Politics and the Politicization of the
US Military

FTA: "Milley also allegedly asked his senior commanders to take on oath to him promising to obtain his approval if Trump launched a nuclear attack. A spokesman for the general stated he acted within his authority as the senior military advisor to the President and the Secretary of Defense, yet Milley failed to consult any civilian authority, a fact confirmed by his superiors in the Trump administration and by the former President himself." If this is true, Milley has committed mutiny and treason. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) position was created under the National Security Act of 1947 and his duties and relationships were later delineated further under the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 and Title 10 USC 152 and 153. CJCS is the principal military advisor to the President. That's really it. CJCS has zero, zilch, none, nada operational command authority over any service chief or combatant commander. The JCS itself is an advisory committee comprised of the the service chiefs. Their primary role is really to provide guidance for manning (or organizing), training and equipping for their respective services and to advise their civilian service secretaries. Geographic and Functional Combatant Commanders, OTOH, do have operational command (OPCON) of all Joint forces assigned to them. Combatant commanders directly report to the Secretary of Defense, NOT CJCS. Milley has no OPCON over them and he knows this. Milley's predecessor, Gen Dunford, started pushing the envelope of how the CJSC can assert influence over the Combatant commanders through the Global Integration concept. Global Integration is an attempt to assess and mitigate risk from global and regional threats with the reality that there are finite resources to combat all of them at any given time or place or domain. Dunford's view was that the CJCS should be the arbiter of that aggregate risk as the geographic combatant commanders would default to prioritize their area of responsibility and assigned forces and defend their Unified Command Plan (UCP) boundaries. Conceptually, the intent make sense but doing so empowers the CJCS in ways that they have no statutory power to execute. Milley has amped this CJCS encroachment to eleven. His insubordination was first on display when Milley published a video of himself where he tries to distance himself from Trump after Trump (and Milley) visited the vandalized church near the White House at the height of the summer 2020 BLM riots. That should have raised red flags there. But this phone call (without SECDEF approval) to his ChiCom PLA counterpart was waaaay out of bounds. He (along with Austin) need to go and face UCMJ charges of insubordination and contempt for authority under Article 92 of UCMJ.

Only Conservatives politicize issues. Lefties are simply rescuing you from the disaster that they created yesterday. Their malignant ineptitude is far outweighed by their good intentions.

Milly......cut off his rank, break his sword and throw him out of the fort.

The Military Brass has always sucked up to the Politicians...it's what they are, Knee Pad Generals!

FTA: "During major conflicts, such as the Civil War and the two World Wars, the military would expand exponentially, only to revert to the size of a constabulary force when hostilities ended. This lasted until the end of the Cold War when our newly established rivalry with the Soviet Bloc compelled us to maintain a large standing military force." The Cold War ended 30 years ago. Our military is still structured for fighting it. And, in the meantime, we've expanded into all other sorts of warfare, like nation building and culture reform. Ike warned of this. Of course, everyone loves to buy bigger and better systems and more stuff for our protection. And then we need a boogeyman...then it was Russia. For awhile it was global terrorism. Today it's China. The fight for resources from the public purse is always political. What is more than worrisome is the military effectively admitting it was prepared to ignore a Presidential order and tip off an adversary. And the MILITARY is silent, from the surrent flock of perfumed princes to the many retirees. What Milley did was unfathomable...until he did it with no apparent repercussions.

OK L Dotters: just who will break Miley? Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?

I used to be a huge supporter of the military. That is rapidly eroding under the power of the traitors and cowards that they have in charge today.

A couple of thoughts. Having had peripheral access to one of our unified commands back in the nineties, I was surprised - really surprised - to learn just how much authority the 1- and 2-stars in charge of the Operations Directorate had in the areas of international diplomacy. Part of their duties consisted of travel to nations in their theater and calling on - not their military counterparts - but heads of state for some of the smaller countries and laying out the facts. I don't disagree with our Cold War strategy. 50 years of brinkmanship. Sure, in the end we learned that Russia was a decrepit nation but all of those tanks, ships, submarines, aircraft, and missiles were pretty imposing at the time. It was still an era of industrial warfare and large numbers could only be countered with larger numbers. And you gotta love Ed Flanders' portrayal of Harry Truman and his vitriolic spew about MacArthur in the movie.

#7 - I used to entertain the belief that the military would never accept an order to fire on the American public. After watching 25,000 of them garrison the Capitol for months, I no longer believe this.

I suspect enlistment has taken a huge dip since the Biden regime took over. Of course, I don't see any media discussing this.

The military was my last hope for some institutional integrity as a backstop to totalitarian socialism. That hope has now dwindled to praying that the enlisted ranks will mutiny against officer class orders to attack the Civilian Resistance. We can thank the legions of warmongers within the GOP for creating and feeding this uncontrollable monster over the last 75 years.