3CHICSPOLITICO

This is in no way, good news.

Brian Allen
@allenanalysis
🚨 Three generals have been fired today.
Reports indicate they are being removed for refusing to put troops on the ground in Iran.
https://x.com/allenanalysis/status/2039906808626659341?s=20

From the NYTIMES:

Hegseth’s firing of Gen. Randy George “reflects growing hostility between Hegseth and the Army’s leadership,” military officials told NYT

By Greg Jaffe, Helene Cooper and Eric Schmitt
Reporting from Washington

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired Gen. Randy George, the Army’s chief of staff, on Thursday, a move that reflects growing hostility between Mr. Hegseth and the Army’s leadership, military officials said.

General George, who was appointed to his position in 2023, led the Army out of one of its worst recruiting crises in history in 2024 and more recently has pushed the service to accelerate its acquisition of cheap drones and other kinds of weapons that have come to dominate the war in Ukraine.

The tension with Mr. Hegseth was not rooted in substantive differences over the direction of the Army, military officials said. Rather it is the product of Mr. Hegseth’s long-running grievances with the Army, battles over personnel and his troubled relationship with Army Secretary Daniel P. Driscoll, the officials said.

Over the last year, General George and Mr. Driscoll had formed a tight partnership, officials said.

Mr. Hegseth has also clashed in recent months with General George and Mr. Driscoll over the defense secretary’s decision to block the promotion of four Army officers to be one-star generals.

Two of the officers targeted by Mr. Hegseth are Black and two are women on a promotion list that consisted of 29 other officers, most of whom are white men. Mr. Hegseth’s highly unusual decision to remove the officers prompted some senior military officials to question whether they were being singled out because of their race or gender, officials said.

Mr. Hegseth had been pressing Mr. Driscoll and General George for months to remove the officers from the promotion list. But Mr. Driscoll and General George refused, citing the officers’ long records of exemplary service.

Two weeks ago, General George asked Mr. Hegseth to meet with him to discuss the removal of the four officers from the one-star list, as well as the general’s view that Mr. Hegseth was interfering unnecessarily in Army personnel decisions overall, the officials said. Mr. Hegseth refused to meet with General George about the matter, they said.

Last week, Laura Loomer, a far-right conspiracy theorist who is close to Mr. Hegseth and President Trump, posted on social media that the defense secretary was “seriously considering” removing General George. Ms. Loomer has also repeatedly attacked Mr. Driscoll.

General George also had a close relationship with Lloyd J. Austin III, Mr. Hegseth’s predecessor and a former Army four-star general.

This was a very powerful explanation as to why this firing MATTERS.

Shanaka Anslem Perera ⚡
@shanaka86

JUST IN: You do not fire your Army Chief of Staff in the middle of a war for no reason. You fire him because of what comes next.

Pete Hegseth called General Randy George on April 2 and told him to retire immediately. The Pentagon confirmed it within hours. No reason was given. Not publicly. Not privately. A senior Army official told Fox News that Hegseth offered George nothing: no misconduct, no operational failure, no policy disagreement on the record. Just a phone call and a career ending in the middle of the most significant American combat operation in two decades.

George is the 24th general or admiral Hegseth has removed. But he is not the 24th. He is the one that matters. The Army Chief of Staff. The man whose signature sits between a president’s intent and the order that sends soldiers across a beach or into a tunnel complex. The 82nd Airborne is deploying right now. Marines from the 31st MEU are staged on the USS Tripoli. JSOC operators are at forward bases in Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. Kharg Island, 90 percent of Iranian oil exports, sits 16 kilometres off a coast that someone will have to decide whether to approach. And the four-star general whose job it was to advise whether that approach should happen was removed 48 hours after Trump told the nation the war would continue for two to three more weeks.

The replacement is Vice Chief General Christopher LaNeve. He was Hegseth’s senior military aide before this appointment. The man who carried the Secretary’s briefcase now commands the Army the Secretary is reshaping. The chain of command did not break. It shortened. The distance between a television studio and a combat order just collapsed to zero intermediaries who were not personally selected by the man giving the order.

No reason was given. That is the tell. When someone is removed without explanation during a crisis, the explanation is the crisis itself. George either objected to something or was about to. The ground option. The power plant strikes. The Kharg raid. The escalation that turned a highway bridge in Karaj into rubble on the same day he was told to leave. Something in the next two weeks requires a chief who will not push back, and the Pentagon solved that problem by installing one trained as Hegseth’s aide.

A former Fox News weekend host just fired a four-star general with combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, replaced him with his own former assistant, and did it during a live war in which the next decision could put American soldiers on Iranian soil for the first time in history. No hearing was held. No misconduct cited. The Army woke up on April 3 with a new chief it did not choose, in a war it did not start, preparing for a phase the previous chief apparently could not be trusted to execute.

The question is not why George was fired. Every general in the building knows why. The question is what order is coming in the next fourteen days that required removing the one man in the chain of command who might have said no.

The war has no perimeter. The chain of command has no objectors. And the next phase has no one left to stop it.

https://open.substack.com/pub/shanakaanslemperera/p/the-last-molecule-standing?r=6p7b5o&utm_medium=ios

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