Dumb McNamara and Admiral Dipshit

With impeachment looming for Pete Hegseth, I watched Adm. Cooper's podcast of lukewarm sports takes and Hegseth's Fox-like speech at the Naval War College

Edited by Sam Thielman

WE DON'T KNOW if Trump will react to the devastation of his political movement by bombing Iran. He emphasized the ambiguity on Friday, as if it would prompt any capitulation from Iran, which won this war in March, and then softened it on Sunday. Meanwhile, the Iranians are passing out iodine tablets to civilians residing near the Pickaxe Mountain nuclear complex that Trump might bomb. 

In the back of everyone's mind is the Oct. 27 briefing that the war's operational commander, Adm. Brad Cooper of CENTCOM, delivered at the White House on the options for resuming the bombing. Those options have been called "insane" by Sen. Chris Murphy following a classified briefing. CNN, citing a source knowledgeable about what Cooper's cooking up, reported that the plans include destroying "a lot of energy infrastructure" and even using the 21,600-lb. GBU-43/B "Mother of All Bombs." Trump dropped the so-called MOAB (Massive Ordnance Air Blast) in Afghanistan, its first operational usage, in 2017. It accomplished nothing. Not long afterward, the Iranians built its facility inside Pickaxe Mountain, which is designed to withstand such a weapon. The MOAB detonates in the air—that's the "AB" right there in its name—not following surface penetration, so it won't hit the facility beneath Pickaxe, which is the point of Pickaxe. 

And in any event the destruction of Pickaxe will not open up the Strait of Hormuz, which is the issue, whether Trump likes it or not. The hallmark of Cooper's war over these nine months has been the inconclusive bombing of targets peripheral to the outcome. These are among the characteristics of a forever war—you remember, the thing that Vice President J.D. Vance swore this wouldn't be, because Trump isn't stupid like those other presidents. 

So naturally, you've got questions for Cooper. After all, he hasn’t briefed the press since May. Luckily, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), which Cooper helms, is willing to field the important questions. Like: what's the admiral’s physical fitness routine been like? What advice would he give his younger self? What would Cooper be doing if he had left the Navy after completing his service obligations from the Naval Academy? And could he answer those questions while sitting extremely awkwardly between two ferns on a podcasting set? 

Now, if you've never seen Armed Forces Network programming, you might be unnerved by the aggressive, cynical and futile attempt to project an image of normalcy during disastrous, protracted wars. But if you're familiar with, say, Grill Sergeants, this is just the latest bad idea from the military's many public affairs shops. CENTCOM is here trying to position a man materially responsible for the mass killing of Minab schoolchildren as a corny but lovable grandpa, out to dish out grandfatherly advice to young servicemembers and show that men who turn kids into pink mist are just like us—dudes who like French fries maybe a little too much for our waistlines. I watched the whole thing so you wouldn't have to. It won't surprise you that Cooper doesn't mention Minab, let alone his inability to open the Strait of Hormuz, nor the way that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has out-generaled him. It will also not surprise you that it's not good podcasting.

Early on, when the host, Fleet Master Chief Lateef Compton, CENTCOM's senior enlisted man, asks about Cooper's workout routine, Cooper quickly raises and just as quickly drops a reference to caring for your "mental fitness." Pretty awkward thing to mention considering that after earlier denials, Navy Secretary Hung Cao admitted that eight sailors serving in the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group attempted suicide amidst their extended deployment in the war Cooper runs. Later, through a goofy perma-smile, Cooper can't parry the gentlest shit-talking over his Bengals—this, despite the Bengals starting out 6-2 this season, while Compton's Patriots are 5-4. Maybe Cooper didn't want to dwell too hard on what it means to land some regular-season wins without a hope of ultimate victory.

I've been around many generals and admirals at various levels of wartime command, doing a better job reporting on some than others. Every single one of them came off more confident—more self-aware—than Cooper here, and I'm including Mike Flynn. Cooper comes across as a dweeb lost in the shallow end of sports talk. Cooper sings the praises of Jerry Rice as if praising a Hall of Famer is a counterintuitive take. At another point, Cooper starts semi-joking about how he's a good free-throw shooter. Maybe that's because he can't get past the zone Iran is running around the Strait of Hormuz? And he foul-baits because he can't win at ethical basketball? This guy is walking into getting dunked on by the IRGC, who have better propaganda. At least David Petraeus could talk shit when necessary—I heard it! 

