Victor Davis Hanson is correct about one thing, and only one thing: selective moral outrage is not a serious argument. If the use of force, cultural direction of the military, or executive latitude was tolerable under Obama and Biden, it cannot suddenly become illegitimate because a different faction now occupies the building.
But that observation, while useful, does not do the work Hanson assigns to it.
To say that critics are hypocritical is not the same as saying the policy is wise. It is merely to say that Washington is consistent in its inconsistency.
The problem with Hanson's essay is that it mistakes contrast for proof. Recruiting numbers rebound—therefore the cause must be a restored "warrior ethic." Procurement reform is announced—therefore a decades-long acquisition pathology is solved. Drug interdiction rhetoric sounds martial—therefore the military has found a morally clarifying mission at home.
None of this follows and Hanson knows better.
Recruiting fluctuates with the economy, incentives, eligibility standards, and demographics. Procurement reform has been an ongoing obsession of the Pentagon for twenty years, regardless of which party is in power. And fentanyl is a criminal supply-chain problem, not a theater of war—no matter how bracing the language used to describe it.
There is also a deeper confusion at work. Hanson treats the removal of progressive excess as proof of institutional health. But institutions are not made healthy merely by replacing one ideological overreach with another. A military that defines itself primarily by what it is not—not woke, not cautious, not restrained—risks becoming performative in a different register.
The American military's historic strength was never ideological purity, left or right. It was competence, professionalism, and discipline under civilian control. That tradition does not require DEI seminars, but neither does it require constant chest-thumping about warrior virtue, which has a way of curdling into slogan rather than doctrine.
Hanson is right to warn against politicizing the armed forces. He is less convincing when he appears to cheer a politicization he happens to prefer.
The republic has survived worse secretaries of defense than Pete Hegseth—and it will survive him too. But survival is a low bar. The question is whether we are governing with sobriety or merely rotating the soundtrack.
