Trump Orders Assassination of CJCS Gen Milley
Trump Orders Assassination of CJCS Gen Milley
The kill order is part of a bigger plan
Washington DC 23 SEP 2023
The Frog Has Boiled
When ————— a twice impeached single-term president becomes the leader of a global terrorist movement; declares the United States “the greatest threat to Western civilization” and demands violent “regime change” in Washington DC; attempts a coup d'état; ordered the execution of his own vice president; steals nuclear secrets in addition to war plans to attack America; is found by a federal judge to be a rapist; proclaimed on national tv to female interviewers he wanted to have sex with his daughter1; is close friend to scores of pedophiles, even wishing one well in the biggest case of its kind this century; surrenders to arrest in 4 different jurisdictions for a tsunami of crimes; continues a history of attacking judges including issuing a threat to Federal Judge Tanya S. Chutkan “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!”; after being warned not to, continues to obstructs justice and engaged in witness tampering; orders his movement to call for civil war against the authority of the United States; inculcates a climate of violence based on executions of all opponents; demands “the deranged sick puppet” prosecutor be “put out to rest”2; orders his puppets in Congress to impeach the sitting President on grounds yet to be specified and shut down the government as a distraction and to provide propaganda semblance of equivalence to his own crimes; outlines his plans for dictatorship should he retake office, including suspending the constitution, creating a police state and pardoning all who engage in crimes to return him to power including violent paramilitaries who stormed congress, ; and yesterday orders the assassination of America’s top military officer for “treason” (direct quoted above), because the officer was one of a very few who stood in the way of the coup d'état; —————— and everyone just shrugs ———— thats when you know the frog has boiled.
The normalization of ‘American carnage’ has been accomplished. None of this is an accident. It is a carefully orchestrated comprehensive political and paramilitary plan to destabilized the United States in order for extremists to take political control of the country with or without the will of the people and/or the peaceful transfer of power.3 That plan is on a collision course with the US constitution and accelerating in a race to keep the alleged criminal in chief out of prison by putting him in the Oval office.4
The order to kill General Milley is not random. It’s part of a war plan. The Trump Terror Network (TTN), in conjunction with foreign adversaries is using the techniques of маскировка (“maskirovka”) or ‘masked warfare’ in a struggle for legitimacy and influence over the American population. Their purpose is to erode America’s influence, cohesion, and national will in order to coerce, disrupt, or overthrow constitutional government.
General Milley has become a lightning rod for the TTN because he had the temerity to resist the dictator’s attempted coup d'état.5 Milley knew exactly what he was facing. Prior to Jan 6 Milley told aides “this is a Reichstag moment”. Trump’s squealing that ‘his’ election was stolen was “the gospel of the Führer” in preparation for a coup.6 In a new article by Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic, “THE PATRIOT: How General Mark Milley protected the Constitution from Donald Trump” the Chairman was asked to consider what would happen should Trump retake power. “He’ll start throwing people in jail” Milley observed “and I’d be on the top of the list”.
The following day, Trump one-uped his old chairman, and ordered his execution: “Milley’s treason is so egregious the punishment should be death”.7
General Milley joins an esteemed list of leaders whom Trump fears and thus desires that they be put to death:
At the highest echelon, the Kill List includes:
Vice President Mike Pence
Prosecutors leading cases against Trump, especially Jack Smith
Federal Judge, Tanya S. Chutkan, and now,
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley
So far, no one has been killed. An assassination is inevitable at some point given the endless exhortations to execute opponents from across the TTN and the creation of a general climate of political violence. All it takes is just one Cesar Sayoc. It is incredible to think that had VP Pence swung from the gallows on Jan 6, support for Trump might have increased. Much like his support has skyrocketed with each of the 91 indictments of his criminal conduct.
America is in an abnormal historical moment where “the greatest danger is not realizing what the greatest danger is”.8
Attacking Institutions
The core proposition of authoritarianism is the rule of the dictator is vitally necessary because traditional institutions have failed, placing the people in mortal danger. Despite the TTN’s best efforts to destroy “the Administrative state” (aka the constitution and all legally authorized activities of the three branches of government known collectively as ‘governance’) from within, American institutions may have faltered in places, but they have not failed. The exceptionally narrow survival from Trump’s attempted coup d'état is proof. Consequently, the TTN’s highest priority strategy continues to focus on an endless series of attacks on institutions from multiple vectors by the putative dictator, his henchmen, party machine, and propaganda apparatus, to manufacture a perception of crisis and failure. At a minimum, they seek to sow doubt about the efficacy of the existing order. At its apogee, the goal is the creation of a deep, mortal fear.9 This is manufactured by ceaseless narratives of ‘total chaos’ and ‘disorder’. The confection of “American carnage”10 (in this case) is then presented as proof of the failure of the system to protect “the innocent” from “the enemies”.11 Opposition to this “policy”12 does not constitute a disagreement among equals subject to peaceful negotiation and resolution.13 Any and all opposition is an evil that must be mortally extinguished.14 The lesson is that only the dictator can restore order: “I alone can fix it”.
The Hierarchy of American Ideals and Institutions
The Declaration of Independence
The Constitution
The Bill of Rights
The concept of separate but equal branches of government
The concept of checks and balances15
The concept that all elements of the government are subject to the rule of law
Individual institutions within the three branches of government that historically have been held in high regard
The Supreme Court
The Department of Justice
The US Military
The Intelligence Community
The electoral system16
Confidence in institutions is plummeting
Many of these institutions have come under direct assault by the TTN. Trump declared he would overturn the constitution. Additionally, his crimes sprees all violate his oath to the constitution, its precepts, as well as common, and statutory, laws. Against norms of appointing new justices, the Supreme Court was stacked with political apparatchik justices that lied when they said they would honor precedent. Accordingly confidence in the Court sunk “to historical low” before taking into account the breathtaking corruption of Justice’s Clarance and Alito. Trump has maintained a constant assault on the Intelligence Community (IC), reaching the apex of insult when, standing shoulder to shoulder with Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, he declared his full faith an allegiance to the Russian dictator against the US IC in Helsinki.
Finally, there is the ludicrous case of American election integrity. US elections have always been well run with negligible fraud discovered - measured in less than a few hundred individual cases.17 Prior to 2016, there was no hysteria about the conduct of US elections. In fact, there was no concern at all. So concern had to be manufactured from whole cloth. Cue the attacks! For just one example, Trump alleged Georgia had 5000 false votes cast. The actual number was 2. GA was just one part of a systematic attack by the TTN on elections around the country. While the statistical reality in each case was the same as those found in GA, facts had no baring on the power of TTN propaganda. Most polling shows 70% of republicans and 40% of the population in general believe the election was stolen.
