Pete Hegseth, a Fox News personality and Army National Guard veteran whom President-elect Donald Trump picked on Tuesday to be his secretary of defense, wrote a book critiquing how the woke ideology has beset the military.
“The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men who Keep us Free,” which came from Fox News Books amid a deal with Harper Collins, was released in early June and quickly rose to the top of the New York Times bestseller list with more than 60,000 copies moved in its first week, according to Mediate.
A book description says it “uncovers the deep roots of our dysfunction — a society that has forgotten the men who take risks, cut through red tape, and get their hands dirty. The only kind of men prepared to face the dangers that the Left pretends don’t exist. Unlike issues of education or taxes or crime, this problem doesn’t have a zip code solution. We can’t move away from it. We can’t avoid it. We have only one Pentagon. Either we take it back or surrender it altogether.”
Hegseth “joined the Army to fight extremists. Then that same Army called him one. The military Pete joined twenty years ago was fiercely focused on lethality, competency, and color blindness. Today our brass are following the rest of our country off the cliff of cultural chaos and weakness,” the book description notes, adding, “Americans with common sense are fighting this on many fronts, but if we can’t save the meritocracy of our military, we’re definitely going to lose everywhere else,” as well as: “Combining his own war experiences, tales of outrage, and an incisive look at how the chain of command got so kinked, this book is the key to saving our warriors — and winning future wars. The War on Warriors must be won by the good guys, because when the shooting really starts, they’re the only ones who can save us.”
In “The War on Warriors,” Hegseth’s fifth book, he wrote about personally witnessing the military go through changes.
“I joined the Army in 2001 because I wanted to serve my country. Extremists attacked us on 9/11, and we went to war. I became an infantry officer in 2003. I guarded terrorists at Guantánamo Bay in 2004. I led men in combat in Iraq in 2005. I pulled bodies out of burning vehicles in Afghanistan in 2012. I held a riot shield outside the White House in 2020,” he wrote in the introduction.
“And in 2021, I was deemed an ‘extremist’ by that very same Army,” he added, per Fox News. “Yes, you read that right. Twenty years … and the military I loved, I fought for, I revered … spit me out. While writing this book, I separated from an Army that didn’t want me anymore. The feeling was mutual — I didn’t want this Army anymore either.”
Earlier this year, ahead of the book’s release, Hegseth spoke with Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro about how the military underwent a “fundamental transformation” starting in the Obama administration, shifting away from being an “institution more focused than any other in our government, in our society, on meritocracy, on lethality, on readiness.”
Hearkening back to the run-up to President Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2021, Hegseth recalled being ordered as part of the National Guard to defend the event — that is until a commander called and said he was no longer needed. Hegseth said that during the writing of his book, he “spoke to someone who was privy to the decision-making” and this person said the chain of command went through his social media and saw that he had the Jerusalem cross and dubbed it a “white extremist tattoo” and that he was a “threat and an extremist,” leading to the revocation of his orders.
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“So I signed up 20 years ago to fight extremists, put my life on the line, and now I’m deemed one because of what I believe — because of my Christian faith or because I work for Fox News or because I support Donald Trump? Any one of those is a wrong answer. Like, I’ve worn this uniform for the better part of 20 years for this country, and you’re calling me an extremist. If they’ll do that to me, they’ll do it to anybody. And they did,” he said.
Hegseth said that “especially under Obama, the focus became, ‘No, no, no, no, what about these gender issues? What about these trans issues? What about these women in combat issues? What about climate change?’ And certainly under Biden, it’s been, ‘What about extremism?’”
Young soldiers joining the armed forces are bombarded with “woke ideology” during training, he said, adding: “You mentioned the warriors are just as good as they’ve always been. I agree, kind of. The challenge is because it’s a top-down organization, you start pushing things like DEI, now your young lieutenants and your young privates going through basic or going through ROTC or going through West Point are getting that woke ideology as part of their training.”
Hegseth also explained how the death of George Floyd in 2020 led Department of Defense leadership to address a supposed “systematic problem” of racism in the military: “The Left knows that by pushing DEI, now they’ve got black soldiers looking at white soldiers and white soldiers looking at black soldiers wondering who really deserved what or why they’re in a position, which is really toxic for an organization primed on unity.”
