Peter Baker on Hegseth Amid Top Military Cuts: He’s Waging War on His Own Pentagon Rather Than on Iran

EXCERPT:

BAKER: “And I think that, you know, there’s a lot of — a lot of discontent about Secretary Hegseth, as you said, among Republicans on the Hill. I think Senator Tillis said he'd never seen anything quite so incompetent. I think you’ve seen others give that — voice that opinion. He seems more intent, Secretary Hegseth does, on waging war on his own Pentagon rather than waging war on Iran. At a time when, you know, there’s a major national crisis going on, he seems much more intent on taming the Pentagon and, you know, bringing it to heel, if you will. But the consequence of that is it means if you’re an officer at high ranks, you learn the lesson to keep your head low. You don’t learn the lesson to speak truth to power, because you’ve seen that he is willing to use his power to get rid of people who displease him in one way or another, whether they’re because they’re not his version of  what he thinks a general should look like, or because they disagree or offer different points of view about policy or the war that’s going on in Iran. So there’s a real consequence to this.”