US axes website for reporting human rights abuses by US-armed foreign forces

This seems like a bad decision to me. Not only does it seem not to be in the spirit of the law (you can still report but not as easily now) but it's not clear why they shut it down at all. Cost? Inefficiency? Just wasn't getting used much? They have a better solution?

On the other hand, the US seems so partisan now that had the current administration told the world they were taking huma' rights abuse reporting seriously by creating a web form, some people would probably be criticized for that, too.

It seems to be an extension of aspects that he talked about in his speech https://www.war.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/4318... Specifically:

> allow me a few words to talk about toxic leaders. > The definition of toxic has been turned upside down, and we're correcting that. That's why today, at my direction we're undertaking a full review of the department's definitions of so-called toxic leadership, bullying and hazing, to empower leaders to enforce standards without fear of retribution or second guessing. > We're talking about words like bullying and hazing and toxic. They've been weaponized and bastardized inside our formations, undercutting commanders and NCOs. No more.

> Third, we are attacking and ending the walking on eggshells and zero defect command culture. > A blemish free record is what peacetime leaders covet the most, which is the worst of all incentives. You, we as senior leaders, need to end the poisonous culture of risk aversion and empower our NCOs at all levels to enforce standards. > I call it the no more walking on eggshells policy. We are liberating commanders and NCOs. We are liberating you. We are overhauling an inspector general process, the IG, that has been weaponized, putting complainers, ideologues and poor performers in the driver's seat.

> No more frivolous complaints. No more anonymous complaints. No more repeat complainants. No more smearing reputations. No more endless waiting. No more legal limbo. No more sidetracking careers. No more walking on eggshells.

> we know mistakes will be made. It's the nature of leadership. But you should not pay for earnest mistakes for your entire career. And that's why today, at my direction, we're making changes to the retention of adverse information on personnel records that will allow leaders with forgivable earnest or minor infractions to not be encumbered by those infractions in perpetuity.

> People make honest mistakes, and our mistakes should not define an entire career. Otherwise, we only try not to make mistakes, and that's not the business we're in. We need risk takers and aggressive leaders and a culture that supports you.

That makes his view of complaints, and his preference that people "take risks" and don't worry about "not being perfect", pretty clear. He thinks those things are "debris" that have been "weaponized" and that he's "liberating" people from. Maybe that seems great if you're in the military. Not so great if you're on the receiving end of those "risks", or if you or your family becomes the broken "eggshells".

To be fair (ignoring whether Hegseth really deserves that), what he describes is a very common view of military leadership during war time.

"War time" is the key there though. The US is not a nation at war. We have allies at war and the executive branch has taken it upon itself to take warlike actions without Congress, but we aren't st war - especially not a war the scale of which is seen as existential and leads to these kind of views on conduct and policy.

Hegseth seems to be playing out what Eisenhower tried to warn us about decades ago. When a wartime general turned President leaves office with a final warning of the dangers of the new military industrial complex, everyone should listen.

Any large standing military will typically oscillate between a wartime footing where aggression and risk-taking are rewarded versus a peacetime (garrison) footing where avoiding politically embarrassing mistakes is rewarded. The problem is that when the next war starts the careerist officers who were promoted during peacetime produce disastrous results. It then takes several lost battles until they are replaced with competent warfighters.

For better or worse, US leadership is now attempting to place the military on a permanent wartime footing, largely on the theory that a major regional conflict with China is coming at some unpredictable time in the next couple decades. They think they're going to have to fight WWII again with China now playing the role of Japan. Some level of occasional human rights abuses are seen as an acceptable "cost of doing business" to maintain a higher level of readiness and combat effectiveness. (I am not claiming that this is a good policy, just trying to explain the current thinking within the military-industrial complex.)

I agree with you here, that maps to my understanding of what they're intending to do as well.

I'm of the opinion that standing militaries are almost never justifiable at scale. A country may need a skeleton crew keeping some semblance of military infrastructure functional, but we should never need a military scaled up for a fight during peacetime.

We need a populace that is healthy and skilled enough to enlist with basic training should a war break out. We don't need to fully arm up and constantly be on the lookout for war.