As usual in American politics, everyone’s talking the Hegseth and the Houthis story to death, but almost no one’s focused on the right part of it. The story, of course, is that Hegseth and Co had planned to bomb Yemen, and did. They discussed their war plans on the Signal app, but accidentally put Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic, on the chat. That was a gigantic breach of protocol, but Hegseth et al didn’t notice Goldberg’s presence. A big national controversy has now arisen about what to do. Investigate Hegseth? Force him to resign? Prosecute him?

If that’s your idea of an interesting inquiry, feel free to pursue it, but what’s interesting to me about this controversy is the candid glimpse it gives us into American foreign policy. How do the top echelon of American foreign policy makers make decisions about matters of life-and-death? The answer turns out to be: by virtue-signaling at each other, then making shit up as they go along. 

My favorite part of the whole thread is Hegseth’s idea of a sales pitch to explain why we’re attacking Yemen. Vance had argued, tepidly, that he wasn’t sure that now was the right time for an attack on Yemen. Why not later?

Here is Hegseth’s response:

I think messaging is going to be tough no matter what – nobody knows who the Houthis are – which is why we would need to stay focused on: 1) Biden failed & 2) Iran funded.

Neither of Hegseth’s two points explains, or even pretends to explain, who the Houthis are, or why we have to attack “them.” Each point presupposes an answer to who they are, but fails to give one. What did Biden fail at? At deterring the Houthis. And who are the Houthis? The people Biden failed to deter. Whom is Iran funding? The Houthis. And who are they, again?  The regime Iran is funding. The circle, as Emerson put it, “is the highest emblem in the cipher of the world.” It’s also the form that all bullshit takes when put into words.

What’s revealing about Hegseth is not his resort to bullshit per se, but the speed with which he resorts to it. This is a person whose whole career has been based on the expeditious production of bullshit. So it’s no surprise that he can produce it so efficiently, on demand.  

By the way, Hegseth, Vance, and Gabbard et al are the people who’ve spent the last decade telling us that they are the “populists” in touch with the heartbeat of America, valiantly forced to fight the “elites” so wokely out of touch with it. And America, they tell us–on Fox, on Joe Rogan, on Tucker Carlson, on every anti-woke platform they can find–is sick of the “forever wars” these woke elites have foisted on us. Because militarism is the essential property of wokeness.

Right. So what are we doing in the Red Sea? Well, we’re beating Israel to the punch in fighting its forever war. How long are we supposed to do this? For the foreseeable future. Why? To guarantee freedom of navigation. Doesn’t that sound suspiciously globalist? Well yeah, but POTUS needs to send a message. To whom? Well, to everyone on…the globe. And what’s the message, again? That everyone on the globe has a God-given right, Israeli genocide or not, to sail a ship on any waterway on the globe. But why would POTUS need to defend freedom of navigation over a waterway that almost no American can find, much less sail a fucking ship through? Hard to hear the answer there.

Old City, Sana’a, Yemen (photo credit: Dan from Brussels, Wikipedia)

That’s the essence of Trumpian bullshit, but the Trump Administration, after all, is just the continuation of American imperialism by vulgar means. The sad fact is that all of American foreign policy has been conceived in Hegseth Mode. Hegseth is no different, fundamentally, from any of his predecessors–from Bush, or LBJ, or JFK, or RFK, or FDR, or Teddy Roosevelt, or so many others. He’s just a little dumber and a little less lucky. It was Dean Acheson who described the outcome of the Cuban Missile Crisis as “plain dumb luck.” If JFK had had Hegseth’s luck, none of us would be here to read this post. If Hegseth had had JFK’s, I wouldn’t have had to write it. 

Hegseth is, like his predecessors, not so much misguided or uninformed or even dumb, but fundamentally evil, a self-created monster from a moral bestiary. Once you grasp this, it’s not long before you reach the straightforward corollary: American foreign policy is not the kind of thing that can or ought gradually to be reformed, but the kind of thing that, along with its practitioners, has to be wiped off the face of the planet. 

It’s not the kind of conclusion, I admit, that anyone can reach at one fell swoop, or accept in one big gulp. So start small. If there’s such a good reason for bombing Yemen, why is it so hard for the people dropping the bombs to come up with it? Why do they have to try so hard to distract you with admitted misdirection, and transparent prevarications? Is it because you’re too weak to handle the truth, or because they’re too corrupt to tell it to you? Or worse still, is it because both things are true at once?

These questions lead to the only investigation worth having in this context: self-investigation. The question is not why Pete Hegseth et al lie, but why Americans permit themselves to be lied to with such equanimity. The day they stop is the day we begin to solve the problem presented by the Pete Hegseths of our world. The messaging is going to be tough no matter what, but it can happen if we stay focused.