The Wall Street Journal‘s editors have a couple regarding Pete Hegseth and his nomination for SecDef.

Mr Trump seems to want someone to take on the “woke” policies of the military under President Biden, and they are problems. But retired four-star Army General Jack Keane says this can be quickly addressed. Give the order, and the brass will follow and so on down the chain of command.

It’s not at all a given that “the brass” will follow orders, from General Douglas MacArthur, whom then-President Harry Truman had to fire over his subordination on forward to General Mark Milley who insisted on pushing woke readings onto our military members. Of course there could have been a perfectly fine reason for that—it’s necessary to know our enemy, a concept as old as Sun Tzu—but he chose to be defensive about his reading list rather than make that point during Congressional hearings. Those pushing the woke policies—and they include far more flags than just Milley—need to be fired, not just given different orders or assignments.

Mr Trump has nominated Stephen Feinberg, the CEO of Cerberus Capital, to fill the management gap as deputy secretary. Mr Feinberg is a highly successful manager, but he also lacks familiarity with the vast Defense Department. Such experience is crucial lest Mr Hegseth be swallowed up by the bureaucracy.

The Pentagon’s bureaucracy badly wants serious and deep culling, anyway, and those who openly oppose Hegseth or Feinberg, or anyone serving as Trump’s SecDef or DepSecDef, or slow walk their decisions, or engage in passive-aggressive (or merely passive) resistance to their decisions need to be fired forthwith, not wrestled with. The smaller bureaucracy that would result would be the easier to manage, especially in the absence of so much dead wood and wasted payroll.