I was a special operations commando. I know what made the US military strong.
Scott Olson/Photographer: Scott Olson/Getty
A medevac helicopter crew ran to help a severely wounded Marine Sept. 23, 2010, near Marja, Afghanistan.
I work in a sensitive role at the Pentagon that tries to reduce civilian casualties in war, proudly serving as part of the most powerful military in history. Indeed, my entire adult life has been dedicated to service under Democratic and Republican presidents as a special operator who fought in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. With experience born from years of punishing hard work and literal blood, sweat, and tears, I represent every American in government service who is under attack by President Trump.
This week, the Trump administration and its shadow president, Elon Musk, began the process of closing down our office in the name of efficiency. With no congressional oversight or effective governmental checks and balances, Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is firing thousands of government workers, including veterans and military spouses, while portraying them as worthless agents of a fictional “deep state.” Equally concerning are Trump’s Cabinet nominations, who represent a consortium of ideologues. Pete Hegseth, his secretary of defense, is one.
Set aside the serious issues raised during his confirmation hearings, including allegations of adultery, spousal abuse, sexual assault, alcohol abuse, a history of demonizing Muslims (including allies), and opposition to rooting out extremists in the ranks. Hegseth’s stated focus as secretary of defense seems to be one thing: waging war against what he considers "wokeness.”
By wokeness, he seems to refer to any program that was created to ensure equality of opportunity. He has said that “the single dumbest phrase in military history is ‘our diversity is our strength,’” and complained that military recruiting efforts fail to bring in enough “patriotic, strong, manly” troops. Expressing a singular focus on “lethality,” he asserts that women should not be in combat roles because “it hasn’t made us more effective, hasn’t made us more lethal.”
Hegseth also attacks the service of LGBTQ service members and does not believe transgender individuals should be allowed to serve at all. He has criticized the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the Clinton-era policy that required gay service members to keep their sexuality a secret, as a move toward “social engineering.” And recently his office issued a memo saying all openly transgender people will be removed from service.
In my career, I directly hunted and killed enemy combatants. But while that is not all that the military does, and most service members end their careers without firing a shot in combat, plenty of female and LGBTQ troops have served bravely and honorably in the most dangerous of situations. I know because I’ve witnessed it.
The only time I saw someone cower in a firefight was a male soldier — he hid in his armored vehicle during a multipronged ambush while the rest of us, including female soldiers, maneuvered and returned fire. I’ve also served under two female commanders who were among the best leaders I had in my career. I have been supported on the battlefield by many an effective and lethal female combat pilot.
The special operations community was the first to see the utility of women in ground combat, understanding the diversity of thought and ability and the unique roles they can fill in culturally sensitive environments. And dozens of women have graduated from some of the toughest special operations pipelines across the Army, Marine, Navy, and Air Force.
I know dedicated service members with same-sex partners who have had to hide their sexuality in terror of being forced out of a job they love. I have also witnessed the racism of fellow service members. Hegseth has rejected efforts to weed out extremists and white supremacists in the military, saying such efforts are “peddling the lie.” But I can’t count the number of racist tropes I witnessed during my military career, including against fellow soldiers, general officers, and former president Barack Obama.
Whether Hegseth realizes it or not, diversity has been at the core of the US military for many decades. It was one of the first American institutions to racially integrate its ranks. Today minority service members represent a third of the armed forces, and women around 18 percent. Even putting aside important moral considerations on equality — at a time when the services are struggling to meet their recruiting quotas, why would the Pentagon want to do anything that didn’t welcome patriotic Black, Latino, female, and LGBTQ volunteers who want to serve their country?
In the special operations community, there is a mantra I always loved: “It takes all types.” Fundamentally, this means that if you can do your job and contribute to the mission, nothing else matters. Some of my fellow veterans seem to forget this — and many Americans seem to not understand it.
There is another aspect of Hegseth’s leadership that worries me and many others inside the Department of Defense. He seems to confuse loyalty to the president with his duty to the Constitution and the laws of the nation. At Trump’s bidding, he recently purged senior military commanders whom he deems insufficiently loyal to Trump, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the top military lawyers in three services.
He did this despite a formal letter from a bipartisan group of House members demanding transparency and the use of “apolitical criteria” in dismissing generals and flag officers. The scale and nature of this purge is unprecedented — and imperils the US military toward a dangerous regression into a wholly politicized force.
His purge has reached my office, which works to reduce civilian harm in warfare. Paradoxically, this effort began during the first Trump administration, though it was fully implemented under former president Joe Biden. As an expert in precision warfare, I went to work at the Pentagon after I retired from active duty to improve our targeting procedures and capabilities. Hegseth mistakes this obligation to protect the innocent as being “woke” — but these are strategic, moral, and legal imperatives.
The US military that I know is one that maintains a culture of nonpartisanship and secularism. That is the only way to ensure that a military comprising many faiths, races, ethnicities, and political beliefs can protect a similarly diverse nation, and that the direction of our national security at home and abroad is guided by a level hand.
This distinction is what kept me serving throughout the longest period of prolonged war in US history. It is a vital quality that separates our military from most in human history.
The US military exists on behalf of the American people, to uphold our Constitution and American ideals of freedom and democracy — not for one man, not for one party, and, unwaveringly, not for the designs of ideologues.
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Wes J. Bryant, a retired Air Force special operations master sergeant, works as a civilian analyst for the Pentagon and is coauthor of "Hunting the Caliphate: America’s War on ISIS and the Dawn of the Strike Cell."
