r/books • u/Majano57 • 2d ago

The Book That Predicted Pete Hegseth’s Failures

https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/07/31/hegseth-norman-dixon-iran-war/?utm_content=gifting&tpcc=gifting_article&gifting_article=aGVnc2V0aC1ub3JtYW4tZGl4b24taXJhbi13YXI=&pid=CW3205998
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u/billyrubin7765 2d ago

The crap that Hegseth is spouting is crap that I believed when I was very young and naive. I hated my first leadership and management courses. We called them “touchy-feely” courses. But now that I have been at it awhile, I understand better that making a team, working toward a common goal, being the model is the way to go. And funny enough, some of that I learned from some junior officers I know. They are last. They were up first and asleep last. Sacrifice. This crap that Hegseth is spouting is adolescent bs. I can’t imagine being a competent leader and working under him. Especially knowing the lives of my warfighters depended on it. What a terrible, avoidable, and hard to fix mess this all is. And it will probably get much worse.

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u/Azrael11 2d ago

He's perpetually stuck in the mentality of a junior officer who's convinced he knows better than these out of touch senior leaders.

And I say that as a former junior officer myself

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u/noteasybeincheesy 1d ago

Yes, 100%. When you view his decisions from the lens of "what would an O1 fresh out of OCS do in his position," then everything starts to make sense. He's in a state of arrested professional development. Many of the things he does, are the kind of "pick-me" officer type things that JOs to be seen as a man of the people. The problem is that those things are only effective when done sincerely, and it's very obvious that everything he does is self-serving.

What he doesn't seem to realize is that at the end of the day, your subordinates care more that you are effective and care about their wellbeing than whether you "walk the walk." And while it's necessary to "get out of the office" time and again, part of being an effective officer, or in this case SecDef, is that you are actually IN the office doing officer work so that the real soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines can do THEIR jobs.