The Wall Street Journal may want to paint Gen. Chris Donahue as a storied war hero unfairly cast aside, but retired Air Force Col. Rob Maness says the four-star’s pending retirement is exactly what civilian control of the military looks like when it actually works — not a purge, but accountability.
Maness, a 32-year Air Force veteran, EOD technician, and 9/11 survivor, wrote this week in American Thinker that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is executing President Donald Trump’s mandate to shrink the Pentagon’s flag officer ranks by 10% overall and 20% at the four-star level. Donahue’s retirement papers were requested as part of that broader housecleaning, and his deputy will step in — a move Maness calls “right-sizing” rather than punishment.
“This is what civilian control of the military looks like when it actually works,” Maness wrote.
A decorated record — and a disputed one
Donahue’s résumé is extensive: West Point, Delta Force, and the famous photograph of him as the last American service member to board a C-17 during the August 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan. But Maness argues that the withdrawal itself was “a humiliating disaster” that left 13 U.S. service members dead, billions in equipment in Taliban hands, and American credibility damaged — and Donahue, as Joint Force Land Component Commander for the operation, bore responsibility for it.
Maness also pointed to Donahue’s on-the-record comments suggesting that DEI policies — diversity, equity, and inclusion — weren’t affecting readiness. Maness wrote that “we now know” otherwise, and that Hegseth has said from day one he won’t protect officers whose careers advanced under “the previous administration’s failed policies.” That’s not punishment, Maness argued. “That’s accountability.”
The ‘real story’ behind the cuts
The deeper issue, Maness wrote, is a Pentagon that grew top-heavy while recruitment cratered and readiness suffered. He criticized senior leaders for spending more time on “pronouns and climate” than on competitors like China and Russia, and argued that Hegseth is doing what voters elected this administration to do: “drain the swamp in uniform and put warriors back in charge.”
The cuts have drawn criticism from Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), who called the Donahue move “unfortunate” and said it “makes no sense.” Maness dismissed that reaction, writing that Shaheen is a Democrat who “thinks the military exists to advance progressive social policy.” Even some Republicans have expressed concern about the “optics” for junior officers, but Maness said those officers need to hear a simpler truth: “the job isn’t about protecting your career or currying favor with the last administration. It’s about executing the commander-in-chief’s orders and winning America’s wars.”
Not a loyalty test, a mission shift
Maness rejected the framing that Hegseth is picking loyalists over merit. Instead, he said, Hegseth is picking leaders who understand the mission has changed — and that the Pentagon doesn’t need more “four-star bureaucrats managing NATO PowerPoint slides while China builds ships and hypersonics.” He argued there are plenty of colonels and one-stars with careers spent “in the dirt” rather than in Brussels or on the Pentagon’s E-Ring who are ready to step up.
The force structure itself, Maness argued, is part of the problem. Too many generals and admirals for the size of the force the U.S. actually maintains means bloat, slower decisions, and a protected class that “answers to itself instead of to the American people.” Trimming that, he wrote, “isn’t cruelty. It’s common sense.”
Maness conceded that Donahue served his country — “no one is disputing that” — but added that service doesn’t come with lifetime tenure at four stars. “That’s not a ‘purge.’ That’s leadership,” he wrote.
The column ends with a direct challenge to critics: “The Wall Street Journal can keep writing elegies for the old guard. The rest of us will keep supporting the men and women actually trying to fix what years of failed leadership broke.”
Maness is the author of “What You Can Do About It: Taking Real Action Against Corruption, Radicalism, and Moral Decay to Save America” and hosts “The Rob Maness Show.”
Source: www.americanthinker.com — https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/08/pete-hegseth-cuts-the-fat-out-of-a-bloated-politicized-pentagon/