In fact, TTN attacks on US institutions have borne fruit across the board. Confidence in institutions is plummeting.
The Pentagon is Under Attack from the Trump Terror Network
When it attacks the Pentagon, the TTN has an advantage bin Laden did not. The Pentagon cannot fight back. It is stuck in what CWII likes to call “the partisanism trap”. Let's be clear - attacking a sitting administration and its policies is 100% fair game. It is what we expect politicians and a free press to do. Attacking the military as a proxy for a political opponent is totally unacceptable. Because the military cannot counter attack a political assault. To do so would be partisan.
The TTN uses the partisanism trap as a shield behind which to launch attacks they know the Pentagon cannot answer. There is a powerful circular logic behind which the TTN cowers: Partisan attacks on the military make any response from the military partisan - which the TTN can then point to as evidence of partisanship in the military. The result is the military sits in the solitude of self-censorship for fear of falling into the partisanism trap.
During the Cold War, both political parties agreed on the necessity that “politics stop at the water’s edge”. The resulting bipartisanship in foreign and defense policy denied America’s enemies attack vectors they previously exploited to create divisions in American society. The TTN purposefully abandoned all of America’s foreign policy settings to facilitate attacks on their political opponents regardless of the cost in national unity. Quite clearly, national unity is not their thing. If America’s enemies joined in attacks on the TTN’s domestic political opponents, then all the better!
“Russia, if you’re listening….?” They were.
This strategy was more accidental than hierarchical at first, but the coincidence of interests worked out well for all of America’s enemies. Now there is a deep symbiotic relationship between the TTN and Russia, China, North Korea and others. Together, they are trying to create a Disunited States of America. If America loses, then the TTN wins - along with their international collaborators.
America is winning a major war and the TTN hates it because it is on the other side
The TTN is ramping up attacks on the US military to make it appear weak and divided. They are doing this because they know full well the exact opposite is the truth. As the Chairman said in the new article
Here’s what your military’s doing: "there are 5,000 sorties a day, including combat patrols protecting the U.S.A. and our interests around the world. At least 60 to 100 Navy warships are patrolling the seven seas, keeping the world free for ocean transport. We have 250,000 troops overseas, in 140 countries, defending the rules-based international order. We’ve got kids training constantly. This military is trained, well equipped, well led, and focused on readiness. Our readiness statuses are at the highest levels they’ve been in 20 years.
More significantly, for the first time in decades - the US military is winning a major war - together with our allies in Europe and Asia.
Ask yourself, who would benefit from distracting and dividing Americans while we and our partners are winning one war (Ukraine) and deterring another (Taiwan)?
You don't have to be Otto von Bismarck to work it out.
The "friendship without limits Axis” seek regional conquest within their spheres of influence (Ukraine/Taiwan) and to undermine the coalition of democratic states led by America. They have an interested in creating divisions in and between the US and Europe to weaken our resolve to resist their aggression.
маскировка
Russia and China cannot fight us on a battlefield because they will lose.18 So they engage in маскировка (“maskirovka”) which translates loosely as masked warfare.19 These are the dark arts practiced in the shadows. Clandestine capabilities used by special forces and intelligence operations to secure political objectives short of the threshold of armed combat. It is a battle of competing narratives. A struggle for legitimacy and influence over the population in order to erode an adversary’s power, influence, cohesion, and national will. маскировка can be deployed directly by SOF forces. More typically, it is deployed indirectly by, with or through, (witting or unwitting) target-nation agents, proxies, insiders, up to an entire insurgency movement, to coerce, disrupt, or overthrow a government.20 From the Leader to the foot soldiers, the TTN includes all of these actors.
In this case, the target is the US government and the agents, proxies, and insiders, are the TTN, supported by external powers, primarily Russia and China.
This short video is produced by the 4th Psychological Operations Group (Airborne) (or simply the 4th PSYOP Group), a unit within US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM).21 It is intended to explain how the US wields influence operations overseas. It also happens to be an excellent snapshot of маскировка as it is used by the TTN and its allies against the United States.
The Trump Terror Network’s маскировка
The TTN’s маскировка strategy can be seen everywhere once one knows what to look for. Seen from this perspective, Trump’s latest attack on Gen Milley is nothing new. It is just one of the more visible political assaults mounted by the TTN on a revered institution. Back in June 2021, a TTN thought leader said of General Milley - a combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan with degrees from Princeton and Columbia University- “He’s not just a pig, he’s stupid”. This was part of a relentless pro-Kremlin campaign that aimed to undermine US support for Ukraine.
When he was fired, Russian state media knew they lost their key agent of influence. In response, they also very publicly lost their minds:
Russian state propagandists openly admit Tucker Carlson was vital to sowing internal divisions in the US
'War on woke' (WOW) - Manufacturing A Fake Culture War to Obscure the Real War in Europe and A Deterred War in Asia
The 'war on woke' (WOW) is a key plank of the TTN маскировка strategy. It is pure culture war distraction and nonsense pedaled by adversaries who have an interest in stirring social divisions. They have been using agitprop like this for generations.22 However, this is the first time that Americans (TTN) have knowingly enabled political warfare attacks on our own people.23
The War on Woke is a fascinating conceit crated and used by ethno-nationalists to give the impression they are in a battle over which ethnic identity is more deserving of the full rights of citizenship. Ethno-nationalists believe in the superiority of their ethnicity (whatever it maybe) over all others. They are the “true” or “real” citizens of the nation not those “other” ethnic groups. Ethno-nationalists believe anyone who does not identify with their ethnicity is lesser to them. At the extreme, ethno-supremacists are taught to view “the other” as enemies and even animals or vermin who contaminate the nation and must be exterminated.
There are one or two problems with this.
First, American exceptionalism is based on allegiance to the idea of America. In a word, the idea of America is “equality”. This is exceptional because all other countries in the world express allegiance to a ruler or other cultural lodestone - not to the idea of equality. For example, the British beseech God to save the King and make him “Long to reign over us”.
The idea of America
The idea of America is expressed in the declaration of independence
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
and that
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed
Those ideas are codified in the US Constitution which is a set of foundational laws that make the idea of America real. In other words, that outline how ‘equality’ works in the real world inside the territorial boundaries of US jurisdiction.
In America, equality is supreme. No other factor of life like ethnicity, creed, political views, or orientation of any kind, is supreme to the idea of equality.
