Purge at the Pentagon
Terry H. Schwadron
Feb. 24, 2025
While the weekend’s decapitation of the Joint Chiefs hierarchy over Donald Trump’s beef with too much diversity, equity and inclusion in the military, the firing of Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. and five others among Pentagon brass rankle for what they portend for injecting political loyalty into the supposedly neutral military.
Others fired included Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead the Navy; Gen. James Slife, the vice chief of the Air Force, and the top lawyers for the Army, Navy and Air Force — apparently all for the sin of promoting — or perhaps reflecting — inclusionary recruiting and promotion policies.
Of course, what also was promised by Trump and carried out now by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is a political loyalty test. Apparently passing is Trump’s new nominee as head of the Joint Chiefs, retired, three-star (rather than four-star, active service) Air Force Gen. Dan “Razin’” Caine, who now apparently requires a congressional waiver to be named as being outside the normal Pentagon ladder. Trump sees Caine as a Trump supporter. It was Caine, whom Trump met in Iraq, who said Islamic rebels could be wiped out in a week — something that Trump thinks happened.
It is likely we never will know the behind-the-scenes politics at play in the changes, but what we can see on the surface — in the inclusion of the military lawyers — is that Trump is removing people who might question or oppose any other orders for the military that will come about as a result of deportation policy or any perceived disorder of political protest in the streets. It is military lawyers who have sought to uphold some rules of war, like those that resulted in murder charges in Afghanistan — findings that Trump overruled.
What exactly has General Brown done wrong? Did Brown say no to Trump? Did he decline to dismiss defense employees or end DEI training? Brown talked infrequently about DEI. Even so, the dismissal came as a federal judge in Maryland temporarily blocked key portions of Trump’s executive orders targeting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in the federal government and corporate America. Maybe it is Trump who should be dismissed.
Indeed, for all the talk of promoting “lethality” in our military — something that all these generals and admirals sign on to do — Trump increasingly is talking about using the military for distinctly non-lethal activities like installing concertina wire at the border and guarding and feeding deportees sent to Guantanamo or now Fort Bliss. Hegseth called General Brown — a Trump hire in 2020 for the job — to fire him as he was at the El Paso base to oversee preparations for arrested migrants.
Trump has been unrestrained in talking of sending armed military into the streets of Chicago and other cities either to help in the arrest of migrants or to quell the crime he sees as rising throughout the country’s cities, reports of violence crime notwithstanding.
It is easy to see the changes in the top Joint Chiefs more as a measure of Trump’s push for total authority over all aspects of public life than it is to see it a recommitment to a stronger military.
Character Issues
Absurdly, the dismissals show up the obvious difference in character among those now being sent away and the flawed individual people like Hegseth whom Trump is bringing in. As with probably all the men and women who make it to the top of the Pentagon chain, the bios of these ousted chiefs brim with experience in doing the actual work of war that Trump says he wants to foster.
In addition, they show experience with running the huge military bureaucracy and an ability to translate the desires of the last administration and Congress to look anew at making the military more amenable to the pluralistic enlistments America is providing. It is not the Trump sons or daughter who is enlisting, and recruitment in general is a major objective for a military that includes people from a variety of backgrounds.
By contrast, many of Trump’s picks for leadership show the opposite. Hegseth had confirmation troubles because of his personal character and because his organizational leadership consisted of running two small veterans’ groups into the ground. Tulsi Gabbard, the new director of national intelligence, had trouble explaining her fealty for Russian and Syrian leaders over
U.S. intelligence as well as lack of organizational skill. Kash Patel took over the FBI this weekend after a brutal battle over his published promises to pursue political investigations. The list goes on.
Mission Impossibilities
At the same time, we’ve seen Trump brandish our military as a bludgeon towards other countries and to withhold our military help to our allies. He seems willing to send military forces into Mexico with little guidance against cartels and towards somehow stopping migration, while simultaneously withholding military and financial aid to Ukraine or double down on support for NATO allies.
Of little interest to him are legal barriers, just as declaring emergencies or issuing executive orders are whims that apparently create legality on the fly. In the dictatorship he seems to be creating, he is the sole authority of legal orders, even if it involves deploying the armed military against U.S. citizens. We saw this in the ordered breakup of a Washington protest, we heard it repeatedly in protests after the murder of George Floyd in 2020, we witnessed that military force was withheld for hours in the protection of Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Trump has insulted military veterans who are injured, is now firing or ending VA health programs, and sees the military as somewhere between ceremonial and useful only as a threat. He refuses to see that the same migrants he wants to deport are serving in the military just as he wants to deny that we have soldiers and airmen who are transgender or gay. We certainly have a military that reflects lots of Black and Brown enlistees, but maybe Trump hasn’t noticed. Through Hegseth, Trump is wishy-washy about maintaining women combat roles.
Trump sees the military as a PR image to be useful when it helps him get his way. It is not even clear what removing DEI means in a two-million-member Department of Defense, other than enduring an occasional reminder video or training. Trump has not been a force to reduce sexual attacks in the military, for example.
At the least, Trump could have awaited a dispute with the Joint Chiefs over any of his many issues. Instead, what we get is that generals, like everyone else, are good to go only if they agree with what Trump might be thinking.
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