When Secretary of War Pete Hegseth first announced the unorthodox step that he would gather all generals and admirals at Marine Base Quantico on short notice, many speculated that this could be a sign that we might be heading toward another war. Hegseth did declare war, but not in the way many pundits expected. He’s going to war against declining standards in the military.

In every respect, this was a historic speech. The convening itself was historic, but more significantly, Hegseth’s speech carried the weight of history. Hegseth’s purpose was to align all of the flag officers around one mission, as he put it, "The only mission of the newly restored War Department is this: warfighting.”

For too long, side quests have taken the military’s focus off lethality. Military standards were changed to accomplish partisan distractions.

By contrast, Hegseth’s predecessor, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin III, oriented the military around climate change, social justice, and other side quests. For example, in 2021, Austin declared, “We face all kinds of threats, but few of them truly deserve to be called existential. The climate crisis does."

War on wokeness

The Pentagon’s mission under the Biden administration was to fight a war on the weather, even going so far as to prioritize climate plans over the duty to build warships. These side quests weakened our military and our nation.

Even worse, Austin’s leadership ushered in an era of politically motivated promotions that prioritized sex and skin color characteristics over merit. To this end, retired Air Force Gen. C.Q. Brown, who served as the 21st chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Biden administration’s final years, famously wrote a memo mandating racial and sex quotas. This firmly committed our military away from promotions based on wars won and lives saved toward a process infused with the radical agenda of the left.

Warrior ethos restored

This was the context of Hegseth’s speech. Within the Pentagon, competing priorities eclipsed the primal imperative of being prepared to kill the enemy before they kill us. The woke agenda pushed by the radical left caused a slow rot that shifted focus from warfighting to social engineering, greatly frustrating many senior military officials.

Hegseth vowed to excise this type of decay inflicted by “foolish and reckless politicians.” He outlined several concrete steps to do just that, including restored grooming standards, stricter enforcement of physical training requirements, leadership and accountability reforms, and changes to training to focus on core warfighting elements.

But if the meeting was only about outlining these seemingly mundane reforms, why gather these high-ranking generals and admirals in one place? Couldn’t the content of his speech have been sent in an email? No, it could not. This was far more important than updating senior leaders on reforms; this was a cultural moment for military leadership. The era of hiding behind systemic racism and sexism to undermine the mission of the military while projecting woke platitudes as a defense of those actions is officially over.

Hegseth understood the mission, which was tough talk to tough people to prepare them for tough times. Some will whine that it’s uncouth for a secretary of sar to say, “No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses. ... We are done with that s**t.”

The whiners need to realize that many warfighters have prayed that someone would say this to their senior leaders. Hegseth did exactly that. This can’t be captured by a mere email.

Symbolically and practically, it’s meaningful that the secretary of war said this directly to their faces, immediately reinforced by a speech from the commander in chief. Saying this face-to-face is not hostile; it’s a sign of respect among tough people.

Hegseth’s admonitions, from calling out fat generals to reminding them that personnel is policy, are best summed up in this statement: “It's like the broken windows theory of policing. It's like when you let the small stuff go, the big stuff eventually goes. So you have to address the small stuff.” This principle should be understood by our military leadership, but it became a vestigial sentiment that was no longer actively practiced.

Aligned for lethality

For too long, side quests have taken the military’s focus off lethality. Military standards were changed to accomplish partisan distractions. Whether it was diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives or the climate agenda, the leaders in the Quantico audience accomplished these side missions ruthlessly and effectively — to the detriment of their primary purpose.

RELATED: Pete Hegseth just ended the era of woke brass in the military

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Going forward, this speech empowered the military to fight against the entropy of distractions and declining standards. Whether they wear five stars or one, all of our star-ranked officers have been aligned to a new standard: lethality. This means effectively and ruthlessly accomplishing the only mission that matters: warfighting.

History, which favors winners, will view this as the moment the U.S. military was made great again. This will be remembered as the day the Trump administration aligned the stars, one in which our senior military officials were liberated to align their leadership with basic common sense.