"Ensuring the stability of the country" my ass. Pelosi said they should take the nuclear codes and other tools of power away from Trump because he's crazy, to which Milley replied "I agree with everything you said". Coupled with his willingness to undermine a military strike of his own country by giving the targetted enemy a heads-up, this paints the picture of a deeply disloyal military leader who asserted the right to unilaterally topple the elected civilian leadership of the armed forces.

Also, can we talk about what a disastrous signal it sends, in terms of the psychology of war, when the highest-ranking member of the American military takes sides for the Chinese and openly issues what effectively was a vote of no confidence against his own president? No matter how justified this stance by Milley might have been, he should never ever have revealed this kind of internal conflict and disarray to the enemy. Any Chinese general crossing president Xi like that would be put to the wall before sunset.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Sep 14 2021 09:26pm

Yea, the Chinese have their head so far up their ass that they are incapable of reading an American newspaper.

I love how in the same sentence you say "ensuring the stability of the country my ass" but then freak out over a hypothetical undermining of a preemptive nuclear attack on China being deescalated. C'mon dude, you gotta hide your colors better than that.

What Milley did was wrong IMO and we need to know who else supported such an action. Was Trump really so deranged that this was supported? Why didn't we find out sooner? There's a lot that we need to know.

This post was edited by thundercock on Sep 14 2021 09:43pm

WE have just now learned that political leaders and some high-ranking members of the generals were plotting to strip Trump of his powers. Likewise, that Milley by default considered a Trump-ordered strike to be an act of insanity that he would have to undermine by informing the target is a huge vote of no confidence against his own commander-in-chief that they couldn't read in the newspapers back then.

That there was political upheaval at the time is of course something the Chinese knew - but definitely not how close the generals were to mutiny. Milley let them in on how weakened the American commander-in-chief's control of the military actually was. This info in and off itself was a huge risk to national security.


Here is the quote from the article again:

It says "if there were to be an attack", not "if there were to be an unprovoked attack ordered by an unhinged president who's clearly losing his mind". Basically, the Chinese knew, thanks to Milley, that in case of a lowkey Chinese attack or provocation, the American generals would be reluctant to carry out a Trump-ordered response. Which brings me back to my original point that it's incredibly foolish, strategically, to let the enemy in on this kind of internal deliberations.



I think a key question will be whether Trump actually had any concrete plans of launching an attack/start a war as a ploy to cling to power. Trump of course denies it, and given how outrageous this accusation is, I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on that one until evidence to the contrary emerges - but I wouldn't rule it out entirely either. Particularly with him moving towards announcing his candidacy for 2024, we really must know if he was willing to drag the country into war in his selfish bid to avoid being ousted from office.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Sep 14 2021 11:22pm

It really isn't a huge risk to national security. In Woodward's first book, Mattis said something along the lines of "we're not going to do that." In addition, we had that one anonymous dude say how he hides documents from Trump. Again, do you really think China isn't paying attention to that? Pelosi made public statements about ensuring that Trump had the necessary checks and balances. Anyway, this isn't something that I condone and I believe that people should resign instead of undermining the President because it sets a really really bad precedent. But man, Trump really exposed some flaws in our system that need to be corrected. Unfortunately, there's absolutely zero interest in correcting them.


Context matters. The only reason we would attack China is if they attack an ally such as Taiwan, Japan, etc. Apparently, America looked so deranged from their POV that they thought that Trump may launch an unprovoked attack. I mean, the rest of the world was legit worried about us lol.


Probably not. I don't think Trump really has concrete plans for anything. Also, I don't know why he would remain in power just for starting a war. We've had successful Presidential transitions in the middle of wars. As for 2024, do we really need to know if he was going to start a war or not? Aren't his actions in Georgia already disqualifying in your eyes?

Checks and balances which, by design, don't apply in an acute situation of war/attack. Say China musters huge forces on the coast next to Taiwan, clearly projecting that they're about to start the big invasion and Trump orders some cruise missile strikes to send a warning - would the generals have carried out these orders? (Obviously he's not gonna wait for Pelosi's approval...)

In reality, the Chinese were scared shitless and counting the days until the madman is finally gone and sleepy uncle Joe takes over, but the strategic opening was there these days for them to exploit the fact that the U.S. were busy with internal conflict.


That's something we can agree on. The Trump presidency was a stress test for America's political and constitutional system. The test was passed with a C- or a D+ imho, but exposed a lot of weaknesses.
A more savvy demagogue with a similar appeal, but who's also capable of self-restraint and strategic long-term thinking, could have gotten shockingly far in terms of clearing checks and balances out of the way...




Spoiler: we already were pre-Trump. I think you Americans still don't really understand how much trust and credibility your country lost in Western Europe when you unilaterally started the Iraq war without UN mandate and told the entire world boldfaced lies to justify it.
The russophile half of Eastern Europe still hasn't forgiven you for bombing Belgrade during the 90s anyway. And let's not even talk about the Arab World...


With "we", I didn't mean you and me, I was referring to the GOP primary electorate.

I've made it clear multiple times that I don't want to see Trump anywhere near the WH again and that I think it would be a huge mistake for the GOP to nominate him once more. As much as I like to shit on the Biden admin, Biden has done nothing severe enough to suggest that a Biden/Trump rematch in 2024 could end with anything but a rout for the GOP.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Sep 15 2021 08:49am

Again, you're missing the context here. This is about US committing an unprovoked attack on China. Apparently, the two meetings weren't secret at all and the Sec Def is the one who ordered the back-channel because they didn't want China to misinterpret anything. There were over a dozen of officials who witnessed the call including members of the State Department. The transcripts were distributed to members of the intelligence committee as well. This is good because it means that Milley wasn't acting unilaterally and this was a civilian order.
https://www.axios.com/mark-milley-woodward-trump-crisis-bb8a80b1-3e3a-492b-934a-99825cc6ef7f.html
https://www.axios.com/pentagon-milley-joint-chiefs-china-1945bf8c-b08d-436c-bc2f-d2befd42fd1f.html

I feel a lot better now than I did 12 hours ago and I hope you do too.


Right but it's significantly worse due to Trump. I remember how freaked out the German and British governments were on Jan 6.


Given that a plurality, if not majority, of GOP voters are willing to overlook what happened in Georgia, Jan 6, etc., I don't think that a war with China would have deterred them. Right wing populism and hawkishness on China go hand in hand.

axios saying this “isnt a big deal” because there were multiple co-conspirators providing aid and comfort to adversarial foreign powers isn’t reassuring

everything is a ok now, we got face diaper joe

It's not just them, it's Foxnews and other organizations. What's particularly interesting is that this back channel was authorized by Sec Def Esper and the first call occurred in October. Acting Sec Def (Esper resigned after the election) said he did not authorize such things but his underlings are saying that they gave him the information and that he was briefed. Milley is set to testify in late September so I imagine he's going to get grilled and there will be subpoenas. It would not surprise me if the Acting Sec Def was just on cruise control during the lame duck period and just didn't read his briefings.

This is all the info I could find on the top Chinese General: https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/General_Li

so general millie and the rest of the slave muzzled are chicom shills like people been saying?