Don't Kill Pete Hegseth's War Boner.

“But when a few drones get through or tragic things happen, it’s front-page news,” Hegseth said. “I get it; the press only wants to make the president look bad. But try for once to report the reality.”

Look. I get it. Six Americans were killed by a drone in Kuwait. Some more died after that. And death is, of course, bad. Stipulated.

There were the schools — okay, fine, the schools — and apparently something happened to a hospital. Civilians. Children, even. I understand that technically these are “facts” and that you, a certain type of person, feel that facts warrant acknowledgment and perhaps a respectful pause in which we reflect on the human cost of war.

But have you stopped, even for one second, to consider what you are doing to Pete Hegseth’s chubby right now?

The man is locked in. He is absolutely vibrating with the frequency of someone who has finally, after a lifetime of second class Fox News hits and faux push-up competitions, been handed actual bombs to drop on actual things. He has, we are told, taken control of Iran’s airspace and water. He has looked at a map and said “we control their fate” as his eyes rolled back into his head. He has a war called Operation Epic Fury and he would like you to think about that name for a moment — Epic. Fury. — and ask yourself whether that is the name of something that should be interrupted by your little gay death tallies.

This is a man who makes big decisions. Huge decisions. Not as big as President Trump’s, obviously, because the President has the biggest decisions, the most important decisions, the best decisions, and also the biggest everything else, as has been documented. But Hegseth is nevertheless entrusted with things, or at least given access to some buttons — like one of those children’s toys where you press the shape and it makes the sound, except the sound is an airstrike and children’s screams caught in their throats — and if Operation Epic Fury is doing a lot of heavy lifting for something that has nothing to do with Iran, Pete Hegseth would like you to know that he does not know what you are implying and also that he is very normal about explosions. Like, on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being Michael Bay, he is clearly not a 10. Yet here you are, you specifically, with the petty acknowledgment of, what, some kind of cost? Think of the gains, which I will not be enumerating here because they are very clear and self-evident.

Also, consider: the White House gave us all a balls-to-the-wall cut of jizz-level explosions that would light any thirteen-year-old who is twelve Mountain Dews deep absolutely on fire — Call of Duty footage, kill scores, Mortal Kombat’s flawless victory, fifty-eight million views — and you have the gall to walk into the post-nut clarity of a man having the best solo orgasm of his life and ask him about casualties. You. Showing up to his Pentagon briefings with your notepads and your follow-up questions like some kind of grief bureaucrat. Pete Hegseth is standing at a podium, having just explained that the United States has dictated Iran’s destiny but it’s also on them, and you want to discuss the six Americans who trusted the chain of command with their lives and whose families and fellow Americans would very much like to know what it was for.

But when a few drones get through or tragic things happen, it’s front-page news.

He said this because it is true, and it is true because he said it. Simple as that. Just like this isn’t a war about regime change, except the regime is being changed — which, again, is not a contradiction if you would stop crying long enough to follow the logic.

Speaking of crying: six people. You want to ruin this over six people. We have so many more; it’s just war math. Everyone knows the deal when they sign up: you ride out into something enormous and loud and named after an energy drink, and if you don’t come back, that’s the deal, that’s the thing you agreed to, nobody made you, and you would understand if you would stop asking what the mission was and whether anyone had defined it before you left and whether the guy who sent you even knows your name, and honestly if he doesn't that's fine, names are not the point, the point is that you rode out, and riding out is enough, and there will be more riding out, and there will always be more riding out, because the button is still there and the button still works and the man at the podium is still at the podium and still has the guns and always will, one man, just one man, with a button, in a building full of other buildings full of people who were elected to decide things like this but didn't, and it was always going to end this way, and it will always be ending this way, get over it, next.

Anyway. Pete Hegseth. He has waited for and deserves this. He has absorbed years of people telling him he was unqualified, too online, possibly drunk at various ceremonial occasions. It's not that he has feelings, because he's not a pussy, but he does have angers, which are different and correct.

