Purge of Military Brass Continues
Undermining the professionalism of the officer corps.
NYT (“Hegseth Fires Army Chief Amid Battle With Its Leaders“):
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired Gen. Randy George, the Army’s chief of staff, on Thursday, a move that reflects growing hostility between Mr. Hegseth and the Army’s leadership, military officials said.
General George, who was appointed to his position in 2023, led the Army out of one of its worst recruiting crises in history in 2024 and more recently has pushed the service to accelerate its acquisition of cheap drones and other kinds of weapons that have come to dominate the war in Ukraine.
The tension with Mr. Hegseth was not rooted in substantive differences over the direction of the Army, military officials said. Rather it is the product of Mr. Hegseth’s long-running grievances with the Army, battles over personnel and his troubled relationship with Army Secretary Daniel P. Driscoll, the officials said.
Over the last year, General George and Mr. Driscoll had formed a tight partnership, officials said.
Mr. Hegseth has also clashed in recent months with General George and Mr. Driscoll over the defense secretary’s decision to block the promotion of four Army officers to be one-star generals.
Two of the officers targeted by Mr. Hegseth are Black and two are women on a promotion list that consisted of 29 other officers, most of whom are white men. Mr. Hegseth’s highly unusual decision to remove the officers prompted some senior military officials to question whether they were being singled out because of their race or gender, officials said.
Mr. Hegseth had been pressing Mr. Driscoll and General George for months to remove the officers from the promotion list. But Mr. Driscoll and General George refused, citing the officers’ long records of exemplary service.
Two weeks ago, General George asked Mr. Hegseth to meet with him to discuss the removal of the four officers from the one-star list, as well as the general’s view that Mr. Hegseth was interfering unnecessarily in Army personnel decisions overall, the officials said. Mr. Hegseth refused to meet with General George about the matter, they said.
Last week, Laura Loomer, a far-right conspiracy theorist who is close to Mr. Hegseth and President Trump, posted on social media that the defense secretary was “seriously considering” removing General George. Ms. Loomer has also repeatedly attacked Mr. Driscoll.
General George also had a close relationship with Lloyd J. Austin III, Mr. Hegseth’s predecessor and a former Army four-star general.
General George is expected to be replaced by Gen. Christopher LaNeve, who previously served as Mr. Hegseth’s senior military assistant in the Pentagon. In addition to removing General George, Mr. Hegseth also fired Gen. David M. Hodne, who was promoted in October to lead the Army’s Transformation and Training Command, a key four-star position focused on Army modernization and doctrine.
Mr. Hegseth also fired Maj. Gen. William Green Jr., the Army’s top chaplain, an official said.
[…]
Senior Army officials described General George’s dismissal as a blow to a service that has seen many of its top three- and four-star officers with deep experience fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan fired or sidelined in recent months.
In October, Gen. James J. Mingus, the Army’s vice chief of staff, was forced to step down from his position a year earlier than expected. His retirement was hastily announced with little input from senior Army leaders.
Senior Army officers reacted with anger and frustration to the news of General George’s dismissal, characterizing it as the latest blow to a service that already feels under siege by Mr. Hegseth.
WaPo (“Hegseth forces out Army’s top general, two other senior officers“) adds:
With George’s ouster, Hegseth has remade nearly the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff, a panel of senior military officers at the Pentagon that advises both the president and the secretary. The only ones remaining from when Hegseth took office in January 2025 are Gen. Eric M. Smith, commandant of the Marine Corps, and Gen. B. Chance Saltzman, head of the Space Force.
[…]
Hegseth, a former mid-ranking Army National Guard officer who attained some celebrity in Republican circles while working as an on-air personality for Fox News, has shown a particular scorn for certain senior Army generals and has moved to oust or block the promotions of several whom he did not support.
In the process, he has clashed at times with Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, a fellow Army veteran and Trump political appointee who is close friends with Vice President JD Vance, current and former U.S. officials said.
“Hegseth can’t fire Driscoll,” one administration official said Thursday. “So he’s going to make his life hell.”
Hegseth’s past movesagainst Army leaders include stonewalling a promotion to four-star general for Lt. Gen. Douglas Sims, who has since retired; bypassing the appointment of Gen. Christopher Donahue as the next head of U.S. European Command; demanding the firing of Col. David Butler, a top Army spokesman who has decided to retire; and forcing out the last vice chief of staff, Gen. James Mingus, several months early, officials have said.
All of those officers worked at some point for Gen. Mark A. Milley, who served as Army chief of staff and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during Trump’s first term in office. While Trump selected Milley for the Pentagon’s top military job, the two clashed over numerous issues, turning Milley into a political target for Trump and Hegseth.
NBC News (“Hegseth has intervened in military promotions for more than a dozen senior officers“) adds this context:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has taken steps to block or delay promotions for more than a dozen Black and female senior officers across all four branches of the military, some of whom are seen as having been targeted because of their race, gender or perceived affiliation with Biden administration policies or officials, according to nine U.S. officials familiar with the process.
The process within the Army, the Air Force, the Navy and the Marines is structured to ensure the most qualified officers get promoted. Hegseth’s decision to intervene in the process has raised concerns among some officials within those military branches and the White House, the nine U.S. officials familiar with the situation said.
