What Is Going On?

Wheels Within Wheels Within ...

The revelation today that the US military--in the person of Mark Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff--was in secret and totally irregular communication with the Chicoms behind the back of President Trump was a total bombshell. It must be reverberating throughout the world. But what is going on? What considerations within the closed councils of DC officialdom led to this revelation? 

The basic idea of the story is that Nancy Pelosi, after the January 6 Event, told Milley: ‘That Trump guy has always been crazy--you should do something to clip his wings while he’s still in the White House.’ And Milley--instead of saying, ‘Uh, what about the 25th?’--responded, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, Madame Nancy, I’ll get right on that, whatever you say, Speaker Nancy, I mean, …’

Could this all be that simple? Milley or Pelosi or both leaked this to Bob Woodward back then, and it’s just coming out now as a matter of course in book form? With a WaPo preview? 

The whole episode is so constitutionally problematic that it’s difficult to accept such a simple explanation. But what’s the alternative? Sundance--or the group that he fronts for--has a fuller explanation that has some attractive features in terms of explanatory power. Basically it runs as follows.

What we’re seeing here is a war within the Deep State. On one side you have the IC (really, the CIA), State, and the Senate (via the SSCI). The other side is the White House and Defense and Military. The IC party is out for blood over the Afghan screw-up because they warned about what would happen without a good plan in place. However, a deal has been reached whereby Milley will take the fall for the fiasco--presumably he’ll be allowed to retire rather than be removed via court martial. This would be done to protect the Zhou regime and Zhou as Resident--because the alternative (Kama Sutra) is even more unthinkable at this point for the Washington establishment than Zhou has turned out to be.

I have no sources but--attractive as this narrative is--there are complications. None are fatal, and perhaps the complications are just markers of areas to which we lack access.

Presumably the narrative behind this move to remove Milley would be that this episode shows that Milley was a loose cannon long before Afghanistan, so it’s only natural that he’d be to blame for that screw-up, too. The fly in that jar of ointment--or so it seems to me--is: Where does that leave the instigator of it all, Speaker Nan? She can hardly come out of this looking better. While she won’t be in any electoral danger, there would seem to be a danger of throwing the House into even more turmoil than it’s already in--well before Election 2022 and with any number of other problems cropping up. Is that simply the price that will have to be paid to try to get Afghanistan behind them?

Another possible problem is that Blinken is not being given any sort of a free ride by the Senate. Does this mean that the CIA/State/Senate coalition isn’t totally unified? Or could it be that there are career foreign policy people who are part of the coalition and want Blinken gone--perhaps along with other people in the NSC? It’s a complication, but certainly not fatal to Sundance’s narrative.

The other complication is simply this: Where does this lead? Supposing that Milley plays along and takes the fall--does that really leave Zhou any better off in the eyes of the country? I can’t see that--if that’s the thinking that can only be a sign of true desperation, presumably fueled by internal polling that’s nothing short of catastrophic. Perhaps the spectacle of NYC school teachers marching across the Brooklyn Bridge chanting ‘F*ck Joe Biden’ was a real jolt for the Establishment. But everyone should know that the buck stops at the top. Zhou may be a total waste of space, but he resides--sometimes--in the White House. He warms himself before the Oval Office fireplace. He can’t possibly escape blame, and the Dems can’t possibly hope to escape complicity in the continuing disasters of this regime. 

I suppose  the counter argument would be, Look, every other attempt to distract--notably the whole Covid ploy--has bombed. In fact, these diversionary tactics have probably only made things worse. This is the last resort. And that may be it.

But imagine the slack-jawed amazement in the rest of the world, as the political establishments, the intelligence services, the militaries, all watch the US slipping into chaos, with a military soft-coup in the mix. Imagine the harm not merely to our standing but to our very real interests in the world. The world knows that this ongoing constitutional crisis, brought about by the removal of a president by other than constitutional means, will not end soon. Oh, they’ve read that Milley assured the Chicoms that the US was “stable.” But what’s stable about the political order of a country when it’s military establishment enters into secret and unauthorized relations with a hostile foreign power--in point of fact, its Main Enemy? The rest of the world knows better than to think that’s a sign of stability.

Imagine all that and remember who gave this to us--because it wasn’t our choice.