SOFREP Saturday Cartoon: Tighten the Waist, Ignore the Waste

Hegesth’s new fitness crusade lands like a kettlebell to the teeth of flag officers and grunts alike.

Line troops get body-taped, charted, and scolded while the real heavyweight, a lumbering beast called Waste, waddles through the vault and sips taxpayer money smoothies through a golden straw.

It is a carnival trick. Shake the turnstile kid for pocket change while the pickpocket in the tuxedo wheels out the safe. Of course, all our troops must be in top fighting shape, but that’s not the point. How about the folks in DC laying off the double hot fudge sundaes for a little bit?

If accountability were a ruck march, the suits would hire a golf cart, claim a personal record, and bill mileage to the warfighter.

Addiction to the Easy Fix

Command loves a metric that it can measure with a ruler. Waistlines cooperate. Spreadsheets smile. Careers get promoted for browning bananas in the chow hall while acquisition goblins juggle billion-dollar programs like flaming bowling pins. It is like repainting the lifeboats while the ship is taking on water. We punish the mirror because the mirror does not lawyer up.

Follow the Straw

Here is the punchline that keeps laughing at us. Tell the private to drop ten pounds and call it a victory. Call it readiness, morale, or good order. Meanwhile, the green checked giant that is the swamp slurps billions out of the budget with a sound like a clogged snorkel, and no one kicks the cup from his hand. 

If leadership wants real fitness, start with the arteries of procurement.

Clamp the straw, not the ribcage. Then we might, just once, see sweat from the right brow.