The Pentagon’s Lack Of Loyalty To President Trump

Whether in overseas matters or domestically, it is very clear that the Pentagon felt no constitutional loyalty to one particular Commander-in-Chief.

The Pentagon’s Lack Of Loyalty To President Trump – American Thinker <!—-> <!–

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October 4, 2023

During the Trump presidency, Pentagon officials refused to follow orders, substituting their own policies over the constitutionally ordained authority of their Commander in Chief. We know that officials lied about troop strength in Syria, attempted to undermine and kill the peace initiative with the Taliban in Afghanistan, and refused to call out the military to quell civil unrest during the George Floyd riots. This is gross insubordination.

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The Syria Insubordination

James Jeffrey, who was a deputy national security adviser to President George W. Bush, US ambassador to Iraq and Turkey under President Obama, and US special representative for Syria engagement under Trump, admitted to just some of the games the Pentagon was playing. After the 2020 election, he revealed that the Pentagon routinely misled President Trump into believing that the troop count in Syria was substantially lower than it was:

“We were always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had there,” James Jeffrey, US special representative for Syria engagement, said in an interview with Defense One.

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When President Trump ordered the withdrawal of US troops from northern Syria, it was considered controversial among members of Congress, diplomats, and the Pentagon. Ultimately, Pentagon officials convinced the President to leave 200 troops behind. According to Jeffrey, the real number was around 900.

Incidentally, Jeffrey was a signatory to the infamous “Never Trump” letter from 70 GOP security officials opposing the President.

From the letter:

We believe Joe Biden has the character, experience, and temperament to lead this nation. We believe he will restore the dignity of the presidency, bring Americans together, and inspire our nation to live up to its ideals.

This statement is absurd and speaks to the motives of a corrupt military, along with members of the State Department and national security establishment.

Jeffrey worked with Pentagon officials to undermine and substitute their foreign policy for that of the President in defiance of over two hundred years of constitutional practice. All parties involved in this gross act of insubordination should have been prosecuted.

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The Afghanistan Insubordination

By February 29, 2020, President Trump had reached a complicated deal with the Taliban so that the U.S. could finally leave Afghanistan. Essentially, there was not a complete suspension of hostilities. Instead, America and the Taliban agreed not to attack each other while the U.S. committed to a specified timetable for completing withdrawal by May of 2021. The Taliban agreed not to allow foreign fighters to enter Afghanistan and use it as a staging area for attacks on America and its allies.

The agreement called for a negotiated settlement between the Taliban and the Afghan government. We agreed not to interfere. It was to be an internal Afghan matter.

Former senior advisor to the Acting Secretary of Defense, Colonel Douglas Macgregor, in a March 2021 interview, explained that, just days after the 2020 election, President Trump issued an order to remove all troops from Afghanistan by year’s end. The decision was surely based on the assumption that the Afghan national army could defend against a Taliban invasion. We now know that the military lied about Afghan capabilities.

Chairman Milley convinced President Trump to limit the drawdown in troop strength to half of the then 5,000-man force, extending the war into the Biden Administration. Extending the war was necessary to cover the lie that the Afghans could defend their country. Secretary Esper said that the agreement allowed for the U.S. to support the Afghan military, which it clearly did not. Fighting ensued, violating the agreement involving American forces. Our broken agreement brought a deadly Taliban response.

To protect their war (and cover their lies), the Pentagon carefully created the false impression that the Taliban had reneged on their commitments. Ultimately, all the lies came crashing down, ending the lives of thirteen American servicemen.

The Civil Unrest Insubordination

It has been a long-standing practice to use federal troops to subdue civil unrest, going back to George Washington personally leading men into western Pennsylvania to put down tax protesters in the “Whisky Rebellion” of 1794. The George Floyd rioting should not have been an exception but, in 2020, the Pentagon was vehemently opposed to bringing peace to America’s streets.

From a June 2020 New York Times article:

General Martin E. Dempsey, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote on Twitter that “America is not a battleground. Our fellow citizens are not the enemy.”

Another former Chairman, Admiral Mike Mullen, claimed that Trump’s disdain for the rights of peaceful protest would play into the hands of America’s foreign adversaries.

According to a book purporting to explain how Trump lost the 2020 election, General Milley claimed he’d saved Americans from Trump’s aggression. While Trump wanted to “crack skulls,” Milley, in his own retelling, was the voice of reason.

The last three Chairs of the Joint Chiefs found it preferable to sit back and watch America burn, ignoring their mission to protect America. In that, they distinguished themselves from generals in the 20th century:

In 1932, President Herbert Hoover used the military to repel 17,000 World War One veterans marching for monies they felt owed. Future World War Two generals McArthur and Patton led the troops in pushing back the protesters.

In 1957, three years after the United States Supreme Court said segregation was unconstitutional, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus (a Democrat) ordered the Arkansas National Guard to prevent black students from enrolling at all-white Central High School. Republican President Eisenhower decisively resolved the situation at gunpoint when he took control of the Arkansas National Guard and sent 1,000 U.S. Army Paratroopers from the 101st Airborne Division to restore order in Little Rock, Arkansas. It took a strong Republican leader to enforce civil rights law.

In 1992, the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles led to 63 fatalities, 2,383 injuries, and over $1 billion dollars in property damage. They ended when President George H.W. Bush and Chairman Colin Powell turned out 10,000 first responders, including National Guardsmen and federal troops, to restore order.

These examples are public knowledge and must surely have been known to the military leadership under President Trump.

The Pentagon’s active obstruction of Trump’s policies and orders amounted to a treasonous coup. There is no value in an American military that will not do what its members have sworn an oath to do and what they are paid to do: To follow the orders of the elected commander-in-chief and protect American lives.

Image: The US 101st Airborne Division in Little Rock, 1957. Public domain.

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