[Salon] Stoic Stonehedge



https://www.pogo.org (The Bunker, 10/07/25.)

This week in The Bunker: The Defense Department’s civilian leader and his boss mustered hundreds of top U.S. military officers so the pair could decant their favorite old whines into new bottles; rising costs of silo-based ICBMs resurrect a still-madcap scheme to put them on trucks; and more.

STOIC STONEHENGE

A muted and measured response speaks volumes

Their blank countenance betrayed nothing as the Pentagon brass heard, but didn’t listen, to more tiring tirades from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and President Donald Trump September 30. They were uniform, that’s for sure. “America’s generals and admirals sat stone-faced as they listened to Trump and Hegseth,” the Washington Post reported. “The uniformed officers sat stone-faced,” ABC News said. The Washington Examiner referred to “the stone-faced audience.” The Associated Press said the officers “sat mostly stone-faced” and NBC News reported they “sat largely stone-faced.”

Apparently, this unpresidented performance at Quantico, Va., had devolved into a rock concert. The nation’s solidly stolid senior military officers upheld their oath to the Constitution, unlike many lower-ranking troops at North Carolina’s Fort Bragg in June. Those soldiers cheered as Hegseth and Trump partisanly berated the military they inherited, smashing the nation’s once-sacrosanct wall between U.S. leaders and those wearing the nation’s uniform.

But it was different this time. Trump seemed flummoxed. “I've never walked into a room so silent before,” he said. “If you want to applaud, you applaud.” Of course, that tends to be your reaction when you exist in a cocoon filled with perpetual yes-people who tell you only what you want to hear.

Convened on short notice, these flag officers had to hit the pause button on their global hotspots to witness their boss play Patton before a huge U.S. flag. Speculation was rampant about what they’d hear. Perhaps a retooling of the relic that remains the formal U.S. defense strategy (PDF)? Maybe some new approach to stave off a nuclear war? Hardly. What they got was a defense secretary’s laser-like focus on “grooming standards” and “fat generals and admirals.” And ominous presidential warnings that the U.S. is “under invasion from within” and that its cities should be used as military “training grounds”.

While the roughly 800 officers gathered last week at that Marine base may have been uniformed, they were hardly uninformed. All knew, and surely most resented, being summoned from around the globe to hear the same strident gripes and grievances from their “superiors” they’ve been bombarded with since January.

The Bunker most assuredly isn’t endorsing the pre-Trump U.S. military. Both Democrats and Republicans have fumbled in their use of the U.S. armed forces in recent decades. The military has hardly honored itself with costly wars and weapons seemingly incapable of winning.

But a bright, shining line has been crossed. Politicians have long used U.S. troops as patriotic props. But until Trump and Hegseth, none has so overtly used them as partisan playthings. Trump is actively engaged in a cheapening of the U.S. military, even as he seeks to push a record $1 trillion annually into its coffers.

That’s why the sullen stony silence of those officers warrants a resounding round of applause from the rest of us.


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