I’ll have to re-watch Seven Days In May and reimagine a psycho president being in charge.
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Milley wasn’t under the impression that he could use the military to do his domestic bidding, as long as we’re talking about eroding civ control of the military.
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Art anticipated life. Who knew?
Well, then there’s really no point about making assumptions about norms then, is there?
Isn’t it about time we found out? That the public’s knowledge of just what Trump was thinking of doing gets higher than 0 percent? I for one have no interest in blindly taking the military at their word that they should defy the intentions of the President of the United States - not without at the very least knowing what those intentions were.
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Totally agree on ethical conduct re: McConnell and his merry band of assholes, but you’ll notice that McConnell broke zero written codes when he took his corrupt, bad faith actions on SC nominees. Not everything can be codified or ethics-proofed, but if there was a statute that said that federal nominees had to receive a vote by the senate within 90 days or be automatically installed on day 91, Garland would be a member of SCOTUS right now.
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Doesn’t matter. It’s not about them, it’s about who we want to be and what we expect of ourselves. Independents can see what their choices are. They can see what kind of people pols like DeSantis and Abbot are. You don’t win by telling them ‘both sides are just as questionable.’ And yes, there are still Republican voters out there who believe in honor and patriotism more than they believe in victory at all costs. They’re not often shown our side couched in terms that speak to them, and when they have been, it’s been people like Al Franken, who they could dismiss because to them, he’s a comedian, and so assumed willing to say whatever serves the applause of the crowd.
Milley is someone they would not be able to ignore.
It absolutely would.
Actually no, the complete opposite of a sane president and facist General.
I’m a little surprised TPM joined the tut-tutting on this; the rest of the journalist class … not so much. After 4+ years of clear, intentional assaults on pretty much every political norm by tRump™ and associates, Milley did not “erode” civilian control of military control as much as preserve what was left of it in the face of repeated assaults.
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As I recall, the first mention of this came from an excerpt from a soon-to-be released book. There was only the excerpt to reason from.
From there the “punditry” extrapolated stuff because clickbait.
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If this had been written around … say 1864,
General Grant ‘Eroded’ Civilian Control Of Military With March to the Sea
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That truth must be burned in to history.
And they let you when you’re famous.
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First of all, everyone opining on this story is acting with insufficient evidence. (Unless you were in the room.)
When I went through basic training, it was explained that we were expected to disobey any unlawful order. Of course, if a service member uses that as a defense of her conduct, she had better be damned sure of her ground.
One interpretation of Gen. Milley getting a pledge from his subordinates that any order from the President that would normally go through him would, in fact, go through him could be to allow the General to weigh in on the legality of that order.
(Am I not as entitled to my wild-ass interpretation as the next guy?)
In any event, I’m looking forward to learning the details of what went down. If we ever do.
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Exactly. But the problem is that the poor grunts in the silo with the launch keys are in no position to be damned sure of their ground if they are wondering if the lunatic President (or maybe they are thinking of him as the “second coming of Christ President”) is ordering them to launch their weapons just to change the subject from his electoral defeat.
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as of now
‘what if’ the civilian support (government) was lying garbage?
I surrender, please be merciful @godwit
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Reminder: every trump era scandal had someone taking damn notes or taping the conversation.
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Wow, that is a really commonsense solution and would prohibit another McConnell-like blockade. Interesting.
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Yes, it makes complete logical and moral sense. But someone here on TPM will tell us why it is nigh near impossible to do. Lots of things in our government (or any others I imagine) are like that.
@trnc
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We’re told the old Soviet was sure we were planning a preemptive nuclear attack on them under Reagan. Imagine now that the Chinese have an identical fear. Could not this affair have launched such an attack by the Chinese?
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It certainly was possible but at the time of the “Miley Incident”, only the Pentagon had a hot-line to China. Not sure if Biden has established one with President Xi Jinping yet.
Did not know this. Thanks.
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