The Washington Post
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.
June 29, 2026 at 6:30 a.m. EDT Today at 6:30 a.m. EDT
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.
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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.