Anti-Trump generals should keep quiet and ‘fade away’

President Donald Trump, in his war with the generals, should call on feisty Harry S. Truman for reinforcement.

It was President Truman who famously fired highly decorated World War II Gen. Douglas MacArthur during the Korean War. Truman took a lot of heat for it, but he stuck to his guns.

He was, after all, the commander in chief and he believed that MacArthur wanted to start a war with China. So, he fired him.

He later said of the firing: “I fired him because he would not respect the authority of the president. I didn’t fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that’s not against the law for generals. If it were half to three quarters of them would be in jail.”

Trump did not say that about retired Marine Corps Gens. James Mattis or John Kelly, both of whom once worked for him, but now have turned against him. Nor did he say that about former Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who also turned against him, even though he was fired by President Barack Obama, not

Trump.

Mattis was Trump’s first secretary of defense and Kelly was Trump’s chief of staff. McCrystal early on said he would never work for Trump because “I don’t think he tells the truth.”

Showing the presidential restraint that he is noted for, Trump merely said that McChrystal, who supported Hillary Clinton, was “fired like a dog by Obama” and was known for his “big, dumb mouth.”

McCrystal, then the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, was dumped by Obama for making disparaging remarks about him and then Vice President Joe Biden at a bar in Paris that turned into a Rolling

Stone article. McChrystal later admitted to “poor judgement.”

Trump has not fired or said anything negative against Army Gen. Mark Milley after the current head of the joint chiefs of staff also turned on him.

Milley did this when he apologized for accompanying Trump, the commander in chief, on Trumps’ staged walk to historic St. John’s Episcopal Church by Lafayette Square. The church had been torched by rioters during a protest over the killing of poor George Floyd.

Trump is far from the first president to tangle with generals with chests full of shiny badges and medals, and with aides circling them like flies. Generals are used to giving orders, not taking them. So, when they go work for a president, they suddenly find that it is the other way around. They are taking commands, not issuing them.

Truman’s animosity toward MacArthur did not stop the general from delivering historic farewell remarks to a joint session of Congress in 1951 in which he concluded, “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.”

The quote was from an old Army barracks ballad. “And like the old soldier of that ballad,” MacArthur said, “I now close my military career, and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. Good-bye.”

And MacArthur did quietly fade away, rarely making any public comments. He died in 1964.

That was then. Now nobody fades away, quietly or otherwise, not even the generals. They become consultants, media stars, talking heads, cable news personalities and commentators and — once out of uniform — anti-Trump critics.

You must notice, though, how ordinary these generals look dressed in civilian clothes with all the glamour of the uniform, all the medals, the battle ribbons, the saluting and the rank gone. They look like you and me.

In General Miley’s case his apologetic comments about being with Trump on his visit to the church were not made to the president in private, but to the public at large, and he made them while still in uniform.

It was a slap in the face. One wonders what Milley would do if a subordinate did that to him.

While a distinguished military officer with years of service, Milley has gone political, like the rest of them, sucking up to the progressives.

Better they all should fade away like MacArthur, dignity intact.

It is interesting to note how progressives in the past savaged generals they hated, like Gen William Westmoreland, a patriot, over the Vietnam War. Now they swoon over these generals, in and out of uniform, because they turned on a president they also hate.

Is there a course about this at West Point?