Introducing the Department of War (Crimes)

As a boxer and a soldier, I always found that the more someone tried to sound like they were a tough guy, the less likely it was to be true. The rare psychopath notwithstanding, most military men truly capable of inflicting a unique level of violence tend to speak softly and carry a big stick, as that old Rough Rider Teddy Roosevelt advised.

For this reason, among others—including his reported treatment of women—Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has always struck me as the personification of the insecure beta constantly attempting to convince himself that he is something different than what he genuinely sees in a mirror. He just tries way, way too hard.

Hegseth is apparently quite fired up about President Trump’s renaming of the Department of Defense to the Department of War.

"We're gonna go on offense, not just on defense," the secretary boomed from the Oval Office during Trump's press conference announcing the change. "Maximum lethality, not tepid legality; violent effect, not politically correct. We're gonna raise up warriors, not just defenders."

Perhaps Hegseth was speaking of a lethal missile strike on a small boat in the Caribbean last week, an illegal attack on civilians, a high-ranking Pentagon official later told The Intercept, which the official said was made possible by the Trump administration’s gutting of top military legal authorities earlier this year.

“The U.S. is now directly targeting civilians,” the DOD official was reported to have said. “Drug traffickers may be criminals, but they aren’t combatants. When Trump fired the military’s top lawyers, the rest saw the writing on the wall, and instead of being a critical firebreak, they are now a rubber stamp complicit in this crime.”

Vice President J.D. Vance, whose efforts to sound like a tough guy are even sadder than Hegseth’s, defended the action on Saturday.

"Killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military," Vance wrote in a post on X.

At least one Republican pushed back.

“JD ‘I don’t give a sh*t’ Vance says killing people he accuses of a crime is the “highest and best use of the military”,’ wrote Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) in response. “Did he ever read To Kill a Mockingbird? Did he ever wonder what might happen if the accused were immediately executed without trial or representation?? What a despicable and thoughtless sentiment it is to glorify killing someone without a trial.”

As Trump uses the military to blow up dinghies he claims are operated by narco traffickers and preps for ground attacks against Venezuela to launch a coup he wanted to do in his first term, both our enemies and our friends continue to align against us. Last week, China put on a military parade for an audience of one: The United States President.

It was a far more impressive display than the listless and, quite frankly, embarrassing military birthday parade Trump threw for himself in D.C. this summer. What’s more, Xi Jinping was flanked by Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un for the spectacle.

“Today, humanity is again faced with the choice of peace or war, dialogue or confrontation, win-win or zero-sum,” Xi told the crowd of more than 50,000 spectators, adding that the Chinese people “firmly stand on the right side of history” and that China was a “great nation” that “is never intimidated by any bullies.”

Meanwhile, Xi and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met on August 31 during the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit, where the two world leaders, along with Putin, were literally photographed holding hands. That one image perfectly represents our global decline in influence more than any other I can imagine.

Trump has already pushed Russia closer to China. The two countries have steadily increased trade over the past decade, while allocating fewer resources to their longstanding territorial disputes at their shared borders. China is buying enough Russian oil to mitigate the effects of sanctions. Yet Trump imposed a sweeping 50% tariff on Indian imports effective August 27, in response to India's continued purchases of Russian oil, a sin for which China received no punitive reaction.

Why on Earth would Trump want to push India away from the United States? As Apple demonstrated when it relocated a significant portion of its cell phone manufacturing there in response to tariffs on goods made in China, it is the only alternative in terms of a nation with a massive population of cheap, skilled workers. It is also a nuclear democracy in a strategically important part of the world where allies are essential.

The concept of BRICS to describe key emerging economies became a reality when Brazil, Russia, India, and China held their first joint economic summit in 2009. Over the years, some economists and policymakers have mused about the possibility of creating a basket currency that could serve as an alternative to the dollar as the world's reserve currency.

It was always India, however, that served as something of a swing vote, vacillating between Eastern and Western orbits. Disrupting that balance in our disfavor is beyond foolish. If you think inflation and our debt are a problem now, the dollar losing its reserve status would seem like economic armageddon in comparison. And while the U.S. military has always been the hedge against that outcome, aligning the most powerful competitors in the world against us makes it far more likely.

It's also worth noting that China and Russia do not have supply chain issues. They do not rely on us or other nations to produce components essential to their national defense and military readiness (China needs only to source oil, which it has proven quite adept at). India should be seen as a critical ally with whom we go out of our way to build diplomatic bridges. This is especially true if we are going to be sending ICE agents into the plants of a South Korean automobile manufacturer.

An ICE raid at a Hyundai/LG EV battery plant in Georgia, where the company had made a significant investment in U.S. manufacturing, resulted in dozens of engineers and equipment installers who are here legally for the highly specialized work of getting the plant online, finding themselves fully chained and bound by agents in full military gear. Take that, our good friends in South Korea.

At this rate, the United States will be left with a few third-world authoritarian states and Israel for allies, assuming we continue to prove willing to fund the latter’s ongoing genocide while the rest of the world looks on in horror. Are you tired of winning yet?

Dennis "Mitch" Maley is an editor and columnist for The Bradenton Times and the host of our weekly podcast. With over two decades of experience as a journalist, he has covered Manatee County government since 2010. He is a graduate of Shippensburg University and later served as a Captain in the U.S. Army. Click here for his bio. Mitch is also the author of three novels and a short story collection available here. He can be reached at editor@thebradentontimes.com.