Much to Hegseth’s chagrin, however, his career as an Army officer corresponded to a series of distinctly failed military campaigns. In deciding on Princeton, Hegseth launched himself on a path eerily paralleling that of another Minnesota native of a previous era, novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald. In reality, the supposed heroes of Hegseth’s war were generally not pedigreed Army National Guard officers like him, but door-busting, ass-kicking Green Berets and Navy SEALs. By 2013, as Hegseth’s star was rising, 53% of polled Americans already saw the Iraq war as a mistake. And unlike the US, which sought technocratic rationales for war, Israel had the advantage of framing everything in biblical terms.