Second, it follows that there is a direct conflict between the ideas of equality and supremacy. Consequently, any supremacy other than the supremacy of equality is against the idea of America. It is against the constitution and it is against the law. PERIOD.
What does Woke mean?
During, but certainly not limited to, the Trump Administration, a series of civil rights crises followed a long and growing list of unarmed black people being killed by police. Trump inflamed the existing trend by his dog-whistle racists rhetoric. These pressures culminated in riots after the gratuitous execution of George Floyd on live television on 25 May, 2020.
Protest on social media used the hashtag “Black Lives Matter”.24 The phrase “Black Lives Matter” was used by the black community to remind everyone else, and especially the police, that their treatment at the hands of authorities did not feel like their lives mattered to anyone at all. They were asking the general community for some awareness of their plight.
The idea of being “woke” emerged around the same time. According to the Associated Press, “wokeness” meant being sensitive to “issues of racial and social justice.”25 Some people used it in the sense of a “wake up call” to the injustices taking place across the black community. Who knew basic empathy towards strangers could be so contentious?
No one can argue that the black experience is not qualitatively and quantitatively different from white America. This is represented in almost all statistics of quality of life. BLM and woke were not making a case for black nationalism or black supremacy. The black community were drawing a distinction between equality at the center of the American idea, constitution, and law, and the lived reality of so many in their community that experienced genuinely unequal treatment.
Nevertheless, requests for simple empathy by a hurting group of Americans were used by white ethno-nationalists to claim that BLM was a rival ethno-nationalist movement that had been created to conduct “white genocide”, “steal” white power and “replace” whites. They responded with counter-programing phrases like “all lives matter” or simply “white lives matter”.
White ethno-nationalists no longer proudly call themselves white supremacists. They have upped their propaganda game from the days of white hoods and burning crosses. The politically correct term for them these days is “white nationalists” (WN) or variations on those terms - sometimes ‘Christian’ is thrown in for the cover of godliness.
They are openly opposed to any social justice for monitories. They treat themselves as an oppressed minority with endless grievances. Sound familiar? That is the central motiving idea of the KKK. White nationalism is old KKK wine in new bottles.
Sen Tuberville, R-AL (naturally), a TTN leader in the Senate responsible for throwing sand in the readiness gearbox of the US military, proudly proclaimed:
“My opinion, of a white nationalist — to me, is an American.”26
MTG of course is also a key proponent of christo-fascism identity politics:
“We need to be the party of nationalism and I’m a Christian, and I say it proudly, we should be Christian nationalists,”
You know who else hates minorities of all kinds? Just before MTG stepped on the stage to address American fascists at a rally, the organizer Nick Fuentes asked the crowd
“Can we get a round of applause for Russia?” that just days earlier had invaded Ukraine. The crowd roared and attendees responded by shouting: “Putin! Putin!”
‘White Nationalist’ represents pride in the concept of a white nation - that white America is an exclusive identity - its own nation that proponents paint as more patriotic and American than any other American identity group.27
This is a direct attack on the constitution that operates on the basic principle that all citizens are equal. That obedience to the law is what unites all citizens regardless of race or creed.
Forced underground by evolving social norms that embraced equality enshrined in the idea of America, the KKK and allies got a big wake up when Obama was elected president. That was Donald Trump’s moment. He took it upon himself to rule that Obama was illegitimate. Trump’s America would never elect a black man! That was the start of Trump’s political career. He turned his racism into a call for action to stop a free and fair America in its tracks and return it to a time when it was great - by which he meant white.
“Birtherism” was a call to action built on the idea that immigrants and non-whites are dirty,28 stealing, raping, always cheating the system, cutting the line, getting welfare handouts, getting more money and power than whites. Such people, animals really - “just look at Chicago” (Obama’s home town) - do not deserve the proud title of “American” or equal rights to “The Patriots”. In fact, “their culture” is completely un-American. This is the narrative of the “great replacement theory” and (I am not making this up) “white genocide”.
When Trump attacked a group of women Representatives of color, ordering them to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came”, Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings, defended his colleagues. In response, Trump said Baltimore is a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.” Telling Rep Cummings “maybe he could help clean up this very dangerous & filthy place.” Trump wrote, arguing that Cummings’ “district is considered the Worst in the USA” and “no human being would want to live there.”
Trump took woke and turned it upside down. Attentiveness to issues of racial and social justice should be applied to whites who were now the ones being oppressed by Obama and the democrats.29 KKK types were awoken from their slumbers and now had a voice. They rushed to the barricades to support their new leader. The culture was suddenly filled with complaint about “the real racism” where whites are the true victims. “There is
massive racist, racial discrimination against European-Americans" and a "very vicious anti-white narrative" in the media. Hollywood, “is not controlled by European-Americans”
Donald Trump? Sounds like him. That was in fact the grand wizard of the KKK David Duke.
“Trump really knows what his movement is based on,” Duke said. “You know, [Trump] had to know that I ran my campaigns primarily on the immigration issue, on fair trade issues, on the issues of preserving American culture, on stopping the replacement of European Americans — which people are all talking about now.”
“Woke” is concerned about awareness of social justice issues. It is categorically not about denying anyone else their constitutional rights. White nationalism is a political project designed to do exactly that and draws a direct line to voter suppression laws and all the rest. Thats why Trump went after Obama with birth certificate nonsense. It was pure маскировка.
WOW targets the US Military Because It is The Most Integrated part of American Society
Currently the most popular line of TTN - маскировка assault on the US military is the slump in recruiting. The TTN scream that woke is “destroying” the military. There are a few problems with this ludicrous / up-is-down proposition.
First, it is simply a lie. Remember the 5000 bad votes in GA that turned out to be in fact just 2? The same manipulation of the numbers apply here too. According to the United States Army, the top three reasons young people are rejecting military service have nothing to do with being open minded and even a shade empathetic to fellow citizens from different backgrounds and experiences. The top three reasons are
due to fear of death,
worries about post-traumatic stress disorder and
separation from friends and family.
Only “5% of the respondents listed [‘wokeness’] as an issue.”
Ironically, more than double that number (13% of respondents) were “significantly more likely to be discouraged from enlisting due to concern about discrimination within the military”. This suggests that 'diversity and inclusion initiatives' (a favorite WOW target) are necessary to boosting recruiting, not an obstacle. Then again, when did facts ever matter to the TTN? So long as it plays well in the media as a great distraction to Trump’s attacks on the constitution.
