Army Gen. Mark A. Milley delivers remarks during an Armed Forces Welcome Ceremony as Army Gen. Mark A. Milley becomes the 20th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at Joint Base Myer – Henderson Hall, Va., Sept. 30, 2019. Milley takes the reigns from Marine Corps Gen. Joe Dunford, the 19th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. (DoD Photo by U.S. Army Sgt. James K. McCann)
The elite in the military-industrial complex think they know what’s best for you and me. In The American Conservative, Peter Van Buren analyzes the actions of America’s recently retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley. Milley’s actions during the Trump administration are debatably unconstitutional, and yet, as Van Buren explains, they are venerated by the left. Van Buren writes:
Milley, while speaking out of one side of his mouth about the sanctity of the chain of command and the president’s role as commander-in-chief, goes on to call Trump a “nuclear monarch” and bemoan the fact that Trump alone could order the use of nuclear weapons as if that was something new. Milley then says without batting an eyelash that during the final days of the Trump administration he took the extraordinary step of having key military officers swear an oath to him, promising to involve Milley in any decisions “weird or unusual.”
Milley also called together senior military officials in charge of the National Military Command Center on January 8 and “instructed them not to take orders from anyone unless he was involved.” Milley says his fear (without evidence, of course) was that Trump would initiate a nuclear war with Iran after losing the 2020 presidential election. Milley was out to break the chain of command to save it, which you see was A-O.K. because breaking all the rules if you possess the judgment of General Milley is itself A-O.K.
His other brush with insubordination came in the form of two phone calls to General Li Zuocheng, leader of China’s People’s Liberation Army, in the days surrounding January 6, assuring the PLA that the U.S. had no plans to launch a first strike against China. Milley was not ordered to do this, but just did it because he personally felt Trump might launch the nukes as a bizzaro-world way to stay in office after the “insurrection” of January 6 failed. Oh yeah, that insurrection—Milley, an alleged student of history—claims was America’s “Reichstag moment.” He called Trump’s statements “The gospel of the Führer.”
Kori Schake, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, said that the revelations Milley covertly acted to counter his commander-in-chief are “bad for the military as an institution…It encourages people to do what Americans are already doing, which is viewing the military as they view the Supreme Court: apolitical when they agree with them, partisan when they don’t.”
As if to prove the point, an anonymous (of course) senior military official said that Milley “did what he had to do to fulfill his oath to the Constitution and to protect this country.” Yet, Trump called it treason. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida demanded Milley resign, as did Christopher Miller, who served above Milley as acting defense secretary in the final months of Trump’s presidency. Milley ignored his boss’s admonition to quit. So much for the chain of command.
Action Line: What’s best for you? You certainly know the answer to those questions better than unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. Click here to subscribe to my free monthly Survive & Thrive letter.
E.J. Smith - Your Survival Guy
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