If Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth should fall off the wagon and be dragged off the public stage to rehab, his Pentagon tenure, however brief or long, will surely be remembered for one thing; or maybe two.

The second would be turning into the answer to a question of the sort that haunts a generation, to wit: “Who lost Ukraine?”

During his maiden visit in mid-February to U.S. bases in Europe, he seemed to be auditioning to head the  honor guard that salutes Vladimir Putin’s victorious entry into the rubble of Kyiv. He acted ready to serve it up on the faux silver platter of MAGA incompetent, arrogant indifference. That would surely be one for the record– and textbooks, fodder for many poignant Banksy wall murals.

But I digress. That is one possible landmark, and (hopefully) the less likely one.

Better odds can be laid on Hegseth’s success of a different sort, that of disproving an old adage, namely:

“History doesn’t repeat, though it can rhyme.”

Sometimes that hoary cliche collides with another one: “What goes around, comes around.” And then, however mixed and mashed the metaphors, a historical repetition may  indeed hove roughly into view.

So it is with Hegseth’s current, all-out campaign to eradicate every detectable trace of what is called “woke” from the military. A month in, what is already remarkable about it is an ever-closer resemblance to a campaign eleven decades ago, ignited by a once-revered but now-scorned president.

Consider:

Within weeks of his March 1913 inauguration, Woodrow Wilson betrayed a campaign promise to a group of Black leaders for unequivocally “fair” treatment of “their” people. He did it by launching a top-to-bottom resegregation of the federal workforce.

Wilson’s crusade was a thorough, and “smashing” success. Black federal workers were fired in droves, and many of the survivors were demoted from white collar to menial labor. Barriers to entry and advancement were added to keep their numbers down: particularly effective was a new requirement that job-seekers attach a photograph to their applications.

To the cries of protest and outrage from erstwhile Black supporters, Wilson peered loftily through his stylish pince-nez eyeglasses. He insisted the new arrangements were actually better-suited for Blacks, and would serve their ultimate aspirations for “uplift.”

(Yeah, a lot of white “leaders” talked that way then; some still do.)

Then he returned to his most important priority, that of betraying his prime campaign promise to the entire country, to keep the USA out of World War One.)

In the years before Wilson’s ascent, Black federal employment had been expanding, finding footholds in the white-collar ranks; federal jobs were becoming a mainstay of the small but ambitious Black middle class. But after Wilson’s re-segregation purge, it took decades for Black federal employment to recover.

Now back to 2025: Despite Hegseth’s macho PR bluster about equal-opportunity “lethality,” early returns on his new drive points straight toward an updated re-run of Wilsonian resegregation.

Of course, Hegseth swears this isn’t so, because — after all, racism in the military, he says, was wiped out 77 years ago, right? That’s when president Harry Truman ordered Army desegregation with Executive Order 9981 in 1948.

In Hegseth’s telling, Truman signed his name, flipped a light switch, and then – end of story. All the gloom of 170 segregated years disappeared in a flash.

In Hegseth’s books and speeches, he  keeps repeating that since Truman signed 9981, racism in the military just “does not exist.” Any suggestions otherwise reflect no more than subversive disinformation being spread by what were once called “outside agitators,” but today he unmasks as “the enemy within,” liberals, Marxists, or worse, Democrats.

Truman’s action was indeed historic, and the change it made cumulatively profound. Yet Hegseth’s version of it is almost entirely innocent of facts: Truman’s desegregation order was fiercely resisted by many generals and Jim Crow fans in Congress and the South. The struggle to make it real took years. The work lasted well past Truman’s term into the Eisenhower era.

By now, Wilson’s re-segregation drive has been essentially overcome in much of the military: many Americans of color are having rewarding careers in uniform, up into the middle officer ranks.

Yet the process is still far from complete. In its upper echelons, the shoulders and collars with eagles and stars remain overwhelmingly white (& male), as do numerous specialized units.

Hegseth’s blather about “unity” notwithstanding, there is much still to do.

But additional progress on that front may may have to wait until the Hegseth-Trump wave crests and recedes. Thirty-five years passed between Wilson’s purge and Truman’s countermanding order. There was struggle and agitation during this long interval, but much of it was defensive. Progress was slow, piecemeal and repeatedly blocked.

Reports while Hegseth was in Europe hinted at some reprise of defensive shrewdness and skill with camouflage. In a purple prose memo issued January 31, shortly before Hegseth headed across the Atlantic, he had loudly telegraphed his battle plan. In rhetoric echoing his fervid memoirs of kicking down doors in Mosul and blowing away insurgents the heading was: “Identity Months Dead at DoD.”

