“General Li, I want to assure you that the American government is stable and everything is going to be okay,” Milley told him in the first call, according to the book. “We are not going to attack or conduct any kinetic operations against you.”
“If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise," Milley reportedly said.
Reportedly from transcripts of the calls.
Is it reportedly from transcripts? Or just Milley’s claims about the calls?
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
It’s in Woodward’s new book. He claims it is from transcripts of the calls that he obtained.
When we talk about things that are the right decision for the wrong reasons, this is a fantastic example of it.
I have a major problem with Milley deciding, “you know what, the President might be off his goddamn rocker, I’m circumventing the chain of command here to run through me.” That’s not Milley’s call to make. If he thinks the POTUS is unfit, he doesn’t address that by inserting himself as the final decision maker on something that the Constitution vests in the Executive Branch.
If Milley believes that Trump is that mentally unstable, he should have been on the phone with Congress, the VP and the Cabinet saying “I have grave concerns about Trump’s mental fitness, I believe you all need to sideline him because I think he could go off the deep end” and lay out all the evidence he’s got. Sure, the GOP would have ignored it all, but at least he’d have been on the record and could have communicated his concerns within the framework of the Constitution so that those tasked with exercising the 25th Amendment could take action if (DON’T LAUGH!) they wanted to.
Milley really should have been pounding the table during the 2nd impeachment discussion, saying “I’ve got evidence that Trump is unfit and may be trying to subvert the government, you all really should listen to me.” Instead, he elected to go John Bolton but without the book deal.
I’m glad Milley decided to route himself in as the final authority on decisions. The need to call China is … honestly, frightening. We don’t need to be telegraphing that kind of stuff to countries we’ve already got tepid relations with. Just STFU, keep things to yourself as much as possible, loop in those that you really need to in order to constitutionally sideline a lunatic.
I guess i’m more inclined to give milley the benefit of the doubt.
I think this was immediately after the jan 6 insurrection, which seems to have been part of a larger coup attempt by trump.
There were just a couple weeks to go. Milley could have spoken with biden too for all we know.
Protocol is ideal. But on the other hand if Milley really was concerned about war, or even nuclear war, breaking out between with china as a kind of sequel to the capitol attack, then i guess you do what you have to do.
I am open to changing my mind on that as i learn more.
There is also this: https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewsolender/2021/09/14/gen-milley-reportedly-took-steps-to-limit-trumps-nuclear-strike-powers-after-jan-6/?sh=39323090409a
From the link
Milley expressed concerns about Trump’s “trigger point” and told senior military officials they needed his authorization to launch a nuclear strike even if Trump ordered it, according to passages of “Peril,” a book from Woodward and fellow Washington Post reporter Robert Costa, which were [reported] by CNN.
You guys realize that these calls were due to people in China’s chain of command receiving misinformation (aka lies), right? Xi wasn’t just sitting back and thinking “Hey, I wonder if that Trump is going to hit the launch button” because some Democrats in the US don’t like the guy. They were getting their own bad data and their advisors were taking the bait.
\textcolor{red}{\text{Just checking: on a scale of importance, what is the relative rank of Chain of Command vs Nuclear War}}
This did not work well for me on my screen. It would not new-line, and so I could not read the end of it.
One call took place on Oct. 30, 2020, four days before the election that unseated President Donald Trump, and the other on Jan. 8, 2021, two days after the Capitol siege carried out by his supporters in a quest to cancel the vote.
How did you get red font?
Example: except replace each % with $:
%\textcolor{red}{\text{How to do red font}}%
\textcolor{red}{\text{How to do red font}}
From my first attempt, the red font strings out without wrapping.
I’m reminded of the scene in Dr Strangelove, though the roles are slightly changed, there is one crazy person with the power to unleash a nuclear attack, and another person calling our “enemies” to warn them about him.
it didn’t work out so well in that film…
I thought there was a similar “back channel” arrangement in this film:
(but there was a nuclear explosion as well…)
Some things I have read in the meantime imply that what seem to me to be small differences in details could make a big difference in terms of the appropriateness of these calls.
For example, there is some talk that the secretary of defense set up the call where milley told them that we were not going to attack first. And that is this is true, it is not so constitutionally unusual.
I like the idea of a congressional investigation. The problem is that too many republicans now put loyalty to trump before loyalty to the constitution. We couldn’t do a Jan 6 bipartisan investigation without the senate undermining it, and the republican congress wanting to turn it into a circus So I have difficulty seeing how we could have a serious investigator this.
The chain of command for Nukes is god awful.
Murdering all of humanity overnight should not be an unchecked power of the POTUS.