August 11, 2023

General Mark Milley, who is Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has forgotten that he was a soldier. Now, he’s only a leftist bureaucrat in uniform. Milley’s basic mode of operation is ingratiating himself to a political class that values the servile.

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What makes Milley dangerous is his willingness to lie unhesitatingly, particularly in public. He is the highest-ranking military officer in the nation, and this matters. Technically the Secretary of Defense is a civilian post even though the Secretary may have a military background. The President and Congress provide civilian oversight but can only do so when presented with truthful, accurate information.

In June 2021, Tucker Carlson made some very strong remarks about Milley’s attempts to make teaching Critical Race Theory (CRT) in the military seem benign. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Milley compared CRT to reading Marx and Mao, as if it’s just part of educating the troops about different ideologies. However, our military is not urging the adoption of Marxism. (At least not yet!) What Milley is doing is cooperating with the Democrat left to indoctrinate the troops in blatant racism.

Image: Mark Milley (edited). YouTube screen grab.

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If CRT flourishes, it will permanently impair race relations and ultimately lead to civil instability. The theory argues as a baseline that unequal outcomes through the proof of statistical disparity in education, employment, and incarceration rates are entirely based on structural racism. The theory does not consider non-white success in Asian and East Asian communities (e.g., people from China, Vietnam, India, etc.) It completely ignores individual merit and hard work. In fact, CRT views merit, which made most hard-working newcomers to our country successful, practically irrelevant, even undesirable.

In the same Tucker Carlson show referenced above, Carlson described Milley as a “pig” and “stupid,” adding that he got his position as the highest ranking and most senior military officer in the United States because “he knows who to suck up to and he’s more than happy to do it…he didn’t get that job because he’s brilliant or because he’s brave or because the people who know him respect him. He is not and they definitely don’t.”

For more than two centuries, our nation’s military has succeeded in keeping us safe and free. Like every other institution in America’s history, it has been imperfect (mostly because of racist Democrat policies). Nonetheless, since WWII, it has been a place for people coming from the bottom of the ladder to shine based solely on their ability and willingness to work hard. (Ask Colonel Allen West, a hugely respected black officer.)

Our military is a companion to free market capitalism. It offers opportunity but no guarantees of outcome. Introducing race into the institution to obtain preferred outcomes cancels out three-quarters of a century of progress.

General Milley proved his deadly untrustworthiness with conflicting statements around the Afghanistan withdrawal that left 13 American servicemen dead and abandoned thousands of others, including American citizens and tens of thousands of allies. The August 2021 withdrawal was a complete disaster.

Afterward, in September, Milley testified under oath, along with General Kenneth McKenzie, that they had advised President Biden against his withdrawal plan and warned of the impending collapse of the Afghan government. Nevertheless, approximately four weeks before the withdrawal, Milley had publicly assured the nation that Afghan forces were up to the task of repelling the Taliban invaders.