“You Can’t Fix Stupid”

My Republican sister-in-law has a favorite saying: “You can’t fix stupid.” She’s right. And right now, Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are Exhibit A and B.

Hegseth’s recent testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee was a masterclass in performative nonsense, serving as a grim reminder of his most reckless ideas and rationalizations:

· Scrapping Public Health Basics: Eliminating long-standing military health mandates—like the annual flu shot—while aggressively pushing to reinstate troops discharged for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine.

· Mandatory “High-T” Screenings: Forcing annual testosterone checks on service members 30 and older—a mandate urologists warn violates American Urological Association standards and risks side effects like infertility and blood clots.

· Trashing Rules of Engagement: Threatening to abolish “stupid rules of engagement,” ignoring the fact that these legal frameworks under the Law of Armed Conflict prevent civilian casualties and maintain operational order.

· Pentagon “Fat Checks”: Forcing top generals and admirals to undergo bi-annual fitness tests in a bizarre attempt to cultivate a “warrior ethos.”

· Barring Women from Combat: Pushing to ban women from infantry, armor, and special operations under the baseless claim that integration degrades combat lethality.

· Gutting DEI and EEO: Dismantling internal oversight, diversity, and equality programs—blatantly ignoring warnings from former defense officials that doing so degrades readiness and destroys accountability.

As taxpayers, we can only be grateful his massive spending requests are currently stalling in committee under intense debate. But Hegseth’s policy theater is only half the problem. The real danger lies in his and Trump’s hawkish grandstanding on Iran—a disaster foretold more than two decades ago.

The $250 Million Reality Check

Enter Lieutenant General Paul K. Van Riper (USMC, Ret.). A highly decorated Marine veteran who earned two Silver Stars in Vietnam and later served as President of the Marine Corps University, Van Riper—now 88—knows a thing or two about real warfare.

In the summer of 2002, the Pentagon spent $250 million on Millennium Challenge 2002 (MC02), a massive war game designed to showcase America’s high-tech, network-centric military supremacy. Van Riper was brought in to command the “Red Force”—a rogue Persian Gulf state modeled directly on Iran.

The U.S. “Blue Force” relied on advanced surveillance, predictive computer modeling, and digital networks. Van Riper knew his low-tech force couldn’t win a conventional fight, so he fought asymmetrically.

When the U.S. cut off his fiber-optic networks, expecting him to switch to trackable satellite phones, Van Riper used motorcycle couriers and broadcast coded signals over mosque minarets during the call to prayer.

Then, anticipating an invasion, he launched a massive, low-tech assault using swarms of explosive-laden speedboats, low-flying civilian aircraft, and land-based cruise missiles.

In less than 10 minutes, Van Riper’s asymmetric force overwhelmed the Navy’s multi-billion-dollar Aegis defense systems. He sank 16 U.S. warships—including an aircraft carrier—and killed a simulated 20,000 American troops.

Refloating the Fleet

How did the Pentagon leadership react to this catastrophic defeat? Did they learn from it?

No. They cheated.

Exercise controllers simply “refloated” the sunken fleet, resurrected the 20,000 dead troops, and reset the game. To guarantee an American victory, they forced Van Riper to turn on his air-defense radar, reveal his positions, and refrain from shooting down Blue Force troop transports.

Realizing the game was rigged to validate expensive technology rather than test battle readiness, Van Riper walked out in protest. He wrote a scathing, classified critique slamming the military’s dangerous faith in technological determinism over adaptive human intellect.

Reflecting on the exercise in an interview with PBS’s NOVA, Van Riper nailed the fundamental flaw in American military hubris:

“What I see are slogans masquerading as ideas. In a sense, they make war more antiseptic. They make it more like a machine. They don’t understand it’s a terrible, uncertain, chaotic, bloody business... They want to apply the technology without the brainpower.”

Over twenty years later, as Trump and Hegseth posture toward Iran with theatrical bluster and reckless policy, Van Riper’s warning rings louder than ever. You can buy all the high-tech weapons and mandate all the testosterone you want—but you still can’t fix stupid.