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late wrote:When you say mass violence by the Left, you mean outside the country.
The FBI says that Right wing violence has been going up …
… that's just an example.
Doug64 wrote:
No, I mean ongoing violence like we’ve been seeing for years, on the part of AntiFA.
Jamie Gangel, Jeremy Herb, Marshall Cohen and Elizabeth Stuart of CNN wrote:The top US military officer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley, was so shaken that then-President Donald Trump and his allies might attempt a coup or take other dangerous or illegal measures after the November election that Milley and other top officials informally planned for different ways to stop Trump, according to excerpts of an upcoming book obtained by CNN.
The book, from Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, describes how Milley and the other Joint Chiefs discussed a plan to resign, one-by-one, rather than carry out orders from Trump that they considered to be illegal, dangerous or ill-advised.
"It was a kind of Saturday Night Massacre in reverse," Leonnig and Rucker write.
The book, "I Alone Can Fix It," scheduled to be released next Tuesday, chronicles Trump's final year as president, with a behind-the-scenes look at how senior administration officials and Trump's inner circle navigated his increasingly unhinged behavior after losing the 2020 election. The authors interviewed Trump for more than two hours.
The book recounts how for the first time in modern US history the nation's top military officer, whose role is to advise the president, was preparing for a showdown with the commander in chief because he feared a coup attempt after Trump lost the November election.
The authors explain Milley's growing concerns that personnel moves that put Trump acolytes in positions of power at the Pentagon after the November 2020 election, including the firing of Defense Secretary Mark Esper and the resignation of Attorney General William Barr, were the sign of something sinister to come.
Milley spoke to friends, lawmakers and colleagues about the threat of a coup, and the Joint Chiefs chairman felt he had to be "on guard" for what might come.
"They may try, but they're not going to f**king succeed," Milley told his deputies, according to the authors. "You can't do this without the military. You can't do this without the CIA and the FBI. We're the guys with the guns."
In the days leading up to January 6, Leonnig and Rucker write, Milley was worried about Trump's call to action. "Milley told his staff that he believed Trump was stoking unrest, possibly in hopes of an excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act and call out the military."
Milley viewed Trump as "the classic authoritarian leader with nothing to lose," the authors write, and he saw parallels between Adolf Hitler's rhetoric as a victim and savior and Trump's false claims of election fraud.
"This is a Reichstag moment," Milley told aides, according to the book. "The gospel of the Führer."
Ahead of a November pro-Trump "Million MAGA March" to protest the election results, Milley told aides he feared it "could be the modern American equivalent of 'brownshirts in the streets,'" referring to the pro-Nazi militia that fueled Hitler's rise to power.
Rucker and Leonnig interviewed more than 140 sources for the book, though most were given anonymity to speak candidly to reconstruct events and dialogue. Milley is quoted extensively and comes off in a positive light as someone who tried to keep democracy alive because he believed it was on the brink of collapse after receiving a warning one week after the election from an old friend.
"What they are trying to do here is overturn the government," said the friend, who is not named, according to the authors. "This is all real, man. You are one of the few guys who are standing between us and some really bad stuff."
Milley's reputation took a major hit in June 2020, when he joined Trump during his controversial photo-op at St. John's Church, after federal forces violently dispersed a peaceful crowd of social justice protesters at Lafayette Square outside the White House. To make matters worse, Milley wore camouflage military fatigues throughout the incident. He later apologized, saying, "I should not have been there."
But behind the scenes, the book says Milley was on the frontlines of trying to protect the country, including an episode where he tried to stop Trump from firing FBI Director Chris Wray and CIA Director Gina Haspel.
Leonnig and Rucker recount a scene when Milley was with Trump and his top aides in a suite at the Army-Navy football game in December, and publicly confronted White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.
"What's going on? Are you guys getting rid of Wray or Gina?" Milley asked. "Come on chief. What the hell is going on here? What are you guys doing?"
"Don't worry about it," Meadows said. "Just some personnel moves."
"Just be careful," Milley responded, which Leonnig and Rucker write was said as a warning that he was watching.
The book also sheds new light on Trump's descent into a dark and isolated vacuum of conspiracy theories and self-serving delusions after he was declared the loser of the 2020 election.
After the January 6 insurrection, the book says Milley held a conference call each day with Meadows and then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Leonnig and Rucker report the officials used the calls to compare notes and "collectively survey the horizon for trouble."
