Raging at Media, Pete Hegseth Just Said the Quiet Part Out Loud
The biggest scandals in U.S. history, like Watergate, have played out in a cat-and-mouse fashion, with press efforts pressuring other institutional actors to do their part to ensure that the truth prevails. During wars in particular, we want to know whether officials and combatants are adhering to rules, laws, and codes of conduct, given the awesome power of the U.S. military and the tendency of war to produce unspeakable horrors.
Which brings us to the ultimate point here: Hegseth himself has declared an open disregard for the “rules of engagement.” Besides the hall of mirrors effect, we don’t even know what this means in practice. Like the TimesCharlie Savage notes that there remain many unanswered questions about the role Hegseth’s laxity played in the school bombing:
What standards of certainty were imposed on strike planners to verify and validate potential targets? Does Mr. Hegseth’s repeated statement that he gave the military “maximum authority on the battlefield,” compared to the practice of past wars, mean that standards have been formally lowered? Whatever the rules on paper, have such comments contributed to a culture of acting more quickly and less carefully – without hesitation, in his words – among planners, leading to negligence or carelessness?
A direct link can be drawn between Hegseth’s disregard for the rules of engagement and his disregard for the role of an adversarial press. Apparently he doesn’t want to answer these questions either: Once CNN is bought by Ellison (whose CBS is a network Hegseth likes), there will be less scrutiny and more hagiography – according to Hegseth himself.
