Hegseth is winning the battle over the Pentagon’s future

By Ruth Behrens · Reporting from Newell, Iowa · September 2, 2026

I was growing up in Newell, Iowa, where the biggest political drama we ever saw involved whether the county could afford to fix the potholes on Main Street before harvest.

When Washington forgets that a plow needs more than just good intentions

I grew up in Newell, Iowa, where our biggest political drama involved whether the county could afford to fix the potholes on Main Street before harvest. We understood economics then—you put in labor, you get yield; if something breaks, you patch it until the next season. The people living closest to the ground know more than the folks writing rules from an air-conditioned office a thousand miles away. Right now, looking at what’s happening inside the Pentagon, I feel that same ache of structural rot—the kind that happens when theory swallows practice whole.

The story remains simple: Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll resigned after 18 months on the job. No one offered an official reason for his departure. But the whispers and reporting from The Guardian and ABC News paint a picture far grimmer than any press release can manage. At the heart of this rot sits Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, whose actions have reportedly created what Senator Jack Reed calls “lasting harm” to the Department of Defense.

The cost of allegiance over competence

Driscoll’s departure was no quiet retirement; it was a public rupture. We document a pattern of senior departures: Navy Secretary John Phelan quit, and now Driscoll walks out. This isn't just turnover; this is institutional bleeding.

The conflict centers on something fundamental to running an army: competence. Hegseth has reportedly fired or sidelined dozens of senior officers—including Chief of Staff General Randy George, a man Driscoll himself called “transformational”—without offering clear explanation. Representative Jason Crow warns the Pentagon is losing its rudder.

Washington knows how to stumble. We saw echoes of this internal friction before. Back in the mid-2000s, during the Iraq War, we endured a “Surge in Iraq” where political disagreements over strategy and execution led to public questioning of professional military judgment and institutional stability. The lesson always remains: when high-level political objectives clash with operational requirements, the institution pays the price.

A pattern that repeats through history’s rough patches

The current situation—where a Secretary undermines the core functions of the service by removing experienced leaders in favor of personal loyalty—is not unprecedented. It represents a recurring failure of governance. The most stark parallel to what we face today is the Vietnam War. That conflict defined itself by its struggle to maintain institutional coherence when high-level political objectives clashed with the operational requirements of a protracted foreign commitment. When Washington prioritized ideological goals over military reality, the American effort suffered profound losses and never truly recovered its focus.

What Hegseth does—blocking promotions, sidelining experts like General George who worked on modernizing the army for drone warfare—is merely the latest chapter in this long record of political interference. We witnessed similar strains when the Budget Control Act of 2011 created internal friction over resource allocation, showing that even funding disagreements can paralyze planning.

The problem never resides abroad; it lives in how Washington manages itself at home. The people writing these rules have never met a payroll, or felt the weight of keeping a town open when the hardware store shutters its doors. They mistake political allegiance for military readiness.

A nation that cannot feed itself, or maintain a functional defense force because its leadership constantly fights internal battles over who gets to be in charge rather than what needs doing, forfeits sovereignty. The cost of this instability—measured in vacant storefronts and shrinking confirmation classes—strikes the American farmer, the small-town shop owner, and every single person forced to pay taxes on a government that cannot govern itself.

Hegseth is winning the battle over the Pentagon’s future

When Washington forgets that a plow needs more than just good intentions

The cost of allegiance over competence

A pattern that repeats through history’s rough patches

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