Alan Zendell, November 10, 2026
Perte Hegseth is the guy who shows up at a staff meeting on Halloween dressed up as a GI Joe action figure in full combat gear. Everyone else is wearing a business suit, but Pete doesn’t even realize how he humiliated himself, instead accusing the other attendees of being unpatriotic and not displaying enough American spirit. Hegseth is a cartoon character who would be amusing if his role weren’t so vital and his actions so demoralizing to our military.
Cait Conley, a West Point graduate who served six tours overseas before joining the National Security Council and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, won New York’s affluent 17th Congressional District race as part of the Democratic tsunami. Conley was asked on CNN this morning whether she supported Thomas Massie’s attempt to impeach Hegseth.
Conley was adamant, calling Hegseth incompetent and a threat to national security. Speaking as someone who has been in the trenches and understands how our military and security apparatuses function, she described Hegseth as someone who is destroying the morale of our armed forces. She called him a disgrace to his office whose actions and decisions are failing service members, and she believes he must be removed from office.
Massie’s impeachment resolution contains eight charges that include violating the Constitution and failing to ignore illegal orders from President Trump. We all see the irony in that. Why isn’t Trump being attacked directly for issuing those orders? That’s politics. Hegseth is vulnerable despite Trump’s avowed support, but impeaching Trump at this time would not sit well with voters of either party who want the next Congress to fix the country rather than seek revenge. Outgoing Representative Massie, whose career was ended by Trump, may have mixed motives for going after Hegseth, but he’s a Republican, which makes the effort to unseat Hegseth bipartisan.
Hegseth is accused of directing illegal military operations in Yemen and Venezuela, ordering extrajudicial strikes on civilian boats in the Caribbean, conducting an unconstitutional war without Congressional approval in Iran, and dismantling the civilian-harm mitigation infrastructure that led to the killing of more than two hundred young students on the first day of the war. He is further charged with ignoring congressional resolutions and mandates and abusing his authority when he attacked Democratic Senator Mark Kelly for telling troops not to obey illegal orders the way Hegseth does.
The articles of impeachment are presented as high crimes and misdemeanors for which the constitution deems impeachment an appropriate remedy. But they do not address the spectacle Hegseth has made of the Defense Department. He has attempted to change a Department created out of the detritus of World War 2 from a professional organization charged with defending the world against post-war aggressors into a Spartan-like war machine. He changed his Department’s image from one that promoted peace through professionally managed strength to a Call to Action video game.
His war against Woke and Diversity sent a clearly Un-American message to our troops that the only people fit to lead our military are white males who live up to Hegseth’s version of Christian morality and chest-pounding belligerence. And every one of those white males must be one hundred percent physically fit and red-blooded, which in Hegseth’s mind means uncompromisingly heterosexual.
Hegseth has no more respect for the rule of law than his boss, Donald Trump. All that matters to him is having the biggest, baddest weaponry, and he seems to really get off creating videos of blowing things up when those things belong to the enemy, although it took months for the damage Iran did to our bases and forces in the Persian Gulf to be acknowledged. And then there’s Hegseth’s incompetence.
In a world in which too many countries and bad actors have access to nuclear weapons, one serious misstep could lead to the deaths of mmillions. Yet, Hegseth conducted the war in Iran like an extension of the illegal and virtually unopposed kidnapping of Nicolas Maduro. He and Trump ignored the advice of serious military and intelligence professionals who warned that a six-week bombing campaign had little hope of achieving the war’s stated objective: depriving Iran of a nuclear weapon. They were convinced, as Trump repeatedly assured the American people that the Iranian regime would collapse and the war would end in total victory for the United States and Israel.
Putting their own ignorance ahead of sound professional judgment is bad enough, but if Hegseth’s plan failed, there was neither a viable alternative nor an exit strategy. Thus the majority of our strategic naval forces remain tied up in the Gulf at enormous cost to taxpayers, the world’s energy supply remains disrupted, and prices for everything from diesel fuel to hamburgers are out of sight. Worst of all, the depletion of our advanced weaponry which will require years to rebuild and replace at a cost of billions of taxpayers who can;t afford health care has weakened our strategic positions all over the world.
When Hegseth complained that his attackers were attacking his success, he sounded like Trump defending his wrongheaded tariffs. What Hegseth today called slander and political revenge by a disgruntled Congressman (Massie) is in fact the first major step to restoring common sense and the rule of law to our defense and security.
