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In the midst of the Iran-Iraq War, the US Secretary of Defense fired the US Army Chief of Staff and other high-ranking officers. Hegseth did not give a reason. For months, he has been purging the Pentagon of generals who do not share his views or who do not seem sufficiently loyal to him...
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has fired more than 20 generals and admirals in a year. On Thursday, he also prematurely retired Army Chief of Staff Randy George. He also fired Gen. David Hodne, head of Army Training Command, and Maj. Gen. William Green, head of Army Chaplaincy. “Abandoning the Army Chief of Staff in the middle of a war without cause is an irresponsible move even by Hegseth’s standards,” Tom Nichols, a columnist for The Atlantic and a former professor at the U.S. Naval War College, wrote on Thursday. George never publicly criticized the defense secretary, “although he had good reasons to do so,” Nichols wrote.
It is not known whether George was forced out because he disagreed with a potential ground operation in Iran. According to the New York Times, the main reason is likely a disagreement over personnel policy. Hegseth recently blocked the promotions of two African-American officers and two female officers to one-star generals.
The Secretary of Defense reportedly pressured George for months to remove the four names from the promotion list. George refused, citing the four officers' excellent service records. Recently, George allegedly wanted to meet with Hegseth to resolve the matter, but the Secretary of Defense reportedly denied him the meeting.
Hegseth also recently launched an investigation into Army helicopter pilots. During a training flight in Nashville, they first flew over demonstrators protesting Donald Trump's policies. They then flew their Apaches toward the home of singer and prominent Trump supporter Kid Rock. He posted a video online of himself standing in his backyard in front of his pool, waving at an attack helicopter as it hovered overhead.
He wrote in X that it was a gesture of respect from the pilots, one that “a complete idiot” like California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom would never accept. Hegseth lifted the pilots’ suspension a short time later: “no punishment, no investigation. Keep it up, patriots,” the Defense Secretary wrote in X.
The helicopter incident and his handling of it are unlikely to have been the deciding factor in George's firing. The Army Chief of Staff has had an impressive career. He served as a lieutenant in the first Gulf War in 1991 and then served consecutively in Iraq and Afghanistan starting in 2001. However, he was nominated for the position of Chief of Staff by President Joe Biden in 2023. Before that, he was a close advisor to Biden's Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin. According to him, many of the generals that Hegseth fired in recent months had very close ties to the Biden administration and its "smart" policies.
Hegseth is convinced that Democratic administrations under Barack Obama and Joe Biden weakened the military, particularly through the promotion of women, transgender individuals, and officers of color.
According to him, the US also lost the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq because its generals were too lenient with international humanitarian law and hampered their soldiers in combat with unnecessary regulations. The US military leadership waged a "real war against its own fighters," Hegseth writes in one of his books.
The Secretary of Defense therefore sees it as his mission to purge the Pentagon of those who, in his opinion, might have a "smart" mindset. However, columnist Nichols also sees this as a goal to transform the military into their instrument of power: "Trump and Hegseth are on a clear mission to politicize the US military and transform it into an extension of the MAGA movement."
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