U.S. Army Secretary Resigns
Yet another high-profile figure gone
By: Austin Abbring
August 31, 2026
U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll has submitted his resignation letter to President Donald Trump. He is the latest in a relatively long list of high-ranking or high-profile military leaders to resign or be relieved by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Reporting indicates that Driscoll and Hegseth have been feuding for several months over Hegseth’s firings of generals, dysfunction within the Pentagon, and differences over drone weapon development.
Driscoll’s misgivings over Hegseth’s purging of military leadership are most certainly valid. In just over a year and a half, Hegseth has either fired, forced out, or received resignations from roughly 20 generals, admirals, and high-ranking civilian officers - many of whom have since the beginning of the war in Iran. Joe Kent also resigned as director of the National Counterterrorism Center in March of this year. While that position is not part of the Department of Defense, Kent resigned over disagreements about the war of choice that Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth launched on Israel’s behalf. Now, I am not at all defending Driscoll or Kent; however, their departures, along with nearly two dozen others from key leadership roles, are clearly alarming and speak volumes about the lack of leadership by President Trump and Hegseth. This has been about installing political loyalists, sycophants, and yes-men in positions of power traditionally reserved for nonpartisanship.
We can see all of the cracks this has caused. We now have just 5 active-duty four-star generals, which is the lowest it has been in decades. Prior to Hegseth’s tenure, there were 10 of these individuals. I have written rather extensively about the illegality, unjustifiability, and general absurdity surrounding the Iran war and my disdain for the military-industrial complex. However, the men and women who have volunteered for our armed forces clearly deserve so much better. They should not be used as cannon fodder while under the leadership of President Trump, who literally said he was bored of this war a few months ago, and under Hegseth, a former Fox News weekend host who is on a DEI firing rampage and attempting to lead us into some nonsensical holy war.
Under this “leadership,” there are multitudes of reasons we are losing this war. We have no political concessions, have not achieved any objectives, have no long-term plan, and are radicalizing a regime further than it was before this engagement. Again, I want to clarify that I do not at all support our objectives, and I completely understand why Iran’s leadership is hostile towards America and its interests in the Middle East. They are more than justified in being hostile towards us. We are not the “good guys”. I am simply looking through the lens of wanting our men and women who volunteered to serve our country, for better or for worse, to have stable, strong leadership and guidance. If we are going to have a trillion-dollar defense budget, we’d better be damn sure there are the best of the best in the positions of general, admiral, and colonel.
As this war drags on and Trump struggles to find a way out, Driscoll will almost certainly not be the last person to resign or be relieved. It was almost inconceivable to me to imagine us being engaged in a more ludicrous, unjust, and disastrous war than the one Bush and Cheney launched against Iraq, yet we have somehow found a way. While this is nowhere near the scale of the quagmire, the dollar amount, and the loss of life, there are still far too many parallels. This is a colossal disaster, and I have never seen our military more mismanaged in my lifetime. It is no surprise that these are the results we are left with, considering how this administration and any ally to Trump function. It is loyalty - plain and simple. Ironically, that loyalty functions as the penultimate level of DEI that Republicans are supposedly enraged by.
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