“Lord, Send Me”: Hegseth Calls in Quantico for a Heavenly Fight Against Communists, Redcoats, the Media and Islamists

In front of the assembled troops at Marine Corps Base Quantico on Wednesday stood a man talking about testosterone. Pete Hegseth, at the head of a department that under this administration is once again officially called the Department of War, delivered a speech he called the “State of the Force.” He borrowed the tone from a cult leader who lost his audience a long time ago. Old slogans, remixed, delivered like a rehearsed performance. The room stayed quiet. Anyone watching the footage sees no one being swept along, just people doing their duty. That a performance like this is possible at the top of the most powerful military force in the world says more about the state of this administration than any outside analysis ever could.

He started with what he considers his greatest success, the firing of veteran generals. The generals had gotten the message, Hegseth said. Those who had responded positively were now leading more focused and disciplined units. And the others? Those who had clung to the “woke” department or treated civilian control of the military as merely a suggestion simply did not work there anymore. The sentence sounds casual until you follow it all the way through. An American officer swears an oath to the Constitution, not to the person serving as secretary. Hegseth turns that relationship upside down. Loyalty to the Constitution becomes grounds for dismissal, obedience becomes grounds for promotion. A military rebuilt by that standard loses exactly the officers who might object when it matters most.

“It's worth saying again so the fake news understands it. We are no longer the woke department or the weak department. Simple translation of that -- no fatties no trannies no beardos no weirdos no wimps no radicals. Just warriors.”

Then came the passage he himself seemed to regard as the high point. They were no longer the “woke” department and no longer the “weak” department, he said, and then immediately supplied the translation. “No fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos,” a line he has used several times before and one that includes an anti-trans slur. “No wimps, no radicals. Just warriors.” The “ideological clowns” were out, the “patriotic cowboys” were in, in his words, “with testosterone tests on top.” This is how the top civilian leader of more than a million troops describes his personnel policy, in the language of a locker room. He did not present testosterone testing as a joke, either. He announced it as policy. The strength of a military has never rested in hormone levels. It has rested in the judgment of the people who carry it.

From there it was only a short walk to the press, which he himself once belonged to. The “so-called press” made Iranian state television look reasonable, Hegseth said. Reporters, whipped up by “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” imagined they were fighting the president, when in reality they were undermining their own troops. A secretary who places his own country’s free press below the level of a dictatorship reveals what he himself longs for. Declaring his own country’s reporters to be agents of an invented syndrome prepares the ground where every critical question can be treated as betrayal.

It did not stop with the speech. Hegseth announced “Project Meridian,” a large-scale investigation into the “future of warfare,” embedded in a Pentagon overhaul that is supposed to pull autonomous weapons systems and new technology deeper into the military. The project will be led by Elon Musk and Newt Gingrich, joined by defense contractor Palmer Luckey. The future of the U.S. military, including combat drones and autonomous systems, is thus being placed by the secretary of war in the hands of a billionaire and a political retiree from the 1990s. Luckey, the third man in the group, makes money from the very technology involved. For what is taking shape here, the term conflict of interest is too small. None of the three has ever been elected or confirmed by the Senate. None wears a uniform either. The direction in which lethal technology develops is therefore being determined by men who answer to no one except the secretary who brought them in.

“Today, at my direction, I'm establishing the Office of Religious Affairs. It will report straight to the top -- a direct line to the secretary ... as Psalm 33:12 extolls us, blessed is the nation in which God is the Lord.”

The next blow was a new office. Hegseth created an “Office of Religious Affairs” that is supposed to report directly to him with no level in between. “Starting today, and for Secretaries of War after me, the Office of Religious Affairs will report straight to the top,” he told the troops. No staff layer would stand between chaplaincy and the secretary anymore, he promised, a line straight to the top. Nobody there would be pushing paper. Then came the numbers to justify it: fewer than 5 percent of the force identified as nonreligious, 95 percent recognized an almighty God, so his department carried a “sacred duty” to bring chaplaincy to the top. The Constitution of the United States separates church and state for good reason. A department that counts and evaluates the faith of its troops moves toward a line beyond which pastoral care becomes ideological control.

The percentages change depending on what they are supposed to support at the moment. In March, Hegseth was still talking about 82 percent religious troops when he cut the recognized faith codes from more than 200 down to 31. The old system had been impractical and useless, he said, many codes had never been used, and the vast majority had used only 6 of them anyway. When the new list became public, Mormons were missing the label “Christian.” Only after 2 Republican senators from Utah, John Curtis and Mike Lee, protested did the Pentagon backtrack and place the church back under Christianity. A department keeping records on the souls of its troops did not even know at first whom it counted as Christian.

The practice fits awkwardly with the proclaimed piety. In April, Hegseth fired the Army’s chief of chaplains, Major General William Green Jr., on the same day as Army Chief of Staff General Randy George. Green had taken office in 2023, with a 4-year term planned through 2027. The man now creating his own office for faith had previously thrown the Army’s top chaplain out the door. First he strips chaplaincy of power, then celebrates it as a matter for the boss, and the contradiction does not seem to occur to him.

“Lord, here I am. Send me. Send me to fight the Redcoats, send me to fight the communists, send me to fight the Islamists. Send me.”

At the end, he reached for the Bible. Psalm 33, verse 12, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.” 250 years ago, he said, people had rejected an earthly king an ocean away and turned instead to a heavenly king. Then came a verse from the sixth chapter of the Book of Isaiah, which he bent into a battle cry. “Here I am, send me. Send me against the Redcoats, send me against the communists, send me against the Islamists. Send me.” A secretary of war who in 2026 still wants to march off against Redcoats has confused the present with a historical movie.

What was announced that Wednesday was pure insanity. A man with access to the largest weapons arsenal on Earth fires generals for their loyalty to the Constitution. He cuts military leadership by another 20 percent. He places his own press below the level of Tehran and the salvation of his troops under his personal supervision. Hegseth sent himself that day, against Redcoats and against ghosts only he can see. A man who places himself directly under heaven no longer has to fear earthly objections.

One day in September. One day when a secretary of war left reality behind and shut the door behind him. And yet we have to follow him, have to bring him back from the land of Redcoats and heavenly chains of command he has moved into. He has not known what he is doing for a long time. Worse is that we no longer know either. An entire apparatus watches a man disappear into the distance who believes himself to be a prophet and can no longer figure out who here is still in their right mind.