Our Woke National Icons
Milley, Fauci, and Biden are soulless men who reveal the bankruptcy of our ruling class.
By Victor Davis Hanson
October 3, 2021
As we watch events unfold in 2021, obvious questions about the fitness of our national leaders present themselves. Who are these new woke national icons and how did they come to lord it over the rest of us? Here are some observations by way of preliminary explanation.
The StrategistChairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley conceded to Congress last week that he has been an anonymous source to controversial “inside” progressive muckrakers detailing the supposed dysfunctions of the prior administration. He strangely characterizes such anonymous, self-serving, behind-the-scenes leaking as some sort of public-service transparency. Evidently, it is now a part of the chairman’s duties to serve the media.
Among the many “background” quotes that Milley provided to meet his journalistic obligations were his various comparisons of his commander-in-chief to Nazis—a violation of Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. He reportedly offered further allegations to journalists that news outlets like the Epoch Times and Newsmax were “terrorist” organizations. When pressed on such details the usually punctilious Milley shrugs, in the fashion of James Comey’s under-oath testimonies, that he does “not recall” such specifics. Such is the honor of the nation’s most visible military officer.
Although by statute Milley lacks operational command, he admittedly has intervened in the operational protocols concerning the use of nuclear weapons. At one point, after a conversation with, and on the apparent prompting of, HouseSpeaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), he redirected normal decision-making channels concerning the potential use of nuclear weapons through his own person. That is forbidden by law—despite what his beltway apologists have pleaded.
More interestingly, though, Milley took it upon himself to call up the major military leaders of Communist China, and to apprise them that (in his opinion) the United States was in crisis (“messy”). No worries, though: the freelancing Milley assured the People’s Liberation Army heads that they should not worry about any preemptive attack or aggression, since Milley himself apparently was in de facto charge of such strategic decision-making and would warn them in advance if his country seemed dangerously aggressive. Thus far in the imbroglio, the Pentagon and the retired military apparently seem comfortable with such a radically new role for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
Milley ignored that Trump was the first president in memory who did not initiate a major new military engagement. And when pressed under oath, Milley himself later confessed that he did not think Trump was likely to start a war against anyone—which raises the question of why he even made such a peremptory call to our adversaries? Much of what Milley has testified to under oath before Congress is flatly contradicted by transcripts of his phone call with Pelosi, is in utter conflict with statements made by President Biden and the State Department and cannot be reconciled with his own frequent prior disclosures to journalists.
In sum, America’s highest-ranking honorific military officer has violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice, has violated the law concerning his own advisory role as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and has either serially not told the truth, or assumes that Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, several journalists (and various earlier incarnations of himself) are all not telling the truth.
Milley has set a new precedent for the leadership of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: it is now permissible to be overtly political, to leak confidential conversations to progressive book-writing journalists, to freelance and warn likely enemies if and when the U.S. military might take action against them, and to pick and choose when to exercise (illegally) operational command, and when (legally) to refrain, or at least to remain “only” an advisor, when culpability for a disaster, like the one in Afghanistan, is determined.
Historians will later ponder why this officer has not resigned and what his continued tenure says about the status of the current U.S. military.
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