A Republican senator has blocked the promotion of a general who oversaw the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, according to a source familiar with the matter, as President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to go after the officials involved in the withdrawal.
Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma blocked the promotion of Lt. Gen. Chris Donahue to four-star general as the commander of US Army Europe-Africa. Donahue was the last US soldier on the ground in Afghanistan at the end of the withdrawal, according to the Pentagon.
The night-vision picture of Donahue boarding a cargo flight out of the Kabul airport become a symbolic image of the end of a 20-year war and a chaotic withdrawal that saw the deaths of 13 US troops in a suicide bombing.
Trump said he will demand the resignation of “every single senior official who touched the Afghanistan calamity.” Vice President-elect JD Vance also promised to go after those involved in the withdrawal, saying, “the people who screwed this up are going to suffer some consequences.”
Donahue serves as the commander of the 18th Airborne Corps at Fort Liberty in North Carolina. At the time of the Afghanistan withdrawal, he was a major general commanding the 82nd Airborne Division.
“We are aware that there is a hold on Lt. Gen. Donahue,” Sabrina Singh, deputy Pentagon press secretary, said at a press briefing Monday. Singh said she is not aware of any other holds on promotions related to the Afghanistan withdrawal.