America's talent for elevating douchebag generals to power — reveals more than just a problematic military

© 2021 Peter Free

 

08 June 2021

 

 

This would be funny — if it were not so pathetically inept

 

Andrew Bacevich, former Army colonel and now professor emeritus, wrote the following about the state of American military leadership:

 

 

At a recent Pentagon press conference, General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, provided a succinct update on America’s longest ever war.

 

“With respect to Afghanistan,” he told reporters, “our primary military objective at this point is a change of mission to conduct a safe, responsible, coordinated, and deliberate retrograde of U.S. forces from Afghanistan in good order.”

 

The operation was unfolding “in a synchronized fashion, shoulder to shoulder with our allies.”

 

Indeed, Milley reported, “we are now in the final phase of that strategic retrograde.”

 

© 2021 Andrew J. Bacevich, The Military Whispers Past the Afghan War Graveyard, The American Conservative (08 June 2021)

 

 

Bacevich went on to unfavorably compare General Milley's semantic evasiveness with former generals Stilwell, Grant and Eisenhower. All of whom had a preference for the kind of honest straightforwardness that is arguably necessary to the competent exercise of wise leadership.

 

 

Let's take a closer look at General Milley's absurd language

 

I will indulge a physiologically based, medical metaphor because it fits so perfectly.

 

 

"Deliberate retrograde of US forces"

 

Is General Milley inadvertently referring to our nation's seemingly infinite capacity for 'retrograde ejaculation'?

 

Meaning sending sperm cells in the only direction that will not effectuate completion of their assigned mission?

 

One cannot be more self and institution-revealing than Milley has just been.

 

 

"Now in the final phase of that strategic retrogade"

 

Our direction-lacking 'sperms' are — evidently happily and under our full and intended control — diverting themselves into the National Pee Bladder.

 

Evidently (according to Milley), making things go Strategically Backward from their previously intended purpose:

 

 

to be peed unceremoniously

 

expensively and bleedingly

 

onto the ground

 

without having achieved any positive result at all

 

 

. . . has somehow become a "strategically" planned blessing.

 

Surely, we can wave the national flag with enthusiastic Pride of Accomplishment.

 

 

Evolution and God should also be pleased . . .

 

. . . with this diverted spurting.

 

At least someone down there (from their on-high perspective) is wielding the Military Erection — the one that supposedly impregnates the National Interest — while thinking about "strategy".

 

Thus, ancient military strategist Sun Tzu would be pleased. And Sun, no doubt, would have used exactly the same Milley Language to describe this massively "retrograde" phallic accomplishment.

 

The ancient Chinese were trained to speak effectively — Princeton University told Milley — who, in turn, shows us via his flowery, pee-full sample.

 

 

The moral? — This is the United States in 2021 . . .

 

A nation that is all about concealing language and absolutely nothing else.

 

If we think that we can keep up with China's on-the-ground accomplishments, for even a day, we are mistaken.

 

Genuinely capable people generally put capacity and accomplishment before the language that floridly describes them:

 

 

Not Milley.

 

Not the US military.

 

And certainly not American leadership.

 

 

Our Ship of State is rudderless in seas of any kind. Even in the tempests that we deliberately stir up.

 

But we do, Missy, talk a good line. Be proud.

 

And with that, I will "retrograde" myself out of here.