The official Army poll above is not the only source of data. The same facts have been repeated in other studies and polls. In a recently released study on junior officer decisions to leave the service, "wokeness is not citied as a concern” at all.
Second, the US unemployment rate is at an 18 year low - thanks to the economic policies of the current Administration. Recruiting always declines in periods of low unemployment. This is global issue. WOW is a great distraction from this “good news’.
Third, “the Army has reported that there’s been a downturn in recruitment rates because of a significant drop in test scores and health issues and an uptick in prior drug use among applicants.” See the following chart. Note, ‘woke’ is nowhere to be found.
Forth, the TTN agitprop numbers just don’t stack up. Sergeant Major of the Army Michael Grinston told Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.) during a March 9 hearing that his comments were politicizing the military.
“When I looked at it, there is one hour of equal opportunity training in basic training, and 92 hours of rifle marksmanship training,” Grinston said. “And if you go to [One Station Unit Training], there is 165 hours of rifle marksmanship training and still only one hour of equal opportunity training.”
So to the extent that WOW can be measured, the numbers show that it is complete bullshit.
Fifth, “about 10% in the surveys say they do not trust military leadership, based on the way recent events or missions have been handled.” 30
Finally, America lost the forever wars. It’s hard to want to sign up for a job where one can spend 20 years fighting an enemy only to hand their capital back almost on the anniversary of the attack that started it all.
The bottom line on WOW is quite simple. “This idea of a woke military is total, utter, made-up bullshit” General Mark Milley.
Nevertheless, WOW as a weapon to attack the pentagon by the TTN has worked remarkably well. Defense One reported
Halfway through the Trump administration, Americans’ regard for and trust in the military began to nose-dive. The share of respondents who told a Reagan Forum poll they had “a great deal of confidence” in the military plunged from 70% in 2018 to 63% the following year, and 56% in early 2021. (It bottomed out at 45% during the Biden administration’s first winter, and rose in the most recent poll to 48%.)
Mаскировка wins. Facts lose. Advantage: Terrorists.
Support for Russia’s War of Genocide and Aggression is Growing thanks to the TTN’s Mаскировка
For years now, American pro-Putin media outlets engaged in Mаскировка have been working hard to discredit the astonishing achievements of Ukraine - a small country resisting war crimes and genocide against its civilian population. The Ukrainians have crushed the mighty Red Army for pennies on the dollar of US support. “The U.S. (and its allies) are subcontracting out the decimation of Moscow’s military for about 4% of the Pentagon’s annual budget” with no risk to NATO lives in combat.
Ukraine’s victories have prevented Putin from spreading his war to other states in western Europe. This has averted the likelihood of escalation to nuclear war. Putin’s miscalculations and failures achieved the exact opposite of his policy objectives that were designed to weaken and divide NATO and the EU.
Instead, NATO unity skyrocketed, non-members rushed to join the alliance, including those with long histories of neutrality and potent military forces, resulting in NATO gaining a huge boost in military capabilities and capacity, as well as stretching NATO’s intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance reach deep into Russia all the way across the added Finish border with Russia.
The Ukraine war has also delivered immense deterrence value in curbing China's planned aggression towards democratic Taiwan.
All of these outcomes are against the interests of the TTN and their international partners. Accordingly, TTN Mаскировка propaganda in support of Russia’s genocidal war of aggression in Ukraine kicked into high gear and is starting to pay off.
While “most Americans polled want to continue sending weapons to Ukraine, that number is shrinking. Just like threatening Pentagon spending, these Republicans are gutting generations of GOP doctrine on Russia.”31 Six senators and 23 representatives “will vote against the $24 billion the Biden administration is seeking for Ukraine”
Mаскировка wins. Facts lose. Advantage: Terrorists.
The radicalization of the American population against the constitution is working.
Half of the country believes there will be civil war “in the next few years”. A slightly lower number, 40% believe that “having a strong leader for America is more important than having a democracy”. This is one of the findings in pre-review social science research conducted by scholars at the University of California, Davis. The study also found that ~20% believed that the lie that “the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump”. YouGov poll released last month had a majority of both Democrats and Republicans agreeing that America would one day “cease to be a democracy.”
Extrapolating from these findings, an estimated ~4.5M Americans are “very or completely willing” to intimidate, injure, or kill for a political goal. They are ready to “commit violence against government, election and health officials, & police and military”.
For more on this research follow this link
Dr Robert Pape at the University of Chicago is one of the country’s foremost experts on radicalization. He is the Director of the Chicago Project on Security and Threats. His research shows that the problem is even worse than the UC Davis study suggests
Mаскировка wins. Facts lose. Advantage: Terrorists.
This time it’s personal!
Its also deeply psychological
Trump’s hatred of Gen Milley is deeply, psychological. Milley represents everything Trump is not, but wishes he could be. Since childhood, Trump fantasized about being a leader of men in the way little boys playing solider do. A shallow, unimaginative, incurious, lightweight dolt from Queens, who squandered a robust inheritance into multiple bankruptcies, only to be bailed out by a bank whose other top client was the Russian mafia; he bullshitted his way into everything he ever did. Including the presidency of the United States.
During his rise in New York in the 1980s and 90s, the culture was changing. The stoicism of the greatest generation was giving way to the celebration of failure among the Gen Xers and Millennials. Morton Downey Jr, Jerry Springer, Maury, Rikki Lake and the Queen herself, Oprah, would put you on national television and make you a “celebrity” so long as you debased yourself telling taboo-breaking stories about your broken family, drug abuse, cheating, incest, or having as many babies of dubious paternity as possible - all the excitements of the modern coliseum.
This proto - ’reality tv’ era was the period where a trailer-park kingpin would get vastly more ratings than a veteran of Omaha beach. Trump understood this lumpen proletariat culture instinctively. It was his culture. His publicist, John Barron (Trump himself), saw to it that the tabloids could never get enough of his sexual needs, his cheating, avarice, partying, and divorces. As a wag on Twitter wrote when he was in the White House “Donald Trump has 5 kids, 3 baby's mamas, lives in government housing, and has outstanding warrants.” Vacuous PR also became useful to cover up failure, embarrassment, venality, mendacity, sloth, greed, gluttony, and crimes. His trailer-park might have been a vertical one covered in fake gold in Manhattan, but it was still a trailer-park.
Possibly his only genuine achievement
He never achieved anything by merit. Except perhaps a piece of ribbon on his fake military uniform in his fake military career in an upstate boarding school for difficult children.
