Another day, another assault on the English language as delivered by Pete Hegseth. Into the growing disaster that is the Iran war-not-war discourse walked the United States Secretary of War Not War himself at 8 am sharp, ready and willing to defend the indefensible.

It started tellingly. Over the weekend, Hegseth announced, he had had the privilege of visiting American troops “in the ground — or on the ground, excuse me” in the Middle East. He had a chance to “bear witness” to “a brotherhood of men and women” who demonstrated their “sheer competency” in dropping bombs through “the skies of Iran and Tehran.”

What a trip that must have been, surrounded by a brotherhood of women, bowled over by their ability to be competent — in both the skies of Iran and Tehran, which is also in Iran! These troops, Hegseth added, even shot down two enemy missiles while he was there. Can you believe it? This is the kind of thing our military is able to do now under “President DJT,” the same man who hours earlier had written a Truth Social post insulting American allies (specifically the UK) and imploring them to “build up some delayed courage, go to the Strait, and TAKE IT” if they want oil.

And, of course, the same man who the day before had publicly floated the idea of destroying civilian infrastructure for electricity and water as collective punishment on the people of Iran for their leaders not negotiating better.

Never mind all that, said Hegseth this morning, because America will “negotiate with bombs.”

They want a deal, he added, they’ve always wanted a deal (and if only someone had thought, at any point in history, about negotiating a deal with Iran that might stop them from building a nuclear weapon.) But at the end of the day, the best way to get a deal is to keep hitting the person you’re approaching diplomatically, so you can force them. That’s what we’re doing “on behalf of the free world,” Hegseth added, and it’s really unfair to nobody seems to appreciate it!

Is it on behalf of the free world, or is the free world actually being threatened here? Because there was certainly an edge to Trump’s purported benevolence as stated by Hegseth.

“A lot has been laid bare, a lot has been showed to the free world,” he rattled off, mad-eyed as ever. And yet that free world has refused to bend to every whim of a geriatric former TV star — surely the very definition of freedom! — which may or may not have consequences further down the line.

“When we ask for additional assistance… we get questions or roadblocks or hesitations,” said Hegseth. Hesitations? From sovereign countries, when Donald J. Trump wants something? Have they not seen how we NEGOTIATE WITH BOMBS?!

As usual, General Caine stood beside Hegseth during this briefing, attempting to provide a semi-sensible foil to the destroyer of language. It was Caine who answered when a reporter directly asked about the whole war crimes thing: that is, whether or not it might be a bad idea to bomb civilian infrastructure after all.

The question was asked yesterday at Karoline Leavitt’s press briefing at the White House and she demurred. Hegseth handed over to Caine today, who rolled out a pre-prepared non-answer: “We’re always thinking about those considerations and developing options to be able to mitigate those risks pursuant to the normal practices that we do in the military.”

And is that not enough for you, after all? It was a sentence, wasn’t it? There were words in it. Nothing more particular can be answered, Hegseth said, because of course then “our enemies” would know what we were planning or doing. The only person who will make any decision about what’s going to happen next is the president himself, who will be acting on information that nobody is allowed to know.

It must be noted, Hegseth added toward the end of the briefing, that America has done “the lion’s share” of cleaning up the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz. OK, not actually cleaning it up, but maybe trying. And most of the trying was done via the ancient wartime method of an old man typing semi-coherent, aggressive missives on his phone to social media, but anyway. Undeniably, America has said and done more about this whole oil crisis thing than anybody else, and whether we also caused the crisis ourselves is immaterial. That’s yesterday’s news.

The competent brotherhood of women carry on, in the name of freedom (which means doing what Trump says) and in the name of Jesus (who does listen to the prayers of the warmongers, whatever the Pope thinks) and in the name of bomb-led negotiation (as compared to other presidents, who were “all talk” during diplomacy, those idiots.)

May God bless whatever this is, and also punish the allies. Because America is leading the free world, whether the free world likes it or not — and it very much has made clear that it doesn’t.