Donald Vandergriff
The latest article by Mackubin Owens in the Washington Examiner is titled “Trump and Hegseth seek a stop to identity politics undercutting military effectiveness.” It matches the provided text excerpt and was published on October 3, 2025. You can read it here:
Your incisive analysis of Secretary Pete Hegseth’s address to the nation’s senior officers at Quantico captures the essence of a pivotal moment in American military history—one that demands not just attention, but action. In an era where our armed forces grapple with the shadows of past failures, from the quagmires of Vietnam and Afghanistan to the creeping complacency of bureaucratic excess, your piece shines a clear light on the unyielding truth: true military excellence springs from warfighting primacy, not from the distractions of identity politics or institutional bloat.
Secretary of War Hegseth’s words, as you so aptly unpack them, are a clarion call to reclaim the “functional imperative” that Samuel Huntington so prophetically described—a military forged in trust, cohesion, and unrelenting lethality, unencumbered by the divisive sirens of DEI mandates that erode standards and invite mediocrity.
What strikes me most in your essay is the unflinching honesty about accountability’s long absence from our officer corps. You’ve nailed it: the proliferation of four-star billets, the reluctance to relieve underperformers, and the elevation of HR checklists over battle-tested leadership have left us top-heavy and tactically adrift. Hegseth’s commitment to slashing that overhead by 20% isn’t mere rhetoric; it’s a surgical strike against the rot I’ve spent decades documenting and combating.
And your reminder of historical precedents—from Marshall’s pre-WWII purges to Jefferson’s ideological realignments—grounds this reform in the resilient DNA of our republic. Far from politicization, this is restoration: civilians charting policy, officers executing with loyalty to the Constitution and the mission, not to fleeting ideologies.
Critics may decry it as a “chilling effect,” but as you observe, the real chill has been the one settling over our ranks as we’ve prioritized optics over outcomes. Hegseth gets it, as do you: identity politics doesn’t unite; it fractures. It whispers that excellence is secondary to equity, allowing adversaries like China and Russia to outpace us while we chase shadows.
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