A biographer quoted the draft-dodger in 2015, “I always thought I was in the military” because of his time at the New York Military Academy. Michael D’Antonio, writes that Trump believed the academy “provided him with more military training than most actual soldiers.” Accordingly, he later boasted “I know more about ISIS than the generals do. Believe me,” adding, "I’ve had a lot of wars of my own. I’m really good at war."
Trump craves what he has never received in his entire lifetime - genuine respect. He has always been the butt of jokes and ridicule. The country laughed at his candidacy. The whole world literally laughed at him in the UN when he drenched them in his self-praise. A psychological assessment noted
Earlier in his career the world had watched him with amusement. Many people refused to take him seriously. [Later] this amusement was transformed into incredulousness.32
Trump is unhealthily obsessed with praise. He longs for someone with genuine gravitas to praise him. He frequently decries that he never gets the praise he deserves, then he follows with a version of “but that’s ok”. He is reassuring himself out loud, like his mother might have done when he fell down in the playground and grazed knee.
But it’s not ok. It’s profoundly not ok. He has never been praised unprompted by an equal. He hates that he is reduced to inserting soliloquy’s of self praise when no one of any standing will naturally utter the words he so desperately seeks. This is why he is constantly saying really stupid and embarrassing things no normal person would say. For example, he tells himself he is the "greatest of all presidents” and "so great looking and smart, a true stable genius!"
Always transactional, he issues praise for others in the vain hope they will reciprocate. It is never about them, it is always about him. It is beyond pathetic. It is a telling window into a broken psyche.
Accordingly, his praise of the worlds autocrats in the hope of reciprocity extends past fawning to groveling. His Russian foreign policy was childlike: "If he says great things about me, I'm going to say great things about him.” He often sounded like a love struck teenager: “I’d have a very good relationship with President Putin if we spend time together.” If this was your best friend telling you about their crush you would feel sorry for them and obliged to point out that “he’s just not that into you”.
What did Trump get in return for all this debasement of both himself and the United States? The record of Putin’s praise of Trump is pretty thin. In the absence of praise from Putin in the 2016 election, Trump simply made it up, telling a TV show “When people call you 'brilliant' it's always good, especially when the person heads up Russia". Putin’s highest praise appears to be this 2019 gem "I do not accept many of his methods when it comes to addressing problems. But do you know what I think?” he added as an after thought, “I think that he is a talented person.”
Trump was over the moon at this adulation from his puppet master and hero.
The only thing Trump hates more than criticism or opposition to his genius is adulation from people he considers beneath him. Like Don Jr and Eric. Or his followers. As he told an aide, covid was great because “I don’t have to shake hands with these disgusting people.” As he watched the attack on Congress unfold “He was angry, not at the appalling crimes they were committing” he felt embarrassed because “his people” were a “white trash” mob that looked “cheap and poor”. Live by Jerry Springer, die by Jerry Springer.
Praise from nobodies reminds him of his relationship with his father. Fred Trump hated weak, good-for-nothing, suck-ups who masked a lack of achievement with bravado that they learned from watching television. Tragically for America, Donald knew his genuinely successful racist mogul father never respected him. Accordingly, he over compensated with narcissism of psychotic proportions. Yet it is an unrequited narcissistic love. For a sociopath, the most painful and destructive kind.
General Milley
By contrast, General Milley is a serious person with a lifetime of achievement at the highest levels of both elite and general purpose forces. He is Trump’s fantasy of ‘Trump as military hero’ come to life. Physically robust, the ‘central casting’ square jaw, no-nonsense, look; a bone fide leader of troops in combat, a reader, a critical thinker, unafraid to speak truth to power, a doer who is confident and self assured. Milley attended Princeton as an undergrad, writing a 185-page-long senior thesis titled "A Critical Analysis of Revolutionary Guerrilla Organization in Theory and Practice". He holds two masters degrees. One from the Naval War College and the other from the School of International & Public Affairs (SIPA) at Columbia University.
General Milley’s record does not include a medal for “neatness and order”. However, it does include one or two other citations for merit.
“We are all going to be tried as war criminals in The Hague”
Little Trump watched Patton far too much and obsessed on the bravado, the pearl handled pistols, the slapping of the shell-shocked (PTSD), and not the complex character, or the history of the war. Unlike every other kid who liked the movie, Trump never went on to read the books. Nor did he seem to understand that the Nazis were the bad guys.33
His skin-deep fascination with martial power was born. This is why he was always surrounding himself with generals. They looked strong. That was the most important fact about military leadership to the image obsessed Trump.
Senator Angus King of Maine, a political independent who is a supporter of Milley’s, told me, “Trump picked him as chief because he looks like what Trump thinks a general should look like.”
Trump knew so little about America, or history, or the military, that he assumed “his generals” would just follow orders. It truly confounded him when they did not. The US military is obliged to follow legal orders - a big distinction that separates America from Nazi Germany. “I was just following orders” was a defense at the Nuremberg war crimes trials. A military obedient to lawful orders is a foundational idea in what the TTN derides as the “Administrative state” (aka the constitution and all legally authorized activities of the three branches of government known collectively as ‘governance’). Trump misjudged Milley, King said. “He thought he would be loyal to him and not to the Constitution.”
According to Susan Glasser and Peter Baker, in Trumps’s childish “version of history, the generals of the Third Reich had been completely subservient to Hitler; this was the model he wanted for his military.” They write that Trump, frustrated at disobedience to this orders, shouted at then-White House chief of staff Marine general John Kelly:
“You fucking generals, why can’t you be like the German generals?”
When Kelly asked Trump for clarification, the president reportedly replied by specifying, “The German generals in World War II."
Kelly then asked Trump whether he knew that those generals "tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off."
Trump dismissed Kelly's historically accurate description, insisting, "No, no, no, they were totally loyal to him."
This was not a one-off event. Numerous authors have catalogued Trump’s superficial grasp of military power and its utility. For example, Trump asked the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. Paul J. Selva, whether he liked the plan for a July 4th parade of tanks, missiles and cheering troops on Pennsylvania Ave.
‘I didn’t grow up in the United States, I actually grew up in Portugal,’ General Selva said. “‘Portugal was a dictatorship — and parades were about showing the people who had the guns. And in this country, we don’t do that.’ He added, ‘It’s not who we are.’”
Trump still did not get it. “So, you don’t like the idea?” he said, incredulous.
“No,” Selva said. “It’s what dictators do.”
Trump’s ignorance of the military, history and the constitution was not just academic. It had very significant real world consequences.
