Gen. Patrick Donahoe retired this week amid controversy and fanfare that he wasn't looking for. The Army officer was the Commanding General of the Maneuver Center of Excellence at Fort Benning, Georgia when he stirred up a hornet's nest of social media users and got into a spat with Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson.
The controversy felt a bit contrived though. Amongst the many afflictions facing the Army from substance abuse to soldier suicides to a lack of leadership accountability and an ongoing sex assault policy debacle, Donahoe's sin was pointing out on social media that female service members are valued members of the Army.
Donahoe had maintained a pretty steady social media presence leading up to the spat with Carlson back in 2021. During one of Carlson's attacks on the military, he accused leaders of feminizing military service. Donahoe shot back on Twitter that Carlson's attack could not be more wrong.
Apparently the slight was enough to delay Donahoe's expected retirement while a year-long investigation was conducted by the Army. "Woke General rebuked for Twitter trolling Tucker Carlson," the New York Post headline at the time read.
Finally permitted to retire, Donahoe spoke with the Army Times as a civilian to tell the rest of the story. He was investigated because his tweets broke rules found in the Army's vaguely worded social media policy. Behind the scenes, much of the Inspector General's investigation was really regarding a Colonel under Donahoe's command who felt slighted by him personally and was unhappy with how the General was reorganizing the Maneuver Center of Excellence.
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While the IG report states that no evidence was found of any so-called toxic leadership in his command, the report pouts that the General violated social media policy and made the Army look bad in a public setting. Below is the Tweet in question. Readers can decide for themselves how controversial it is, or ever needed to be made in the first place.
Indeed, while Donahoe was permitted to retire at his rank as a two-star General, one has to wonder how the Army can exist on social media at all if it feels triggered and shamed by the most benign messages. While Donahoe was being investigated for supporting female service members, the Secretary of the Army was herself tweeting, "I expect @USArmy leaders to stand up for women—and all Soldiers—who are unduly attacked or disrespected."
Speaking with the Army Times, Donahoe admonished the military bureaucracy's tendency to investigate everything under the sun. "I think that stems from how we operated in Iraq and Afghanistan, where every interaction outside the wire had to be substantiated or documented for the record," he said.
In retrospect, many will likely see the entire incident as a fake controversy centered around social media melodrama however it also begs the question, what is the right way for active duty service members to engage on social media? This is a new way for military leaders to interact not just with their troops, but also with the public at large. But without a doubt their a huge difference in the perception of a Private trolling people online and a two-star General mixing it up with Fox News hosts.
Whatever the future holds, we shouldn't expect the Army to get a handle on its own social media policy for another 35 years.
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