Hegseth claims another scalp in Pentagon purge
Dan Driscoll resigned and warned the resident that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is doing serious damage to the military
What happened
The Pentagon was thrown into turmoil last month after Army Secretary Dan Driscoll handed in his resignation, warning President Trump on his way out that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s purging of senior officers and resistance to technological change was doing serious damage to the military. Driscoll has clashed repeatedly with Hegseth, who has pursued a vendetta against “woke” values and has in recent months fired or driven out several highly respected top commanders for reasons he has not articulated. They include Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, fired in April, and Gen. Christopher T. Donahue, the top Army commander in Europe, who was pushed out in July. George’s and Driscoll’s departures leave the Army with no Senate-confirmed civilian or military leader amid the ongoing war with Iran. Hegseth has also blocked the promotions of dozens of lower-level officers, many of whom were Black or female or had ties to George or Donahue. Driscoll reportedly warned Trump that Hegseth’s purge was creating chaos, hurting morale, and harming efforts to modernize the military. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) urged Trump to fire Hegseth, saying he was more focused on “culture wars” than on “the vital work of our national defense.
Driscoll’s departure came just days after four top military commanders warned Hegseth that the Iran war was compromising military readiness elsewhere in the world. In a highly classified assessment, the four-star commanders registered their disapproval of a plan to keep more than 50,000 U.S. troops in the Middle East through September, and many into 2027, The Washington Post reported. Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell called the Post’s story “inaccurate” and “a betrayal of the force,” perpetuated by critics who hate Trump and Hegseth “more than they love America.”
What the columnists said
Driscoll’s departure “couldn’t come at a worse time,” said Brynn Tannehill in The New Republic. In Ukraine, we’re witnessing “a revolution in military technology and fundamentally how we think about war.” But rather than “lean into the future” of drones and artificial intelligence, as Driscoll was attempting to do, Hegseth canceled an elite counter-drone unit that “had been championed by the generals he sacked.” He’s putting his energies instead into building his ideal macho “warfighter” military, with no flab, transgender troops, female flag officers, or “Black men with shaving chits.”
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He’s also focused on his own self-promotion, said Ewan Palmer in The Daily Beast. Another Washington Post report revealed that Hegseth had secretly “hired a team of MAGA influencers” who routinely laud him on social media and assail his critics. They include Kurt Schlichter, a retired colonel with more than 620,000 X followers, and Thomas Anderson, who touts Hegseth to his 323,000 X followers under his pen name CynicalPublius. The Pentagon, which had not disclosed that the influencers were on the payroll, “has not revealed what their roles are.”
Hegseth’s officer purge “is without precedent,” said Greg Jaffe in The New York Times. On his watch the number of four-star Army generals has been cut from 10 to five, and he’s fired or blocked the promotions of more than 80 generals and admirals. The dismissals don’t appear to be related to job performance but instead seem part of an effort to build a leadership “aligned with his political and ideological views.” One officer who’d led combat troops in Iraq and Afghanistan reportedly had his promotion pulled because a unit he took over had a mentorship group for female paratroopers.
Driscoll’s departure “puts the Pentagon even more firmly under the control of Hegseth and his MAGA agenda,” said Nancy A. Youssef in The Atlantic. Driscoll, an Army veteran and close friend of Vice President JD Vance with the ear of the White House, sometimes “served as a counterweight to Hegseth’s impulses.” The prospect that he’ll be replaced by a Hegseth ally—potentially Pentagon spokesman Parnell—is further “raising fears inside the Army.”
Making a former Fox News host secretary of defense “was always a huge gamble,” said Tom Nichols, also in The Atlantic. “And now the price of that gamble is evident.” It’s not just Hegseth’s purge and his installation of loyalists; his “tenure has been disastrous on multiple scores.” He was reportedly the sole senior administration official to back Trump’s plan to attack Iran. Hegseth raided “assets from other theaters” to support that foolish war, leaving the U.S. and its allies exposed to threats from China and Russia, who are watching closely as we lose “to a third-rate power in the Middle East.” We will all pay the “price for his incompetence.”
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