President Donald Trump has weathered fierce criticism over the past five months after beginning a devastating, never-ending war in Iran. But throughout it all, there’s been one brave man firmly in his corner: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who on Tuesday told senators they’d been thinking about this forever war situation all wrong. Instead of criticism, we should be praising Trump for dragging us into war.
“President Trump deserves the kind of praise he should get for undertaking this effort,” Hegseth told the Senate Appropriations Committee in a hearing on Tuesday. “Having the courage to ensure that crazy Islamists can’t have a nuclear weapon to hold us at issue.”
To their credit, the Senate was immediately skeptical. “Excuse me, so he should be praised for starting a war without authority?” Rhode Island Democrat Jack Reed interjected. “For creating a situation in which the world economy is suffering tremendously?”
Reed wasn’t the only dissenter during Hegseth’s testimony. Over the course of the hearing, the secretary was repeatedly interrupted by protesters. “Your hands are bloody with 17 Americans,” one protester — displaying a banner emblazoned with “NO WAR ON IRAN” — shouted as they were dragged out of the room by law enforcement.
“Stop bombing our children in Iran and Palestine, this is illegal,” another protester shouted seconds later. Several more rounds of interruptions took place throughout his remarks.
Hegseth was on Capitol Hill to try to convince the Appropriations Committee to continue showering the Department of Defense with taxpayer money in order to implement Trump’s policies — namely, bombing Iran over and over.
“Not funding this department at $1.5 trillion, I believe, is the greatest threat our nation faces,” Hegseth said.
When the Senate asked for clear answers on where that money is going, Hegseth only offered vague handwaving about overturning Biden’s “woke” military policy.
Hegseth went on to brag that the American military is “no longer run by bureaucrats,” but is “instead led by combat tested veterans and world class business leaders who are running the department like a business.”
If the Pentagon is being run like a business, it’s certainly not a profitable one. Instead, Hegseth’s grand corporation of war functions more like a taxpayer subsidized feast for defense contractors and Silicon Valley. Private corporations are allowed to milk American defense systems for profit, while taxpayers, deprived of adequate health care, education, and social services, are continuously asked to fund a bottomless pit of budget requests with little in the way of accountability.
And outside of the dollar signs and D.C. budgets, the human toll of the war is only getting higher. Iranian civilians have been dying for months, but U.S. servicemembers have also died in Trump’s name. In the past few days, at least three more servicemembers have been killed by Iranian strikes, and the New York Times reports that the Pentagon has repeatedly withheld information on U.S. casualties from the public throughout the duration of the war. Thus far, at least 17 servicemembers have been killed as a result of the war.
Trump, for his part, is defiant. On Tuesday afternoon, he posted a short list on Truth Social, comparing past U.S. wars — including, Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea, and Vietnam — to his war in Iran. “Iran Military Conflict: 4 months, 18 DEAD,” Trump wrote.
The other wars on that list, of course, have already ended. Trump’s war in Iran could last much longer yet.