“There is not a single service that has been immune to this level of involvement by Hegseth,” one of the U.S. officials said.
Two of the officials said there are concerns in the military and the White House specifically that Hegseth is blocking or stalling some qualified officers from receiving promotions through the ranks of general and admiral because of their race or gender as he targets diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives at the Pentagon. There is also concern that Hegseth could be singling out military officers whom he views as aligned with officials or policies of the Biden administration, the officials said.
[…]
Hegseth, who declared an end to “woke” culture at the Defense Department last year, has criticized DEI initiatives adopted by the Biden administration, as has President Donald Trump. Hegseth also has publicly accused the military of awarding promotions based on diversity rather than merit. Not all promotions for officers who are women or members of racial minority groups have been blocked or delayed during his tenure as secretary, four of the U.S. officials familiar with the process said.
[…]
Two officials said that among the attributes Hegseth has cited for removing officers from promotions are past support for Covid vaccines or mask mandates for troops, which were enacted during the Biden administration, or whether officers were affiliated with DEI programs, potentially being women or members of racial minority groups, or promoted or worked on such initiatives.
The officials said an officer’s association with former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley, whom Trump views as a political enemy, can also make an officer who is up for a promotion susceptible to scrutiny from Hegseth’s office.
“I think there is not consistency being applied to the standards” for promotions, another of the U.S. officials said.
[…]
A retired senior military officer described the promotion process as rigorous and said any meddling by the defense secretary could diminish trust in it.
“Our officer corps trusts our promotion process,” the retired officer said, adding that intervention in the process without an explanation “will certainly cast a shadow across our officer corps that everything they have said, done and written about during their careers could be politicized in a career-ending manner with the stroke of a pen.”
Retired Naval War College professor Tom Nichols dubs this “Hegseth’s War on America’s Military.”
Why were these men fired while U.S. forces are fighting overseas? The Defense Department has given no official reason for their dismissals, but likely they are the latest victims of Hegseth’s vindictive struggles with the Army, which he feels treated him poorly—the service “spit me out” he said in his 2024 book—as he struggles in a job for which he remains singularly unqualified.
Hegseth began his tenure by acting against what he sees as a Pentagon infested with DEI hires. He pushed for the removal of the then–Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, C. Q. Brown, who is Black, and he fired a raft of female military leaders, replacing them all with men. But dumping the Army Chief of Staff in the middle of a war, without explanation, is a reckless move even by Hegseth’s standards. George is a decorated combat veteran who was slated to stay in his job until 2027, and he has never publicly feuded with Hegseth—despite having good reason to do so.
Trump and Hegseth have been on a clear mission to politicize the U.S. military, and to turn it into an armed extension of the MAGA movement. Hegseth regularly proselytizes, both for Trump and for his right-wing evangelical beliefs, from the Pentagon podium.
I’m less concerned than Tom and some others that this is happening in the midst of war with Iran. Neither George nor the other two generals fired are in the operational chain of command. But the ongoing politicization of the military is deeply concerning.
To be clear: the President and the Secretary of Defense have the right to fire senior officers whom they see as obstacles to their policy goals. Officers at the three- and four-star level serve at the pleasure of the president and his appointed secretaries. But, by long tradition, once appointed, these senior officers serve out their customary terms (typically four years for positions on the Joint Chiefs and three years for combatant commanders) absent extenuating circumstances. This administration has fired an unprecedented number of officers, mostly because of mere association with the previous administration or with former Chairman Mark Milley (who, while elevated to that post by Trump, eventually earned his ire).
A hallmark of the American officer corps for generations is that they are nonpartisan. Some have taken the extreme position of George Marshall and refrained from so much as voting. By the time they have reached the general and flag ranks, they have served decades under many presidential administrations of both parties and any number of policy agendas.
To the extent these officers implemented policies related to COVID and/or DEI, they did so under the lawful orders of the previous administration. The new administration has every right to issue lawful orders changing those policies and to expect these officers to carry out said policies. But firing them for carrying out the previous policies sets a dangerous precedent: it will cause officers to become partisan actors.
Were a Democrat to win the 2028 election, they would rightly assume any senior military leader has passed rigorous screening for MAGA loyalty. They would naturally want to replace them with officers who would enthusiastically carry out progressive policies. And, given the purge of women and officers of color, we’d likely see affirmative action on steroids.
An unfortunate choice of words. Presupposes that best or equally qualified are not nominated.
We are already seeing affirmative action on steroids. For less qualified or even unqualified white males, that is.
Which, of course, is considerably worse than affirmative action for equally qualified members of underrepresented groups.
Weird to call out a hypothetical Dem government on affirmative action…
With Trump’s approval and encouragement the military and the Department of Justice have been drained of priceless experience and institutional knowledge, and our national security and bedrock legal principles have been put at risk because Trump deems personal revenge (for mostly imagined slights) more important. Trump’s cabinet is full of clowns and grifters, but Hegseth was put into a position where he could cause immense harm. His roiling of the military brass with his anti-woke bullsh*t shows how unserious he is about the Iran “excursion.”
PS – agree wholeheartedly that Dr. J stepped on a rake with his closing reference to “affirmative action on steroids.” That’s missing the forest because of all those damn trees.