Longtime readers will be well aware of the fact that the Echo has focused not infrequently on the role of Irish Americans in defending the United States, and this from the Revolutionary War years right up to the present day.
We are rightly proud of this role. Irish Americans have been in the front lines through time and around the world.
Not surprisingly, that long line of service over the years, decades and centuries, has resulted in Americans of Irish descent rising to the top ranks in all branches of the military.
So it was not surprising that this page noticed something untoward in recent months, and that is the forced resignations of leading figures in the military hierarchy with Irish names.
The most recent resignation was that of Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, an Iraq war veteran, who submitted his resignation to President Trump after what reports described as repeated clashes with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Driscoll, according to the Washington Post, had served as Army secretary since February 2025, overseeing efforts to make the service more modern and nimble and taking a leading role in the Trump administration’s efforts to defend against the proliferation of cheap, deadly drones.
Added the report: "The departure follows Hegseth’s firing of numerous senior Army officers over the last year without disclosing his reasoning."
Driscoll’s departure came in the wake of Navy Secretary John Phelan, who was forced out of his post in April.
And there's the case of General Christopher Donahue, who was the army's top general in Europe and the last man to leave Afghanistan in that chaotic withdrawal a few years back. He also commanded Delta Force.
“He’s singularly our best warfighter at every level,” one retired senior Army officer said of Donahue.
As per the Washington Post in a report after Donahue's ouster: "The general’s expected departure makes him the latest apparent casualty in Hegseth’s purge of senior military leaders whom the secretary has deemed insufficiently loyal to the Trump administration or branded 'woke' for their past defense of diversity initiatives. Hegseth has fired or otherwise removed dozens of generals and admirals, often without specifying a reason."
Many other top military commanders without Irish names have made their exits too of course. And concern over what all this means for military efficiency and national security transcends a specific focus on commanders with obvious Irish heritage.
And as for national security? CNN is apparently a threat to it, so who knows what the U.S. is facing in the broader world where friends and allies are becoming shier by the minute while foes are being encouraged by all the chaos on the banks of the Potomac.
It can be pretty much concluded that the view from a range of foreign capitals of the DOGE-like purges at the Pentagon is one of puzzlement ranging to uncertainty and outright concern.
We have been losing excellent people for no good reason. This is not good for the military. This is not good for the nation's defense.
