Pete Hegseth’s purges claim one of the military’s superstars
Gen. Christopher Donahue heads into early retirement as the defense secretary seeks to root out MAGA disloyalty.
To hear those who know Army Gen. Christopher “CD” Donahue tell it, he is one of the military’s superstars, or “water walkers.”
As the commander of Delta Force, the Army’s top Special Operations unit, Donahue was on the front lines of fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. As commander of the fabled 82nd Airborne Division, he was the last U.S. service member to leave Afghanistan in 2021. And as commander of the 18th Airborne Corps from 2022 to 2024, he played a key role in supporting Ukraine’s efforts to roll back the Russian invasion.
Retired Army Gen. Tony Thomas, former head of U.S. Special Operations Command, calls Donahue “a generational leader.” Retired Adm. William McRaven, another former Special Operations chief, has written that he is “one of the most brilliant officers I know.” Retired Army Gen. Christopher Cavoli, a former supreme allied commander in Europe, describes him as “almost like a comic book action hero” and, “without a doubt, the most experienced war fighter we have in the U.S. Army.”
Not long ago, Donahue was being talked about as a future Army chief of staff or chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Now Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is forcing him into early retirement by downgrading his position as commanding general of the U.S. Army in Europe and Africa after only 18 months and not offering him an alternative four-star slot. That makes Donahue the latest casualty of the secretary’s insidious purge of the senior ranks of the armed forces.
Military personnel understand that senior commanders can be “relieved for cause,” as happened to Gen. Douglas MacArthur in Korea and Gen. Stanley McChrystal in Afghanistan. What’s unnerving about Hegseth’s ousters — which have already claimed at least two dozen admirals and generals — is that they’re accompanied by no public explanation. The secretary claims to champion “warriors,” and Donahue is the ultimate warrior, so why push him out?
Some suggest the general is being scapegoated for the costly withdrawal from Afghanistan — you know, the one President Donald Trump set in motion by concluding a one-sided peace deal with the Taliban in 2020. If so, that is deeply unfair.
As my Washington Post colleague Dan Lamothe has noted, Donahue didn’t take charge of the Kabul airport until after the country had already fallen to the Taliban. Moreover, he was not responsible for the Marines guarding Abbey Gate, where a suicide bomber killed 13 U.S. service members. Working three days mostly without sleep, Donahue forcefully stabilized a chaotic situation; at one point, he told the Taliban that if they didn’t move back, “We would be able to kill more of them than they could ever hope to kill of us.” He thereby ensured that other Americans and their Afghan allies were able to evacuate safely.
Hegseth’s military career ended as a major in the Army National Guard, and he never earned the coveted Ranger tab. Yet he now has the power to cut short distinguished military careers as part of his attempts to root out anyone suspected of disloyalty to the MAGA agenda, often for the flimsiest of reasons. (As far as can be discerned, Donahue’s greatest sin was once saying that “there ain’t no ‘woke’” in the military.) His departure comes after the shocking dismissal in April of Gen. Randy George, the Army’s highly respected chief of staff.
While Donahue and George are White men, many of Hegseth’s victims are women or minorities. The defense secretary recently told West Point graduates that the “single dumbest phrase in military history” is “our diversity is our strength,” and he seems to view anyone who isn’t a White male as a “diversity hire.” In addition to firing high-profile women and minorities, Hegseth has blocked the promotions of at least 40 officers who were selected to become generals and admirals. According to the New York Times, about half of the officers whose promotions were derailed are women or minorities, even though 74 percent of all officers are White and nearly 80 percent are men.
Hegseth’s purges are only a small part of his larger project to impose a MAGA agenda on the military. In April, he revoked the flu vaccine requirement, which had been in effect since 1945. The Pentagon now says boot camps for all military services are mandating it again, after 275 recruits fell ill at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. In May, Hegseth breached the tradition of defense secretaries not getting involved in partisan politics by campaigning for a Republican U.S. House candidate in Kentucky. In June, he used a speech in Normandy on the anniversary of D-Day to attack U.S. allies in Europe and equate impoverished immigrants from the Global South with the Nazis.
The secretary has also barred reporters from the Pentagon press office and ended the editorial independence of the military newspaper Stars and Stripes. He keeps trying to punish Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Arizona), a retired Navy captain, for criticizing the administration even after being rebuked by a federal judge for trampling on the senator’s “First Amendment freedoms.” Most dismaying of all, Hegseth is carrying out attacks on alleged drug boats that legal experts say are unlawful; so far, the strikes have killed at least 210 people.
While Hegseth claims he is all about making the armed forces more “lethal,” the U.S. military had no better success in achieving its objectives in the recent war with Iran than it did in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His policies are actually undermining the military by compromising its professionalism.
As Sen. Jack Reed (D-Rhode Island), a West Point graduate and former Army officer, recently said: “Taken together, the secretary’s actions are an assault on the norms, traditions, and structures that have kept the American military the most trusted institution in this country for 250 years.”
Well put, and what a shame.
What readers are saying
The conversation explores the controversial actions of Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, and the impact of his leadership on the U.S. military. Participants express strong criticism of Hegseth's decisions to remove experienced military leaders, suggesting that his actions... Show more
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