President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Pete Hegseth to be Secretary of Defense. Hegseth is a combat veteran who served as an Army infantry officer in Iraq and later deployed to Afghanistan with the Minnesota National Guard. 

Hegseth is best known for his veterans advocacy as executive director of political advocacy groups Vets For Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America.

The Trump transition team goes out of its way to mention his New York Times best-selling book, The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free. According to the press release, the book tells "how we must return our Military to meritocracy, lethality, accountability, and excellence." That seems to work well with Trump's planned "warrior board" to remove the woke deadwood from the Armed Forces; see Trump Preparing Executive Order to Cull the Military of Woke Generals and Admirals.

As refreshing as Hegseth's devotion to our fighting force is the fact that he is bucking the, in my opinion, dysfunctional fad of selected retired four-star generals to serve in that position. Institutions don't reform themselves through the efforts of people who have succeeded under the status quo; they need an outsider to do that.