About a week ago, The New York Times reported that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s personnel moves have been so dramatic that he has left the U.S. Army “essentially rudderless” during an ongoing war in the Middle East. This week, conditions went from bad to worse. MS NOW reported:
Army Secretary Dan Driscoll has submitted his resignation amid tension with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the ongoing U.S. war with Iran, two sources familiar with the matter told MS NOW on Monday. […]
The news comes as the U.S. war with Iran, which military leaders have reportedly cautioned is unsustainable, reaches its sixth month. Driscoll was among the people who brought up concerns with the administration “surrounding Army transformation and readiness and Hegseth’s blocking those efforts specifically by firing the Generals who were responsible,” the source said.
I’ve spent months documenting the scope and scale of the hapless Pentagon chief’s purge campaign, which has affected every branch of the armed forces, but in light of Driscoll’s departure, it’s worth paying particular attention to what’s become of the U.S. Army.
Arguably the highest-profile move came in April, when the former Fox News host fired Army chief of staff Randy George, removing the Army’s top officer for dubious reasons just two months after Donald Trump launched the war with Iran. (Hegseth, it’s worth noting for context, fired the highly decorated and widely respected four-star general while Driscoll, then the Army secretary, was on vacation.)
But that’s just the start of a larger list. Hegseth has also either fired or sidelined Gen. David Hodne, commander of Transformation and Training Command; Gen. James Mingus, the Army vice chief of staff; Gen. Christopher Donahue, commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa; Lt. Gen. Joseph Berger, the Army’s former top lawyer; Lt. Gen. Douglas Sims, the former director of the Joint Staff; and Lt. Gen. Joseph McGee, the former director for strategy, plans and policy at the Joint Staff.
And that’s just the Army — the purge list related to the other service branches is significantly longer — and it doesn’t include other officers whose promotions have been needlessly blocked by the hapless Pentagon chief.
A report in The Atlantic summarized, “Hegseth’s purge of the military has been so dramatic that with Driscoll gone, the military’s largest service is left without a top civilian leader, a Senate-confirmed top general, a confirmed Army general in charge of operations, or a confirmed commander of Army troops in Europe. Because of all the firings across the service over the past year, the Army, with more than 450,000 active-duty soldiers positioned across the globe, has fewer generals than at any point in recent history.” (As of early last year, when Hegseth took office, there were 10 four-star generals on active duty. The service is now down to five.)
Did I mention that the United States is currently at war? And that the operation clearly isn’t going well? Because these details are both true and highly relevant as the scandal-plagued defense secretary systemically hollows out the Army.
We’ll learn soon enough who, if anyone, Hegseth chooses to fill these many vacancies, but hanging overhead is a difficult question: Who will save the U.S. Army from the defense secretary?
In theory, the job should fall to the commander in chief, but it appears there’s little point in turning to the Republican who chose Hegseth for the job in the first place. In fact, a separate report in The Atlantic noted that Driscoll, ahead of his resignation, went directly to the president to share his concerns, and Trump “was surprised when Driscoll told him how many generals and other top officers had been fired, pushed out, or passed over for promotion under Hegseth.”
To date, however, the president has done nothing to steer the failing secretary in a more responsible direction.
Democratic Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, issued a written statement after Driscoll resigned, which read in part, “It is far past time for President Trump to recognize the lasting harm that Pete Hegseth is inflicting on the Department of Defense. … The Army is the backbone of the joint force. At this moment, hundreds of thousands of soldiers are deployed around the world, many in combat zones. The soldiers carrying out these missions deserve leadership that is reliable, forthright, and focused on the fight ahead. The Army cannot stay ahead of our adversaries while its senior ranks are hollowed out and its chain of command is left in limbo.”
That’s true, though it was hard not to notice that Reed’s Republican colleagues in the Senate — who could, in theory, also intervene on behalf of the armed forces — issued no comparable statement.
All of which suggests that it may fall to voters to help rescue the Army, by way of this year’s midterm elections, since the White House and Congress are clearly not up to the job.
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