Milley and Trump

Conservatives are attacking General Mark Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, for three things authors Bob Woodward and Robert Costa claim he did in the last months of Trump’s presidency. I am no fan of Milley and  doubt that anyone foolish enough to babble in public about “white rage” has the brains and judgment to be up to the job he has.  However, I think the criticism is wrong.

The book mentions a conversation Milley had with his counterpart in China a few days before the election where he told the Chinese general that things were not getting out of hand, that the American government was stable and functioning normally. (He apparently had similar conversations at about the same time with officers in the armed forces of a number of other countries as well.) According to Milley, the call was authorized by the secretary of defense and made with over a dozen people present. I see nothing wrong in telling enemies and friends something like that to caution the first and reassure the second.

People have paid more attention to a second conversation on January 8^th with the same Chinese general. According to Woodward and Costa, Milley  told him that the United States was  not planning a sneak attack on China before Trump left office and promised to warn the Chinese if that changed. I see nothing wrong with telling the Chinese America was not planning to attack them.  Trump was behaving erratically enough that people might have wondered if he would do something that crazy.  The promise of a warning to the Chinese if we planned to attack is strange and unlikely enough to require quite a bit more than the authors say so to be taken seriously.  Also it has been reported in the news tonight that the general denies the story of offering the warning.

Perhaps the thing that infuriates conservatives the most is Milley’s meeting with other general and flag officers after January 6^th  to obtain their pledge not to obey an order from Trump to launch an unprovoked nuclear strike against a foreign country. They ignore the context of the time. From election day to December 14^th Trump’s behavior was dangerous, foolish, delusional, dishonest, reprehensible, and harmful to the country, but still within legal limits. After December 14^th he was acting as an enemy of the republic. On January 6^th he attempted a coup d’état by ordering his vice president to overturn the results of the election. On the same day he conducted a demagogic rally against the results of the election and sent a mob of gullible supporters to the Capitol to try to stop the final certification of his defeat.  It does not seem at all unreasonable to me that a prudent officer would want to make sure that the man was not able to do something far worse to try to stay in power.

I think General Milley did the country a service and should be commended for it.