_Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission._

The military historian Dennis Showalter once told me that he didn’t care about the amount of fat around a general’s belly; he cared about the fat between a general’s ears. It was a telling quip, and one that highlights the shortsighted nature of Pete Hegseth’s emphasis on fitness and military bearing to the generals and admirals he assembled yesterday.

(By the way, what about Trump as commander-in-chief? Is he going to exercise and lose weight? Good luck with that one, Pomade Pete.)

Of course, physical fitness is important in military settings, especially if you’re at the pointy end of the spear, as they say in the military. But America’s senior leaders today are not boy generals like George Armstrong Custer in the U.S. Civil War. They are men and women in their fifties and early sixties, presumably promoted for their integrity, knowledge, insight, skill, and experience—not because they can still run sub-six-minute miles or perform 100 pushups.

(Aside: It might be time to buy stock in Ozempic and similar drugs used for weight loss.)

Recall all the media praise showered on William Westmoreland, David Petraeus, and Stanley McChrystal. These three generals were lauded for their physical fitness and military bearing, their spartan qualities as warriors. Yet, all three demonstrated strategic mediocrity in fighting and losing the Vietnam, Afghan, and Iraq Wars. They may not have had flabby bellies, but they had flabby minds.

Hegseth is all about warrior image over substance.

Don’t get me wrong: I think everyone should exercise if they can, and being substantially overweight isn’t healthy. When I was in my early forties and a lieutenant colonel, I ran with the troops and did pushups and sit-ups. But there’s a lot more to military effectiveness than being a lean, mean fighting machine.

But I’ll admit I’m burying the lede here.

Trump and Hegseth’s message to senior leaders was far more disturbing than complaints about a fat and woke military. Here’s what I sent to a friend about this:

> The national security state has kept our country in a state of permanent war since 1947. Trump and Hegseth are just ripping the facade of security away and replacing it with war. Peace is the word that dare not speak its name. And war, of course, has come to the streets of America, with troops deployed to Portland next. Add that to the many police who got their initial training in the military and the rapid expansion of ICE along with detention centers—it’s obvious how the war on terror has truly become global since now the focus is on terror in America. We are reaping what we sowed.

I was then asked for a more formal comment and came up with this:

> The statements of Trump and Hegseth show that the global war on terror was and is truly global (as well as permanent) because that war has now come home to America’s cities. Now places like LA and Portland are to be pacified by American warriors and warfighters, with detention centers (concentration camps) for those who resist. President Dwight D. Eisenhower was never more right or prescient when he noted, “Only Americans can hurt America.” Trump and Hegseth see America’s streets as a battleground for the U.S. military against the enemy within. The real enemy to democracy, of course, is the very deployment of troops to the streets. American colonists launched a revolution 250 years ago partly because they didn’t want the king’s troops among them as enforcers. Anyone who doesn’t see the fundamental dangers of Trump and Hegseth’s actions to democracy and our Constitutional rights truly has some flab between their ears.
https://www.antiwar.com/blog/2025/10/01/fat-generals-are-the-problem/