Democrat to support the war on terror. The party threw an almost unanimous support behind it, despite the fact that the majority of their voters never approved of the war. This struggle between the base and the party leadership belies the true nature of American democracy, the opinions of the voters matter very little when there is money to be made for Lockheed and Raytheon.
All in all, over 4.5 million innocent people died in the disastrous post-9/11 wars, and that number will continue to increase for many years to come.
For Hegseth, there is no ethical struggle. After serving as a commander at Guantanamo he volunteered for a combat role, leading soldiers in battle and personally taking part in the pillaging of Iraq, a country which had no weapons of mass destruction and no ties to Al-Qaeda whatsoever. Unlike many republicans, who always kept their distance from the fighting and now admit that the war was a mistake, Hegseth is a full-throated and unapologetic supporter of the war. The unit he fought with, the 3BCT of the 187th infantry division, is proven to have committed routine and severe war crimes in Iraq, including several known massacres of villages.
Their commander, a man by the name of Col. Michael D. Steele, kept a running tally of the people the unit had killed and kidnapped, using it as a competition to keep morale high among the men. The unit photographed every person they murdered and kidnapped, posting their photos in the unit’s ready room corkboard. The victims ranged from 13 year old children to a 75 year old man named Jasim Hassan Komar-Abdullah who’s dentures fell out as the soldiers posed for photos with his lifeless body. Every last kill was meticulously tracked and the soldiers who killed the most innocent people were given engraved knives as prizes.
The crimes of the 187th were so severe that they were even brought up on war crimes charges. A few soldiers were sacrificed, but Col. Steele got away with little more than a slap on the wrist even after it was proven he ordered his soldiers to kill all “military aged males”, a term so broad it can apply to nearly everyone. The culture of impunity that shielded men like Steele was no surprise. In Iraq, the brutality was not a symptom, it was the point. The soldiers deployed to this innocent country looking for terrorists needed to look no farther than the mirror.
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