The Washington Post published extremely serious allegations against Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley yesterday, although of course the paper tried to make the centerpiece of the story former President Donald Trump’s erratic behavior.
From WaPo:
Fearful of Donald Trump’s actions in his final weeks as president, the United States’ top military officer twice called his Chinese counterpart to assure him that the two nations would not go to war, a senior defense official said Tuesday after the conversations were described in excerpts from a forthcoming book.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley told Gen. Li Zuocheng of the People’s Liberation Army that the United States would not strike. One call took place on Oct. 30, 2020, four days before the election that defeated Trump. The second call was on Jan. 8, 2021, just two days after the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by supporters of the outgoing chief executive.
Milley went so far as to promise Li that he would warn his counterpart in the event of a U.S. attack, according to the book ‘Peril,’ written by Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa.
The story here, however, is not Trump, no matter how much the corrupt corporate media would have it be so. The story is that a military leader defied civilian control over the direction of America’s foreign policy, and did so through secret talks with our chief adversary on the global stage.
Under every president, we hear about “[name] derangement syndrome”; there was Bush Derangement Syndrome, and Obama Derangement Syndrome. But only Trump Derangement Syndrome seems to have led the ostensible upholders of “norms” and “democracy” to treat as no big deal actual violations of democracy’s most sacred norms in the service of thwarting Donald Trump.
Civilian control over the military is not something to be jettisoned when you disagree with the people’s choice. Generals playing politics at the highest levels of the military is a game as old as the country, but secretly speaking with America’s foreign enemies to defy the policy decisions of the elected leader of the United States crosses a line, a bright red one. With all the blabber about norms, here is one that truly matters.
The American people deserve to know the content of those phone calls. If this reporting is true – and it must be taken with a grain of salt given Bob Woodward’s track record – Gen. Milley must be fired and, depending on the content of the calls, may even be justly prosecuted.
Under the guise of “saving democracy from Trump” our media, intelligence services, government bureaucrats, and corporate overlords have kamikazed faith in every one of the institutions keeping America the stable democracy it has blessedly remained for over 200 years. Millions of Americans feel the system is so rigged that they despair of anyone in our ruling elite being held responsible for any action, no matter how obviously over the line.
Let us hope that, in the case of Gen. Milley and his alleged flaunting of bedrock principles not only of the American system, but any non-banana republic, those Americans are wrong.
