Author Pete Hegseth has released his fourth book, titled The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free.
Hegseth pulls no punches in his examination of the cultural rot infesting the military. Our uniformed men and women are part of an institution that we thought was immune from compromising meritocracy, but no longer seems to be. Hegseth isn’t an “all is lost” lamenter, but he fears we are near the point of no return.
He isn’t wrong.
In Chapter 2, the book discusses the “Extremists That Never Were.” Within weeks of taking office, Joe Biden’s Defense Secretary, Lloyd Austin, issued a “Stand Down” order to the entire Department of Defense. A stand-down order is generally reserved for something objectively in need of repair or address. For example, a rash of warplanes crashing would cause a stand-down.
What was the urgency? Austin stood…
