Hegseth’s “maximum lethality” comes back to haunt him
Go a little deeper Hegseth has dubbed his philosophy “maximum lethality,” and it’s more or less exactly what it sounds like: Military operations should deploy overwhelming force — to hell with “woke” distractions like civilian protections or legal oversight.
Key points
- For another thing, the phrase “maximum lethality” shows up several times in Massie’s articles of impeachment.
- “He has been effective, and that’s what we’re impeaching him for,” Massie said of Hegseth on CNN.
- (The Senate has a higher threshold for conviction, and it’s never removed a Cabinet secretary.) But the Republican-led push to impeach Hegseth is still a striking rebuke of both the man and his uber-macho, unrepentant military philosophy.
“Just common sense, maximum lethality, and authority for war fighters.” Hegseth has been hashing out this doctrine of military maximalism for years — since his own time in the US Army National Guard.
But Hegseth’s swaggering philosophy may be coming back to bite him.
Additional details
- Behind the scenes, Hegseth also cut funding and staffing for programs that mitigate and document civilian harm and fired the senior military lawyers who provide legal oversight to combat operations.
- But President Donald Trump has stuck by Hegseth through all his multitudinous misjudgments, from his cringe obsession with the Crusades to deadly strikes on suspected drug boats in the Caribbean.
- In a matter of days, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth could join a very exclusive club: Only two other Cabinet members have ever been impeached by the House…and one of them died 136 years ago.
- “No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement,” Hegseth said in a 45-minute lecture to senior military officials last year.
- Former military officers and legal experts say Hegseth’s dismissal of legal restraints breaks with generations of American military doctrine.
How this summary was made: extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting. It is drawn only from the reporting of the sources listed below — read the originals for full detail. How we summarize →
Advertisement
Every article behind this summary — 1 article from 1 outlet
Get stories like this in your inbox.
Subscribe — it's freeOne free email at 6am — your topics, deduplicated, five minutes. No account, no paywall.