Mask off US empire: War secretary tells military to commit war crimes, as Trump threatens 'enemy within'

US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth gathered generals and told them to commit war crimes and ignore international law. Trump ordered military to use cities as "training grounds" to fight "enemy within"

US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth gathered top generals and encouraged the military to commit war crimes and ignore international law.

“You kill people and break things for a living”, Hegseth proudly told the military commanders, calling for “maximum lethality”.

“We also don’t fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our warfighters, to intimidate, demoralize, hunt, and kill the enemies of our country”, he added.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump ordered the Department of War to use US cities as “training grounds”, to fight the “enemy within”.

He bragged about deploying the National Guard to cities like Washington, DC and Los Angeles, California, and said his next targets are Portland, Oregon and Chicago, Illinois.

“America is under invasion from within”, Trump claimed. “It’s a war, too. It’s a war from within”.

The US president boasted that he “signed an executive order to provide training for a quick reaction force that can help quell civil disturbances”, to deploy the military to repress his political rivals.

Trump and Hegseth made these remarks at a special event held in Quantico, Virginia on 30 September.

The Trump administration ordered US generals and admirals from all around the world to convene for this meeting, where it officially announced the new policies of the US military.

Hegseth stated (all emphasis added):

Every day, we have to be prepared for war, not for defense. We’re training warriors, not defenders. We fight wars to win, not to defend.

Defense is something you do all the time. It’s inherently [reactive] and can lead to overuse, overreach, and mission creep. War is something you do sparingly, on our own terms, and with clear aims.

We fight to win. We unleash overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy.

We also don’t fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our warfighters, to intimidate, demoralize, hunt, and kill the enemies of our country.

No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement. Just common sense, maximum lethality and authority for warfighters.

“Crusader” Pete Hegseth wants to “rewrite the rules” of war so they “are advantageous to us”

Much of the corporate media coverage of Hegseth’s Quantico speech focused on his reactionary attacks on so-called “wokeness” and his demonization of fat soldiers and DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion). However, the press did not put adequate emphasis on his extremely aggressive, warmongering rhetoric.

In his remarks, Hegseth was essentially admitting that the US military does not care about international humanitarian law.

The US Department of War is publicly rejecting the Geneva Conventions, which were established in 1949, in the wake of World War Two, to provide a clear set of rules that countries must follow in war.

The US empire is saying it does not care about the rules of engagement; it is going to carry out war crimes ad nauseum.

In fact, this is something that Hegseth has proposed for years.

It is not an exaggeration to say that Hegseth is an extremist, both politically and religiously.

Back in 2020, when he was working at the right-wing TV channel Fox News, Hegseth published a book called American Crusade, in which he proudly identified himself as a “crusader”.

Hegseth, who has multiple crusader tattoos, implored American conservatives to take up arms and continue the Crusades that had been launched a thousand years ago.

Hegseth wrote that the US right is waging a “holy war”, and its main targets are the international left, China and Islam. (There are roughly 2 billion Muslims in the world, and China is a country of 1.4 billion people, so he is essentially at war with more than 3 billion people.)

This extremist worldview inspired Hegseth to encourage the first Trump administration to wage an all-out war on Iran.

Trump assassinated Iran’s top general, Qasem Soleimani, along with a major Iraqi official, in an act of war in January 2020.

In response, Hegseth, a lifelong neoconservative hawk, went on Fox News and said the US military should bomb Iranian “cultural sites” and civilian areas such as hospitals, schools, and mosques.

Iran needs “to come back limping and begging”, he insisted. “We can’t kick the can down the road any longer”.

“We need to rewrite the rules [so that they] are advantageous to us”, Hegseth declared in the 2020 TV segment.

Today, five years later, this is precisely what Hegseth is doing.

The Trump administration has taken the mask off of the US empire and shown its true face. It boasts that it seeks domination and hegemony, and is willing to use extreme violence to fulfill its neocolonial aims.

The US Department of War plans to wage much more war

Trump signed an executive order on 5 September to rename the Department of Defense as the Department of War.

At the event in Quantico, Hegseth boasted that “the era of the Department of Defense is over”.

He repeated his favorite slogans: “Peace through strength”, and, “Those who long for peace must prepare for war; to ensure peace, we must prepare for war”.

“From this moment forward, the only mission of the newly restored Department of War is this: war fighting, preparing for war, and preparing to win, unrelenting and uncompromising in that pursuit”, Hegseth stressed.

The war secretary’s message was contradictory. He simultaneously argued that the United States has the most powerful military on Earth, but also that the US faces unprecedented dangers.

“We have the strongest, most powerful, most lethal, and most prepared military on the planet”, Hegseth declared. “Full stop. Nobody can touch us. It’s not even close”.

However, he warned that the US is in an “urgent moment”, which requires a massive investment in new weapons. Hegseth stated:

You see, this urgent moment of course requires more troops, more munitions, more drones, more Patriots, more submarines, more B-21 bombers. It requires more innovation, more AI in everything and ahead of the curve, more cyber effects, more counter UAS, more space, more speed.

America is the strongest, but we need to get stronger and quickly. The time is now and the cause is urgent.

US Department of War targets China and western hemisphere (ie, Latin America)

When Hegseth claimed the United States faces “urgent threats”, what were they exactly?

Hegseth referenced “the threats we face in our hemisphere and in deterring China”.

He made it clear that the US military is preparing for war on China, while also seeking to impose hegemony in the western hemisphere, by destabilizing independent left-wing governments in Latin America.

This is why the Trump administration is attacking Venezuela, and working with right-wing, oligarchic opposition forces to try to overthrow its leftist President Nicolás Maduro.

