Hegseth’s Challenge To West Point Cadets Will Bring Patriots To Their Feet

In a stirring, emotional and inspiring commencement speech at West Point, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth perfectly articulated the warrior’s credo for the graduates while he devastated the woke ideology that had permeated the military in recent years.

“On a day like today, there’s no better way to start than with a word from Scripture,” he began. “And on a day as special as this, for the 998 great Americans of this class, there’s no more fitting verse than from Isaiah 6:8:

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said. “Here I am. Send me.”

“Many of you, even in your short time in uniform, have endured what I call the slow slide of the U. S. Army,” Hegseth recalled. “You’ve seen standards lowered. You’ve seen an obsession with race and gender. You’ve seen the watering down of discipline, codes weakened and traditions tossed aside in the name of political correctness. Statues taken down, paintings placed in the basement.”

“I’m here to tell you the slow slide here at West Point and across the United States Army is over,” he declared. “Political leaders with ideological agendas and weak military leaders who were just looking to curry favor for the next star allowed our cherished army to slide off our true north. But you, our warriors, will snap it back. You are the future. Others may have allowed it to slide away. You will not. You will restore our army. And I will empower you to do it.”

“The single dumbest phrase in military history was peddled in our army only a few short years ago,” he continued. “You’ve all heard it, maybe in your first two years at West Point: ‘Our diversity is our strength.’”

“The single dumbest phrase in military history,” he stated. “We had generals saying this with a straight face on national television. It was absolute nonsense. Now, these sorts of silly things can be laughed at when they occur in a civilian lounge or civilian faculty lounge or debated in graduate seminars. But they cannot be tolerated in our formations. These ideas are what get people killed. Diversity is not our strength. Unity is our strength.”

“When you’re out there in your formations as platoon leaders at the tip of the spear,” he said, “You will not compromise; you will not seek color, and you will not try to meet arbitrary quotas based on immutable characteristics. You do not have time to celebrate identity months. And you will not make excuses for yourselves and you will not accept excuses from others. You will lead. That’s what this academy has trained you to do, to lead us.”

“There’s no substitute for preparation ever,” he said. “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Plan for recovery, resupply, alternate communications, rehearse and refine.”

He turned to his own personal history to illustrate his point:

The first air assault I ever did, leading a platoon in Baghdad in the middle of the night on an al-Qaeda objective, we had 36 hours to prepare, and I spent every minute of those 36 hours preparing. It paid off. Because when the pilots dropped us a few hundred meters in the wrong spot in the middle of a mud field and the GPS didn’t work, there was one man that platoon was looking at. It was me. And because I’d done every map recon, every satellite imagery recon, every recon I could, I had a general sense of where we were and could orient at that moment in the right direction.

If I had not prepared, they would have looked at me and I would have looked right back at them. And nothing I did was perfect. Nothing you’ll do will be perfect, but at least you can prepare. Always be the most prepared member in your unit.  Be decisive and be aggressive. Pick a course of action and carry it through until you have a point to reassess. Second guessing. Set the example and display courage. Both physically and morally to make the tough calls, especially when it’s not popular. It doesn’t mean you won’t be afraid. But it means you will be prepared to push through it. Know the purpose of your mission and explain it to your soldiers.

“My job is easy,” he said. “Your job is hard. Your job is to forge a team of American soldiers who will stand tall, not back down, look the enemy in the eye, and whisper, ‘Send us.’ You are in the profession of arms. You feel comfortable inside the violence, so that our fellow citizens can live peacefully. Lethality is your calling card, and victory our only acceptable end state.”

“My seven kids are here with me today,” he noted. “My wife, Janie, and I brought them. Our oldest is 15 years old. He may. look at attending West Point one day. Or heaven forbid, the Naval Academy,” he joked. “Who knows? We have five boys and two girls, all Americans, all children of God. I don’t know what path God will choose for them. And I know that I’ll fiercely love them no matter what they do. But I can tell you this, nothing in the world would make me prouder than to hear one of them stand up and proclaim, ‘Send me.’”

“We live in a culture of clickbait and rage bait and vapid social media and celebrity gossip,” he said. “In a world like that, it’s really easy to get distracted and lost. And no matter what my kids end up choosing, I pray like this audience: they choose substance. I pray they choose service. And I pray they choose purpose. ‘Send me’ is the timeless, selfless call to service. It’s the craving to serve something greater than yourself.”