Retired Major General Randy Manner, a high-ranking Army officer with a two-star rank and a former Acting Vice Chief of the National Guard, strongly criticized Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Hegseth claimed the U.S. military should “untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country” and told soldiers not to follow “stupid rules of engagement.”
Manner strongly disagreed with these statements.
He said, “Those are the words of a potential war criminal right there, and that is not the advice or direction any Secretary of Defense should be giving our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines.
It puts them in greater danger.”
Manner also said Hegseth isn’t qualified to be Secretary of Defense.
“He is a disgraced major who was removed from the DC National Guard.
He has no real qualifications for this job other than his extreme loyalty to the president.”
This is a senior military leader with decades of experience warning that Hegseth’s dangerous words put American troops at risk and go beyond what is acceptable.
Hegseth has a different version of how he left the DC Guard, but Manner was its deputy chief and knows the real story.
He flagged Hegseth as an “insider threat” because of his islamophobic “deus vult” tattoo, which led to his resignation.
Now, as Trump’s illegal war with Iran is getting worse and Marines are moving quickly to the Gulf, Hegseth is pushing for “no rules” tactics.
Manner says this kind of talk is reckless and immoral, and it doesn’t need generals with stars to see that.
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