Gen. Mark Milley was and is Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He is our senior military officer, but he has no direct command responsibilities. These are entrusted to our theater commanders, for example Central Command that includes the Middle East. These theater commanders report to the Secretary of Defense and the President, not to the Joint Chiefs Chairman.
To repeat: The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is the senior advisor to SecDef and the President. He has no direct command responsibility. He is most emphatically NOT the Oberbefehlshaber der Wehrmacht, the supreme commander of the armed forces. In our system, the President is commander-in-chief of the armed forces. I thought Gen. Milley knew that.
Nevertheless, Gen. Milley made repeated comparisons of President Trump to Hitler. He claimed Trump was “preaching Hitler’s gospel.” He compared Trump supporters to “Brown Shirts,” the paramilitary SA stormtroopers Hitler used as street thugs. He said he feared that Trump would not leave office if Biden won the election.
At the very least, this is gross insubordination. At most it is mutiny, spreading disloyalty to civilian authority and planning a military coup. The penalty for mutiny is imprisonment or death. The penalty for Milley is being retained in his high office.
Trump was the best friend Israel ever had in the Oval Office. He moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, Israel’s capital. He supported Israel against terrorism. His daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren are Jews. To call this man is a Nazi is to claim that Nazis were pro-Semitic and that the Holocaust never happened.
My uncle died in the Holocaust. Someday I might forgive Gen. Milley for being a political hack and a fool, but I will never forgive him for trivializing the Holocaust. And I will never forgive him for suggesting the subversion of civilian control of our military. If he couldn’t stand Trump, he should have resigned. Sitting there glaring at him and trying to undermine his administration was unforgivable.