A Republican senator is blocking the promotion of Lt. Gen. Christopher T. Donahue, the commander of U.S. troops in the final days of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, in what could be the first salvo in a Trump administration war against America’s generals.
Senator Markwayne Mullin, Republican of Oklahoma, put a hold on General Donahue’s promotion to four stars, or general, after his nomination was sent to the Armed Services Committee last week, officials said.
Sabrina Singh, a spokeswoman for the Pentagon, told reporters on Monday that the Defense Department was “aware” of the hold.
General Donahue was the last American service member to depart Afghanistan as Taliban fighters took control on Aug. 31, 2021. A decorated former Delta Force commander, Army ranger and paratrooper with multiple tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, he was recently selected to lead the U.S. Army’s Europe Command as the war in Ukraine heads into its fourth year.
General Donahue has long been seen as a likely candidate to eventually become the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the military’s most senior position.
Pete Hegseth, the former Fox News host whom President-elect Donald J. Trump has selected as his defense secretary, has indicated that he wants to fire Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., an Air Force fighter pilot who is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Trump transition officials have said they plan to go after generals in the Pentagon for a list of perceived crimes, including taking part in the Afghanistan evacuation and promoting diversity in the ranks.
And NBC News reported that the Trump transition team is exploring whether generals who were involved in the Afghanistan evacuation can be court-martialed, although it is unclear how they could be held culpable for following lawful orders from the commander in chief.
But if that purge includes General Donohue, 55, who is known throughout the military as “C.D.” and who led the Army’s successful rush to speed aid to Ukraine in the early days of the Russian invasion, then the American military may soon see a wholesale change in leadership.
“I fought alongside C.D. in some of the most dangerous fighting along the Syrian border and can personally vouch for his individual bravery and leadership,” said Doug Philippone, who spent 18 years in the Army and was deployed to Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan and is a co-founder of the venture capital firm Snowpoint Ventures.
General Donahue, Mr. Philippone said, “is one of the few generals that are pushing full steam against the bureaucracy to innovate and modernize our military.”
A spokesperson for Mr. Mullin’s office declined to comment.
The Oklahoma senator has been a vocal critic of the Afghanistan evacuation, a process that began during the first administration of Mr. Trump, who signed an agreement with the Taliban in February 2020 stipulating that American troops would leave Afghanistan by May 1, 2021.
But Mr. Mullin has reserved his criticism for the Biden administration, which carried out the Afghan withdrawal. In 2021, as a GOP congressman, Mr. Mullin posted a photo of himself on Instagram saying he was headed home from “helping get Americans out of Afghanistan.”
He wrote then: “President Biden and his administration are absolutely lying to the American people about Americans and our friends being left behind.”
For his part, General Donahue arrived at Kabul international airport on Aug. 18, three days after the Afghan capital fell to the Taliban. In front of him was an impossible puzzle: a sprawling airport besieged by desperate people trying to flee and not enough troops to carry out an orderly end to America’s longest war.
Days later, on Aug. 26, 2021, a suicide bombing at the airport’s Abbey Gate killed 13 U.S. service members and scores of Afghan civilians. General Donahue was not responsible for that part of the airport when the attack occurred.
His soldiers from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division held the airport for the final 48 hours of the U.S. mission and managed to evacuate Afghan and American citizens despite limited resources.
General Donahue was the commander on the ground on Aug. 29 when an American MQ-9 Reaper drone shot a Hellfire missile at a white Toyota Corolla in a neighborhood near the airport. The Pentagon at the time said the car was filled with bombs but later acknowledged that 10 civilians had been killed and that the car was carrying water bottles and posed no threat.
General Donahue’s supporters say he was dealt an impossible hand in Afghanistan at a time when civilian leaders had put the American military in an impossible position.
Withholding General Donahue’s promotion is both a “disservice” to him and “a slap in the face to the soldiers that spend their career fighting the wars of the last 25 years,” said Mick Mulroy, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East.
“Politicians and policymakers should be held responsible for their own decisions, not those honor bound to carrying them out,” Mr. Mulroy said. “That hold on Chris Donahue’s promotion should be removed immediately.”
A company commander who was at the airport during the evacuation said it was “nuts” that General Donahue’s promotion was being delayed and that the troops who were on the ground that day should not be punished for what happened.
Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., who was head of U.S. Central Command during the American evacuation of Afghanistan, called General Donahue “one of the finest officers the U.S. Army has ever produced.”
General Donahue is the “commander you want in a tough situation,” General McKenzie said. “In short, he’s the best we’ve got.”
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