Last week a reporter friend asked me what I made of Cooper. I replied that every time I've looked into him, he's come across as a dipshit, a man prone to the sort of vacant pronouncements that officer culture rewards, or at least doesn't challenge. He told Congress that a nuclear Iran would be a global hegemon; I can't decide if that's dumber than it is delusional or vice versa. In May, Cooper bullshited Congress that he had "contingencies" to force the reopening of the Strait. Five months later, no such contingencies materialized, just aimless failed bombing that got the U.S.' panicked Gulf allies counterattacked. It doesn't get talked about as much as it should, but under Cooper's command, the Iranians have cratered the U.S. basing structure in the Gulf. Whatever regional U.S. basing ends up becoming, it will not be as robust as it was on February 27. 

During the part of the podcast that acknowledged the Iran War's existence, Cooper remarked, "No one could have imagined the trajectory of events that we've been on." The fuck is he talking about? The U.S. and Israel launched this war. The broader path of unrestrained hostility toward Iran, which led first to the slaying of Qassem Soleimani and then to the 2025 "Twelve-Day War," has been a trajectory set when Trump ripped up the Iran Deal, a move that had bipartisan support, including from would-be Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, if not years or even decades earlier. This war has been depressingly overdetermined, even as foreign-policy mavens like Daniel Drezner want to pretend otherwise. Attitudes like Drezner's reflect those of a foreign policy elite that for generations has embraced an uncritical, reckless willingness to confront Iran. They can be summed up as: We spent decades carefully making this bed; can you believe Trump was stupid enough to lie in it?

Cooper's rudderlessness makes a lot of sense when you remember that he was raised into the CENTCOM job after losing the 2024-5 year-long naval confrontation to Ansar Allah. For all Pete Hegseth's laughable pretense about restoring warrior culture, the man he raised to CENTCOM lost the last war he fought. 

And then there's Hegseth himself. 

Hegseth has reached the crucible of his secretaryship. As an outgoing act, the departing right-wing dove (sings a song, sounds like she's singing ooh, baby, ooh, baby, ooh) Rep. Thomas Massie plans on introducing articles of impeachment when Congress returns for the lame-duck session, and he thinks there's enough irate Republicans to join Democrats and oust Hegseth. It was conspicuous that the Washington Post's post-election piece on the moves to make Hegseth the fall guy for the war waited until very far down to mention Vice President Vance's remarks that Iran was a millstone for Republicans. I don't know who the Post's sources were, but that's how it typically appears when a particular camp feeds reporters a narrative. Hegseth recently clashed with one of Vance's friends, now-resigned Army Secretary Don Driscoll, an obvious choice for defense secretary should Vance win the presidency in 2028. It makes a lot of sense that Vance would want to frame Hegseth as singularly responsible for the war’s manifest failures.

We can say without praising Hegseth that Vance's effort is absolute bullshit. Vance sacrificed whatever antiwar credibility he aspired to by shilling for the Iran War while performing skepticism of it. He shilled for the 2025 Twelve Day War before he shilled for this one. He misrepresented the efficacy of his diplomacy on multiple occasions: "They moved in our direction," Vance boasted after the April talks in Islamabad; whoops. And as recently as September, Vance was denying it was even a war at all. At the same time, any measure to get rid of Hegseth comes nearly two years too late and never soon enough. I won't recapitulate Nick Turse's absolute filleting of Hegseth, but read deep enough into it to see that among the nicknames officers have for Hegseth is Dumb McNamara, which I can't stop laughing at. And never forget that Vance cast the deciding vote for Hegseth.

Hegseth is destined to join Robert McNamara and Donald Rumsfeld among the least fit men to ever run the Defense Department. He began his tenure by purging the black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. C.Q. Brown, a man far more qualified than Hegseth, and this act of infamy, which he claims was combatting "a Marxist ideology" of equality, was only the beginning of Hegseth's quest to make the military whiter and more “masculine.” He is a creation of Rumsfeld's wars and a reflection of the psychosis at the heart of them. Hegseth denied plunging the U.S. into a forever war; Rumsfeld in 2003 made the same denials. In an unhinged video he released Thursday that sneered at the impeachment push, Hegseth said of his wanton murder of civilians in the waters north of South America, "Narco-terrorists should die, not be caught and released." The Iran War, to Hegseth, is "a courageous and historic effort which will ensure Iran will never get a nuclear weapon." Maybe that's how it looks after a few beers.

