Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth offered the following explanation for the deaths of at least four American servicemembers during “Operation Epic Fury,” the ongoing U.S. offensive against Iran that began over the weekend:
“We have air defense systems, and a lot’s coming in, and you hit most of it — and we absolutely do — we have incredible air defenders. Every once in a while you might have one, unfortunately — we call it a ‘squirter’ — that makes its way through and in that particular case it happened to hit a tactical operations center.”
Hegseth managed to throw in a snazzy hand gesture to more visually describe the trajectory of this “squirter.” The moment felt central to an unspoken throughline at the briefing: Americans are dead and more deaths are expected.
Donald Trump released a video acknowledging as much on Sunday, announcing the deaths of three service members. “Sadly, there will likely be more before it ends, that’s the way it is,” the president said. General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, echoed the president while speaking next to Hegseth at the Pentagon on Monday, noting that the military expects “to take additional losses” as operations continue. (The death of a fourth American was announced around the time Hegseth and Caine were speaking on Monday.)“We didn’t start this war, but under President Trump, we are finishing it,” Hegseth said. “An effort of this scope will include casualties. War is hell and always will be.”
Hegseth’s use of the word “war” here is notable given that Congress — the sole entity in the federal government granted the authority to officially declare war — has not done so. The offensive against Iran is vastly unpopular, and threatens a destabilizing quagmire in the Middle East that large swaths of Americans who lived through the decades-long “Wars on Terror” reflexively reject. As always though, a certain contingent of sycophantic Republicans and administration officials have thrown their full support behind the president. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) suggested some service members killed in Afghanistan and Iraq may have been “Nazis” in a tweet attempting to dunk on progressive Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, who months ago was embroiled in controversy over a tattoo linked to Nazi symbology (Platner claims he had no idea and has since had it covered up). Trump’s former national security adviser and current U.N. Ambassador Mike Waltz responded to news that multiple service members involved in operations in Iran were killed or injured with the platitude, “Freedom is never free.”
Trump, Hegseth, and Caine have made clear that the price will continue to rise. Trump and Hegseth have both declined to rule out the possibility of “boots on the ground.” Hegseth, insisting that this was not another amorphic “forever war” in the Middle East, refused to estimate the timeframe for the operation. “I would never hang a timeframe from our perspective. The commander in chief sets the op tempo and terms of this fight,” Hegseth said.
Perhaps even more concerning was Hegseth’s bold declaration that the United States would not be abiding by nationally and internationally recognized “rules of engagement.”
“Capable partners are good partners, unlike so many of our traditional allies who wring their hands and clutch their pearls hemming and hawing about the use of force,” Hegseth said. “Regardless of what so-called international institutions say is unleashing the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history. B2 fighters, drones, missiles and, of course, classified effects, all on our terms, with maximum authorities. No stupid rules of engagement, no nation building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars.”
“We fight to win, and we don’t waste time, or lives,” the Pentagon chief emphasized.
Yet both time and lives are being spent in Iran in a manner the vast majority of Americans think is too high a cost.
Apple Maps, August 30, 2026
Pete Hegseth gestures after giving a State of the Force address at Marine Corps Base Quantico on Sept. 30, 2026 in Quantico, Va.
Pete Hegseth’s ‘Warfighter’ Crusade Isn’t About Killing
Pete Hegseth, to his credit, understands one truth about the world: the military’s job is to kill people.
Hegseth, the newly rebranded “Secretary of War,” is obsessed with showcasing clean-cut troops trained to do just that. He refers to it as “lethality,” a word that he used twice in his roughly hour-long State of the Force speech on Wednesday, which laid out his vision for this new, more-violent military: a force of fit, unified “warfighters,” unburdened by the bureaucracy and norms of the past.
“No more diversity quotas, no more gender pronouns, no more identity months,” Hegseth said, pacing back and forth on stage. “Only the warrior ethos.”
If that wasn’t enough, he doubled down moments later.
“We are no longer the woke department or the weak department,” Hegseth said, stumbling over his words slightly. “No fanny, no fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals. Just warriors. Just tough, ready, committed troops.”
To do this, Hegseth thinks, the military needs to work out. He wants every soldier doing physical training every day. He leads group workouts at the Pentagon, hops in on PT, does pullups and pushups and flexes his muscles. This is all, broadly, fine for a Defense Secretary to do. Go ahead, engage with your troops. (Less normal, perhaps, is his obsession with monitoring troops’ testosterone levels.) But Hegseth’s CrossFit crusade isn’t really about killing.
