{"id":190445,"date":"2025-10-04T23:17:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-04T23:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/190445\/"},"modified":"2025-10-04T23:17:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-04T23:17:07","slug":"veterans-react-to-hegseths-insulting-address-to-generals-and-admirals-pete-hegseth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/190445\/","title":{"rendered":"Veterans react to Hegseth\u2019s \u2018insulting\u2019 address to generals and admirals | Pete Hegseth"},"content":{"rendered":"

Naveed Shah, a veteran and activist who served as an enlisted public affairs specialist \u2013 an army journalist \u2013 uncharacteristically found himself searching for words to describe the address<\/a> of the newly styled secretary of war to flag officers on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of the words that are coming to me aren\u2019t fit to print,\u201d said Shah, policy director for Common Defense, a veterans advocacy organization. \u201cThe people in that room who have served for 20, 30-plus years in uniform do not need Pete Hegseth<\/a> to tell them about warrior ethos.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hegseth\u2019s hour-long Ted talk-style address touching on physical fitness, the doctrine of lethality and the perils of DEI certainly drew more attention than a policy memo might have, and perhaps more than Donald Trump\u2019s rambling, politically charged hour-long speech that followed.<\/p>\n

But the attention came at the cost of respect, said Dana Pittard, a retired army general who commanded soldiers in Iraq and co-author of Hunting the Caliphate<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought it was insulting,\u201d Pittard said of the address, rejecting Hegseth\u2019s assertion that senior officers of color \u2013 like himself \u2013 had benefitted from a non-existent quota system for promotions.<\/p>\n

Online chatter in military groups ahead of the unprecedented, secrecy-shrouded meeting of 800 generals and admirals called to Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia had revolved around a demand for some loyalty oath to the administration, or public firings or a declaration of war. Some described it as karmic revenge for decades of mandatory hour-long safety briefings held by unit commanders before dismissing troops for the weekend. Many also wondered if the expensive challenge to security could have been an email.<\/p>\n

\u201cCertainly, addressing the troops could be useful or beneficial, but to call 800-plus generals and senior enlisted advisers from around the world into this room just before a government shutdown? It\u2019s not just bad optics or strategy,\u201d Shah said. \u201cA bad cold could have threatened our entire chain of command.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pittard said it was well within the authority of a defense secretary to call a meeting of generals, but that the display was \u201cegotistical\u201d and a waste of resources. And Trump\u2019s subsequent comments created \u201ca dangerous, slippery slope \u2026 to make it so partisan\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe talked about the previous commander in chief, president Biden, and then talked about the \u2018enemy within\u2019. That is a dangerous slippery slope to be referring to that to the leaders of the US military<\/a>. Very dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hegseth\u2019s discussion of physical fitness standards for women in combat roles met a more nuanced response, particularly from women who have served. Hegseth said that women in combat roles would have to meet the same fitness standards as men, including tasks like carrying a body and marching with heavy gear. \u201cIf women can make it, excellent. If not, it is what it is,\u201d Hegseth said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a fairness advocate and the avenue of approach that I\u2019m able to see is that they\u2019re creating a pathway of fairness,\u201d said Sally Roberts, an Afghanistan war veteran and Team USA world medalist in women\u2019s wrestling who founded Wrestle Like A Girl,<\/a> which advocates for women\u2019s wrestling opportunities in school and elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Roberts said she had not been allowed to serve in some selective units, despite her physical abilities. \u201cI was held back because I didn\u2019t fit the right idea of who they wanted for those particular units or groups, and I feel like this has the opportunity to actually level the playing field for those high performing, high achieving individuals that want to succeed, but have barriers to entry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amy McGrath, a retired Marine pilot and former Senate candidate, described Hegseth\u2019s comments about women as disparaging.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe claimed the military needs to \u2018return to the male standard\u2019 in combat jobs (of 1990!), but here\u2019s the truth: there has never been a separate male and female standard\u201d she wrote on Instagram. \u201cWhen women entered combat roles, one standard was set, and we\u2019ve been meeting it ever since. You can either do the job or you can\u2019t. Period.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tamara Stevens, a former navy cryptological technician, said she found Hegseth\u2019s discussion of \u201clethality\u201d more alarming than anything else, given the context that Trump provided later with comments about using deployments to American cities as a training ground.<\/p>\n

\u201cBasically, he\u2019s saying that we\u2019re no better than Hamas because people are joining because they want to break things and they want to kill people,\u201d she said. \u201cI mean, for anyone that\u2019s been in the military, he\u2019s not qualified to be secretary of defense. He\u2019s barely qualified to be a host on Fox News.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut to say these things in front of the preeminent generals and admirals leading our military? Has he no honor, to say that we don\u2019t belong in polite society? Maybe he doesn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

This article was amended on 1 October 2025. Amy McGrath was formerly a Marine pilot, not a navy pilot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Naveed Shah, a veteran and activist who served as an enlisted public affairs specialist \u2013 an army journalist…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":190446,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,134,427],"class_list":{"0":"post-190445","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}