After Trump had lost the election, his ‘advisers’ told him to attack Iran as a distraction. Robert O’Brien, the national-security adviser, “had been a frequent cheerleader for tough measures: ‘Mr. President, we should hit ’em hard, hit ’em hard with everything we have.’” Goldberg writes, “Milley explained that this would be an illegal preëmptive act”:
“If you attack the mainland of Iran, you will be starting a war.” During another clash with Trump’s more militant advisers, when Trump was not present, Milley was even more explicit. “If we do what you’re saying,” he said, “we are all going to be tried as war criminals in The Hague.”
Goldberg explained this was an intense but not an atypical day at the office for the Chairman: “Milley deflected Trump’s exhortations to have the U.S. military ignore, and even on occasion commit, war crimes.” Glasser and Baker write that
In the morning before the Lafayette Square photo op, Trump had clashed with Milley, Attorney General William Barr, and the Defense Secretary, Mark Esper, over his demands for a militarized show of force. “We look weak,” Trump told them. The President wanted to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 and use active-duty military to quell the protests. He wanted ten thousand troops in the streets and the 82nd Airborne called up. He demanded that Milley take personal charge. When Milley and the others resisted and said that the National Guard would be sufficient, Trump shouted, “You are all losers! You are all fucking losers!” Turning to Milley, Trump said, “Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?”
Significantly, the Insurrection Act order came the day after his cowardly, pathetic, and unneeded evacuation to the bunker was reported in the news. This humiliated the showman. He felt it made him look weak. He then ordered the execution of the person who leaked the story.
Trump’s lust for violence against the people did not end there. A few days later “Trump’s latest chief of staff, Mark Meadows, called the Defense Secretary at home —three times—to get him to recant his opposition to invoking the Insurrection Act” thereby allowing the 82nd airborne to be deployed against the people. Meadows threatened Esper that he would lose his job if he refused to give the order. The Secretary did not budge. His name was on a list from that point forward.
Immediately after the election, Trump weighed decapitating the core components of the national security system. The director’s of the CIA and the FBI somehow survived, but key leaders in DOJ and the Pentagon did not. Trump fired the Secretary of Defense, Esper, the undersecretary for policy, and the undersecretary for intelligence, and replaced them with lunatic loyalists.34
This is significant because the Secretary, and not the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, issues orders to the armed forces. These moves were seen by the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff as preparation for a coup for which they developed counter-coup contingency plans to include preventing a “distraction” war against Iran (noted above) or the use of nuclear weapons - detailed at length in the Goldberg story and in a CWII piece of the same issue.
Having decapitated most of the national security apparatus, on December 18th, Trump then turned to Esper’s replacement to continue the coup.
Trump hosted Flynn and a group of other election deniers in the Oval Office, where, for the "first time in American history, a President would seriously entertain using the military to overturn an election. They brought with them a draft of a proposed Presidential order requiring the acting Defense Secretary—Christopher Miller—to “seize, collect, retain and analyze” voting machines.
In a nutshell, the Flynn-Clark plan was: declare martial law under the Insurrection Act, use the military to seize voting machines and “investigate” them past Inauguration Day, have the DOJ send letters to the states to say the election was fraudulent, use fake electors to certify a loser as the winner of the election, and deploy the 82nd Airborne Division to shoot anyone who protested the election stolen by Trump and his henchmen.
We came so close to a fascist dictatorship.
The Danger of Trump was predicted before his election
Long before Trump was elected, military experts of every stripe predicted exactly what would happen if he was elected. There are reams of quotes but these are two of the more prescient:
“If you take the man at his word,” said Michael Breen, the president of the Truman National Security Project and a decorated former Army officer, “we have a presidential candidate who seems to have committed himself to triggering what would probably be the greatest crisis in civil-military relations since the American Civil War.”
This is an except of a letter signed by over 100 experts published before the election
Mr. Trump’s own statements lead us to conclude that as president, he would use the authority of his office to act in ways that make America less safe, and which would diminish our standing in the world. Furthermore, his expansive view of how presidential power should be wielded against his detractors poses a distinct threat to civil liberty in the United States.
“It is now obvious to me that you… subscribe to fascism & Nazism”
Lafayette Sq was the final straw. Having held off the barbarians at the gates - the ones inside, pushing out - General Milley drafted a resignation letter on June 8, 2020. The undelivered letter is one of the most stunning artifacts in modern American history. A sitting Chairman of the Joint Chief’s of Staff accused the sitting president of being a fascist, of attempting to use the military against the people, and of doing great and irreparable harm to the United States at home and abroad.35
All cultures revere valor. Against all odds, in the face of overwhelming peril, especially of mortal danger; acts of singular intrepidity, of bravery, of physical courage in battle, are recognized by the highest award a country can bestow. The standing of these are so great that in some cases, an awardee must be saluted, even by officers senior in rank. Therefore a private will be saluted by a general, and not the other way around, if the private wears the award. In some cases, the award is issued so sparingly that the majority are posthumous recipients.
Clausewitz wrote that
War is the province of danger, and therefore courage above all things is the first quality of a warrior.
But he did not leave it there. He continued,
Courage is of two kinds; first, physical courage, or courage in presence of danger to the person: and next, moral courage, or courage before responsibility; whether it be before the judgment-seat of external authority, or of the inner power, the conscience. The two combined make up the most perfect kind of courage.
Napoleon had a more pithy formulation
“In war, the moral is to the physical as ten to one.”
Curiously, there are no awards for moral courage. CWII has always thought this an incongruous gap in martial culture. Surely the premium on truth, on the courage of one’s convictions, of the importance of right over might, of making sure the war about which you are to embark is the right war for the right reasons; is just as important as one’s willingness to charge a fox hole? CWII thinks of this in the context of his world of strategic planning that can be intensely bureaucratic or political, or worse, both. Where genuinely impressive thinkers do not challenge ideas sometimes for fear of criticism, but more often for fear of looking foolish, or insubordinate, or the worst reason: basic primordial careerism.
Mark Milley exhibited the highest traditions of the United States Army when at great risk to himself he inserted himself into certain roles and responsibilities that no chairman before him has ever had to consider, because no president before Trump was an existential threat to the constitution.36 Criticism of general Milley for being political ignores this critical fact. It is the flip side of the partisanism trap. It should therefore be dismissed for the utter rubbish that it is.