By any objective measurement, the U.S. military is plenty good at killing. We have more bombs and more planes and more ships and better-trained and equipped troops than any country in the world. The “warrior ethos” Hegseth is so obsessed with is the relic of recruitment videos from the peak of the War on Terror, the years of bearded operators with ropy muscle covered in Kevlar fabric, who kicked in doors and sniped off heads and got their hands dirty. Those guys still exist, of course. They haven’t gone away. If they’re needed again, they will be there.
But combat doesn’t look like that anymore.
On the same day that Hegseth delivered his speech, the U.S. formally withdrew from Iraq, one of America’s last active presences in the wars of occupation that defined the military for the past two decades. War is different now. It is fought with drones and cruise missiles from the decks of ships in the Persian Gulf and dusty air-bases outside of the glittering megacities of America’s Middle Eastern oil merchants. Does every soldier involved in this need a perfect waist-to-shoulder ratio? Does it physically impede America’s interests abroad to have diversity, equity, and inclusion policies? Has the existence of trans servicemembers ever stopped the U.S. military from killing even a single person that it wanted to kill, anywhere in the world, at any time?
Hegseth, I think, would say yes. He has a personal chip on his shoulder. The “woke” elements of Army bureaucracy once removed him from service at Joe Biden’s inauguration because he has a tattoo on his arm that reads “DEUS VULT,” a common rallying cry for a very particular kind of extremist Christian nationalism. But most rational observers, people who are clear-eyed about America’s unparalleled ability to Blow Shit Up, can recognize that all of these arguments are battles of cultural semantics that have basically nothing to do with the military’s ability to kill. With respect to “lethality,” the U.S. military is pretty much fine. If you doubt this, ask an Iraqi.
Hegseth’s relentless focus on violent language and imagery is largely a marketing tactic for what is a more holistic cultural and political shift. Hegseth does not want a military that is indicative of America’s cumbersome, bureaucratic state apparatus in the same way that Trump is relentlessly focused on cutting red tape and federal “waste.” There are certainly inefficiencies in the federal system, but much of that bureaucracy exists for precisely the reason that Hegseth and Trump want it gone: it is a check on unitary power. Hegseth wants a united, homogenous military of soldiers who share his cultural prejudices, who share his bloodthirsty ethos, and who share his religion. In the State of the Force speech and many other recent public appearances, Hegseth has quoted scripture and explicitly referenced his Christian faith, a tacit assumption that he expects the men and women in uniform below him to be Christian. He wants a force that, in his own words, does not buy into the “fake news” media’s “disingenuous headlines about deployment lengths, patently false claims of low troop morale or flat-out propaganda.”
A more malleable military is also a better business opportunity. The Trump administration has been terribly effective at streamlining the process by which they can redistribute money to the oligarchs they choose. The so-called Department of War is no different. In his speech, Hegseth announced an initiative called “Project Meridian,” a sort of tech incubator for military contractors that will be run by Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey, and, bizarrely, Newt Gingrich, who Hegseth said would be joined by “hand-picked private sector leaders.”
“Their work will be focused on discovering, developing and fielding the weapons and systems that our children and our grandchildren will need in their lifetimes without any creative limitations or restrictions,” Hegseth said. “On any future battlefield, from under the earth to beyond the moon, our American warriors will be armed with absolute technological superiority because we will have the foresight to prepare today for tomorrow.”
That’s the window dressing. There’s truth there, of course: the military does have a lot of work to do to adapt to the new forms of warfare playing out in Ukraine. Battle has shifted. But what Project Meridian represents is a shift to a faster, less regulated version of the military industrial complex. There will be less oversight. The money will move where Trump and Hegseth want it to, delivered to the tech barons and traditional defense contractors who best curry favor with the administration. This is for the good of the soldier, regardless of what Hegseth says. It does not make us more deadly. It just makes a select few — some of whom aren’t even American — that much more rich.
After all, that’s the goal, right? A prosperous, united, Christian nation, led by titans of industry who bow only to a single leader who can reshape the world on a whim. No fatties, no weirdos, no radicals. No dissent, crucially. Dissent is traitorous. As soldiers, as civilians, even, all we should think about is how to kill. Hegseth and his hand-picked private sector will handle the rest.