Navy Crucified a Retired Officer….

And now Hegseth’s reviewing it…..

It’s the Armed Forces

Not the Sometimes Armed Forces@

The problem is not this incident, or even her response to it. The real problem is that we still have not dealt with the underlying code.

Weapons kill people. Full stop. What few are willing to say out loud is that SECWAR’s guidance, if followed seriously, will lead to deaths.

Someone will accidentally discharge a weapon on base. Maybe more than one person will. Someone may bleed out.

It is entirely possible a soldier leaves a pistol in his car, a child finds it, and tragedy follows.

That is not good. It should be prevented wherever possible. We should teach proper storage. We should teach proper handling. We should reduce avoidable mistakes.

But warriors are human, and humans make mistakes. If you cannot accept the risk of individual deaths, then you are, whether you admit it or not, accepting something worse: defeat.

There are millions of people of unknown allegiance inside our borders. There are hardened criminals here too. There are hostile nations and extremist movements that would gladly take American lives and have every intention of keeping soldiers from reaching base when the balloon goes up.

You must accept training accidents, negligent discharges, and lethal mistakes if you want a force that is truly ready for war.

And readiness does prevent war.

So no, the problem is not simply that he made a mistake and she punished him.

The problem is that she is almost certainly calling friends and fellow officers right now, and they are almost certainly telling her she did the right thing.

“What if his kid found it?”

“What if it went off by accident?”

“What if, what if, what if.”

And with every call, more smart people get pulled in. They come armed with better language, cleaner rationalizations, and safer-sounding excuses. Before long, the “she wasn’t wrong” line spreads like wildfire.

But she was wrong.

He made a mistake. She made a bigger one.

Neither of them should lose a career over this. But both of them need to understand commander’s intent.

Both need to grasp the broader implications of SECWAR’s directive.

Both need to reject safetyism and embrace fundamental safe practices.

And if she refuses, if she cares more about shielding a few individuals from a hypothetical risk of death than about preserving the strength, readiness, and deterrent power that protect millions of American children, then she should be removed.

I don’t care that she is a woman. I don’t care that woman tend to socialize problems amongst themselves more than men. What is dangerous is the fact those phone calls she has with friends and colleagues aren’t public.

Women are more socially. They are more chatty. They are less likely to accept an order from a man without discussing it amongst themselves first.

That’s a good thing. It’s a great thing.

We need more people challenging orders.

Problem is those discussions need to be made public. There needs to be documentation. But Navy culture doesn’t allow it.

What worries me the most isn’t the fact she disobeyed orders (she probably made the decision before it was announced) the problem is I know there are people whispering in her ear and others “she wasn’t wrong, what if a kid found that?”

She was wrong.

There is a silent resistance to everything Hegseth is doing. And the core of that resistance is whispering in the halls.  That’s not helping anyone…. John A Konrad up