General Mark Milley, on Friday, vacated his role as the highest-ranking military official in the United States, departing with a final comment aimed at his former commander-in-chief, Donald Trump, emphasising that soldiers do not pledge loyalty to a ‘wannabe dictator’.
The forceful critique delivered by General Mark Milley on his final day as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff served as a stark reminder of how the US military was thrust into the intensifying political fray during the Trump era.
During an intricate military ceremony marking his departure, which was graced by the presence of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and President Joe Biden, General Milley refrained from explicitly mentioning Trump, but there was no ambiguity regarding the focus of his indirect criticism.
‘We don’t take an oath to a king, or queen, or a tyrant or a dictator,’ Milley said of American soldiers. ‘And we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator.’
General Milley’s successor as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff will be Air Force General Charles “CQ” Brown, only the second African American to assume the highest military position.
A burly army veteran with a wealth of experience from numerous foreign deployments and senior command roles, General Milley’s dedication to military service spanned an impressive four decades.
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However, his most significant test came when, in 2019, President Trump appointed him to the pinnacle of his military career as the senior military advisor to the president.
Throughout his four-year term, which extended into the Biden administration from 2021, General Milley was responsible for orchestrating the complex withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, leading special forces missions in Syria, and overseeing a substantial program to aid Ukraine in its urgent battle against Russian incursion.
As chairman, ‘it was one crisis right after another,’ Milley told AFP last month.
Milley’s years at the top, however, also saw the military involved in an unusual number of politicized controversies.
While the Biden administration has pressed for changes including renaming bases named after Confederate leaders in the Civil War, senior Republicans have repeatedly lashed out at what they claim are “woke” leftist policies in the ranks.
Milley’s circumstances during the 2020 presidential election and its aftermath were overshadowed by Trump’s refusal to accept the election results, a unique American political ordeal.
In the midst of escalating tensions following the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters, Milley clandestinely contacted his Chinese counterpart to convey that the United States was maintaining its stability and harboured no intentions of initiating conflict with China, according to Bob Woodward’s “Peril.”
Trump’s long-standing fury over this revelation was palpable when he took to his social media platform this month, insinuating that, in days of old, the punishment would have been nothing short of death! for Milley.