The Update Desk: General Milley's Apology

In our Sunday School Extra Credit earlier this week, we learned from the conversation Martha Raddatz had with Gen. Martin Dempsey (Ret.), former Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that both Defense Secretary Mark Esper and current Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley tried to talk the president out of calling for active duty military personnel to help out with controlling the protests in DC.

AP PHOTO/PATRICK SEMANSKY

Esper, as we know, went on to send mixed signals about his participation in the Bible photo op, in which Milley also participated, in uniform. And now, we learn that Milley has also decided to speak out about his actions that day. 

In this CNN article, which is where I got the pic of Trump and his minions, we learn that 

America's top general has apologized for appearing in a photo-op with President Donald Trump following the forceful dispersal of peaceful protesters outside the White House last week, calling the move a "mistake" and saying his presence "created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics."

Gen. Milley's comments came from a taped speech for graduates of the National Defense University, and per the article, he "regrets accompanying Trump" on the walk to St. John's Church.

As senior leaders, everything you do will be closely watched. And I am not immune. As many of you saw, the result of the photograph of me at Lafayette Square last week. That sparked a national debate about the role of the military in civil society.  "I should not have been there. My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics. As a commissioned uniformed officer, it was a mistake that I have learned from, and I sincerely hope we all can learn from it.

He also spoke to the killing of George Floyd, which sparked the continuing protests around the country and around the world as well, where protesters have leveraged what happened here to raise (again) issues of systemic racism in their own countries.

I am outraged by the senseless and brutal killing of George Floyd. His death amplified the pain, the frustration, and the fear that so many of our fellow Americans live with day in, day out. The protests that have ensued not only speak to his killing, but also to the centuries of injustice toward African-Americans ... we should all be proud that the vast majority of protests have been peaceful. 

He also said that the military has done a good job with inclusiveness, "we too have not come far enough. We all need to do better, pointing to the high proportion of African-Americans in the service compared to the overall population, but a low percentage of high-ranking officers. 

... although the United States military has a higher proportion of African Americans serving in our ranks than in society at large, only 7% of our flag and general officers are African American...we must, we can, and we will do better. 

But wait - it's not all lovey-dovey for Milley, it seems.  In this article in The New Republic, he's not getting a lot of sympathy.  Citing the same speech, the article suggests that "Mark Milley is sorry. For the photo op, not the invasion of American streets with soldiers." And there's more.

The article says that Milley has, "as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has made a franchise of slumping in a chair beside the commander-in-chief with a look of shame," but notes that he's better than some others in Trump's inner circle.

...he is a sight better than Defense Secretary Mark Esper, the West Point grad whose honor code led him to explain away his presence in Trump’s photo op as a misunderstanding: He was just expecting to go “observe” a damaged public bathroom. Esper, in turn, is slightly less greasy than Attorney General Bill Barr, who falsely claimed pepper spray wasn’t a chemical weapon and denied responsibility for the order to violently clear protesters from the square. (“My attitude was get it done, but I didn’t say, ‘Go do it,’” he said.)

 It's "easy to applaud" the general for "moral courage of some sort," something that I've found lacking with all of the folks in the Administration, Republicans in the House and Senate, and at the state level, too. But his apology only goes so far. It

covered only his appearance beside Trump, not his own troubling role in the violence and terror carried out in Washington by uniformed, oath-swearing American citizen-soldiers during a dark week that three Times defense reporters—among them an Afghanistan War veteran—called “a debacle for the National Guard.” 

And what was that debacle? Pitting "undertrained, mostly-minority Washington-area National Guard soldiers against their peacefully protesting neighbors and relations." Milley's plan was to convince Trump that the part-time Guard troops could handle things and that the active-duty troops weren't needed. And, it's been reported that Milley and others put quite a bit of pressure, mostly on the DC Guard, to get it done or Trump would send in the 82nd airborne to clean things up. And, throughout all of the stuff the military has been required to do during Trump's three-and-a-half years in office, none of it

can remotely touch the spectacle of the U.S. military’s top general and the Army secretary pleading with National Guard leaders to kick ass in what the Times called “a last-ditch attempt to keep active-duty troops outside the city.”  

Again, from the article,

"...what I saw was more or less really f---ed up,” one told Politico. “The crowd was loud but peaceful, and at no point did I feel in danger, and I was standing right there in the front of the line. A lot of us are still struggling to process this, but in a lot of ways, I believe I saw civil rights being violated in order for a photo op.” 

A photo op for which Milley has apologized, but the apology is not going to soften

his ultimate legacy, one that should persist long after his green-suited, Trump-adjacent photo appearances are forgotten: He will forever be known as the American general who decided that the main difference between a functional democracy and an unconstitutional junta lies in which uniformed troops you use to beat protesters.

Clearly, the second article is addressing much more than just the apology - it's going to the larger issue of how the adults in the room are failing us - if they're even in the room, which is often in doubt.