The Weaponization of the Pentagon
There is a general perception in and outside the military that the top ranks of the services are increasingly politicized. High profile officers have used the great authority, influence, and power of the Pentagon in polarizing progressive advocacy roles from transgenderism to abortion—to the detriment of military efficacy and lethality. Much of unhappiness with the military arises partly from the woke hysteria, the institutional disdain for Donald Trump and his response to it, and the perceived rewards for those retired military lobbyists and corporate board members who reflect a new woke creed.
The nadir in politicization came in 2021 when it was revealed that Milley secretly contacted his Chinese communist counterpart during the height of the 2020 presidential election. Milley claimed he believed that his own commander-in-chief, Trump, was unstable. And so, after his layman’s diagnosis, he wished to assure the People’s Liberation Army’s ranking officer that he would tip the Chinese off about any thought of a preemptive American strike on China. Milley also ordered his own subordinate theater officers to report to him first should Trump contemplate any nuclear action against China.
Upon public disclosure of those facts, Milley should have been summarily fired. By law, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs is an advisory official only. The position enjoys no operational command.
Milley violated the chain of command by usurping theater authority that was not his. Nor can a military long exist, if its iconic leader freelances in contacting enemy counterparts without the knowledge of the commander-in-chief.
Can we imagine the outrage that would now ensue, if Milley should once again warn his Chinese counterpart that another president, Joe Biden, in the chairman’s own opinion, suffers bouts of cognitive debility and early onset senility, forcing Milley to take matters in his own hands? Yet such freelancing insubordination is now Milley’s legacy.
In fact, some in the retired U.S. military for over four years systematically violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice, sometimes to the extent of engaging in a sort of coup porn.
In a Washington Post op-ed, retired generals Paul Eaton, Antonio Taguba, and Steven Anderson melodramatically and without evidence warned the nation of a supposedly impending coup should their commander-in-chief Donald Trump be elected again in 2024.
In August 2020, two retired officers John Nagl and Paul Yingling, wrote an op-ed urging Milley to simply remove Trump from office should Milley himself feel such a move was necessary after a disputed election. That was a de facto call for a possible coup d’état. But it was not unique.
Earlier, civilian Rosa Brooks, a former Obama-era Pentagon legal official, published an inflammatory call to arms in Foreign Policy. She discussed three major possible avenues to remove newly inaugurated Donald Trump from the presidency. One of her alternatives was a military coup.
For the entire Trump presidency, retired four-star generals and admirals had routinely smeared their commander-in-chief as a veritable Nazi, a Mussolini-like figure, an abject liar, and comparable in his policies to the architects of the Nazi death camps. One retired admiral called for the removal of Trump “the sooner, the better” as if regularly scheduled elections were insufficient remedies.
Aside from clear violations of Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, these officers were oblivious that nearly half the country supported the president and his policies. And so, millions of people would logically conclude that the highest-ranking retired officers, and by extension the culture of the current military, had nothing but contempt for their own views and voting decisions. Alienating nearly half the country is not a wise strategy of military recruitment.
Nor is hypocrisy. The perceptions in the ranks have grown that applications of the law are asymmetrical and politically warped. Article 88, applicable to retired generals and admirals, prohibits military officers from using contemptuous words about top civilian elected and appointed officials. It says nothing about the spouses of said officials.
None of the retired officers who in the media libeled their commander-in-chief from 2017-2021 faced any consequences—reprimands, court martials, or sanctions from doing business with the Pentagon from their corporate billets. Yet one recently did.
The U.S. Army just fired retired consultant Lt. Gen. Gary Volesky from a contractual position with the Pentagon because he poked fun at First Lady Jill Biden. Note that Volesky did not suggest Jill or Joe Biden was a Nazi, a fascist, or liar —much less that her husband should be removed from office “the sooner, the better.” Retired General Volesky’s crime was mocking Jill Biden’s purported hypocrisy on the recent overturn of Roe v. Wade.
Unfortunately, the crisis in the U.S. military transcends even the Afghanistan misadventure, unsupported accusations against an entire demographic, the erosion of military familial loyalty, freelancing politicized officers, and asymmetrical applications of laws and codes.
Fairly or not, the perception among the public and our enemies is that the U.S. military has become a political entity with an agenda that transcends defending the U.S. and its interests.
Its perceived main agenda by half the country is progressive social justice, administered top-down from a cadre of elites who can implement controversial policies through the chain of command without the messy work of the Congress—to the delight of the Pentagon’s newfound sunshine friends on the woke Left.
Such military social engineers unfortunately appear to share contempt for a large group of Americans who voted for a president they despised. And this is a fact warmly welcomed by our worst enemies abroad.
https://amgreatness.com/2022/07/24/h...test-military/