The following quote expresses a very nuanced example of the ideas expressed by Clausewitz and Napoleon. Goldberg wrote that
When I asked Milley about [war crimes], he explained his larger views about behavior in combat. “You have accidents that occur, and innocent people get killed in warfare,” he said. “Then you have the intentional breaking of the rules of war that occurs in part because of the psychological and moral degradation that occurs to all human beings who participate in combat. It takes an awful lot of moral and physical discipline to prevent you or your unit from going down that path of degradation.
General Milley understands that the extraordinary character of war can evince the very worst in anyone and that the only guard against our worst angels is an awareness born of knowledge of the risk, and a concomitant vigilance that must remain constant in the face of unimaginable provocations.
“War is politics by other means.” Clausewitz was not just referring to violence but also маскировка - the politics of deception and deceit that exists under the threshold of physical violence. Mark Milley likely never imagined the last battlefield in his final war, for which he would not receive a ribbon for his extreme intrepidity in the face of overwhelming barbarianism, would be the plush carpet of the Oval Office.
His sexual problems were never concealed. He and his second wife were interviewed not long after Tiffany was born and was asked who the infant most resembled. “She’s a very beautiful baby,” Trump replied. “She’s got Marla’s legs. We don’t know whether or not”—he put his hands to his chest to indicate breasts—”she’s got this part yet, but time will tell.” When Ivanka was 16 he said “Don’t you think my daughter’s hot? She’s hot, right?”. When she was 20 he said it was OK to describe her as “a piece of ass”, and that, “I've said if Ivanka weren't my daughter, perhaps I'd be dating her." In a joint interview when they were asked what they most had in common with one another, she replied “real estate and golf”, he replied “sex”. If these were things he was willing to say on national television to female interviewers in the presence of Ivanka, one can only imagine what was happening in private. A new example has just come to light. According to Taylor's book, the worst of the behavior was Trump's lewd comments about his own daughter.
“Afterward, Kelly retold that story to me in visible disgust. Trump, he said, was 'a very, very evil man”
Mr. Smith — whom Mr. Trump has described as “a thug” and “deranged” — has been a particular target of violent threats, and his office is on pace to spend $8 million to $10 million on protective details for him, his family and senior staff members, according to officials.
It is the Bannon strategy. The following was written in Dec 2021 long before a lot of detail came out in various books and the J6C hearings.
Steve Bannon is ideologically of the ultra right, but his ideas are Leninist and his plans modeled on Ho Chi Minh’s bottom-up village shadow-government strategy. He artfully used the new technologies of psychometric manipulation developed by Cambridge Analytica to trigger Brexit and elect extremist candidates across Europe and the US.
His openly stated objective of destroying the ‘administrative state’ coincide with GRU objectives to destabilize the US in order to give Russia freedom of action in its sphere of influence and beyond. Cambridge Analytica brought Bannon and the GRU together through cut outs like Lukoil. Together they are working to manufacture a descent into chaos.
They are making significant headway as Jan 6 proved beyond all doubt. Many see the attack on Congress as a culminating point. It was in fact an artificially manufactured tipping point, enabled by a series of coincident crises. The last time there was major war followed by a global pandemic and economic crises, parts of the democratic world collapsed into authoritarianism.
It did not end on J6. It is a continuing project that gets more desperate as it fights the clock against the slowly grinding wheels of justice. At the time of writing it is not clear which side will prevail. Polling shows a dead-heat between Biden v Trump, and there are a range of scenarios where Trump can escape the law and even legitimately win reelection.
It is a complete outrage that the DOJ and FBI deliberately delayed investigating Trump until it was humiliated into doing so.
There are strong arguments that despite everything, Trump could be legitimately reelected outside of the “contingent election” scenario. “The thrice-indicted, twice-impeached, once-defeated, politically toxic Republican standard-bearer has a real shot at the presidency again.”.
In normal circumstances, polling is usually relatively accurate. In times of political flux and especially crisis, polling becomes next to useless. We have seen this from the advent on the Trump political phenomena onwards. Here is a different poll with an opposite outcome. The key is to understand the context - which tells us that polling can not be trusted in the current unstable climate.
As discussed at length on this site, scores of powerful monied interests will win if this is achieved. First and foremost, the survival of the Putin regime and its victory that will be snapped from the jaws of defeat in Ukraine.
“TTN” is used instead of maga for a few reasons. First, while all TTN members are maga, not all people who sympathize with, or identify, as maga are part of the TTN. Second, the definition of terrorism is the “the use of organized political violence”. Not all maga adherents support the use of violence for political ends. Third, the courts have now confirmed that the TTN is a terrorist movement. This is over a year since CWII decided to create the term. At the time it was a controversial decision but was carefully made only when the evidence became overwhelming that there was no other way to characterize the political project at the heart of maga.
According to Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker’s book I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year.
It is necessary to parse the word salad mobspeak that Trump deploys as cover in front of normies. His paramilitaries know precisely what he is saying. As one of his terrorist followers told another pre-J6
Immediately after “stand back and stand by” Proud Boys were jubilant:
“Armed and Ready, Mr. President,”
“President Trump told the proud boys to stand by because someone needs to deal with ANTIFA … well sir! We’re ready!!” wrote one Proud Boy. “Trump basically said to go f— them up! this makes me so happy,” he continued.
Recruitment skyrocketed. None of these people are particularly bright but they all immediately understood the “coded message”. The usual Trump defenses of ‘it was just a joke’ or ‘it was the perfect tweet, I never told anyone to do anything wrong’ should by now be taken for what they are - a smoke screen that works only on willing dummies.
Stewart Stevens GOP strategist.
Where one did not previously exist
When people heard that phrase in the Trump inauguration they thought to themselves “what carnage? What is he talking about?”. President George W Bush put it uncharacteristically succinctly “that was some weird shit”.
Always scapegoats - usually the weak and defenseless. But sometimes those individuals and groups who exercise moral courage in standing up to the torrent of lies, manipulation, and growing reactionary violence to “restore order” in the non-existant chaos..
It is a policy in the sense that it is their only idea for governance.
Namely, what democracy is all about.
!["Ultimately, our Second Amendment rights protect [us from] Democrats"](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_140,h_140,c_fill,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_auto/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4a640c24-1cd2-4380-827a-f8a3ad8c794d_902x902.png)
Not just between the equal branches of government but more generally in the application of administrative authorities
As distinct from the electoral college. The electoral system means the patchwork fabric of local and state based systems designed to elect candidates to public office.
Election fraud has been proven time and again to be virtually non existent in the US. “Justin Levitt at Loyola Law School, turned up 31 credible allegations of voter impersonation out of more than 1 billion votes cast in the United States from 2000 to 2014. Judges in voting-rights cases have made comparable findings of fact.”
