General Mark Milley — not stupid — but maybe obsequious and easily led by the nose?

26 June 2021

In assessing the worth (or not) of Tucker Carlson's slam at . . .

. . . the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, let's ignore General Mark Milley's favorable stance regarding critical race theory.

Instead, let us question his ability to read serious strategic situations with accuracy. Presumably, we do not want erroneous political stooges telling us what the US military should learn.

Consider, in that evaluation, General and Chairman Milley's comment about the Capitol Riot of 06 January 2021:

"What is it that caused thousands of people to assault this building and try to overturn the Constitution of the United States of America?" Milley said of the Jan. 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of supporters of former President Donald Trump.

"What caused that? I want to find that out. I want to maintain an open mind here, and I do want to analyze it."

Obsequiousness (to the Democratic Party) . . .

. . . is arguably evident in the General's slanted description of the January event. No historically sensible strategist, tactician or even mildly competent military leader would have called the Capitol Riot an "assault" — at least not in the way that the term is used in military contexts.

The Riot was a mob trespass, with assertive pushing in places, at best.

The fact that the General implicitly changed the military meaning of "assault" to one of "mob trespass" indicates the political intent to escalate the severity of the mob's considerably lesser actions. This semantic deviousness hardly credits Milley's intellectual integrity.

Nor would anyone with insight describe the Trump mob's trespass on the building as having been intended to overturn the Constitution.

Misguided and illegal though the Riot was, it was clearly intended as a demonstration against what its participants saw as the Democratic Party's attempt to unseat a fair-minded implementation of the founding document's guidance with regard to running the 2020 election.

There is a big difference between wanting to trash the Constitution, as Milley asserts was the case, and wanting to uphold it against alleged vote thieves.

Milley arguably dishonors those who participated in the Capitol Trespass by painting them with a treasonous brush that they certainly do not deserve.

What strikes me, in all this, is that General Milley is blatantly wrong with regard to the scale and significance of — and strategic motivation for — the Capitol Riot.

Do these errors (of his) matter?

Consider the significance of Milley's inflation of very little in Some Big Thing

Is General Milley's quasi-hysterical level of milquetoast-ness — meaning seeing an existential threat where there is little or none (in the Capitol Riot) — something that we want in a top-ranking militarist?

Do we want the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff supporting the Deep State's effort to label close of half of America as domestic violent extremists?

Worse, implicitly (given his apparent approval of the Biden Administration's evaluation of the severity of the Capitol Riot) do we want him favoring putting the alleged Trump extremists in jail for crimes that fall far below the looting, assaults and arsons that BLM and Antifa protesters massively indulged — and skated completely free of punishment for — just a year ago?

The stark disproportion between treatments of these two groups is indefensible by any reasonable standard of objectively applied Justice. Yet here comes General Milley, asserting that one group — and not the other — tried to unseat America from its pinnacle of 'Constitutional-ness' (or something).

It is precisely this towering magnitude of toadying, political stooge-ness that makes General Milley — and dozens of others like him — so harmful to the Actual National Interest.

The moral? — General Milley's surprising inability to properly analyze a comparatively simple event . . .

. . . such as the Capitol Riot — without overreacting in his formulation of its significance— makes him unsuited to determine what sort of 'theories' to be teaching American military.

I would be impressed if a 'real' General, say like George C. Marshall, stood in critical race theory's support. But of course, there are no leaders of similar spine and mental stature left.

Instead, we are afflicted with self-aggrandizing, stoogey-pomposities like General Milley and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.

This is not a strategically sound place for America to be.

I predict that, if America's plentiful supply of neocons does manage to start a war with someone materially capable, we are going to badly lose that conflict. Again.

I suppose that some folks will sleep well — knowing that our troops died with books about critical race theory tucked under their indoctrinated, 'whites'-hating arms.

PeteFree.com

General Mark Milley — not stupid — but maybe obsequious and easily led by the nose?