By John J. Duncan Jr.
duncanj@knoxfocus.com

I have never known of any Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as blatantly political and as openly partisan as Gen. Mark Milley.

I also have never seen anyone try as hard to portray himself as some type of hero and savior of this country as Gen. Milley.

He had apparently read and/or heard so much anti-Trump propaganda that he became a victim of Trump Derangement Syndrome himself.

Then somehow in his unbalanced mind, he convinced himself that Trump was going to attempt a coup and Milley was going to ride to the country’s rescue.

So, after Biden “won” the election, and Milley wanted to be on the winning team, who should he confer with other than Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.

Of course, both Speaker Pelosi and Leader Schumer encouraged him in his bizarre belief as I am sure all his yes-men aides did too.

And then, of course, he wanted others around the world to know how heroic he was, so among others he called the top general in China, to assure him that he (Milley) was in charge and everything would be ok.

Then, he had such a Messianic Complex that he told other top military people that if the president ordered some type of attack, to check with Commander in Chief Milley first.

Thus, Gen. Milley had such a lust for power that he really was attempting to do the very thing that he was accusing Trump of wanting to do. And then for Milley to call a U.S. attack that killed 10 people, including an American AID worker and seven children, “righteous” is almost beyond comprehension.

Under the failed leadership of Secretary of Defense Austin and Gen. Milley, we have just had the most messed up withdrawal from Afghanistan that we have ever had from any war.

In fact, if someone was told to come up with the worst withdrawal possible, it could not have been even this bad.

In Lynne Olson’s outstanding book, “Last Hope Island,” Winston Churchill is quoted as saying this about the mess the French made during the very earliest days of World War II: “In all the history of war, I have never known such mismanagement.”

These exact same words could be used to describe the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

I have earlier written about how the worst thing is all the young Americans who were killed or maimed in this senseless war.

But we should have brought all our very expensive equipment home over several months before all the troops were withdrawn.

The easiest thing in the world to do is spend other people’s money. And it has been proven time and time again that there are no fiscal conservatives at the Pentagon. But to give the Taliban almost $90 billion in modern, state-of-the-art military equipment is beyond stupid.

In our 20-year war in Afghanistan, we had a new top general every year or two. As Tucker Carlson showed on his program a few weeks ago, every general said repeatedly that things were going well and we were “making progress.”

Well, we sent a few trillion down the drain, and about all we did was give thousands of Afghans more money than they had ever seen in their lifetimes.

And one report said the Afghan President we appointed skipped the country with $169 million in cash.

A 2020 report by the Congressional Research Service said our founding fathers “were deeply skeptical of a standing army” and believed civilian control of the military “was critically important to prevent the emergence of a new form of tyranny or dictatorship.”

And we certainly do not need a tyrannical dictator like Gen. Mark Milley.