“The era of the Department of Defense is over… From this moment forward, the only mission of the newly restored Department of War is this: warfighting… We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country… You kill people and break things for a living.” — Pete […]
The post Betraying America’s Military and the Constitution They Swore To Defend appeared first on LewRockwell.
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“The era of the Department of Defense is over… From this moment forward, the only mission of the newly restored Department of War is this: warfighting… We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country… You kill people and break things for a living.” — Pete Hegseth
Donald Trump and his administration have done a grave disservice to America’s military.
By politicizing the military, sending service members into wars of questionable legality, attempting to use military forces against American citizens, and seeking to punish veterans who exercise their constitutional rights, the Trump administration has attempted to turn the U.S. military into its own guns-for-hire battalion.
This is not how you honor America’s military.
Pete Hegseth has done an even graver disservice to the men and women who serve.
Having called for a “warrior ethos” that celebrates aggression, lethality and an unquestioning commitment to warfighting, the self-styled Secretary of War has repeatedly demonstrated a troubling disregard for the constitutional safeguards meant to govern the military’s use of force.
Consider his record.
Hegseth fired the military’s top uniformed lawyers—the very officers charged with ensuring that military operations and orders comply with the law—complaining that legal advisers should not become “roadblocks.”
He shared sensitive operational details about impending military strikes in Yemen over an unauthorized Signal chat, exposing military personnel and missions to potential danger. The Pentagon’s own inspector general subsequently found that he had violated departmental security protocols.
He imposed sweeping restrictions on Pentagon journalists, limiting independent scrutiny of military operations and prompting a federal court to find that the department’s press restrictions violated the First Amendment.
He sought to punish retired Navy captain and Senator Mark Kelly for reminding service members of their duty to refuse unlawful orders, threatening his military rank and retirement pay until a federal judge intervened.
He has used the Pentagon to promote his particular brand of Christianity, hosting Christian worship services, inviting a Christian nationalist preacher into the halls of military power, and overhauling the military’s chaplaincy system in ways that have raised serious concerns about the religious freedom of service members who do not share his beliefs.
He has invoked the Crusades as a model of religious struggle, defended the Christian warriors who fought them, and called for pushing back against “Islamism” culturally, politically, geographically and militarily. Even as American troops wage war against Iran, Hegseth has invoked biblical warfare and prayed at a Pentagon service for overwhelming force against enemies he described as deserving “no mercy.”
And he has overseen military operations in Iran, Yemen and the Caribbean that have raised serious questions about congressional war powers, civilian casualties and the legality of deadly force—including so-called “kinetic” strikes on suspected drug-smuggling vessels that have prompted allegations of war crimes and demands for legal accountability.
Now, faced with eight articles of impeachment introduced by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky), Hegseth has dismissed the effort as an act of “sabotage,” suggesting that holding military leaders accountable amounts to punishing the troops who carry out their orders.
Questioning the war makers is not an attack on the troops. It is one way of defending them.
The charges at the heart of Massie’s impeachment effort speak to an identity crisis under Hegseth’s leadership—one that pits the Founders’ vision of a military that exists to defend the Constitution and a constitutional form of government against a version of the military as a ruthless killing machine whose purpose is to invade, intimidate, and destroy the president’s enemies.
America’s service members represent different religions, political beliefs and walks of life, but they are bound by a common oath: to support and defend the Constitution.
Unfortunately, while Hegseth and the rest of the Trump administration pay lip service to the Constitution, their actions have repeatedly raised questions about whether they believe its restraints apply to them.
Three of Massie’s eight articles of impeachment accuse Hegseth of violating separate provisions of the War Powers Resolution by waging war against Iran without congressional authorization, continuing hostilities despite Congress’s direction to withdraw U.S. forces, and refusing to terminate military operations after the expiration of the law’s 60-day limit and potential 30-day withdrawal period.
The remaining five accuse Hegseth of disregarding laws meant to protect civilians during military operations; authorizing extrajudicial killings of suspected drug traffickers at sea; retaliating against Senator Mark Kelly for exercising his First Amendment rights; directing the military operation to seize Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, without lawful authority; and waging an unauthorized military campaign in Yemen.
Hegseth wants to dismiss the impeachment effort as a disagreement over military policy, but this is about something far more fundamental than one man’s job or one administration’s military strategy.
It is about the constitutional balance of power.
For decades, presidents of both political parties have treated Congress’s war powers as little more than an inconvenience, while Congress has repeatedly allowed its constitutional authority to be diminished.
Impeachment is not a criminal prosecution. It is one of the mechanisms the Founders provided for holding public officials accountable for serious abuses of power.
If Congress will not defend its own constitutional authority over war, who will?
That question goes to the very heart of the constitutional crisis confronting the American military.
The Founders understood the danger of concentrating military power in the hands of a government that answers to no one. They feared standing armies that could be used to subjugate the population, and they sought to prevent the machinery of war from becoming the personal instrument of a president.
Yet that is precisely the direction in which the government has been moving.
For decades, military tactics developed for foreign battlefields have found their way into American communities. Armored vehicles on neighborhood streets. Militarized police raids. Citizens increasingly treated as enemy combatants rather than individuals with constitutional rights.
Now the Trump administration is attempting to blur the distinction between military operations abroad and civilian law enforcement at home.
In September 2025, Trump told military leaders that American cities could serve as training grounds for military forces. That same month, a federal court ruled that the administration’s use of National Guard troops and Marines for civilian law enforcement in Los Angeles violated the Posse Comitatus Act.
Think about the implications.
The government is asking American service members to defend freedom abroad while using—or preparing to use—them to enforce government power against their fellow citizens at home.
This is precisely the danger the Constitution was intended to guard against.
The Constitution divides war powers between Congress and the president, places the military under civilian authority, and binds those in power to the rule of law.
But those safeguards mean little when Congress refuses to challenge unauthorized wars, presidents treat military force as their private prerogative, and military leaders demand obedience without accountability.
The problem extends far beyond any one president or military campaign.
For decades, the United States has maintained a vast military empire, policing the globe, occupying foreign countries, and waging wars with no clear end in sight. The military-industrial complex has profited enormously from this arrangement, while the men and women in uniform have been left to bear its human costs.
Each new conflict is marketed as national defense. Each demands more money, more weapons, more deployments, and more sacrifices from those expected to fight it.
And it is America’s service members who are treated as pawns in the government’s endless pursuit of global power.
Consider the human price of the war with Iran.
In a November interview with 60 Minutes, President Trump insisted that the conflict with Iran was “not a war” and asserted that the United States had not lost a soldier in the previous five or six months. He then acknowledged 18 deaths across the Iran and Venezuela operations, comparing that number with the much larg
