When Pete Hegseth walks into the Pentagon for the first time he will likely pass one of the most famous works of art in the building. It is one I think will resonate with the 29th Secretary of Defense.
Hanging between the third and fourth level of the Pentagon’s outer E-ring, the painting by Arnold Friberg depicts an Air Force officer and his family kneeling at prayer beneath a stained-glass window.
Its words are from Isaiah 6:8: “Here am I; send me.”
What a minor miracle that such a work of art — graced with a message of faith, family and sacrifice — survived the Biden administration’s goon squad of DEI mandarins. They probably dismiss it as a patriarchal, chauvinistic, anachronistic symbol of white Christian nationalists.
But the reverent officer depicted in Friberg’s work is exactly the sort of man Hegseth writes about in his bestseller, “The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free.”
In Washington, D.C., many politicians who haven’t served talk about “honoring our service men and women” with more benefits: a pay raise, more G.I. Bills, more healthcare, more free Veterans Day lunches at Chili’s.
But if you ask a veteran why they joined, the answer you will likely receive won’t be about the benefits.
Military service is a calling.
Faith, family and sacrifice lie at the core of why most people raise their right hand and pledge their lives to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. The best military officers with whom I have served have a quiet and purposeful sense of that old-fashioned sentiment — duty, honor, country.
Those values have been under a full frontal assault. After spending a generation in the fear and loathing of men and their “toxic masculinity,” the left now stands surprised that those same men commit suicide at increasing rates, want to become women or voted for President Donald Trump by massive margins.
To push back, three battles await the next secretary of Defense.
The first is the dangerous drop in military recruiting. The Biden administration was the first in American history to miss its military recruiting goals. And it didn’t miss by a little — the U.S. Army fell short by two whole divisions.
The Army disguised this shortfall by instituting a fat camp for recruits — euphemistically dubbed the “Future Soldier Preparatory Course.” Having a ripped secretary of Defense, who women are swooning over on X (“I’m a war criminal now” tweeted the Redheaded Libertarian), should help set an example for future recruits. Hegseth will likely have no problem recruiting young men with ads that work: ones that celebrate traditional American patriotism and toughness.
Secondly, the DEI culture runs deep and is currently running for cover. Career officials will be digging in and getting rid of their most obvious signs of wokedom. They will hide behind complicated multi-matrixes and cross-functional org charts. To root them out, Hegseth will need to put actual warriors back in charge. Thousands of keyboard warriors fill the five-sided building every day, but what our military needs is less support staff and more door-kickers and trigger pullers.
Lastly, Hegseth will need to return civilian control to the military. That long American tradition has come under attack, particularly with the growth of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the chairman’s role. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs is an advisor to the president and thus outside the official chain of command, yet the Joint Staff has grown to thousands of people with a staggering budget of nearly half a billion dollars. With 44 four-star generals running around and a Navy that boasts more admirals than ships, Hegseth will need to reckon with right-sizing our flag officers to wrestle back control of his military.
All this will be a monumental undertaking, but thank God some brave men still pray: “Here am I; send me.”
Morgan Murphy is military thought leader, former press secretary to the Secretary of Defense and national security advisor in the U.S. Senate.
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