{"id":72315,"date":"2021-09-19T17:57:17","date_gmt":"2021-09-19T22:57:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=72315"},"modified":"2021-09-19T17:57:45","modified_gmt":"2021-09-19T22:57:45","slug":"72315","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=72315","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Milley<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It has been fascinating to follow the recent career of General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, an advisory body of military commanders that, by law, lies\u00a0outside the chain of command<\/a>.
\nIt\u2019s not clear Milley knows that.
\nBeing a thoroughly\u00a0modern major general<\/a>, he seems to be more interested in blockading \u201cwhite rage<\/a>\u201d than honing\u00a0the fighting skills<\/a>\u00a0of our military.<\/p>\n

So I was edified to see that Milley has put down some of his thoughts in a new\u00a0Art of War<\/i><\/a>. It is a very different sort of book from the Chinese classic by\u00a0Sun Tzu<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It is not just that Sun Tzu was interested in winning wars and prevailing over the enemy. He also understood that his country\u00a0had\u00a0<\/i>enemies and that it was important to be able to distinguish effectively between friends and enemies. \u201cI will force the enemy to take our strength for weakness, and our weakness for strength,\u201d he wrote in one famous passage, \u201cand thus will turn his strength into weakness.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\n
Milley has turned that old-fashioned \u201cbinary\u201d idea on its head\u2014he deconstructed\u00a0<\/i>it, you might say, and implicitly showed how out of sync with our times poor old Sun Tzu is.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Of course, Sun Tzu did not know about telephones, Twitter, Facebook, or systemic racism, so he would have been unable to comprehend the postmodern wisdom of Milley\u2019s aper\u00e7us. \u201cIf you think you might attack an enemy,\u201d the general writes, \u201cpick up the phone and give \u2019em a heads up. It\u2019s only fair.\u201d Brilliant!<\/p>\n

Another morsel: \u201cIf you surrender, you can never lose.\u201d Why didn\u2019t Sherman or Grant think of that?<\/p>\n

Some of Milley\u2019s wisdom has a very contemporary application, to wit: \u201cWhen retreating, leave most of your armaments behind so you know what you\u2019ll be up against next time.\u201d Good advice, right?<\/p>\n

And Milley, like Sun Tzu, goes beyond strictly military themes into realms sociological, psychological, and political. \u201cYou cannot betray the one to which you were never loyal.\u201d This obviously is an insight that has wide application, as pertinent in business as in warfare proper. Ditto Milley\u2019s postmodern revision of JFK\u2019s famous saying: \u201cAsk not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for China.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finally, General Milley\u2019s art of war has a pragmatic commercial side, as can be seen in such observations as \u201cHe who turns on a bad orange man gets a big book deal.\u201d Has any fortune cookie ever contained greater wisdom?<\/p>\n

\u201cBut that\u2019s all satire, parody!\u201d you object. \u201cIt\u2019s from the\u00a0Babylon Bee<\/i>, not any real book written by Mark Milley.\u201d<\/p>\n

You\u2019re right about that and I apologize for the imposition.<\/p>\n

I also note that it is\u00a0effective<\/i>\u00a0satire. Why? What makes it effective? Its close proximity to the truth. Mark Milley would never\u00a0advise<\/i>\u00a0a military leader to \u201cpick up the phone\u201d and call one\u2019s enemy to alert him to a forthcoming attack. No, no. General Milley is a man of\u00a0action<\/i>. He does not\u00a0write about<\/i>\u00a0such things. He actually\u00a0does<\/i> them. He actually called his counterpart in China, twice, to assure him that, should the United States be planning an attack, he, Mark Milley, would be sure to let him know in advance. What a guy!<\/p>\n

Effective satire exaggerates, but in exaggerating reveals something essential about the subject under discussion. The subject here is the character and behavior of Mark Milley. \u201cYou cannot betray the one to which you were never loyal.\u201d It has the ring of authenticity, doesn\u2019t it? After all, Milley was the person who, on the run-up to the January 6 rally in Washington, assured his aides that talk of a coup by Donald Trump was piffle. \u201cYou can\u2019t do this without the military. You can\u2019t do this without the CIA and the FBI.\u00a0We\u2019re the guys with the guns<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

You see why Tucker Carlson called Milley a \u201creckless nutcase<\/a>.\u201d He apparently believes that the military answers to him.<\/p>\n

But I don\u2019t want to take up all your time with satire, however revealing it may be. I also have a scoop to share with you. I was in Washington recently and happened by a restaurant frequented by many of the people who run our lives. At a table next to mine, a group of military men sat huddled in serious conversation. A lot of papers were spread out for inspection and discussion. Wouldn\u2019t you know it, a small envelope must have slipped out of someone\u2019s pocket. I only noticed it when the group had left. I picked it up and ran to the door, hoping to return it to its rightful owner. No luck. They had vanished into their limos and were gone. I pocketed the envelope and went back into the restaurant. The unsealed envelope contained a single sheet of paper. On it was written this brief announcement:<\/p>\n

The Pentagon<\/p>\n

Washington, DC<\/p>\n

Dear Mr. President,<\/p>\n

In recent weeks, loud and irresponsible voices of an extremist minority have unfairly occupied the headlines with groundless, hateful, and hurtful criticism of my patriotic efforts to save America from the scourge of white rage and the machinations of a pro-Trump insurrectionary movement. I am proud that my efforts to quash a movement that is comparable to Hitler\u2019s Brownshirts were successful but am mindful that this controversy, stirred by domestic extremists and other racists, has become a distraction. Therefore, I am tendering my resignation, effectively immediately, in order to spare the country from needless confusion. I am grateful for the opportunity to have served in your administration and look forward to spending more time with my family and on the sets of major media news shows.<\/p>\n

Sincerely,<\/p>\n

Maj. Gen. Mark Milley<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I haven\u2019t seen this letter reported yet and am pleased to be able to break an important story for my readers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Milley. It has been fascinating to follow the recent career of General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, an advisory body of military commanders that, by law, lies\u00a0outside the chain of command. It\u2019s not clear Milley knows that. Being a thoroughly\u00a0modern major general, he seems to … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial-o-the-day"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=72315"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72317,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72315\/revisions\/72317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=72315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=72315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=72315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}