And now he is finally at The Citadel — er, Pentagon. He has the water. He has the air. He has men who will ride out because that is what men who ride out are for, and their deaths are not a reckoning, they are a resource, they are the cost of doing something enormous and furious, and somewhere up the chain someone, probably, calculated that cost and found it acceptable and pressed the button, and the button made the explosion, and the explosion made the kill score, and the kill score is the point, Blood for the Blood God, and what you do after that — what any reasonable person would do after that — is declare a Triumph. You flatten a parade ground. You line the Avenue of the Victor Bellum with the fruits of your victory. Billions watch on pict-casters. The Warmaster rides a war-beast. This is the correct response to winning. And instead you, some woke baby, want Pete Hegseth to stand at a podium and account for the six Americans who died in his war, for what purpose they died, and whether anyone is going to say their names, which, with all due respect, is not a Triumph, and Pete Hegseth did not come this far to not have a Triumph.

He knows what you’re doing, by the way. He’s not an idiot. Well — he knows what you’re doing. “I understand the media’s intent is to cast the president in a poor light,” he has explained, patiently, to your face. You think you are covering a war. You think you are honoring fallen troops by writing their names down and asking how they died and for what, specifically, they died, and whether anyone in charge has asked themselves that question with any seriousness. But Pete Hegseth has completed a thorough analysis of your soul and determined that you are, in fact, trying to make the president look bad. That is your whole thing. That is why you became a journalist: to stand between a man and his war boner. Nerd.

Apparently, treating fallen soldiers as a PR problem is bad, according to The Atlantic, which is a magazine. And what’s the alternative? That their deaths might require someone to look a family in the eye and say here is what we were trying to accomplish, here is whether we accomplished it, here is what your person believed they were fighting for and whether anyone in this building had decided that before we sent them, here is the honest answer to the question your child or spouse or parent died asking, which is why — the serious, sacred, terrible accounting that every military that has ever asked anything of its people has understood it owes them in return, the minimum, the floor, the thing you do because the person who died was not a unit or an incident or a resource, they were someone who trusted the chain of command with their life? Because Pete Hegseth has already addressed that. He addressed it by saying “the framework of this war will be determined by us at every juncture,” which is a sentence that begins with “the framework” and ends with “every juncture,” and if you need anything in between you are a little bitch.

Perhaps you are asking: what about the 1,332 civilians? What about the schools (again with the girls!) What about the UNESCO World Heritage site, the bazaar, the rehabilitation hospitals, the burn unit?

Before I address that, I want you to notice, just for a moment, how you sound. You sound like someone who was given an Operation called Epic Fury and immediately started quibbling about bureaucratic details like body count and strategy. Do you know how long it takes to name an operation? Do you have any idea the meetings that go into “Epic Fury”? Consider the work that went into that name, the risk of not choosing any of the alternatives:

• Operation 1337c0r3

• Operation Skullfuck

• Operation Seymour Butz

But sure, you want to talk about proportionality.

Moving on.

About “laws of war”: Stop. Just stop. As a great man with the same last name as his first name once said: that is fake and gay. End of story.

You want to cite “distinction.” Fine. The administration has looked into it. There may have been a secondary explosion. There may have been an Iranian air defense failure. As stated above, so you know it’s real: the framework of this investigation will be determined by them, at every juncture; just chill and stop killing the vibe.

The rationale for the war, I'll admit, has shifted somewhat. It was the imminent nuclear threat, and then it was the ballistic missiles, and then it was the 1979 hostage crisis that we are all intimately familiar with, and then it was that Iran was planning to attack Israel, and then — when intelligence officials indicated there was no "evidence" Iran was about to attack anyone — it became more of a general deterrence situationship, a preemptive strike against a nation that had the theoretical capability to eventually develop a weapon that might, in some scenario, at some point in time, be determined under the threat framework being established by our best Warmasters. So as you can see, the reasons are numerous and the logic is airtight and this has all been very clearly explained.

This is not endless and we can quit whenever we want. Whenever we want!!! No — this is a not-fat man in a suit who once kind of did a pull-up on television, who has been walking around with this thing since approximately the first time he watched a jet take off, who has spent years on Fox News basically describing his symptoms to a doctor who kept telling him it wasn’t a real condition, and who is now — finally, at the highest possible level, with the biggest possible bombs — getting the euphoria he has always needed. You don’t interrupt that. You don’t interrupt a man finally feeling something, anything. You close the door. You give him a minute. You let the Secretary of Defense of the United States of America have this.

Don't kill that. Don't you dare walk into that briefing room with your photographs of fallen Americans and collapsed school buildings and your questions about what the soldiers died for and whether anyone is going to answer that and who specifically is going to look those families in the eye. Some of us are trying to feel good about this war and Pete Hegseth hasn't finished.

The above is, if it wasn’t apparent yet, entirely satirical on my part.