{ "archive_path": "archive/1788271214.72195", "base_url": "www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/08/driscoll-hegseth-military-resignation/688479", "basename": "", "bookmarked_date": "2026-09-01 14:00", "canonical": { "archive_org_path": "https://web.archive.org/web/www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/08/driscoll-hegseth-military-resignation/688479", "dom_path": "output.html", "favicon_path": "favicon.ico", "git_path": "git/", "google_favicon_path": "https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=www.theatlantic.com", "headers_path": "headers.json", "htmltotext_path": "htmltotext.txt", "index_path": "index.html", "media_path": "media/", "mercury_path": "mercury/content.html", "pdf_path": "output.pdf", "readability_path": "readability/content.html", "screenshot_path": "screenshot.png", "singlefile_path": "singlefile.html", "warc_path": "warc/", "wget_path": "www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/08/driscoll-hegseth-military-resignation/688479/index.html" }, "domain": "www.theatlantic.com", "extension": "", "hash": "1WHW0XERWCSX2VFY02EQ", "history": { "archive_org": [], "dom": [], "favicon": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--max-time", "120", "--output", "favicon.ico", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=www.theatlantic.com" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-09-01T16:20:31.599743+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "favicon.ico", "pwd": "/data/archive/1788271214.72195", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-01T16:20:31.201325+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "git": [], "headers": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--head", "--max-time", "120", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/08/driscoll-hegseth-military-resignation/688479/" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-09-01T16:20:31.763042+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "headers.json", "pwd": "/data/archive/1788271214.72195", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-01T16:20:31.607283+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "htmltotext": [], "media": [], "mercury": [ { "cmd": [ "/app/node_modules/@postlight/parser/cli.js", "https://www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/08/driscoll-hegseth-military-resignation/688479/" ], "cmd_version": "1.0.0", "end_ts": "2026-09-01T16:20:43.295678+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "mercury", "pwd": "/data/archive/1788271214.72195", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-01T16:20:40.150878+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "pdf": [], "readability": [ { "cmd": [ "/app/node_modules/readability-extractor/readability-extractor", "/tmp/tmpo2yqr979", "https://www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/08/driscoll-hegseth-military-resignation/688479/" ], "cmd_version": "0.0.11", "end_ts": "2026-09-01T16:20:40.120268+00:00", "index_texts": [ "During a White House meeting last week, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll brought his concerns about the future of the Army under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directly to President Trump\u2014a sign of how far tensions between the two Pentagon leaders had escalated, and of the dysfunction inside the building, four people familiar with the conversation told us.Trump was surprised when Driscoll told him how many generals and other top officers had been fired, pushed out, or passed over for promotion under Hegseth, one of the people said. Driscoll argued that the Army could not transform itself the way it needs to, because of the departure of so many leaders, this person said, adding that Trump expressed concern about the deep cuts to the Army\u2019s senior leadership. Driscoll informed the president of his intention to resign\u2014and by today, Driscoll was on his way out.Hegseth\u2019s purge of the military has been so dramatic that with Driscoll gone, the military\u2019s largest service is left without a top civilian leader, a Senate-confirmed top general, a confirmed Army general in charge of operations, or a confirmed commander of Army troops in Europe. Because of all the firings across the service over the past year, the Army, with more than 450,000 active-duty soldiers positioned across the globe, has fewer generals than at any point in recent history. Driscoll\u2019s personal appeal to Trump just days before his exit was the most direct articulation of high-level concerns among Pentagon leaders about the strains facing the force\u2014including Hegseth\u2019s intervention in Army personnel decisions and the mounting demands of the Iran war.The White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said that Driscoll had been \u201chighly effective\u201d in improving soldier readiness and advancing other administration priorities. \u201cThe United States Army is more powerful than ever thanks to his work alongside the Commander-in-Chief and Secretary of War,\u201d Kelly wrote in a statement, using the administration\u2019s preferred term for the Department of Defense.Driscoll\u2019s spokesperson declined to comment, and Driscoll did not respond to a call seeking comment. But a person familiar with his resignation told us that Driscoll had \u201cbrought up concerns with the administration surrounding Army transformation and readiness and Hegseth\u2019s blocking those efforts specifically by firing the Generals who were responsible.