Reuters reported that the Trump administration is also using $1.8 billion of so-called “foreign aid funding” to pursue its imperialist ambitions in the western hemisphere, by colonizing Greenland and countering what it calls “Marxist, anti-American regimes” in Latin America.

Specifically, the State Department of Marco Rubio is fixated on destabilizing Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua.

While Rubio is tasked with imposing US hegemony in Latin America, Hegseth is setting the stage for war on China.

In his far-right 2020 book American Crusade, Hegseth called for overthrowing China’s socialist government.

In May 2025, in his capacity as the US war secretary, Hegseth traveled to Singapore for the Shangri-La Dialogue conference.

There, he said the United States is “preparing for war” with China.

“The threat China poses is real, and it could be imminent. We hope not, but it certainly could be”, Hegseth claimed.

“Beyond our borders and beyond our neighborhood, we are reorienting toward deterring aggression by Communist China”, he added.

“Those who long for peace must prepare for war. And that’s exactly what we’re doing”.

Donald Trump orders US military to target “enemy within”

After Pete Hegseth delivered his extremely hawkish remarks in Quantico, Virginia on 30 September, Donald Trump spoke for more than an hour.

In a rambling, partially unscripted speech, Trump boasted of bombing Iran and Venezuela and boosting the US military budget to more than $1 trillion, while simultaneously complaining that he has not been awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.

One of the main points that Trump repeatedly emphasized was that he is using the US military to repress his political rivals inside the country, referring to them as the “enemy within”.

In particular, Trump made it clear that he is targeting cities that are run by Democrats. And he boasted that he is ignoring the wishes of the elected leaders of Democrat-run cities and states, and deploying the military despite their opposition.

These are highlights of the fascistic rhetoric in Trump’s speech:

And they [the troops] are brave in our inner cities, which we’re going to be talking about, because it’s a big part of war now; it’s a big part of war.

…

America is under invasion from within. We’re under invasion from within.

[It’s] no different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways, because they don’t wear uniforms. At least when they’re wearing a uniform, you can take them out. These people don’t have uniforms.

But we are under invasion from within, and we’re stopping it, very quickly.

…

The horrible plague that is taking place from within.

…

I just want to thank the National Guard in Washington, DC.

…

But it seems that the [cities] that are run by the radical left Democrats, what they’ve done to San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, they’re very unsafe places. And we’re going to straighten them out, one by one.

And this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. It’s a war, too. It’s a war from within.

…

And I told Pete [Hegseth] we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military, National Guard, but military.

Because we’re going into Chicago very soon.

…

How about Portland? Portland, Oregon, where it looks like a war zone.

And I get a call from the liberal governor: “Sir, please don’t come in. We don’t need you”.

I said, “Well, unless they’re playing false tapes, this looks like World War Two. Your place is burning down. I mean, you must be kidding”.

[He said] “Sir, we have it under control”.

I said, “You don’t have it under control, Governor”.

…

Oh, and we haven’t even started yet. Last month, I signed an executive order to provide training for a quick reaction force that can help quell civil disturbances.

And this is going to be a big thing for the people in this room, because it’s the enemy from within, and we have to handle it before it gets out of control. It won’t get out of control once you get involved at all.

Trump boasts of how NATO spending benefits US military-industrial complex

In his Quantico speech, Trump also bragged that he forced NATO allies to massively expand their military spending from 2% to 5% of GDP.

Trump emphasized that European countries will spend trillions of dollars buying weapons from for-profit US corporations in the military-industrial complex.

“We’re making a lot of money”, Trump gloated.

These were Trump’s remarks:

Now, as you know, I went over and I met with NATO, and NATO raised from two to five, which everyone said, 5% of GDP.

Millions are now, trillions of dollars are pouring in. They didn’t pay the 2% because they knew we were there to pay it. And now they pay the 5%. That’s trillions of dollars.

And we’re not spending any money on that war [in Ukraine], not 10 cents.

We sell our equipment to NATO; NATO pays us for the equipment, and they give it to Ukraine, or whoever they give it to. But they can keep it.

…

I just want you to know, we’re selling equipment. People are buying equipment. They’re buying. They are buying the equipment at full price.

…

And now I got it to five, and I get along great with all of them. In fact, they call me “the president of NATO”. I said, “I don’t think so”.

But they’re great; they’re great people. And they’re spending a lot, they’re spending a lot of money, and a lot of money that they should have been spending in the past.

But I think Putin was a wake-up call for them, really.

We’re now selling large quantities of American-made weapons to NATO, and we’re getting really fair pricing. We’re making a lot of money.

…

Secretary Hegseth will soon be announcing major reforms to streamline military acquisitions and expedite foreign military sales.

We have tremendous numbers of countries that want to buy our equipment, and, you know, in many cases it takes too long. The backlog, we’re backlogged on all the equipment, which is something that’s new to us, a little bit.

And I told those companies, you better get your ass going because, you know, we’re buying, we’re selling you a lot of equipment. We’re getting countries to buy your equipment. You gotta produce the equipment.

Trump compared US to Roman and British empires

At the end of his speech, Trump again took the mask off of the US empire, proudly comparing it to the Roman empire and the British empire.

This was the conclusion to the US president’s remarks:

From Sparta to Rome, to the British Empire, to the United States of America, history has shown that military supremacy has never been simply a matter of money or manpower.

At the end of the day, it is the culture, spirit of our military that truly sets us apart from any other nation.

…

We will vanquish every danger and crush every threat to our freedom in every generation to come.

Because we will fight, fight, fight, and we will win, win, win.