Hegseth was asked the wrong questions

I don’t know many countries that punished their own troops for violating wartime laws.  Israel once punished soldiers for permitting a massacre of unarmed people in Lebanon.  Given what is occurring in the West Bank and Gaza, I doubt if it would today.  The U.S. punished a number of troops for slaughtering unarmed civilians at My Lai and gave medals to a helicopter crew that ignored orders and saved some Vietnamese children, but even at the time many Americans tried to justify the killing of the children.

Now we get a Secretary of Defense who has publicly stated that a Navy Seal accused by his fellow Seals of murder should not have been charged.  He evidently knows nothing about the Uniform Code of Military Justice or has decided to ignore it.

He was a Fox commentator.  He knows nothing about America’s strategic place in the world.  He is “religious.”  Sen. Cramer used his question time to praise Hegseth for using the words “Jesus Christ.”  

This is a complete abdication of Senate responsibility.  I don’t give a damn that Hegseth was a drunk.  So was General Grant, supposedly.  I don’t care that Hegseth fooled around.  So did John Kennedy and Dwight Eisenhower.  What I care about is that we get someone to run the Department of Defense that knows something about military preparedness, about global strategy, about who are our allies, about how NATO works, how nuclear deterrence can prevent wars, how to fight an insurgency.  

And we get this asswipe.

Amazing.