As I write this, Hegseth is speaking at the Naval War College. He's there to defend and advance his military-academic purges. The "only question" that should matter to a military educator should be "will it help us achieve victory," Hegseth said, which is simply an attempt at running the Woke Campus Radicals play for professional military education. "Our service colleges imported the worst pathologies of civilian higher education," Hegseth accused, such as "false and sinister progressive ideologies." As someone who has spent time at places like West Point and the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, this is nonsense. Notably and tellingly, Hegseth's demand to "teach victory" skirted past mentions of his actual record of disaster in Iran. But there is a cohort of disgruntled officers who think it's appropriate to, say, nuke Mecca; and not teaching such options to senior officers is censorship. He's simply trying to appear visible and unafraid, daring both the outgoing Congress and the new one to get rid of him. Hours after he wrapped up his half-hour speech, the Pentagon announced Hegseth will hold his first press briefing in months tomorrow morning.

Should Hegseth’s impeachment succeed, it'll be far from sufficient. Adm. Cooper, who by every account has been lockstep with Hegseth on escalating the Iran War, will remain. So will the retired officer who cultivated Trump until he replaced Brown, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine. Caine had been set up to be the Iran War's fall guy before Hegseth was. He has only himself to blame for thinking he could manipulate Trump, a hubristic mistake made by officers more capable than Caine. And then there's Vance, the creation of tech oligarchs like Peter Thiel, whose ownership stake in Palantir makes him a profiteer off the Iran War. Thiel may likely read the midterms as vindication of his rejection of democracy and pour more money into Vance in the hope of imposing technofeudalism on us. The Iran War and its failures must not wash off of any of these men. 

ANY RENEWED BOMBING OF IRAN might have to center seaborne strikes if Russia finally provides the Iranians with its S-400 advanced "NATO killer" air-defense system.

A POLL CONDUCTED by the Institute for Global Affairs at the Eurasia Group finds that 44 percent of  voters in the midterm elections were less likely to back a pro-Iran War candidate, compared to only 13 percent backing Iran hawks. Going forward, 53 percent want Congress to impose an end on the war. I asked Jonathan Guyer of the Institute what he thought these findings mean for any congressional initiative to defund it. 

"Most Americans want Congress, not the president, to decide when the war on Iran ends. Heading into the midterms, Democrats and independents put lower prices ahead of U.S. military goals in Iran, while Republicans are less united than their party’s leaders," Guyer tells FOREVER WARS. "A third of Republicans would accept falling short in the war to avoid higher prices, and only a third say a candidate’s support for the war makes them more likely to back that candidate. 

"That suggests efforts in Congress to rein in the war could find support beyond Democrats, and the new Congress will have a chance to use the war powers the Constitution gives it."

By contrast, defense intellectuals prefer the Iran War fully transition into a forever war. "Maintain the blockade and economic pressure campaign, respond with force when Iran or its proxies strike U.S. or partner targets," argue Rand's Raphael S. Cohen and Howard J. Shatz, calling these the "best of bad options." That rationale was how the defense intellectuals for an entire generation reconciled themselves to the Iraq and Afghanistan quagmires. The new Congress will have to choose between advice like this and the fairly clear demands of the people who just elected them.

ONE MORE THING I FEEL is worth mentioning from Cooper's video. There's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it praise for retired Army Gen. Vince Brooks, whom Cooper cites as a mentor. Brooks, you'll remember, was one of many retired officers to publicly denounce Trump's 2020 suggestion of martial law against Black Lives Matter. I don't know if that was some sort of samizdat, some subtle effort at distancing himself from Hegseth's crusade for a white and Trumpist military, but it was there and so I note it.

A SECOND PRINTING FOR NO ONE ESCAPES THE DIALECTIC. I'm humbled to announce that even before Wednesday's debut, we sold out our print run for the first issue. We're going back for a second printing, so if you want #1 but didn't preorder it, you'll find it at your local comic shop. Keep telling people about it—it's working. Remember as well, anyone who shows me proof of adding NO ONE ESCAPES THE DIALECTIC to their pull list will get a free year's subscription to FOREVER WARS at the paid tier. Whenever a new issue drops, I'll have subscriber-only commentary right here and only here. 

But that's not all. This Wednesday, Nov. 11, come to my home base,  Bulletproof Comics & Games at 2178 Nostrand Avenue—right off the 2/5 at Flatbush Avenue, to say nothing of the B44, B41, Q35, B103 and (a bit of a walk) the B11. I'll be signing and hanging out from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m., so come through—the one last week at Anyone Comics was a great and fairly raucous time.