When the Pentagon Chief Calls Citizens 'Lunatics

What happens when the man commanding 1.3 million service members calls his own citizens "lunatics in the street" while cheering on armed federal agents? We're finding out.

Pete Hegseth, the Defense Secretary who prefers to be called the "Secretary of War," didn't waste time after ICE agents shot nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. Within hours, he was online declaring "ICE > MN" and telling immigration agents: "We have your back 100%. You are SAVING the country."

The calculation was stark. The implications, starker still.

The Dangerous Ambiguity of 'We'

Hegseth's "we" remains undefined. Does it include the 1.3 million troops under his command? The forces he put on standby for potential Minneapolis deployment? His fellow Cabinet members? The ambiguity isn't accidental—it's strategic.

This matters because Trump has already expanded military deployment in U.S. cities and threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would allow troops to conduct law enforcement activities. When federal agents surged into Minneapolis, Hegseth put troops on prepare-to-deploy orders in North Carolina and Alaska.

By backing ICE's hard-line tactics against Minnesota citizens, Hegseth didn't just overstep his jurisdiction—he telegraphed how he might approach domestic opposition if those troops were deployed against citizen protesters like Pretti and Renee Good.

Breaking Pentagon Tradition

I've covered every Defense Secretary since Bob Gates. None has embraced Hegseth's gleeful, intimidating rhetoric about military violence. Even Jim Mattis, whom Trump called "Mad Dog," made tough-guy quips about how "it's fun to shoot some people," but ultimately served as a check on Trump's most disruptive instincts.

Traditionally, Pentagon leaders couch military violence in decorous euphemisms that show the solemnity of lethality. Insurgents are "eliminated" or "taken off the battlefield." Public gloating is viewed as unseemly in an institution as storied as the U.S. military.

Not Hegseth. His tone regarding force is gleeful, juvenile, and crude. He's posted doctored children's book covers showing a turtle named Franklin hanging from a helicopter, shooting at drug boats. He's embraced what the White House now touts as Trump doctrine: "fuck around and find out."

After a September strike on suspected drug traffickers, he told reporters: "I'd say we smoked a drug boat and there's 11 narco-terrorists at the bottom of the ocean—and when other people try to do that, they're gonna meet the same fate."

The Iraq Disillusionment

Hegseth's attitude stems from his experience in Iraq, where he served with the 101st Airborne. In his 2024 book The War on Warriors, he made a shocking admission: he instructed his platoon members to disregard their rules of engagement. That confession now looks especially ominous given potential domestic troop deployments.

Those rules of engagement exist for a reason—they're designed to ensure operations comply with U.S. and international law, guided by military lawyers called Judge Advocate Generals (JAGs). Hegseth dismisses JAGs as "jagoffs" and complains their decisions led to U.S. troops "fighting with one hand behind our back."

"When you send Americans to war, their mandate should be to lethally dominate the battlefield," he wrote. "Our enemies should get bullets, not attorneys."

Untying the Hands of War

Since taking office, Hegseth has fired top generals and vowed to empower "trigger-pullers." Speaking to senior officers at a Marine base in Virginia, he declared the military would fight wars to win, not defend, and would end "stupid" restrictions on force.

"We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt, and kill the enemies of our country," he told hundreds of officers. "No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement; just common sense, maximum lethality, and authority for warfighters."

The question becomes: who exactly are the "enemies of our country" when troops deploy domestically?

The Precedent Problem

U.S. troops deployed over the past year in Los Angeles, Memphis, and Washington D.C. have largely stayed "out of the fray," as Peter Feaver of Duke University puts it. That's because military personnel have more extensive training and better discipline than ICE or Border Patrol agents.

But Hegseth's firing of top Army, Navy, and Air Force lawyers suggests a different trajectory. Mark Cancian, a retired Marine colonel now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, warns that Hegseth might simply override the military justice system if violence occurs during domestic deployments.

"There's always somebody who acts inappropriately, even criminally, in a moment of stress or frustration and needs to be held accountable," Cancian said. "That will be a test."

Global Implications

Hegseth's "maximum lethality" philosophy and dismissal of legal constraints don't just affect domestic deployments. Allied nations watching America's approach to civil-military relations are taking notes. If the world's most powerful military abandons restraint at home, what does that signal about U.S. operations abroad?

The implications extend to NATO commitments, peacekeeping operations, and the broader international order that relies on American military professionalism and adherence to legal norms.