“There are the threats, the stress, the attacks on democracy on the officers, on the staff”. David Becker, the executive director of the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation and Research chillingly observed “We may lose a generation of professionalism and expertise in election administration,” he said. “It’s hard to measure the impact.”
Today, in the wake of attacks on people like Shay Moss and Ruby Freeman “One in three election officials feel unsafe because of their job, and nearly one in five listed threats to their lives as a job-related concern.”
In 2020, there were only 475 potential (not proven) instances out of more than 25 million votes cast.
Trump claimed “dead people voted, and I think the number is close to 5,000 people.”Raffensperger pushed back, saying: “The actual number were two. Two. Two people that were dead that voted” Raffensperger’s comments were bolstered by an Atlanta Journal-Constitution report in December 2021 that Georgia authorities confirmed a mere four cases of ballots cast in the name of dead people.
The Brennon Center has complied historical case studies that prove the TTN’s claims are utter bullshit.
A comprehensive 2014 study published in The Washington Post found 31 credible instances of impersonation fraud from 2000 to 2014, out of more than 1 billion ballots cast.
Going further back, a 2010 book “cataloguing reported incidents of voter fraud concluded that nearly all allegations turned out to be clerical errors or mistakes, not fraud. A 2009 analysis examined 12 states and found that fraud by voters was “very rare,” and also concluded that many of the cases that garnered media attention were ultimately unsubstantiated upon further review.”
Yet the impact of TTN propaganda is clear: 70% of republicans believe the election was stolen from Trump. Among Americans in general 40% believe the lie.
They would lose conventionally and they rightly fear an escalation to nuclear war.
In the Special Operations Forces (SOF) community there is endless definitional and doctrinal debate over concepts like маскировка. In the most general terms, they are all part of a family of activities that like outside of conventional warfare. Terms often used include unconventional warfare and irregular warfare - officially defined as
Unconventional warfare is defined by the Joint Chiefs of Staff as
Activities conducted to enable a resistance movement or insurgency to coerce, disrupt, or overthrow a government or occupying power by operating through or with an underground, auxiliary, and guerrilla force in a denied area. Also called UW. (JP 3-05.1)
US Army manual FM 3-0 (Operations) defines irregular warfare as
the overt, clandestine, and covert employment of military and non-military capabilities across multiple domains by state and non-state actors through methods other than military domination of an adversary, either as the primary approach or in concert with conventional warfare.
Lt. Col. (ret.) Mark Grdovic, argues that, irregular warfare is the ‘struggle for legitimacy and influence over the population’.
This definition is a combination of the definitions in the preceding footnote.
Disclosure, CWII is a former principal strategic planner for USSOCOM.
The Russians have used race for years to divide Americans. KGB Operation INFEKTION put out that AIDS was created as a bioweapon at Ft Detrick and was spread by the black population.
The Dominion law suit and $787.5 million payout exposed Fox as a propaganda outlet willing to constantly and repeatedly lie about the most consequential threat to American democracy since the 1850s and 60s. Fox fermented, incited, and then covered up a coup. Fox Corp. chair Rupert Murdoch testified he didn’t believe Trump’s election fraud claims. It knew it was lying but it did not care.
BLM subsequently became a civil rights movement.
The Associated Press defines “Wokeness” as “a slang term that originally described attentiveness to “issues of racial and social justice.”
This echoed his masters voice
In 2018, Donald Trump proudly proclaimed: “You know, they have a word, it sort of became old-fashioned. It’s called a nationalist. And I say, ‘Really? We’re not supposed to use that word?’ You know what I am? I’m a nationalist. OK? I’m a nationalist.”
They made a smart propaganda switch around J6. They swapped out the CSA stars and bars and wrapped themselves in old glory.
He uses the word “dirty” a lot in this context, reminiscent of the rats scurrying about in Nazi propaganda films representing the plague of Jews who were a vermin that needed to be cleansed from the soul of Germany.
Any statistics about living in America shows this is patently absurd. Again, facts do not matter in маскировка.
In a sense this is an unfair criticism of military leadership who get ordered to do things the military is not well prepared to do. The Taliban abuse their women. That offends us. But it’s not the Pentagon’s job to build a Madisonian democracy in a pre-biblical land with no democratic culture. Military leaders failed in that they did not forcefully push back against mission creep that ended with the Madisonian project, but started with a much simpler and achievable mission - find, fix, capture or finish bin Laden. The can-do attitude of the military is great for Ops but very dangerous for accurate assessments of the likelihood that military ops can deliver lasting political outcomes.
This happens when we failed to heed Clausewitz’s eternal warning
“The first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgment that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish by that test the kind of war on which they are embarking; neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn it into, something that is alien to its nature.”
According to POGOs The Bunker.
This is in fact a psychological profile of Adolph Hitler. The similarities between the two are stark.
There are reasons his followers march in growing numbers and confidence in our streets with that flag.
(one of whom had previously been barred from a confirmed position at the Pentagon due to “his tweets and remarks promoting conspiracy theories and calling former president Barack Obama a terrorist”).
Edited Text of the Milley letter focusing on the key points -
It is my belief that you were doing great and irreparable harm to my country. I believe that you have made a concerted effort over time to politicize the United States military.
Second, you are using the military to create fear in the minds of the people… I cannot stand idly by and participate in that attack, verbally or otherwise, on the American people.
Third, I swore an oath to the Constitution of the United States and embodied within that Constitution is the idea that says that all men and women are created equal… It’s obvious to me that you don’t hold those values dear and the cause that I serve.
And lastly it is my deeply held belief that you’re ruining the international order, and causing significant damage to our country overseas… [Our war dead] were slaughtered because of tyrannies and dictatorships..fascism [and] Nazism... It’s now obvious to me that you… subscribe to many of the principles that we fought against.
Full text
And in these times of political threats against those who support the constitution - the threats are often extended to family members.
Thank you. Even after all this time, I sometimes sit staring at the screen trying to articulate actions and ideas that are so bizarre to me that I'm rendered speechless for big chunks of time. A big one was the implication that the top guy whose job was to protect the constitution was its arch enemy. The system and the people in it struggled to grasp this reality.
I could not agree more. I'm turned off by it myself. I'm sick of it. I just feel compelled to put down what I think is happening. Thanks for your encouragement. Only a handful of ppl read this. I know most can't believe it or thing it's over the top. I've been in that position before. For me it's just a record to point ppl to in the future to show someone was warning.