Oklahoma Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin has blocked the promotion of the “last US soldier out of Afghanistan” to get his fourth star and become commander of US Army Europe. Lieutenant General Christopher Donahue is currently the commanding general of the Army’s XVIII Airborne Corps and once and future Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Tellingly, his was the only one of nearly 1,000 military promotions not approved as the Senate recessed for Thanksgiving. Someone familiar with the affair confirmed Mullin’s removing Donahue from the promotion list was directly related to Donahue’s role in Afghanistan.
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Donahue acquired a degree of fame by hotdogging his role as the “last man out of Afghanistan.”
The little-known part of the story is that Donahue had Afghan evacuees bumped off the plane and left to the tender mercies of the Taliban so he could bring home war trophies. Our own Jennifer van Laar broke this in an exclusive story headlined: EXCLUSIVE: Maj Gen Ordered 50+ Evacuees off One of Last Flights out of Kabul to Make Room for Taliban Souvenir.
In a number of articles penned in the following days, Donahue is characterized as “uniquely qualified” for that moment in time and generally depicted as a humble, understated leader of his division.
Unfortunately, everything isn’t quite as it may seem. During the last hours of the evacuation, according to troops under his command and as documented by photographs and witness statements, Donahue ordered all of the passengers aboard a C-17 transport plane to disembark so he could have a souvenir loaded onto the plane. That souvenir, or “war trophy,” was an inoperable Taliban-owned Toyota Hilux with a fully operational Russian ZU-23 anti-aircraft autocannon mounted in the bed. Once the Hilux was loaded passengers were allowed back on the plane, but, of course, there wasn’t room for all of them. According to troops on the scene, at least 50 people and perhaps as many as 100 people were left at Kabul to make room for the Hilux.
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In fact, he wasn’t even the last man out.
LTG Donahue refused to open the gates at HKIA despite Marines reporting up the chain of command that American passport holding citizens were trying to get in to evacuate. In addition to the statements from Marines, we had plenty of other evidence of Americans trying to get into HKIA to evacuate.
Donahue was the ground commander who ultimately made the decision to not get those Americans out. We can banter back and forth about security and other critical elements of why he chose to do what he did, but I can’t sidestep or forgive a commander not making every attempt to get those Americans out who were standing at the gate, talking directly to the Marines, and being refused entry.
The other nonsense about the fake photo op of “last boots on ground” that was proven false due to the Air Force load master being the last to get on the airplane and an entire medical unit still being on ground conducting operations well after the evacuation, plus borrowing the equipment from the delta team that was with him to take a cool guy photo, can be shrugged off.
Making an effort to use critical space on the airplanes to take home a Toyota Land Cruiser with a mounted anti-aircraft gun as a war trophy, instead of human beings, or at the very least the dozens of working dogs that were left to die in kennels at the hands of the Taliban, can also be shrugged off.
What I can’t shrug off is leaving American citizens behind in Afghanistan when they were standing at the gates with their passports out pleading with the Marine guards to let them in. He shouldn’t have been allowed to pin on a third star, let alone a fourth.
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Mullin has been highly critical of the conduct of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.
BACKGROUND:
The Biden Administration’s Afghanistan “Rescue” Narrative Blows Up in Their Faces
State Department Tries to Steal Credit for Rescue of Four Americans From Afghanistan
Therefore, it is hardly out of character for him to weigh in on Donahue’s promotion, particularly in an environment where the President-elect is making noises about court-martialling some of the officers in charge of the withdrawal.
BACKGROUND:
REPORT: Trump Team Targeting Military Officers Involved in Afghanistan Withdrawal
Trump Reportedly Has a Radical Plan for Accountability on Afghanistan, and the Press Are Seeing Red
Hopefully, this will be more than a blip on the radar, and Donahue’s promotion is scuttled. As he was the prime mover in renaming Fort Bragg to “Fort Liberty,” it would be more than poetic justice if his upward trajectory ended just as Fort Bragg got its rightful name back.