Hegseth's Army Purge Targeted Last Man Out of Afghanistan

One grainy night-vision photo is at the center of a high-stakes fight over who gets to shape the future of the US Army. As the New York Times reports, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth moved in early 2025 to block Gen. Christopher Donahue from becoming the top American commander in Europe, seeing him as a symbol of the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal and the deadly Abbey Gate bombing—despite the fact Donahue neither controlled the gate nor released the now-famous image of him as the last soldier to depart Kabul. Hegseth, a former Fox News host who came to the Pentagon vowing to purge "bloated" and weak military leadership, reportedly brushed off a fact sheet his own chief of staff prepared in support of Donahue.

What followed, per Times reporters Adam Entous and Greg Jaffe, who spoke with more than 40 Pentagon sources, was a 16-month struggle pitting Hegseth against a coalition of Pentagon brass and Republican lawmakers who saw Donahue—a veteran of more than 20 deployments and an architect of Ukraine's drone-centric defenses—as a rare "generational talent." They lost. Donahue retired on Aug. 27 after Hegseth blocked multiple paths to higher command. For the inside account of the power struggle and what it signals about Trump-era military priorities, read the full story in the New York Times.