New York Post

MILLEY’S REAL BOSSES

- JOSH HAMMER

THIS week’s unsettling revelation of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley’s alleged late Trump administra­tion-era perfidy is but one glaring fusillade in a years-long crusade by America’s decrepit ruling class to condemn and ultimately subjugate us “deplorable­s,” “wrong-thinkers” and all others with a conservati­ve or traditiona­list worldview.

It is a shot across the bow in that roiling cold domestic conflict, and it is also a brazen assault on one of the most rudimentar­y defining features of America’s constituti­onal order — an assault that exposes the lie that the ruling class cares one whit about the very “democracy” it invariably claims to cherish.

To recap, a leak of a forthcomin­g book from Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, “Peril,” claims that two days after the Jan. 6 US Capitol riot, Milley was so bothered by former President Donald Trump’s demeanor and conduct that he deemed it necessary to take unilateral action outside the formal chain of command.

Specifical­ly, Milley allegedly convened a rogue meeting with senior military officials in charge of the National Military Command Center, the Pentagon’s de facto war room, to tell them not to accept military orders from anyone unless he was personally involved.

In effect, Milley, haunted by hysterical cable news-induced nightmares and caving to delusions of grandeur, took impetuous action to cut out the commander in chief of the US Armed Forces himself from the formal chain of command. He did so, we are made to believe, out of fear the lame-duck president might launch a high-scale attack or nuclear weapon strike, perhaps against China.

Although the qualifier “allegedly” is perhaps necessary to describe Milley’s actions, it is worth noting that Milley himself has not disputed the report. On Friday, he described the calls as “routine” and “perfectly within the duties and responsibi­lities” of his office.” Sounds a lot like a tacit admission.

There could not possibly be a clearer example of how much the American ruling class is drunk on power and of how little it cares for any and all obstacles standing in the way of its accumulati­on and exercise of that power.

And in this instance, those obstacles take the form of the quintessen­tial defining feature of what usually separates a democracy or a republican form of governance from a dictatorsh­ip: ultimate civilian control of the military. In underminin­g that ultimate civilian control, Milley and his apologists are playing with fire.

How bitterly ironic, too, that the same left-wingers who opposed Trump on ostensibly “fascist” or “authoritar­ian” grounds while simultaneo­usly preaching about the imperative to save our American “democracy” are now the ones who, seemingly without fail, have taken to defending a Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman who has taken a blowtorch to the very definition of “democracy.”

Milley is, of course, the same man who has openly defended the merits of studying critical race theory in the military and, in general, seems far more preoccupie­d with preening for holier-than-thou wokesters than he does with ensuring the US Armed Forces are adequately prepared to hunt down and kill America’s enemies in the most efficient way possible.

In short, as National Review’s Dan McLaughlin tweeted: “To Mark Milley, the General Lee who has been dead for 151 years is a dire

threat, but the General Li who commands the world’s largest army on behalf of a murderous tyranny is a chum.” That is damning almost beyond words.

Milley’s direct attack on civilian control of the military is but the latest indication that our wokeist ruling class will take no prisoners in its systemic assault upon the very pillars of the American constituti­onal order.

From Trump-era “deep state” malfeasanc­e to imperious progressiv­e judging to a woke Joint Chiefs chairman feeling justified in removing the duly elected commander in chief from the military chain of command, the ruling class has now thoroughly revealed the depths to which it is willing to sink in order to enact its agenda and force its political opposition to bend the knee.

Eyes wide open, the onus is now on the deplorable­s to resist such an anti-constituti­onal — indeed, antiAmeric­an — trampling.

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