Oklahoma Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin has blocked the action of the “last US soldier from Afghanistan”. Get his fourth star and become commander of US Army Europe. Lt. Gen. Christopher Donahue is currently the commanding general of the XVIII. Army Airborne Corps and once and future at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Significantly, his promotion was the only one of nearly 1,000 military promotions not approved because the Senate recessed for Thanksgiving. Someone familiar with the matter confirmed that Mullins’ removal of Donahue from the promotion list was directly related to Donahue’s role in Afghanistan.
Donahue gained some notoriety by highlighting his role as the “last man out of Afghanistan.”
The little-known part of the story is that Donahue had the Aghan evacuees pushed off the plane and left to the Taliban so he could bring home war trophies. Our own Jennifer van Laar broke this in an exclusive story headlined: EXCLUSIVE: Major general orders over 50 evacuees to leave Kabul on one of the final flights to make room for Taliban souvenirs.
In a series of articles written in the following days, Donahue is described as “uniquely qualified” for that moment and is generally portrayed as a humble, unassuming leader of his department.
Unfortunately, not everything is as it seems. In the final hours of the evacuation, according to the troops under his command and as documented by photographs and witness statements, Donahue ordered all passengers aboard a C-17 transport plane to disembark so he could load a souvenir onto the plane. This souvenir or “war trophy” was a disabled Toyota Hilux owned by the Taliban with a fully functional one Russian ZU-23 Bed-mounted anti-aircraft gun. As soon as the Hilux was loaded, the passengers were allowed back on the plane, but of course there wasn’t room for everyone. According to troops on the ground, at least 50 people and perhaps as many as 100 people were left behind in Kabul to make room for the Hilux.
Mullin was extremely critical of the conduct of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.
BACKGROUND:
The Biden administration’s Afghanistan “rescue” narrative is blowing their minds
The State Department is trying to steal credit for rescuing four Americans from Afghanistan
So it’s hardly out of character for him to comment on Donahue’s promotion, especially in an environment where the president-elect is making noises about court-martialing some of the officials responsible for the withdrawal.
BACKGROUND:
REPORT: Trump team targets military officers involved in withdrawal from Afghanistan
Trump reportedly has a radical accountability plan on Afghanistan, and the press is seeing red numbers
Hopefully this will remain more than just a blip on the radar and Donahue’s promotion will fail. How he was Since he was the driving force behind the renaming of Fort Bragg to “Fort Liberty,” it would be more than poetic justice if his upward trajectory ended right when Fort Bragg was given back its rightful name.
