While it will likely be buried in the news of the firing of three members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the nomination of a retired 3-star as Chairman, it’s noteworthy that Secretary Hegseth also fired the top uniformed lawyers for the three service departments:
We are also requesting nominations for the Judge Advocates General for the Army, Navy and Air Force.
The JAGs for the Navy and Air Force serve the Marine Corps and Space Force, respectively, as well.*
There was no explanation given for why these 3-star officers—the top uniformed lawyers in their services and thus not only the head of their respective Judge Advocate corps but the principal legal advisor to their service chiefs—were let go. I could speculate but will not do so here.
It is noteworthy, though, that Hegseth has long had an animus for military lawyers. It was a bone of contention during his confirmation hearings.
NYT, “Hegseth Spars with Senator Over What He Meant by Slang Term,” January 14, 2025
One of the stranger moments in a confirmation hearing on Tuesday for Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick to lead the Pentagon, was when a senator asked the former Fox News host to define the word “jagoff.”
The question from Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island and the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, was prompted by a comment that Mr. Hegseth made to his military platoon, as he wrote in his 2024 book, “The War on Warriors.” He made the comment during his Iraq deployment in 2005 after hearing a presentation by a JAG officer, or a member of the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps, who defend Army soldiers in legal matters.
After he and his team were briefed by the JAG officer on the proper protocols for firing on an enemy with a rocket-propelled grenade, Mr. Hegseth disparaged one of the rules of engagement, saying it was “going to get people killed,” he recalled in his book.
During the hearing on Tuesday, Mr. Hegseth, at first, declined to define the slang term with a slight smile. “I don’t need to, sir,” he said. “The men and women watching understand.”
When pressed, Mr. Hegseth ultimately said “it would be a JAG officer who puts his or her own priorities in front of the war fighters, their promotions, their medals, in front of having the backs of those making the tough calls on the front lines.”
Mr. Reed implied that Mr. Hegseth was being disrespectful when calling JAG officers the slang term. “How will you be able to effectively lead a military in which one of the principal elements is discipline, respect for lawful authority?” Mr. Reed asked.
The word “jagoff” — rooted in an unmistakably sexual definition, a blurring of a more lurid term — has expanded to become a catch-all insult for someone who is annoying or otherwise unfavorable. But the meaning has regional contexts, too. In western Pennsylvania, it can be used to dismiss someone for their irritating behavior — or to embrace them with a sarcastic but affectionate compliment.
More broadly, Hegseth has repeatedly noted his frustrations about the laws of armed conflict and rules of engagement which put soldiers in a more precarious position.
NYT, “The Metamorphosis of Pete Hegseth: From Critic of War Crimes to Defender of the Accused,” November 21, 2024
When Pete Hegseth was an earnest, young Army lieutenant in Iraq in 2005, he was cleareyed on how he viewed crimes committed by soldiers in war.
Soldiers in his own infantry company in Iraq in 2006 had shot civilians, executed prisoners and tried to cover up the crimes.
“Those are a no-brainer,” he told an audience at the University of Virginia after his deployment. He called the acts of those soldiers, who served in a sister platoon in his company, “atrocities” and added: “Of course that’s wrong. No one is here to defend that.”
By the end of his Army career, though, he was repeatedly doing exactly that.
As a presenter on Fox News, he portrayed other troops charged with war crimes as “heroes.” The military prosecuting them was, he said, “throwing warriors under the bus.” The once circumspect officer glossed over crucial details, told his TV audience that troops were just “doing the job they were hired to do” and pushed relentlessly for President Donald J. Trump to intervene.
It was a stark shift for the man President-elect Trump picked this month to lead the Defense Department. Soldiers who served with Mr. Hegseth say the change was driven in part by a string of military deployments — once to Guantánamo Bay, once to Iraq and once to Afghanistan — that each taught him a new lesson in military dysfunction.
The experience transformed him from a neoconservative believer in U.S. military might into an outsider so distrustful of the national security establishment that he repeatedly sided with convicted murderers over Pentagon leadership.
[…]
Mr. Hegseth’s views reflect a disillusionment among a segment of post-9/11 service members, and a slice of the broader public, about how the military is used. Mr. Trump tapped into that anger, promising a more inward-looking foreign policy and a hands-off approach to prosecuting soldiers.
That is why several veterans who served with Mr. Hegseth said they were thrilled with his nomination. Most of those interviewed said they hoped the fact that he did not follow a traditional path to the office, through the upper ranks of the Pentagon and jobs in the defense industry, could help him understand the burdens placed on rank-and-file troops and redirect the military’s priorities.
Others see it differently. They say battlefield rules prevent missions from spiraling into chaos and protect troops from some of the moral pitfalls inherent in combat.
The number of troops charged with illegal killings in Iraq or Afghanistan is minuscule, and military leaders vehemently dispute the notion that such prosecutions were unfair or capricious. They fear having someone at the very top of the chain who does not understand that failing to hold people accountable for the few incidents of war crimes virtually guarantees more of them.
lt’s not obvious, however, what firing these three particular leaders will do to change things. Those next in line will likely have been trained in the same traditions.
*The Marine Corps has a two-star Staff Judge Advocate to the Commandant; thus far, he has been spared. Space Force, as a new service mostly created out of the Air Force and which reports to the Secretary of the Air Force, has no judge advocate corps of its own.
