Don't kid yourself, world leaders knew firsthand how unfit he was when they tried to have a coherent conversation with him. Would love to hear their unfiltered analysis.
Vindman's piece in the Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/outl...fe52d8-17b1-11ec-a5e5-ceecb895922f_story.html Alexander Vindman: Milley had another choice — to resign Checking an unhinged Trump did not require circumventing the chain of command By Alexander S. Vindman Alexander S. Vindman, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, is a doctoral student at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and author of “Here, Right Matters.” He served on the National Security Council and as political-military affairs officer for Russia for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Today at 4:17 p.m. EDT Leaders must be held accountable for their actions if the rule of law is to prevail. For the military, accountability derives from civilian control over our armed forces. This is the governing principle of civil-military relations; it is central to our democracy and peaceful society. Gen. Mark A. Milley subverted that principle. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had justifiably deep concerns on multiple occasions regarding an unhinged and increasingly erratic President Donald Trump, according to new reporting by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa of The Washington Post in their book “Peril”; The Post’s Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker in their book “I Alone Can Fix It”; and Susan Glasser of the New Yorker. In those moments, Milley attempted to engage with White House and National Security Council staff to counsel the president to reverse course. This was appropriate action; it was similar to the way I reported the abuse of power that resulted in Trump’s first impeachment. Ultimately, when duty demanded, I went further — I publicly testified before Congress about a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which Trump encouraged Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden, his political rival. But now these reports, months after the danger has passed, show that when Milley failed to achieve results using normal channels, his next steps were far more controversial. Milley — fearing that the post-election crisis was Trump’s “Reichstag moment,” whereby the president would either use the military to prevent the peaceful transfer of power or push the United States into a war — expressed concerns to his military subordinates that Trump was dangerous. He made clear that any orders from Trump to employ nuclear forces must be routed through him. If Milley confirms this reporting in his testimony before Congress on Sept. 28, only two actions can restore the crucial balance of civil-military relations: Either Milley resigns, or President Biden relieves him of his duties as chairman of the Joint Chiefs. What were Milley’s options in the untenable situation he faced in the hours and days after Trump’s efforts to steal the election and instigate an insurrection to overturn Biden’s legitimate victory? There happens to be a recent and excellent precedent. In early 2019, retired general Jim Mattis resigned as secretary of defense in protest over Trump’s ill-considered decision to hastily and dangerously withdraw all forces from Syria and abandon our Kurdish allies. Mattis’s resignation resulted in an enormous backlash, compelling Trump to reverse his decision. Mattis put his convictions and U.S. national security interests ahead of his position. Imagine Milley doing the same on Jan. 7, the day after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol. How might that have restrained the president and affected the second impeachment trial that followed the insurrection? A resignation accompanied by a letter similar to Mattis’s would have shed light on the seriousness of the situation inside the White House. In addition, Milley could have publicly expressed his concerns and joined other senior leaders, including Cabinet officials, who stepped down after Jan. 6, which would have been a proactive move against further abuse of power. Instead, the reporting suggests, Milley blustered to subordinates, raised grave concerns with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and, sometime in the same period, sought to circumvent or subvert the chain of command. more
conclusion to Vindman's essay The Joint Chiefs of Staff consist of more than a half-dozen four-star military officers, each with several decades of honorable service and dedication to defending the U.S. Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. I am befuddled by the notion that only Milley was standing between a madman and Armageddon. That is the plot of a Hollywood blockbuster. That is not the way the U.S. military operates. Any one of the other chiefs of staff or the vice chairman would have stepped up and continued to serve as a guardrail. Milley’s resignation would have put people on alert and made it nearly impossible for Trump to use the military to extend his presidency. The vice chairman automatically would have served as the new chairman until the Senate was able to confirm a replacement. Milley did not resign in protest over the events that unfolded in the closing days of the Trump administration, the moment when such action would have been most meaningful to illuminate his concerns and when other generals were available to provide the necessary checks. Instead, the public learned of his fears only months later. