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Opinion: Gen. Milley betrayed the United States

Ben Weingarten Federalist Senior Contributor; Claremont Institute Fellow
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General Mark Milley may be defending his phone calls with his Chinese counterpart during the final weeks of Donald Trump’s presidency, but that doesn’t excuse what he did. As we recently learned in a new book, General Milley called Chinese General Li Zuocheng not once, but twice in the final days of Donald Trump’s presidency. Milley, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told members of the Senate Armed Services committee that his goal at the time was easing tensions with Beijing and not “to usurp authority.” Regardless, his actions are inexcusable and require serious consequences.

If the alleged comments in a new book are true, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Woke General Mark Milley arguably betrayed the United States of America. 

If the non-denial of his comments by a spokesperson indicates he delivered them, it would seem that General Milley not only was unashamed of that betrayal, but thinks he’ll be rewarded for it.

And the lack of outrage from every corner of Washington D.C. save for a senator here or there demonstrates he may well be right.

If so, we’ve crossed a new rubicon in the transition of America from a constitutional republic rooted in the consent of the governed, and which demands civilian control over the military, to a tyrannical, post-constitutional Deep State, and that should deeply trouble more than everyone, whether you’re a Democrat or Republican, Trump hater or Trump lover.

The Washington Post’s reporting on a forthcoming book from Bob Woodward and Robert Costa titled Peril claims that Milley conducted two phone calls with his Chinese counterpart during the last two months of the Trump presidency — reportedly unbeknownst to President Trump, and according to a credible source, other senior administration officials as well.

In one call, he went behind the president’s back to say this:

General Li, I want to assure you that the government is stable and everything is going to be okay We are not going to attack or conduct any kinetic operations against you.”

And then he went further. “General Li, you and I have known each other for now five years. If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise.”

Milley, also questioning the president’s mental acuity, also reportedly called in senior officers for a review of the nuclear launch procedures and asked for them to pledge an “oath,” as he termed it, to run any initiation of the nuclear code by him.

It seems he may have been in cahoots with, again, not the president of the United States, but Speaker Nancy Pelosi, on this point, who wrote in a letter at the time that she had spoken with Milley about taking “available precautions for preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike.”

So just a few immediate questions here:

  • Who elected Gen. Milley to the position of subverter of the commander in chief?
  •  Who authorized him to threaten to give actionable intelligence of the most critical kind—that dealing with America initiating an attack on our worst foreign adversary—to that foreign adversary? And one by the way, that he refused to call an enemy in the past.
  • And who was General MiIley to ask for an “oath”— as the book explains it—that any initiation of nuclear weapons launch be run by him? The president is the sole person who calls that shot.
  • Last but not least, what other conversations was Gen. Milley having?

There were reports that he feared that President Trump would also strike Iran. So was he back-channeling that he’d tip off the mullocracy in the event of an incoming assault there too?

And who else was back-channeling without the president’s knowledge?

Heck, Gen. Milley even lost Alexander Vinman, the so-called whistleblower in Trump impeachment over Ukraine over a phone call far less disturbing than this one, obviously.

In any other period in history, this would all be pretty much inconceivable —giving aid and comfort to our enemy, a general free-lancing and back-channeling policies like these, and doing it all because of his not-so-humble opinion about the president’s mental state.

But this is just one example in a whole slew of them that we’ve seen over the last five years of unaccountable, unelected members of the bureaucracy going outside their chain of command to undermine a president simply because they thought they knew better—and in many instances because they felt that the president’s agenda threatened their own privilege, power, and prestige.

If Gen. Milley—and anyone else involved with this, since the statement from Milley’s spokesperson indicates that the Department of Defense and the “interagency” were in on these calls—does not pay a massive price for what he and they did, that goes way beyond just firing, we will no longer be America in effect.

There will be nothing to deter the worst abuses of power; the gravest violations of our constitutional order.

It will have proven that there is not a dual standard justice system – a double standard justice system – there is no justice, only punishment for deplorable dissenters.

It will have shown that we are a nation purely of men, not of law.

A nation where might makes right.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:

For our ruling class, everything was justified in trying to bring down Trump and anyone who dared to support him. No norm was too sacred, no institution too hallowed, no law too sacrosanct. They have done irrevocable damage to the country to try and eliminate the greatest threat to their authority they’ve ever faced.

They are everything they claimed Trump was and worse.

And they have made their message clear: They believe they know what is right for the public, and they have not only a right, but a responsibility, to make us submit to their rule to impose their designs on you.

We are witnessing the complete perversion of the American system, and it needs to be screamed from the rooftops.

And that this White House seems to be standing by and cheering it on, saying that President Biden, quote, “has complete confidence in his [Milley’s] leadership, his patriotism, and his fidelity to our Constitution,” indicates our commander in chief is complicit in perverting that system too.

And he ought to pay with his job as well.

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