Lying Generals and the Lies They Tell (< fiddy)

by Maj. Danny Sjursen, USA (ret.) | January 14, 2020

I’ve had it out for Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Army General Mark Milley, of late.
My dislike for the man might even constitute an intellectual blind spot.
Count me guilty as charged.
I’ve mistrusted this character – who brilliantly weaves both plainspoken soldier’s bluster
with a veneer of intellectualism – ever since he addressed
the West Point faculty, of which I was then a member, back in 2014.

His basic thesis: the cadets, the army as a whole, needed to get back to the basics of war-fighting,
and avoid the distraction of "too much" scholarly diversion.
Milley, unlike most army chiefs, didn’t attend West Point himself.
No doubt some combination of the standard insecurity associated with that,
and typical resentment of "ring-knocking" academy elitists,
drove this not-too-subtle dig at we professors.
Only I sensed there was more to his postulation, something grander
and more disturbing: a conscious pivot back to tactics masquerading as strategy.

In what universe, I recall thinking – and venting to my fellow "elitist geeks"
on the history faculty – do our future officer students, with America trapped in
ill-advised quagmires across a distant region, need less intellectual curiosity and stimulation?
A drill sergeant can teach a clever monkey to shoot straight or drive a tank.
The United States Military Academy (USMA) – which regularly ranks as the top
public university in the nation and rates comparably with Ivy League schools – ought to aspire
to better, I’d then believed: to outputs of critical thinking;
a broad, diverse knowledge base; cultural awareness; and strategic sense.

So, way back in 2014, Milley disappointed many of us – I was far from alone in that analysis.
He proved then, and has only doubled down on that since, that "intelligence,"
as typically defined, does not necessarily equate to sober strategy or ethical consistency.
On paper, the general appears to be one of the quintessential
"Best and the Brightest" – though we know how that worked out for
the Vietnam generation – being a graduate of Princeton and Columbia Universities.
Recently, Noam Chomsky – using climate change as his model – questioned the very
efficacy of, and capacity for, human intelligence to solve existential problems.
Well, Chomsky’s well-reasoned doubts apply quite well to General Milley and his slew
of his flag officer underlings charged to "advise" one Donald J. Trump.