Saturday, 23 November 2024

Mark Milley Fears He Will Face a Court-Martial When Trump Enters White House


Mark Milley Fears He Will Face a Court-Martial When Trump Enters White House Then-President Donald J. Trump listens to then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley during a briefing at the White House in response to the COVID-19 on April 1, 2020.
Commentary
Then-President Donald J. Trump listens to then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley during a briefing at the White House in response to the COVID-19 on April 1, 2020. (Jabin Botsford - The Washington Post / Getty Images)

Retired Gen. Mark Milley is afraid of retribution.

The former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a four-star Army general made no bones about his feelings about former President Donald Trump in the lead-up to the presidential election.

And he was equally clear about his own fears.

In a book “War” by The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward, Milley told Woodward he could be recalled to duty in the event of a Trump win to face a court-martial “for disloyalty,” the Post reported in October.

Now, what could make him think that?

Maybe because he told Woodward in a previous book, according to a Post report from September 2021, that he’d engaged in secret talks with his counterpart in the Chinese military — People’s Liberation Army Gen. Li Zuocheng — both immediately before and after the 2020 election.

“In the book’s account, Milley went so far as to pledge he would alert his counterpart in the event of a U.S. attack, stressing the rapport they’d established through a backchannel,” the Post reported.

Trump’s reaction was explosive.

In a statement, he called Milley a “dumba**” and said if the story is true “then I assume he would be tried for TREASON in that he would have been dealing with his Chinese counterpart behind the President’s back and telling China that he would be giving them notification ‘of an attack.’”

WARNING: The following post contains language that may offend some readers. 

The book also recounted how, in the final months of the Trump administration, Milley had set up an informal chain of command, essentially subverting the Constitution and its civilian control over the military.

In Woodward’s latest book, according to the Post, Milley also called Trump “fascist to the core” and “the most dangerous person to this country.”

Should Mark Milley be court-martialed?

All that proves is that Milley’s political judgment is as bad as the military record he established during the Biden administration, when he was in charge of the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.

This is the same military mind that assured American lawmakers in February 2022 that the Russian military could invade and defeat Ukraine “in 72 hours.”

That meant he thought it would be over in three days. Careful readers might note that almost three years later, the Russian military has definitely not conquered Ukraine.

Yet he fears a court-martial “for disloyalty”? Maybe incompetence, ineptitude and colossally poor judgment might be easier to prove. (Trump has made his feelings about Milley’s professional abilities abundantly clear.)

Related:
Retired Gen. Mark Milley Reaping Massive Reward Despite Disastrous Afghan Withdrawal and Rampant Politicization of the Military

Still, the odds of the general being recalled to duty to face a court-martial are low. Reporting on Woodward’s book, The Guardian reported that is has “only been done a few times in American history and for very serious crimes.”

But there’s a very real retribution Milley should be worried about, and that’s the judgment of history.

Overseeing the most humiliating American moment on the world stage since the fall of Saigon — a moment that inspired the United States’ worst enemies — will leave a stain on his memory.

And in bringing Trump back to office in the Nov. 5 election, American voters have rendered their judgment about the present.

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Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro desk editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He's been with Liftable Media since 2015.
Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He's been with Liftable Media since 2015. Largely a product of Catholic schools, who discovered Ayn Rand in college, Joe is a lifelong newspaperman who learned enough about the trade to be skeptical of every word ever written. He was also lucky enough to have a job that didn't need a printing press to do it.
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