"The general theme of these calls was, come hell or high water, there will be a peaceful transfer of power on January twentieth," one senior official told the authors. "We've got an aircraft, our landing gear is stuck, we've got one engine, and we're out of fuel. We've got to land this bad boy."
Milley told aides he saw the calls as an opportunity to keep tabs on Trump, the authors write.
Leonnig and Rucker also recount a scene where Pompeo visited Milley at home in the weeks before the election, and the two had a heart-to-heart conversation sitting at the general's table. Pompeo is quoted as saying, "You know the crazies are taking over," according to people familiar with the conversation.
The authors write that Pompeo, through a person close to him, denied making the comments attributed to him and said they were not reflective of his views.
In recent weeks Trump has attacked Milley, who is still the Joint Chiefs chairman in the Biden administration, after he testified to Congress about January 6.
Jamie Gangel, Jeremy Herb, Marshall Cohen and Elizabeth Stuart wrote:The book reveals Pelosi's private conversations with Milley during this tenuous period. When Trump fired Esper in November, Pelosi was one of several lawmakers who called Milley. "We are all trusting you," she said. "Remember your oath."
After the January 6 insurrection, Pelosi told the general she was deeply concerned that a "crazy," "dangerous" and "maniac" Trump might use nuclear weapons during his final days in office.
"Ma'am, I guarantee you these processes are very good," Milley reassured her. "There's not going to be an accidental firing of nuclear weapons."
"How can you guarantee me?" Pelosi asked.
"Ma'am, there's a process," he said. "We will only follow legal orders. We'll only do things that are legal, ethical, and moral."
A week after the insurrection, Pelosi led House Democrats' second impeachment of Trump for inciting the insurrection. In an interview with the authors, Pelosi said she fears another president could try to pick up where Trump left off.
"We might get somebody of his ilk who's sane, and that would really be dangerous, because it could be somebody who's smart, who's strategic, and the rest," Pelosi said. "This is a slob. He doesn't believe in science. He doesn't believe in governance. He's a snake-oil salesman. And he's shrewd. Give him credit for his shrewdness."
late wrote:You said mass violence.
That's not it.
FBI maintains stats on violence, have you forgotten Jan 6 already? How about violence against Asians???
"Since 2015, right-wing extremists have been involved in 267 plots or attacks and 91 fatalities, the data shows. At the same time, attacks and plots ascribed to far-left views accounted for 66 incidents leading to 19 deaths."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2021/domestic-terrorism-data/
They are threatening more.
Doug64 wrote:
Why should we take them seriously?
The book itself quotes Milley as telling his fellow officers, “They may try, but they're not going to f**king succeed. You can’t do this without the military... We’re the guys with the guns.”
The general’s message is unmistakable: without the military, failure; with it, success.
The truth is, where the “guys with the guns” would line up was by no means a sure thing. Milley himself exhibited no friction with Trump until after the infamous June 1, 2020 incident in which he marched with the president across Lafayette Square for a photo-op made possible by the violent dispersal of peaceful demonstrators. He later felt compelled to call his action a “mistake” as it became clear that Trump wanted to invoke the Insurrection Act and call the military into the streets on the pretext of crushing the nationwide George Floyd protests. Milley and other senior uniformed commanders feared that such a deployment could provoke mass resistance and lead to deep fissures within the military itself.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/0 ... s-j16.html
Trump’s admiration for the Führer was apparently an open secret in Washington. During a November 2018 trip to Europe, he told his stunned chief of staff, Marine Gen. John Kelly, “Hitler did a lot of good things.” This discussion is reported in another new book written by the Wall Street Journal’s senior White House reporter Michael Bender, Frankly, We Did Win This Election. It recounts that Trump pushed back against Kelly’s protests over the remark, insisting that Hitler revived Germany’s economy.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/0 ... s-j16.html
ckaihatsu wrote:
You can’t do this without the military... We’re the guys with the guns.”
The general’s message is unmistakable: without the military, failure; with it, success.
late wrote:
When Ike was asked to run for president, he had to pick a party, he didn't belong to either.
Our military has a tradition of staying out of politics.
IOW, no 'success' for anyone.
