What are the things about Flag Officers you have been harping on? Is this from direct contact with Flag Officers? Details please.
Solid question, and I appreciate the effort at serious discussion.
First: I am career enlisted (retired at E-8, Senior Master Seargent, USAF), and served at base-level; so I cannot claim any frequent direct contact with flag officers. I did once support a two-week mission where we took then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Myers on a tour through nearly every major camp in the Iraq and Afghanistan AOR's, and I actually got to chat with the General a good bit during this brief tour (a very solid guy). Other than that, I can scarcely recall a time when I have said two words to a flag officer. I'd did however serve several years on staff later in my career and had near daily interaction at the O-6 level.
Second: I too share your concern of Hegseth's qualifications.... but it's just concern, not necessarily a deal breaker. I'd like to see how confirmation goes--if it gets that far.
Now about my opinion of the flag officer corps: I don't necessarily have a list, but if a racked my brain and called some military buddies, I am sure I can come up with some names. Still, I am largely drawing on my own, admittedly anecdotal military career experience. There have been several "day-in-the-life" occasions throughout my career where I have seen our most senior leaders let us down--and that is nearly impossible to distill down to any sort of objective indictment on the flag officer corps as a whole. And maybe it is not fair for me to do so here. Anyway, one such occasion is rather famous and that is the one involving General Petraeus--paradoxically perhaps one of the better military minds of our age. As CENTCOM Commander, he authored General Order 1A, which forbad cohabitation with members of the opposite sex while in a war zone under threat of courts martial--among other things. Service members were literally seeing their careers ended for engaging in the same behavior as our good general. Never mind the general was also married (adultery is a crime under Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice), and I have first-hand knowledge of service members receiving punishment (NJP* and worse) for violations of Article 134 and G.O. 1A. Never mind also the classified information he passed on to his mistress he was banging in the war zone, Puala Broadwell.
Of course, this proves nothing; but I do hold it up along with countless others as a symbol of something rotten in the highest levels of military leadership. Sometimes stepping way outside is the only way to clean things up.
*NJP is Nonjudicial punishment--the most severe punishment that can be administered outside of courts martial.
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