by G. Murphy Donovan (November 2025)
Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way. —General George Patton
Military units still hold commander’s calls. Such meetings are usually “mandatory” formations. Absence is not an option. Frequency, format, and location are optional. Subject matter and duration are command prerogatives. Often a commander’s call might be devoted to awards and recognition.
Just as often, these periodic gatherings might be devoted to purely military matters like tactics, operations, or strategy. When circumstances warrant, commanders might also use such meetings as reminders of standards, discipline, or just “ass chewing,” a military euphemism for severe verbal reprimands.
Secretary of Defense (also Secretary of War) Pete Hegseth’s recent Commander’s Call at Quantico Marine Base was clearly an ass chewing, reprimands designed to reorient the military services away from the corrosive impact of Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion (DEI) programs that now fester in all government agencies including the military services.
Surely it’s no accident either that the Quantico Marine Base was chosen as the site to announce new policy and training vectors. The Marine Corps, across the board, is the most disciplined, traditional, and well trained component of the six military services.
Only the Coast Guard runs a close second when the subject is performance standards. Clearly too, the Air Force was the worst of the “woke” lot. The first, most senior officer, to be fired by Hegseth and President Trump was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the senior serving USAF officer at the time.
Albeit, the assembly of military brass at Quantico is unique in only one respect. The gathering of brass was a call for senior and non-commissioned officers only, a stern reminder that examples and role models are set at the top.
Fat, political, and woke in the War Department will no longer be national standards. Hegseth admonished those who do not agree with new policies to “do the honorable thing and resign.” Predictably, only General Thomas Bussiere, head of the USAF Global Strike Command (nee Strategic Air Command), announced his retirement in the wake of a Secretary Hegseth’s speech at Quantico.
The USAF and Space Force may be the worst of the “woke” due to permanent or perennial contractual affiliation with Rand Corporation, a major purveyor of progressive, if not Left Coast, social memes; first at USAF, and now more widely at the Pentagon. RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, considers itself the original, if not premier, federal think tank; at first selling strategic, now social, policy studies to the Pentagon and War Department agencies.
Indeed, long before the pronoun wars, RAND boasted the first LGBTQ corporate club funded with taxpayer monies.
RAND may have invented the “revolving door” syndrome also, where civilian mandarins rotate from think tank to the Pentagon and back again. Donald Rice for example, former president of RAND, served as Secretary of the USAF.
The origin of the woke thread at RAND may be traced to Daniel Ellsberg and the “Pentagon Papers” scandal and the subsequent Don Rice social studies tenure in Santa Monica.
Apparently, Rice, like his contemporaries, didn’t see much of a future for strategic studies at RAND or the Pentagon.
At the recent Quantico assembly, surely the Secretary of War also wanted to remind the unprecedented assembly of officers that the military chain of command in America runs from the President to the Secretary of Defense and then down to the major combat commands, not through the Service secretaries or the Joint Chiefs. JCS officers merely advise the President and the Secretary of War. The six Service chiefs do not have command authority to direct any troops in the field.
The capstone message from the Secretary of War was an admonition to get back to military basics; standards, training, and winning. If the Hegseth scold had to be put in a nutshell it would be this; if we are in it, we need to win it.
Strategic myopia is not an option. No military can afford to be tactically engaged whilst the nation is strategically adrift.
Or as George Patton might have put it: “There is no substitute for victory.”
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G. Murphy Donovan is a retired USAF Intelligence officer who once served as the senior Air Force and Military Research Fellow at the RAND Corporation. Follow him on X.
Follow NER on Twitter @NERIconoclast