\u201d Hegseth did not have an immediate response to Driscoll\u2019s departure.Read: The military Pete Hegseth wantsSince his arrival at the Pentagon early last year, Hegseth\u2014a former Fox News host who appealed to Trump loyalists by deriding a \u201cwoke\u201d military and advocating for leniency for troops charged with war crimes\u2014has sought to reshape the Army. He has placed like-minded generals in positions of influence, intervened to stymie the promotions of lower ranking-officers, and gutted diversity initiatives. The result was an Army depleted of leaders, and an Army secretary and a Pentagon chief at constant odds. Hegseth has ended dozens of Army careers, all without any clear explanation. He now has driven out the secretary of the Army.Driscoll\u2019s departure puts the Pentagon even more firmly under the control of Hegseth and his MAGA agenda. Driscoll is a confidant of Vice President Vance, a relationship that gave him access to the West Wing, and at times Driscoll served as a counterweight to Hegseth\u2019s impulses, but only up to a point. Some current and former defense officials told us they believe Driscoll\u2019s enmity toward Hegseth actually had the unintended consequence of broadening the purge of the uniformed ranks. And yet Driscoll\u2019s departure, which had been expected for months, and the prospect that he will be replaced by someone more politically aligned with Hegseth are already raising fears inside the Army. \u201cWhat happens then? Generational damage,\u201d a defense official told us.Driscoll arrived at the Pentagon in February 2025, a third-generation Army soldier who shared several things in common with Hegseth, his new boss. Like Hegseth, Driscoll joined the military in the most muscular years of Washington\u2019s post-9/11 wars. Both men served in Iraq in a company-grade role. (Hegseth, a National Guardsman, also deployed to Afghanistan.) Both returned with sharp criticisms of America\u2019s overseas adventures and the military\u2019s hidebound ways. Both attended Ivy League schools: Hegseth, Princeton and Harvard; Driscoll, Yale Law, where he befriended the fellow veteran Vance. Both Driscoll and Hegseth have made unsuccessful runs for political office. Both have also eyed a return to politics. As Army secretary, Driscoll frequently reminded people that he had a direct line to the vice president, people familiar with the matter said, and told others that he had ambition to someday run for president himself\u2014an ambition that Hegseth is also said to harbor.But the two men differed starkly in temperament and style. Hegseth, who required an unprecedented tie-breaking Senate-confirmation vote from Vance after failing to win any Democratic support, is one of Trump\u2019s most reliable MAGA warriors. He has publicly boasted about firing \u201cwoke\u201d generals, dared military dissenters to quit, and demonized the mainstream media. Driscoll also supported administration policies but has done so in a more genial way that appealed to many lawmakers more than Hegseth\u2019s combative approach before Congress. And unlike Navy Secretary Hung Cao, who has echoed Hegseth\u2019s scornful and partisan tone on social media, Driscoll has steered clear of endorsing Hegseth\u2019s most controversial actions or most of his culture-war priorities. Unlike Hegseth, Driscoll is friendly with the press, cultivated ties with lawmakers of both parties, and courted technology leaders as he promoted the Army\u2019s sprint to transform how it wages war. That served him well in the administration, earning him additional responsibilities as director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives and later as an unofficial mediator for the war in Ukraine. None of that sat well with Hegseth.Army personnel appointments were a particular point of friction. Hegseth has not hesitated to push aside or promote officers as he sees fit, in many cases in ways that have irked others in the Pentagon. Driscoll advocated for General Randy George, the Army chief of staff whose name appeared on a list circulated before Trump\u2019s return to office of senior officers who should be fired due to perceived transgressions against the MAGA agenda. Although Driscoll may have bought George time, Hegseth ultimately fired the general in April. Chris Donahue, the four-star general who headed U.S. Army Europe