Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has returned again and again to a familiar target: the military’s long-standing refrain that “our diversity is our strength.” Last week, at Bath Iron Works in Maine, he dismissed it as “the dumbest phrase in military history” and mocked the generals who had repeated it “with a straight face.” Some of those lines drew applause in the shipyard crowd. They also revealed a dangerously thin understanding of how modern militaries generate combat advantage. When the secretary mocks generals for saying “our diversity is our strength” and doing so “with a straight face,” he suggests they were engaged in political theater rather than expressing professional judgment. Most senior officers do not reach those ranks by echoing the talking points of whichever administration is in power. They rise through years of operational command, strategic study and decisions that carry real-world consequences. The more likely explanation is that they were articulating a lesson learned from war — a lesson now being dismissed. The United States has entered
