The larger problem at hand is that no one elected Gen. Milley to anything. It is not the job of the military state, or the intelligence state (James Comey) to override the governing authority granted to the president of the United States. We the people make those choices. If we the people decide to elect a brash gameshow host with a short fuse and no governing experience, then that is the choice we make, yes, even should the republic fall. Unelected bureaucrats and generals holding secret meetings with hostile foreign nations are the things that lead to actual banana republics and military juntas, not mean tweets and yelling at journalists.
Even Trump antagonist and MSNBC regular Alexander Vindman admits as much and is calling for Milley’s immediate resignation. Vindman tweeted, ‘If this is true GEN Milley must resign. He usurped civilian authority, broke Chain of Command, and violated the sacrosanct principle of civilian control over the military. It’s an extremely dangerous precedent. You can’t simply walk away from that.’
Vindman is correct. The United States is ours to keep or lose. That decision is not up to Gen. Milley, no matter how much he squeals he is ‘needed on that wall’.
You have to wonder: if Milley was willing to overstep his authority in January, what’s stopping him from believing that an 80-year-old Joe Biden might be incapacitated to the point of not being able to make clear headed decisions regarding actions in, say, Afghanistan? Media pundits and Milley defenders aren’t looking at the long game. But they should. Milley does not become a patriot by suddenly aligning with the wild fantasies of #Resistance Twitter. If he’s willing to overstep his authority with imagined scenarios in the Trump era, how far would he be willing to go in the real world? How much authority was Milley granted on President Biden’s catastrophic Afghanistan withdrawal? How much say did Milley have in a drone strike that reportedly targeted and killed a US-aligned aide worker and seven children in Kabul?
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