His very first target was that notorious terrorist suspect, Black History Month, which was to begin the next day. It fell in his new fiefdom like the bullet-riddled Iraqi insurgents he brags about leaving stacked up “at room temperature.”

In U. S. military schools which Hegseth was scheduled to visit, teachers obediently took down images of such dangerous characters as Harriet Tubman, Michelle Obama, and MLK. Curated teaching packets disappeared into unmarked filing cabinets; various ceremonies were deplatformed. Recruiters canceled visits to events where rising students of color gathered.

(All gone. But not forgotten: these hazardous materials can be safely stored off-campus; ceremonies and visits postponed can be rescheduled.)

Further, there were three actual open protests on the bases against the Hegseth diktat, in DOD schools in Germany and Belgium: they were small, peaceful, and mostly by the young. They signaled a truth learned by many career military families —commanders come and go.

Their tenure can often seem more like an overlong winter, with the landscape mainly dun and featureless, leaves gone and fields bare under the waves of cold. Yet the colors of spring have not thereby been eliminated; their time of blooming and fruit-bearing will come again.

And for the history-minded, they were reminders of another lesson, that when commanders go on crusade, they can often fail: Hegseth is utterly besotted with the Christian Crusades of a millennium ago; his romanticized vision of them shapes his outlook and agenda, and even some of his many body tattoos

But the actual Crusades look different to other eyes: Muslims see in them two centuries of bloody Christian invasions aimed at removing Jerusalem from Islamic control, and note that they all ultimately failed in their mission.

Nevertheless, Hegseth’s anti-woke fervor is of a piece with his own vision of an “American Crusade,” the title and subject of his 2020 book. “American” in that its prime targets were “the enemy within,” with DEI/wokeness heading the enemies list (& LGBTs close behind).

“Our present moment is much like the 11th Century,” he declared in American Crusade. “We don’t want to fight, but, like our fellow Christians one thousand years ago, we must. . . . Arm yourself — metaphorically, intellectually, physically. Our fight is not with guns. Yet.”

Reviewer Jonathan Chait briskly summed up Hegseth’s agenda in his own words: American Crusade calls for the “categorical defeat of the Left,” with the goal of “utter annihilation,” without which “America cannot, and will not, survive.”

And his scheme also looks different to others close by: besides the school protests, when the Army canceled recruiting visits to an annual national awards ceremony for Black engineers, the news site military.com reported that it“sparked calls of discrimination.

“It’s f—ing racist,” one active-duty Army general told Military.com on the condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation. “For the Army now, it’s ‘Blacks need not apply’ and it breaks my heart.”

In Virginia, state representative, Mike Feggans, whose Virginia Beach district adjoins major naval bases around Norfolk, took to Instagram to denounce:

“President Trump’s attack on Black History Month and cultural celebrations within the Department of Defense, and the removal of books and lessons plans for Department of Defense on base schools isn’t just about canceling events—it’s about erasing our history and reshaping our future.”

These scattered voices are not yet slowing Hegseth’s crusade, any more than the complaints from outraged prominent Blacks deterred Woodrow Wilson’s 1913 re-segregation campaign.

Hegseth returned from Europe to the Pentagon ready to strike more public and fateful blows: firing the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Chief of Naval Operations, and several other high-ranking officers.

Every active duty U. S. general/admiral should be nervous. Hegseth and Trump have said they’ve made a list of all generals and admirals, and their tenure is in jeopardy. Hegseth, in particular, has written and spoken with special bitterness and contempt about American flag officers:  “These men, and women, are cowards hiding under stars. Whores to wokesters. . . . . Cowards, then sellouts.” (From his 2024 book, The War on Warriors.)

It is no coincidence that his first two multi-starred victims, the very highest-ranking officers, were a Black male and a woman: Air Force General Charles Q. Brown Jr., Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Admiral Lisa Franchetti, Chief of Naval Operations.

Between them they have 80 years of successful military experience, four unblemished decades apiece (Hegseth has one, not unblemished). Their “offenses” were two:

Whatever; Pete Hegseth hates generals, his books make that abundantly clear, and he is on a roll, determined to bleach the barracks and remasculinize the ranks.

When, where and from whom will he face significant pushback? Check back if the Russian flag replaces the blue and yellow standard of Ukraine.

But barring that, or some unforeseen twist of fate, Hegseth could well make segregation history repeat more than rhyme, at least in his vast uniformed domain.

. . . And somewhere, Woodrow Wilson is smirking behind his timelessly fashionable pince nez eyeglasses.