Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Gen. Mark Milley went out like he came in: as a flatter, as a fawner, as a man blown about by the winds of opinion and without any steady mooring.
Milley, you may recall, was initially appointed to the position by then-President Donald Trump. I remind you merely because, ever since roughly the middle of 2020, the general has been wringing his hands of any involvement with the former president — and, for all intents and purposes, sounds as if he were a surrogate for President Joe Biden.
It was that way Friday, too, when Milley seemingly implied during his departing remarks that Trump was a “wannabe dictator.”
The comment came during what CNN called “an impassioned and at times furious speech.”
“It was a bitter and pointed swipe that appeared unmistakably targeted at former President Donald Trump, who has in recent days accused Milley of ‘treason’ and suggested that he should be put to death for his conduct surrounding Trump’s bid in 2021 to remain in office despite losing the presidential election,” CNN noted.
This is, being CNN, a shadow of the truth; Trump said that Milley’s backchannel communications with China in the aftermath of the events of Jan. 6, 2021, done without the then-president’s knowledge, constituted treason and that the act was “so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH.”
You may note the “in times gone by” statement, which acknowledges that in no way would Milley ever be put to death, nor did he express an intention to. But, like a game of media telephone, all that context got lost as got whispered around in liberal media circles, and within a week it became that Trump wanted Milley executed.
Milley, meanwhile, left far less wiggle room in terms of interpretation of his remarks: “We don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator,” he said. “We take an oath to the Constitution and we take an oath to the idea that is America – and we’re willing to die to protect it.”
JUST IN: Woke Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley appears to slam former President Donald Trump in his retirement speech, calling Trump a “wannabe dictator.”
Milley, who once arguably committed treason by promising China he would alert them of a US attack, also accused Trump of… pic.twitter.com/Rl83P12TQn
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) September 29, 2023
This may have been rousing stuff in the CNN newsroom, but the whole affair came across a little more like a Jeb Bush “please clap” moment if you were there:
Milley had a Jeb! moment today and then he stepped down as the top US general.
Fitting end to his career. pic.twitter.com/Y1tQNF5dT9
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) September 29, 2023
Is Milley violating good principle by attacking Trump? He claims he doesn’t take an oath to “dictators.” He also doesn’t take an oath to the Chinese Communist Party. Yet, lest we not forget, in these backchannel calls — again, conducted without Trump’s knowledge while Trump was still president — Milley promised General Li Zuocheng of the People’s Liberation Army that “I’ll call you” if there was going to be any attack by the United States on China.
Not that there was going to be an attack, mind you, but he promised our geopolitical adversary that he’d inform them of it without our president knowing. It cannot be emphasized enough that, at the very least, Milley ought to have resigned his post if he felt this call was important enough, because he’d made it clear his first duty was not to the United States or its Constitution, but instead to his concept of contributing to geopolitical stability during a turbulent period.
If he wanted to be his own profile in courage, fine — but then at least have the courage to admit that, by the ultimate betrayal of the chain of command, he had disqualified himself for further service in his role.
We’re talking about his retirement now, so naturally he didn’t take that course. Instead, he became the face of President Joe Biden’s wokeness-oriented, socially engineered makeover of the U.S. Armed Forces. Perhaps no moment so perfectly crystallized what he meant to the Biden-era military than this nugget of testimony before Congress regarding “white rage” back in June of 2021:
“I want to understand white rage, and I’m white,” Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said while testifying before Congress, pushing back on accusations from a Republican congressman that the military was becoming too “woke.” https://t.co/ix4dKxrC2d pic.twitter.com/HkFVB7d6Ur
— The New York Times (@nytimes) June 24, 2021
Right.
No word in his closing remarks on how close he got to understanding all that “white rage” before he stepped down, but maybe we’ll hear about it in the inevitable memoir he’ll put out further trashing Trump and anyone in his orbit. You know the type of memoir: It’ll inevitably be titled something like “Tough Decisions” or “Durable Leadership.” It’ll generate a few high-profile interviews on “60 Minutes” and “Meet the Press,” no doubt.
As for its reception among the buying public, however, I’m going to guess it’ll be a bit more like the tepid response Milley received from the crowd during his final remarks as chair of the Joint Chiefs.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
