Apocalypse again
Colonel Kilgore loved the smell of napalm. Secretary Hegseth loves killing. There's a difference.
Last week, during the Pentagon’s monthly prayer service, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth delivered an address that would have made a bloodthirsty crusader like Pope Innocent III proud.
Hegseth then prayed what he said was the same prayer that a military chaplain gave troops during the Maduro operation, calling on God to behold the “wicked who rise against your justice and the peace of the righteous” and to “break the teeth of the ungodly.”
“Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation. Give them wisdom in every decision, endurance for the trial ahead, unbreakable unity, and overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy,” Hegseth prayed.
Like so much of the second Trump administration, Hegseth’s remarks were shocking but not surprising. (Granted, he’s amping up his Christian Nationalism; the absolutely unhinged and odious extremist Doug Wilson is his mentor for a reason.)
But, as Greg Sargent recently documented, Hegseth’s rhetoric about Operation Epic Fury has always been, by any previous standards, almost cartoonishly berserk.
From Greg Sargent in The New Republic:
By now it’s become unmistakable that Hegseth’s tenure has been marked by open and unrestrained sadism and bloodlust. He enthuses about raining “death and destruction from the sky all day long” and about “punching” the enemy “while they’re down.” He speaks of liberating the military from “stupid” rules of engagement. He delights in unleashing its “maximum lethality.” He rhapsodizes about killing “without hesitation”—with no moral qualms whatsoever.
It’s all more than a little performative. But that isn’t the same thing as being insincere or easily dismissed.
As Kurt Vonnegut wrote, we are what we pretend to be. And Hegseth pretends to be — and therefore is — the kind of person who issues orders like kill them all.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. “The order was to kill everybody,” one of them said.
[…]
A missile screamed off the Trinidad coast, striking the vessel and igniting a blaze from bow to stern. For minutes, commanders watched the boat burning on a live drone feed. As the smoke cleared, they got a jolt: Two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck.The Special Operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 attack — the opening salvo in the Trump administration’s war on suspected drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere — ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions, two people familiar with the matter said. The two men were blown apart in the water.
Now, according to a report in Zeteo, some folks within the Pentagon have started referring to Hegseth as “Dumb McNamara.”
Just like his Vietnam War-era predecessor, the joke goes, Hegseth is so obsessed with metrics that “prove” the US is winning that he cannot appreciate (or refuses to see) the larger strategic failure. But unlike McNamara, who was objectively brilliant, Hegseth is… patently not.
It’s a funny line, and the contempt for Hegseth is certainly deserved.
But to understand who Hegseth thinks he is — and why he’s actually even worse than that — we need to look to another figure from the Vietnam War.
Who Hegseth thinks he is
The figure Hegseth seems to have in mind — the template he’s working from, consciously or not — is Apocalypse Now’s Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore.
Played by Robert Duvall, Kilgore, famous for declaring, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning,” is an instantly iconic representation of US imperialism and a militarist will-to-power.
Kilgore is a Vietnam War commander who leads helicopter assaults to the blare of Wagner. He’s like something out of The Iliad — intentionally, self-consciously so.
He’s not just an aesthete. He’s also a performer: whether it’s professional surfing or rolling thunder, he loves the sublime combination of beauty and violence as both a practitioner and a connoisseur.
KILGORE (pointing to trees): Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed for twelve hours... and when it was all over, I walked up. We didn’t find one of them, not one stinking [—] body. The smell, you know that gasoline smell? The whole hill — smelled like… victory.
He looks off nostalgically. A shell comes in and hits in the background… Kilgore ignores it.
KILGORE: Someday this war’s gonna end.
A tremendous sadness enveloping him. Then he stands up and walks off.
Kilgore doesn’t justify what he does. He is too busy reveling in it.
When Hegseth practically vibrates with excitement while rattling off statistics about enemy targets obliterated, his eyes gleaming with satisfaction, this is who he thinks he is.
“Any man who’s brave enough to fight”
Yet Hegseth’s performance is a pale imitation.
As evidenced by his frequent invocation of “no quarter,” Hegseth recognizes no code, not even that of the warrior. That’s not true of Kilgore, who, for his manifest flaws, operates according to a standard.
From the script:
Kilgore turns and continues down the burning street with his group. He comes upon a wounded VC, groaning. The man has tied a wash bowl over his belly — and is groaning for water. Kilgore turns to a soldier.
KILGORE: What’s this?
SOLDIER (OVER P.A.): This man’s hurt pretty bad, sir. About the only thing holding his guts in, sir, is that pot lid.
KILGORE (to ARVN soldier): Yeah? What does he have to say?
ARVN SOLDIER: This soldier is dirty VC. He wants water. He can drink paddy water.
KILGORE: Get out of here! Give me that canteen.
He pushes the ARVN soldier away, turns, and then gets a canteen full of water from the lieutenant.
KILGORE: Any man who’s brave enough to fight —(to ARVN soldier) Get outta here! I’ll kick your fucking ass! Any man brave enough to fight with his guts strapped on him can drink from my canteen any day.
The difference
Of course, we shouldn’t romanticize a character who is depicted as monstrous — charismatically so, yes, but still.
Although that scene showcases Kilgore’s code, and its allowance for a limited form of mercy, it’s also evidence of his arrogance. (Remember: the US is supposedly there to support the South Vietnamese, not threaten to kick their fucking asses.)
Kilgore is no hero. But what he does have is a fundamental respect for war — and for warriors, even the enemy.
Unlike Hegseth, who is desperate to advertise his contempt for limits, Kilgore treats his code as no less an integral part of his embodiment of American machismo than his shirtlessness or his coolness under pressure.
For Kilgore, war is a force that gives life grandeur and, as Chris Hedges put it, meaning. For Hegseth — and for his boss — the war on Iran is propaganda and content.
Kilgore loved war. Hegseth, as Sargent reminds us, seems to love killing. That distinction might have once sounded abstract. No longer.