Recently I met a serving naval officer at a going away party for a mutual friend. Nice guy, had a charming and lovely wife, both very amusing. We traded contact info and became friends on Facebook. I thought that was the relative end of it until yesterday. For whatever reason, and certainly violating the constitutional spirit of his uniform, he went on a leftist rampage on my Facebook page over the Afghanistan debacle.
He couldn’t bear criticism of Joe Biden. So he launched ad hominem attacks on any commentary on my page critical of Biden. For violating the civility rules of my page, not for his opinions, I bounced the swabo and thus banished him to the conversational netherworld.
I bring this up because sadly he seems only a symptom of a larger malady in our current military leadership. I say this as a veteran myself. When serving officers like my former pal, and even the Chairman of the JCS General Mark Milley, can go on record spouting ridiculous leftist cliches like “white rage” they are contradicting the traditional apolitical attitude of the US military. Apparently, when the Army recently said they were switching to pinks, they actually meant it.
We need professionals in uniform, not political officers looking for promotion and succor from the latest politician to come around the block. Bonapartism, even in a gentle form, is not an attractive national trait. Case in point, the aforementioned Milley.
As the always brilliant Mark Steyn puts it, “One of the depressing aspects of the Swamp is that everything becomes a racket – including even your armed forces. Look at that buffoon at top right, the guy who heads the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Thoroughly Modern Milley. During his recent wokier-than-thou Congressional testimony on ‘white rage’, I wish someone would have asked Thoroughly Modern what they were all for:
Well, this is for Korea… Vietnam… This small ribbon’s for the Jimmy Carter helicopters-in-the-desert fiasco, because that went tits up far quicker than it usually takes… Here’s the Pentagon Female Empowerment Award I got for introducing Take Your Child Bride To Work Day to Jalalabad… This one’s from the Association of Non-Binary Staff Colleges for Most Transitions in a Single Battalion… Oh, and this most recent one is for getting into a Twitter spat over Tucker Carlson… If you don’t have total contempt for Milley and the rest of the brass right now, you’re part of the problem. I’m in favor of razing the Pentagon and salting the earth – or, at the very least, firing Milley and the massed ranks of ‘parade generals’ (a useful Commonwealth term)…” The man has a point. One reason for the Afghanistan disaster is that our military was caught unaware. Perhaps they should spend less time brushing up on PC jargon and more time at the profession of arms.