The Iraq War[nb 1] was a protracted armed conflict from 2003 to 2011 that began with the invasion of Iraq by the United States–led coalition which overthrew the authoritarian government of Saddam Hussein. The conflict continued for much of the next decade as an insurgency emerged to oppose the coalition forces and the post-invasion Iraqi government.[56] An estimated 151,000 to 1,033,000 Iraqis were killed in the first three to five years of conflict. US troops were officially withdrawn in 2011. The US became re-involved in 2014 at the head of a new coalition; the insurgency and many dimensions of the armed conflict continue. The invasion occurred as part of the George W. Bush administration's War on Terror following the September 11 attacks despite no connection of the latter to Iraq.[57]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War
Prominent neoconservatives in the George W. Bush administration included Paul Wolfowitz, Elliott Abrams, Richard Perle and Paul Bremer. While not identifying as neoconservatives, senior officials Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld listened closely to neoconservative advisers regarding foreign policy, especially the defense of Israel and the promotion of American influence in the Middle East. Many of its adherents became politically influential during the Republican presidential administrations of the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, peaking in influence during the administration of George W. Bush, when they played a major role in promoting and planning the 2003 invasion of Iraq and invasion of Afghanistan.[3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism
ckaihatsu wrote:
*Or*, on the other hand....
late wrote:
Google PNAC.
On March 20, 2000, Barron's featured a cover article titled "Burning Up; Warning: Internet companies are running out of cash—fast", which predicted the imminent bankruptcy of many Internet companies.[42] This led many people to rethink their investments. That same day, MicroStrategy announced a revenue restatement due to aggressive accounting practices. Its stock price, which had risen from $7 per share to as high as $333 per share in a year, fell $140 per share, or 62%, in a day.[43] The next day, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates, leading to an inverted yield curve, although stocks rallied temporarily.[44]
On April 3, 2000, judge Thomas Penfield Jackson issued his conclusions of law in the case of United States v. Microsoft Corp. (2001) and ruled that Microsoft was guilty of monopolization and tying in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. This led to a one-day 15% decline in the value of shares in Microsoft and a 350-point, or 8%, drop in the value of the Nasdaq. Many people saw the legal actions as bad for technology in general.[45] That same day, Bloomberg News published a widely read article that stated: "It's time, at last, to pay attention to the numbers".[46]
On Friday, April 14, 2000, the Nasdaq Composite index fell 9%, ending a week in which it fell 25%. Investors were forced to sell stocks ahead of Tax Day, the due date to pay taxes on gains realized in the previous year.[47]
By June 2000, dot-com companies were forced to re-evaluate their spending on advertising campaigns.[48]
On November 9, 2000, Pets.com, a much-hyped company that had backing from Amazon.com, went out of business only nine months after completing its IPO.[49][50] By that time, most Internet stocks had declined in value by 75% from their highs, wiping out $1.755 trillion in value.[51]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_b ... the_bubble
ckaihatsu wrote:
My point stands
The book itself quotes Milley as telling his fellow officers, “They may try, but they're not going to f**king succeed. You can’t do this without the military... We’re the guys with the guns.”
The general’s message is unmistakable: without the military, failure; with it, success.
Potemkin wrote:
The general was correct. Trump had no chance of reversing the election results, because to do so he would have needed the support of the armed forces, not a bunch of wackos dressed as Sitting Bull waving American flags tied to spears.
And as others have pointed out in this thread, the American military has no tradition of directly intervening in American politics, nor do they show any desire to do so. The general was simply reaffirming his commitment to that policy of non-intervention.
Politics_Observer wrote:
@Potemkin
An army that intervenes or gets involved in politics is committing treason and has ZERO i mean ZERO business in politics. It is a violation of the oath they take. At least the oath taken by soldiers here in the U.S. There is a strong separation of politics and the armed forces. The armed forces are apolitical and not involved in politics at all and simply carry out the orders given to them by civilian authorities that are lawful orders and in line with the constitution. The military does not overthrow the constitution but stays within the constitution.
In June 2020, Milley was photographed in combat fatigues walking with Trump to St. John’s Church outside the White House, shortly after demonstrators protesting the police killing of Floyd were forcibly cleared from Lafayette Square by federal law enforcement and National Guardsmen.
Milley apologized days later, saying he regretted his participation and that he “should not have been there.”
“My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics,” he said at the time.
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/5605 ... tests-book
Potemkin wrote:
Indeed. That incident was clearly a wake-up call to him. He suddenly woke up and realised that Trump was trying to use him. Took him long enough. Lol.
Potemkin wrote:Looks like this 'democracy' thing ain't gonna last much longer in the US of A. Oh well, you had a good run while it lasted. I wonder who your new Fuehrer will turn out to be. One of the Trump dynasty? Or maybe a Bush, or a Clinton? Maybe you should go old school, and have a Kennedy...?
Rancid wrote:
It was a good run. Hopefully I can make my way out to somewhere else before the Nazis take over.
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