General Milley.
General Milley had no direct evidence of a coup plot. But in the days after Mr. Trump’s electoral defeat, as the president filled top military and intelligence posts with people the general considered loyal mediocrities, General Milley got nervous. “They may try,” but they would not succeed with any kind of plot, he told his aides, according to the book. “You can’t do this without the military,” he went on. “You can’t do this without the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. We’re the guys with the guns.”
While some might greet such comments with relief, General Milley’s musings should give us pause. Americans have not usually looked to the military for help in regulating their civilian politics. And there is something grandiose about General Milley’s conception of his place in government. He told aides that a “retired military buddy” had called him on election night to say, “You represent the stability of this republic.” If there was not a coup underway, then General Milley’s comments may be cause more for worry than for relief.
Right. A coup.
Why don’t we outfit him in a dress and prance him around like a runway model?
Next up, Major General Patrick Donahoe.
On July 22, Major General Patrick Donahoe, the Commanding General of Fort Benning, reported from his official Twitter account that he was seeing a “surge” in ICU visits among young soldiers due to Covid. He reported that he would mandate the vaccine if he had the power to do so.
I replied, pointing out that the DOD has lost a total of 26 out of over 2 million personnel in the last year and a half to the virus. In the fourth quarter of 2020, there was a 25 percent surge in suicides across all services. In those three months alone, 26 additional servicemembers took their lives compared to the prior year.
The military’s response to the Coronavirus is almost certainly to blame for the rise.
[ … ]
He also tweeted at the university where I am a student, Hillsdale College, and told them to “come get your boy” for questioning the military’s quarantine and lockdown policies. General Donahoe, apparently, thinks the private sector is just like the military, where criticism can be stopped, and careers ended, with a mere snap of the fingers. As the thread attracted more attention, one commenter asked the General “how many wars he’d won.” The General responded by accusing the questioner of “shilling for Putin.” When I asked if Putin was the reason America had lost in Afghanistan, the General blocked me.
My interaction with the General serves as a microcosm of the American military’s cultural rot. Here we have a two-star General who spends his days on social media hyping a vaccine for an illness that poses minimal risk to his troops. When pressed on why America can’t win wars and why he embraces policies that treat healthy people like biohazards, his first response is to accuse his critics of treachery and then block them from view.
This is what $693 billion a year buys you: unbridled arrogance from the leaders of a military that can’t win against third world tribesmen armed with small arms and homemade explosives. A significant portion of our military leaders, like General Donahoe, are totally detached from reality. They face no consequences for losing wars or losing troops to preventable suicides. Many of them don’t really command anything at all. They are so ensconced in layers of bureaucrats, staff, operations and logistics shops, briefs, intelligence reports, public affairs officials, and aides that there is usually no danger of the public uncovering their true character, lack of leadership, or empty careers.
Task & Purpose had a fawning piece on him a while back.
One of the reasons Donahoe — who commissioned in 1989 through the ROTC program at Villanova University, and most recently served as the Deputy Commanding General of Operations for the 10th Mountain Division out of Fort Drum, New York — says he engages in Twitter is because it exposes him to viewpoints he otherwise could miss out on. Because of his rank, he’s insulated from the views, complaints, and opinions from lower ranking soldiers. But with Twitter, he’s able to get unfiltered perspectives, straight from the source.
“What I enjoy following [@LadyLovesTaft] is she’s got a perspective that I don’t have,” Donahoe said at AUSA. “I’ve never been a female lieutenant in the United States Army, I’ve never had that experience … those really are valuable insights for us. What is it that a female lieutenant in uniform in a combat arms unit faces on a daily basis? I got nothing, other than what’s being reported through 42 filters. This is unfiltered, unvarnished.
How embarrassing for Task & Purpose. And how embarrassing for the U.S. military. And how embarrassing for America.
But then, these two ladies aren’t the exception in today’s military leadership. They’re the rule.
How sad and pathetic.