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff did not act when it would have made a difference; that is consequential. Public servants have long protected citizens against abuses by self-serving political actors. They were the check on the Trump administration and testified to the president’s corruption. While institutional norms were harmed and good order eroded, the institutions themselves held. What Trump could not do in four years to subvert the proper functioning of our government, he could not easily have done in the waning days of his administration. The failure of the insurrection and the failure to overturn the election is a testament to that. It is very dangerous to believe that any one individual in a system is indispensable. Too many of our leaders believe that about themselves. Milley has been at the center of a firestorm on multiple occasions during his tenure; he may be the most controversial active-duty general since Douglas MacArthur, who was relieved of his duties after he subverted the chain of command and publicly clashed with President Harry Truman over U.S. foreign policy in Korea. Trump paraded Milley through Lafayette Square in front of the White House following the violent suppression of a peaceful protest over the murder of George Floyd; Milley later apologized for his poor judgment in participating as a prop for the president. The left has accused him of a slow response to the insurrection on Jan. 6, and the right has charged him with being insubordinate and leading a “woke” military. Both sides have accused him of undermining civilian control of the military. Supporters and detractors alike have come to see him as a political actor. Such a reputation harms an honorable institution that espouses apolitical values. Furthermore, it undermines the military’s credibility at a moment of real national security threats. In recent years, too many leaders have succumbed to situational ethics, and the public has looked the other way when people considered those leaders part of their faction. Doing the wrong thing, even for the right reasons, must have consequences. Many people in the Trump administration — including me — resigned or were fired exactly because they did the right things in the right way. Milley may have done the wrong thing for the right reasons. But the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff does not deserve greater consideration for doing the wrong thing — he deserves greater scrutiny. As my friend and former Pentagon official John Gans tweeted: “You can break norms for a greater good, but that often comes with a price. Paying it is the only way to ensure the norms survive for the next time.” If we want our institutions to be our guardrails rather than relying on a constant supply of individual saviors, we should hold our leaders accountable. Truman wrote in his 1956 memoir: “If there is one basic element in our Constitution, it is civilian control of the military. Policies are to be made by the elected political officials, not by generals or admirals.” That is why he relieved MacArthur of his duties. So far Biden has expressed his confidence in Milley, but the precedent here is important. Right matters only when everyone’s actions have consequences.
Great points ^ Really highlights the weaknesses in our democracy when you have a cult like following for a brain dead and corrupt narcissistic president. What's the right thing for these Patriots to do when faced with the domestic threats by those in power? Thank god they upheld thier oaths and put America first.
Lol repugs thinking it's treason to not let orange man become dictator..so desperate like openly celebrating taliban. Nice one weirdos
They dont want to hold dump accountable nor hold a hearing among peers to cease this endless power grab. Instead they b**** and moan about underlings not following orders as if it's not really the problem of an increasingly powerful and aggressive executive with turnkey dictator powers.
Gotta salute Vindman, despite his personal feelings about Trump, he makes a strong rebuttal to the “rally round the liberal party” nonsense mindset that may give Milley a pass ..
Reminds me of Comey situation (with lower stakes). It was AG Loretta Lynch who was supposed to have a direct hand over the Hillary investigation, but later recused herself because Slick Willy couldn't resist laying down his charms during an unscheduled meeting. That vacuum put Comey in a no-win situation where both sides were putting him under the microscope and dissecting his deficiencies. It just reeks of intrigue and innerworkings of dept. heads vs. the overall purview of the president. Here Defense Secretary Mark Esper was already worried about optics and ordered his policy office to begin backchannel comms with Chinese counterparts, but likely didn't inform Trump because he was suffering from a meltdown from bigly rigged voters who called him mean, fat, ugly and unloved. Post-regeneron related side effects that amplified mania created an "unsuitable theatre of operations" for this former vet, who had gone to hell and back in Iraq, to tell his Commander in Chief that he was straight up crazy. Lucky Mark then followed orders to eat ****. The bigger question is how whiny Con senators will play the Sept. 28th hearing. Deep State Treason vs. Biden's unfitness as a 4D Military Chess Player Split messaging no bueno for their simple partisans. Hazard to guess that the frequency mojoman's ugly cartoons will fortell the actual pitch and tone of what/how much they're "outraged".
The real story remains that our prior president's pre-existing feeble mindset significantly declined to such an alarming post-election point that our Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joints Chief of Staff believed he was a clear and present danger to the world at large.
