Somebody who goes on twitter by @TheShallowState proposed an interesting argument with which I partially disagreed, to the effect that this morning's big Hegseth event at Quantico must have been staged by Donald Trump as a TV reality show moment, but is apparently very serious about not being quoted at anybody else's website, so I have reconfigured the following in respect to their desires.
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| Image by Military Religious Freedom Foundation, god love them for their work. |
At first glance at the idea proposed by @TheShallowState, sure, but I wasn't convinced that there wasn't something more behind it. For one thing, because the plan is just so extremely weird. It's not something that has ever happened before, as NBC News (for instance) reported; it's not so unusual to have two or three dozen senior officers gathering at the Pentagon, but more or less all the generals and admirals of the US armed forces, some 800 total, taken. away from posts where you'd think at least some of them should be ready to respond to real military. emergencies in sensitive spots around the world, together with aides, communications personnel, and their own security, which might up the total to as many as 3,000, so much too much for the Pentagon that they're doing it at Quantico Marine Base instead, and it's bringing on serious logistical problems even though it has supposedly been under discussion for months. (Somebody was pointing out that if the government shuts down today they could all end up stranded in Virginia for the duration, which would be a pretty funny comment on our current millitary readiness.)
And how many months, actually? This is something that has really been important to somebody for a while, and I don't think it's Trump, whose decision announced on Sunday to show up for the event was by all accounts sudden, adding a whole new order of magnitude of logistical difficulties, and he himself has been anxious to play down its importance:
“It’s really just a very nice meeting talking about how well we’re doing militarily, talking about being in great shape, talking about a lot of good, positive things. It’s just a good message,” Trump said in an interview with NBC News. “We have some great people coming in and it’s just an ‘esprit de corps.’ You know the expression ‘esprit de corps’? That’s all it’s about. We’re talking about what we’re doing, what they’re doing, and how we’re doing.”
I thought it must be "Secretary of War" Hegseth, popping off in a way he's done before, in July, when he out of the blue announced a pause in weapons shipments to Ukraine without clearing it with the White House, or with special Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg or secretary of state Marco Rubio, apparently the third time he'd done it, under the prodding of undersecretary for policy Elbridge Colby, a China hawk who thinks focus on Ukraine is stupid, but the first time it rose to public notice, forcing Trump's own people to scramble to restore the impression that Trump is in some sense in charge. Or maybe with the Pentagon's crazy new media policy, imposing total department control over what reporters can report or who they can talk to in the building itself, which Trump seemed not to have heard of at all:
