The Hegseth Illusion: How the Peace Wing Was Gutted from Within

Nancy O'Brien Simpson

Photo: commons.wikimedia.org by BalkanPhotos, https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/

США и Россия

There was a moment—a fragile, flickering moment—when some of us believed. Not in the man, necessarily, but in the possibility. That maybe, just maybe, a rough-mouthed outsider like Donald J. Trump might finally break the war machine. He railed against “forever wars,” mocked the architects of Iraq, and gave off just enough fumes of anti-interventionism to stir the exhausted hearts of peace-seekers across the political spectrum. We knew it was a long shot. But hope, as it always does, sneaks in through the cracks.

Enter Pete Hegseth.

To the anti-war right, Hegseth was supposed to be different. A veteran who'd seen the cost of empire firsthand. A voice, however faint, for recalibrating American might. When Trump eyed him for Defense Secretary, some dared to believe the tide might turn. But what followed was not a quiet revolution—it was a quiet purge. The illusion shattered.

Many of us quietly hoped Donald J. Trump might be different. That, amid the noise and narcissism, he meant it when he vowed to end America’s endless wars. We longed for someone, anyone, to slam the brakes on the blood-drenched machinery of empire. He said he’d do it. He said he was the "Peace President."

And we believed him. Some of us, anyway.

Never mind the red flags. He had four years. He could have pulled out of Afghanistan. He didn’t. That burden, awkward and overdue, was left to old Joe, who stumbled his way through the mess. We should have seen it coming when Trump ordered the assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani. Or when the drones kept droning and the bombs kept falling—different president, same war. But we were hope fiends. Peace junkies. Starved for sanity in a world ruled by steel and smoke.

Then came Gaza.

So much for the Peace President—funding what historians are already whispering might be the most televised genocide of our time. Worse yet, there’s that fever dream image of Trump grinning beside golden fountains, imagining Gaza paved over and rebranded with Trump Resorts and Casinos. A new Riviera, he says. The blood’s not dry.

Yes, he campaigned like a dove, even tried to charm Arab American voters in Michigan with talk of restraint. But listen closely to the words beneath the words. “Get it over with,” he said on stage, debating Biden. Not “stop the bombing.” Not “end the starvation.” No. He meant: “Let Israel finish the job.” And we all missed it, distracted by Biden’s garbled syntax, his scrambled foreign policy monologue barely making it to the period.

Let’s be honest: there are anti-war voices in Trump’s orbit. There are people of conscience quietly working behind the gold-tinted curtains. But those voices? They’re being drowned out. Or worse—fired.

Take Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick for Defense Secretary, who many on the anti-war right saw as a hopeful figure. This month, his inner circle cracked open like a pressure valve. One of his closest allies at the Pentagon, Dan Caldwell, was marched out of the building—fired. Along with Deputy Chief of Staff Darin Selnick and Colin Carroll, top aide to Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg. Gone. No warning. No ceremony. Just escorted from the premises like traitors in a palace of hawks.

The trio issued a statement last weekend. They said they were “incredibly disappointed by the manner in which our service at the Department of Defense ended.” They decried “baseless attacks” on their integrity. But the message between the lines was louder: they were purged for pushing back against the war machine.

Meanwhile, the usual suspects are sharpening their knives. Nikki Haley, ever eager to bomb, dismissed diplomacy with Iran as “Obama 2.0.” And Mark Dubowitz, from the hawkish Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, crowed about the perfect timing to dismantle Iran altogether. “Never a better time,” he wrote, “to finish off the regime.” It's empire-speak. Genocide-speak. Spoken fluently in both parties.

And now? Hegseth himself may be learning the lesson every idealist inside the Beltway eventually does: cross the neocons, and you’re out. You’re done. Ask Curt Mills of The American Conservative. He saw it too. Those who dared suggest restraint—who balked at dragging America into another Israeli war or a proxy war with Iran—were systematically eliminated.

There’s a divide on the right now. A reckoning. The anti-war conservatives, the realists, the America First isolationists—they’re being gutted from the inside. One by one.

So let’s be clear: Trump was never the Peace President. Not in action. Not in legacy. He was a man who flirted with peace, whispered it like a dirty secret, but in the end? He kissed the war machine on the lips and signed the check with a flourish.

Hope is a stubborn thing. But memory, my friends, must be sharper.