There are going to be a thousand think pieces about Pete Hegseth’s weird war pep rally. The newly christened Secretary of War (and sorry, bro, but “secretary” doesn’t sound very alpha) took to the flag-bedecked stage for a 45-minute stemwinder that was less George F. Patton and more QVC host.

In his address, Hegseth laid out a “back to basics” role for the U.S. military. Some will certainly praise him for his reconception of our armed forces from a Swiss army knife of conflict, peacekeeping, nation-building and the occasional deployment to garden in our nation’s capital to a more singular group whose “only mission is this: war-fighting.”

It begins with “culture,” he told the room. The culture of warfighters doing war-fighting stuff without worrying about such niceties as “rules of engage

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