Better to have fat generals than a fatheaded defense secretary

Pete Hegseth, who treasures calling himself the cabinet's "Secretary of War" in a cabinet that has no department of war, is likely to go down in appalled history mostly as a moronic defense secretary who earned the adjective by berating the "fat generals" (admirals too) sitting before him at a bizarre, 2025 gathering of cretinous derangement.

But though appalled by Peter Brian Hegseth, history will love the irony of Hegseth.

The self-styled Secretary of War's complaint about fat generals serving alongside the svelte was that they're responsible for the U.S. military's "decay." (This somehow included, in Pete's mind, different gender qualifications for combat which, in informed minds, don't exist.)

And yet the first, actual U.S. Secretary of War, Henry Knox, was a former general about as fat as any general could be. Indeed, historical rumor has it that when preparing to embark on his famous Delaware River crossing, George Washington said something to the effect of Move your fat ass, Henry, before you sink the damn boat.

Evidently he moved. Because the crossing was a bang-up success. And that was largely because Knox had — his considerable heft notwithstanding — brilliantly managed the logistics of floating scores of troops and tons of artillery toward Trenton, New Jersey. Thereupon a battle of less ingenious success ensued; Trenton's "defenders," Britain's mercenary Hessians, almost immediately retreated, then immediately surrendered.

But a win's a win. And Knox, because of the Trenton victory he made possible, became a fat brigadier general at the age of 26. At 31 and even fatter he was promoted to the rank of major general, as the Revolutionary War hung on. Hegseth battled paper cuts as a 20-something 2nd lieutenant handling civilian affairs in Bush II's Iraq War.    

At the age of 34, Knox began serving as the second Secretary of War under the Articles of Confederation. As the U.S.'s first Secretary of War at age 38, the almost 300-pound former general's tenure was a distinguished one, seeing not to the military's decay but the Navy's creation; proposing the country's first military academy, West Point; and defending the land rights of what he stressed were "sovereign" American-Indian tribes.

And he began doing it with all of two civilian employees. With more than 700,000 such workers, the slim-trim Mr. Hegseth, 45, has so far had — and since the past is prologue, will undoubtedly continue to have — a rather less distinguished career as an imaginary War Secretary. Or, to put just a bit finer point on it, as a once-unimaginable Secretary of Defense, Mr. Hegseth has been a fucking disaster.     

The litany of his extraordinary screwups is too familiar and far too lengthy to rehash here. Plus I've grown leery of protracted posts. So I'll cut this one appropriately short.

After scolding hundreds of generals on Tuesday for having "decayed" the U.S. military — some, because of their corpulence — Secretary of TBD Hegseth spluttered, "If the words I’m speaking today are making your heart sink, you should do the honorable thing and resign." Now we don't know if Col.-soon-Gen. Henry Knox's heart sank when the Continental Army's leader told him to shift his oversized ass. But we do know that the honorable, long-serving Henry Knox's entire body wasn't nearly as fat as Pete Hegseth's head.

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Cross-posted in Substack.