Trump imply he should be executed for Treason. He's pissed about this latest reporting... The Patriot: How Mark Milley Held the Line - The Atlantic How General Mark Milley protected the Constitution from Donald Trump By Jeffrey Goldberg In normal times, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the principal military adviser to the president, is supposed to focus his attention on America’s national-security challenges, and on the readiness and lethality of its armed forces. But the first 16 months of Milley’s term, a period that ended when Joe Biden succeeded Donald Trump as president, were not normal, because Trump was exceptionally unfit to serve. “For more than 200 years, the assumption in this country was that we would have a stable person as president,” one of Milley’s mentors, the retired three-star general James Dubik, told me. That this assumption did not hold true during the Trump administration presented a “unique challenge” for Milley, Dubik said. Milley was careful to refrain from commenting publicly on Trump’s cognitive unfitness and moral derangement. In interviews, he would say that it is not the place of the nation’s flag officers to discuss the performance of the nation’s civilian leaders. But his views emerged in a number of books published after Trump left office, written by authors who had spoken with Milley, and many other civilian and military officials, on background. In The Divider, Peter Baker and Susan Glasser write that Milley believed that Trump was “shameful,” and “complicit” in the January 6 attack. They also reported that Milley feared that Trump’s “ ‘Hitler-like’ embrace of the big lie about the election would prompt the president to seek out a ‘Reichstag moment.’ ” These views of Trump align with those of many officials who served in his administration. Trump’s first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, considered Trump to be a “****ing moron.” John Kelly, the retired Marine general who served as Trump’s chief of staff in 2017 and 2018, has said that Trump is the “most flawed person” he’s ever met. James Mattis, who is also a retired Marine general and served as Trump’s first secretary of defense, has told friends and colleagues that the 45th president was “more dangerous than anyone could ever imagine.” It is widely known that Trump’s second secretary of defense, Mark Esper, believed that the president didn’t understand his own duties, much less the oath that officers swear to the Constitution, or military ethics, or the history of America. Twenty men have served as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs since the position was created after World War II. Until Milley, none had been forced to confront the possibility that a president would try to foment or provoke a coup in order to illegally remain in office. A plain reading of the record shows that in the chaotic period before and after the 2020 election, Milley did as much as, or more than, any other American to defend the constitutional order, to prevent the military from being deployed against the American people, and to forestall the eruption of wars with America’s nuclear-armed adversaries. Along the way, Milley deflected Trump’s exhortations to have the U.S. military ignore, and even on occasion commit, war crimes. Milley and other military officers deserve praise for protecting democracy, but their actions should also cause deep unease. In the American system, it is the voters, the courts, and Congress that are meant to serve as checks on a president’s behavior, not the generals. Civilians provide direction, funding, and oversight; the military then follows lawful orders. The difficulty of the task before Milley was captured most succinctly by Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster, the second of Trump’s four national security advisers. “As chairman, you swear to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, but what if the commander in chief is undermining the Constitution?” McMaster said to me. For the actions he took in the last months of the Trump presidency, Milley, whose four-year term as chairman, and 43-year career as an Army officer, will conclude at the end of September, has been condemned by elements of the far right. Kash Patel, whom Trump installed in a senior Pentagon role in the final days of his administration, refers to Milley as “the Kraken of the swamp.” Trump himself has accused Milley of treason. Sebastian Gorka, a former Trump White House official, has said that Milley deserves to be placed in “shackles and leg irons.” If a second Trump administration were to attempt this, however, the Trumpist faction would be opposed by the large group of ex-Trump-administration officials who believe that the former president continues to pose a unique threat to American democracy, and who believe that Milley is a hero for what he did to protect the country and the Constitution. “Mark Milley had to contain the impulses of people who wanted to use the United States military in very dangerous ways,” Kelly told me. “Mark had a very, very difficult reality to deal with in his first two years as chairman, and he served honorably and well. The president couldn’t fathom people who served their nation honorably.” Kelly, along with other former administration officials, has argued that Trump has a contemptuous view of the military, and that this contempt made it extraordinarily difficult to explain to Trump such concepts as honor, sacrifice, and duty. Robert Gates, who served as secretary of defense under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, told me that no Joint Chiefs chairman has ever been tested in the manner Milley was. “General Milley has done an extraordinary job under the most extraordinary of circumstances,” Gates said. “I’ve worked for eight presidents, and not even Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon in their angriest moments would have considered doing or saying some of the things that were said between the election and January 6.” ...
