The military officers aiding Trump's stunt have been promoted to the level of their incompetence
A small fraction of a large number can be a significant number. So, although the fact that there are a significant number of ninnies among the 329 million people in this country is embarrassing, it is not surprising. What is puzzling is that specimens such as Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have reached positions of considerable responsibility in today’s government.
It might be a fact of today’s political physics that these two have floated upward because they are lighter than air. That, however, is an insufficient explanation of their eminence. Neither is it satisfactory to merely note that such people can be expected to be found in high offices when the dispenser of offices, civilian and military, probably would explicitly reject basic civic norms if he knew they existed.
They will not exist for long if the nation does not recoil against an administration that includes a defense secretary who refers to this Republic as a “battlespace.” And also includes a four-star Army general who reports to the Oval Office in combat fatigues, dressed appropriately for an evening of police and military engagements that involved clearing a public park of peaceful demonstrators, and intimidating protesters elsewhere. The purpose of the clearing, achieved with flash-bang grenades and chemicals, was to enable the Bible-brandishing commander in chief to stand in front of a church for the purpose of stroking the portion of his political base that is composed of Evangelical Christians who relish rendering their souls unto this particular Caesar. Unfurl the “Mission Accomplished” banner.
On Tuesday, Esper’s evolving explanation was that he did not know details about the event his commander was conscripting him into. Monday night’s Battle of Lafayette Square, which took place in a traditional venue of protests, and operations elsewhere in Washington, were inglorious engagements for the U.S. military, comparable to the events of July 28, 1932. President Herbert Hoover ordered the Army to disperse the members of the self-named Bonus Expeditionary Force, generally remembered as the Bonus Army or Bonus March, which at one point that sweltering summer numbered approximately 20,000.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-military-officers-aiding-trumps-stunt-have-been-promoted-to-the-level-of-their-incompetence/2020/06/03/e73330ce-a5d6-11ea-b473-04905b1af82b_story.html
George Will is getting woke. Only took half a century.
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