and Africa, followed several months later.The Army has been without a top commander since George\u2019s firing. General Christopher LaNeve, who was picked by Hegseth as the No. 2 officer in the Army, has been acting in that role, often going straight to Hegseth for decisions, bypassing Driscoll, according to defense officials. Hegseth is expected to nominate LaNeve to lead the Army, but Capitol Hill is already signaling that LaNeve would struggle to be confirmed, because of many lawmakers\u2019 antipathy to Hegseth. \u201cWe are not going to reward Hegseth for what he did to the Army,\u201d one congressional staffer told us.Read: Americans deserve answers from HegsethThe Army has long prided itself on representing the diversity of the country, but under Hegseth, minorities and women have been pushed out or barred from promotion. The military has long sought to be apolitical, but under Hegseth, troops are measured not by combat experience but by their perceived loyalty to the administration. Among the generals fired have been some of the most experienced and decorated in the service. Each departure marks the loss of decades of investment in that soldier and raises questions about how future troops can rise through the ranks.Although Army Undersecretary Michael Obadal is expected to take over in the near term, many Pentagon officials fear that the administration will nominate the Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell, another Army veteran, to replace Driscoll. Parnell, who previously made a failed bid for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, shares Hegseth\u2019s pugilistic spirit and interest in culture and personnel issues. Like Hegseth, Parnell has no experience managing a large organization and would face a contentious confirmation hearing. A new Army secretary who is more politically driven\u2014and likely less experienced and less well connected than Driscoll\u2014could keep the service embroiled in cultural fights rather than focused on the long-term planning that Driscoll and others believe it desperately needs." ], "output": "readability", "pwd": "/data/archive/1788271214.72195", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-01T16:20:38.017752+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "screenshot": [], "singlefile": [], "title": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--max-time", "120", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/08/driscoll-hegseth-military-resignation/688479/" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-09-01T16:20:38.010303+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "Dan Driscoll\u2019s Parting Shot - The Atlantic", "pwd": "/data/archive/1788271214.72195", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-01T16:20:37.979716+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "wget": [ { "cmd": [ "wget", "--no-verbose", "--adjust-extension", "--convert-links", "--force-directories", "--backup-converted", "--span-hosts", "--no-parent", "-e", "robots=off", "--timeout=120", "--restrict-file-names=windows", "--warc-file=/data/archive/1788271214.72195/warc/1788279631", "--page-requisites", "--user-agent=Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) wget/GNU Wget 1.21.3", "--compression=auto", "https://www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/08/driscoll-hegseth-military-resignation/688479/" ], "cmd_version": "GNU Wget 1.21.3", "end_ts": "2026-09-01T16:20:37.969609+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/08/driscoll-hegseth-military-resignation/688479/index.html", "pwd": "/data/archive/1788271214.72195", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-01T16:20:31.769041+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ] }, "icons": null, "is_archived": true, "is_static": false, "latest": { "archive_org": null, "dom": null, "favicon": "favicon.ico", "git": null, "media": null, "pdf": null, "screenshot": null, "singlefile": null, "title": "Dan Driscoll\u2019s Parting Shot - The Atlantic", "warc": null, "wget": "www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/08/driscoll-hegseth-military-resignation/688479/index.html" }, "link_dir": "/data/archive/1788271214.72195", "newest_archive_date": "2026-09-01T16:20:40.150878+00:00", "num_failures": 0, "num_outputs": 6, "oldest_archive_date": "2026-09-01T16:20:31.201325+00:00", "path": "/national-security/2026/08/driscoll-hegseth-military-resignation/688479/", "schema": "Link", "scheme": "https", "snapshot_id": "fc826f79-5477-4116-9331-67edd8167042", "sources": [ "/data/sources/1788271214-import.txt" ], "tags": ",pool,war-wiki,drudge", "tags_str": "pool,war-wiki,drudge", "timestamp": "1788271214.72195", "title": "Dan Driscoll\u2019s Parting Shot - The Atlantic", "updated": "2026-09-01T16:20:31.201189+00:00", "updated_date": "2026-09-01 16:20", "url": "https://www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/08/driscoll-hegseth-military-resignation/688479/" }