The film legend died last year, and true Pentagon patriots, like one he once portrayed, sadly seem long gone.
By Darren McKinney
First, let’s stipulate that no one, and certainly no one who’s dedicated his life and career to service in our military, should be condemned solely on the basis of sometimes anonymously sourced, reconstructed dialogue in a Bob Woodward book, the likes of which are historically known for taking some creative license.
But if we believe even half of what Mr. Woodward’s latest book, “Peril,” co-authored with his Washington Post colleague Robert Costa, reportedly has to say about Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, we’re hard-pressed not to compare his conduct in uniform late last year and in January to that of Burt Lancaster’s power-mad Air Force general in director John Frankenheimer’s now classic 1964 film, “Seven Days in May.”
Lancaster’s character, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff “Gen. James Matoon Scott,” was poised to wrest control of the military (and the nation) away from a duly elected president he believed to be insufficiently aggressive with the United States’ principal global rival. Milley, to hear Woodward and Costa tell it, was poised to wrest control from a president he believed might prove too aggressive. But the two generals otherwise seem to have much in common.
With help from others on the far-right — from the military, Congress and elsewhere — the fictional Joint Chiefs chair went so far as to initiate a violent if ultimately failed coup. Our real-life Joint Chiefs chair, as far as we know, never executed his plans because then-President Trump never sought to initiate a military strike against China or any other adversary during his waning days in office as Milley, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and seemingly hysterical others on the left reportedly feared.
Reassuringly, the film coup failed in large part because co-star Kirk Douglas’s character, Pentagon-assigned Marine “Col. Martin ‘Jiggs’ Casey,” put loyalty to the chain-of-command and the Constitution, particularly its prescription for civilian control of the military, above politics. He and others stood admirably against the would-be usurpers of power, and the chilling story ends on a largely high note, albeit one ringing with warnings and lessons for future leaders.
But those lessons have apparently been lost on Gen. Milley and several top Pentagon officials he supposedly recruited to his cabal.
In addition to making two unauthorized and secret phone calls to a top Chinese general to say, effectively, “Don’t worry, I’ve got our crazy president in check, and I’ll give you a heads up if he tries anything,” the Woodward-Costa book asserts that Milley summoned senior officers to a Pentagon meeting wherein he told them any procedure for launching nuclear weapons was not to be undertaken without his say-so — this despite the fact the Joint Chiefs chair has zero statutory or constitutional authority to order military operations directly. He serves solely as an advisor to the president.
Yet, apparently, there wasn’t a single Kirk Douglas at that January meeting. No one patriotic and sensible enough to spring to his feet, jut his jaw and say, “General, with all due respect, sir. Have you lost your mind, sir? If you adjourn this meeting at once and pledge never to speak of this treason again with anyone, we can all pretend this never happened, sir. But if you persist a moment longer, sir, I’ll have no choice but to assume command and immediately place you under arrest. If a duly elected commander-in-chief is unfit for office, sir, the Twenty-Fifth Amendment can be invoked and authorized officials, which do not include you, sir, can make appropriate judgments. Sir.”
Of course, many in today’s equity-obsessed Pentagon are too busy trying to “understand white rage” or rooting out “domestic extremists” from the ranks to find any time for constitutional niceties and first principles. And after he testifies before Congress later this month, it’s almost a certainty that Gen. Milley, unlike Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn before him, will not be prosecuted for any crime. He probably won’t even be forced to resign, even though experienced underminer-of-a-sitting-president Col. Alexander Vindman thinks he should.
In fact, it’s far more likely Gen. Milley will be portrayed as a hero in an upcoming Showtime or HBO miniseries starring portly leftist John Goodman.