How the Pentagon Became America’s Junkie War Machine—and Why It’s Time for a Full-System Reboot

Let’s stop bullshitting ourselves: America’s foreign policy lumbers around the globe like a blackout town drunk—smashing windows, claiming it’s a rescue mission, and wondering why no one wants the help.

For the last 50+ years, we’ve worn the cape of “global leader” while setting half the world on fire—and now we’re shocked people don’t want to invite us to the barbecue. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, and the hits keep coming…

The Department of Defense, the bloated war-chested Frankenstein we keep feeding tax dollars to, has become less about defense and more about corporate warfare cosplay.

The only defense company actually playing 4D chess right now is Palmer Luckey’s Anduril Industries. While the old guard of military contractors are still polishing Cold War relics and milking the Pentagon like it’s 1991, Luckey’s crew is building AI-powered autonomous systems and sensor networks that actually belong in this century.

They’re not just innovating—they’re disrupting the entire defense-industrial complex with Silicon Valley speed and SOF-level precision. While Raytheon and Lockheed are busy writing PowerPoints for budget bloat, Anduril’s pushing live code into drones that don’t need a joystick jockey to kill bad guys. Love him or hate him, Palmer’s not just ahead of the curve—he’s setting it on fire.

We need a hard reset because we’ve lost the plot. Big time.

Benghazi, Iraq, and the Birth of a Goddamn Mess

I buried my best friend Glen Doherty, because of this system. He was killed in Benghazi during one of the most botched, disgraceful operations of the post-9/11 era. And for what? A chaotic regime change that turned Libya into a failed state and a training ground for jihadist franchises. Then the CYA that happened at the Department of State afterwards was a disgrace.

Glen deserved better. America deserved better.

Then there’s Iraq. Remember the “weapons of mass destruction” we never found? We toppled Saddam, pulled the plug too early, and surprise—ISIS was born. That brilliant chess move helped flood Europe with refugees and destabilize the entire Middle East.

What we’ve been doing isn’t “spreading democracy”—it’s slinging gasoline onto powder kegs and calling it liberation. We’ve created power vacuums so large they could swallow entire civilizations. And they have. This is a major issue Putin has brought up multiple times, and thankfully, Trump seems to understand the quagmire.

America Needs to Lead Like It’s 2025, Not 1955

Here’s the cold, hard truth: If we want to be world leaders, we’ve got to start acting like it at home first. You can’t sell the American Dream when your own house is falling apart. Our infrastructure is crumbling, mental health is in crisis, college is ridiculously expensive, healthcare is coin-operated, veterans are killing themselves, and we’ve got politicians who can’t spell “honor,” let alone live it.

Why would any sane country want to follow our lead right now?

We’ve got to stop exporting chaos and start exporting stability. That doesn’t mean going soft—it means being smart. Want to win the long game? Build a nation so strong, so just, and so damn functional that others want to copy the blueprint. Not because we force them to, but because we inspire them to.

Less Talk, More Action

In the SEAL Teams, we didn’t win by flapping our gums—we won by doing the hard work. The same applies to policy.

Want a better world? Start with a better America.

• Take care of your own: healthcare, education, vets, mental health—stop talking and fix it.

• Lead by example: cut the covert bullshit and stop toppling regimes like it’s a Call of Duty campaign.

• Make diplomacy sexy again: foreign service should be our frontline, not drone strikes and Halliburton invoices.

We’ve spent the last two decades treating foreign policy like a live-action Call of Duty campaign—charging into sovereign nations with zero endgame, racking up body counts, and unlocking chaos like it’s some kind of twisted achievement badge. But this isn’t a video game, and there’s no respawn for the lives we’ve shattered or the failed states we’ve left in our wake. It’s time to power down the joystick, step out of the fantasy, and start leading like grown-ass adults. Real leadership doesn’t look like drone strikes and regime change—it looks like stability, accountability, and a country worth emulating instead of fearing.

Let’s fix this American foreign policy before there’s nothing left to fix.