Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
“This is America,” Gen. Milley declared at Ramstein Air Force Base.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was taking a victory lap at the airbase in Germany where thousands of Afghans were housed while hundreds of Americans had been left behind.
Milley, who had issued a “stand down” order to address “extremism” in the United States military, an imaginary problem invented at the behest of the Biden administration to purge conservative and patriotic officers from the ranks, was blasé about the Afghan disaster and the new terror threat it has created.
“I think they said a couple of hundred or something like that popped red,” Milley said, referring to the hundreds of Afghan evacuees whose backgrounds had raised red flags for terrorism.
A couple of hundred was also the Biden administration’s estimate of Americans left behind.
Milley’s idea of America was leaving behind hundreds of Americans, bringing in hundreds of Islamic terrorists, abandoning tens of billions in weapons and massive state-of-the-art airbases - and creating the first terrorist state.
There was nothing American about Milley’s decision to go along with Biden’s abandonment of Americans, not to mention Afghan allies who held SIV visas, while importing tens of thousands of Afghans who had not been cleared, had not received visas, and who might be terrorists.
With one Pentagon official estimating that 0.5% of Afghans were being red-flagged for terror ties, the airlift will have brought at least 500 Afghans who represent a potential terror risk.
Ramstein had been the site of a Baader–Meinhof terrorist attack in 1981, but Milley appeared as unconcerned about the threat to the base as he was to the lives of Americans in Afghanistan.
The same general who claimed to be studying “white rage” in Congress, and who instead of planning the Afghanistan withdrawal thoroughly had ordered a two-month stand down to hunt “domestic terrorists” in the military ranks, replied to a question about future coordination with the Taliban terrorists by curtly saying, “It’s possible.”
Milley had compared President Trump to Hitler, but is ready to collaborate with Islamofascists.
"We do not take an oath to a country, a tribe, or a religion," Milley had boasted in a speech delivered during the Trump administration. "We take an oath to the Constitution."
Milley repeatedly violated that oath, to obey “the orders of the president of the United States” by rejecting President Trump’s lawful orders to curtail the violent attacks on the White House and federal buildings by Black Lives Matter mobs. He violated the Constitution by imposing political tests on members of the armed services during the critical conversations on racism in 2020 and the stand down on extremism in 2021 which were used as a pretext for purging conservatives.
And finally, Milley violated the part of the oath that represents the primary function of his service, defending America “against all enemies, foreign and domestic” when he collaborated with the Taliban and their Al Qaeda allies, the Haqqani Network while leaving Americans behind.
Gen. Milley repeatedly lied about what was actually taking place in Afghanistan.
In July, he falsely claimed that a "safe, orderly and responsible transition" was taking place in Afghanistan and that the 600 U.S. military personnel there were sufficient to "secure the embassy, to secure the international zone and secure HKIA, the international airport in Kabul".
A month later, even 6,000 troops, ten times that number, would not suffice for the task.
Milley assured reporters that "the Afghan Security Forces have the capacity to sufficiently fight" and that "we're always going to maintain the capability of self-defense". None of these things were true.
Next month, the United States presence would be reduced to a besieged airport surrounded by checkpoints manned by Al Qaeda's allies, the Haqqani Network, due to the disastrous decisions of the Biden administration and Gen. Milley.
Milley's options to "fully protect our force in Afghanistan" came to nothing when a terrorist attack by ISIS-K with Haqqani complicity at Kabul airport killed 13 American military personnel.
Instead of challenging Milley's lies about Afghanistan, the media asked him about an account in an anti-Trump book which claimed he had prevented a non-existent Trump "coup", and about his opinions on “white rage”.
As the Taliban began wrapping up their conquest of Afghanistan, the media stopped asking Milley about Trump or white rage. But Milley went onl defending the "deliberate and responsible drawdown of U.S. forces" which added up to overseeing a shameful surrender.
Three days before this press briefing, Gen. McKenzie, who would command the botched retreat on the ground, met with the Taliban leadership in Doha. The Taliban leaders had offered to let the United States control Kabul until August 31st. McKenzie reportedly conveyed to the Taliban that they could take over Kabul so long as the U.S. was allowed to use the airport. It's unlikely that such a decision would have been made without taking it all the way up to the White House through the chain of command, through Milley and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
The mission, Milley laid out in his press briefing, was "to establish and maintain security at the Kabul International Airport. Defend the airport from attack. Evacuate all American citizens from Afghanistan" and "evacuate personnel with State Department-designated Special Immigrant Visas."
Milley and his brass failed at all of these tasks. They failed to maintain security around the airport, outsourcing the job to the Taliban and the Haqqani Network, leading to the deaths of 13 Americans. And they failed to evacuate all Americans and most Afghans SIV visa holders.
While Milley boasts about the scale of the evacuation, few of the evacuees were Afghan allies who had visas allowing them to enter the United States. Bloomberg summed up the scale of the disaster with the headline, "U.S. Struggles to Learn Who’s Who in Afghan Airlift of 124,000".
Whom had Milley evacuated? Terrorists and rapists: a number of whom were trafficking underage girls.
That was Milley’s America.
Milley had failed to fulfill his own defined tasks. And yet he was taking a victory lap at Ramstein Air Force Base as if he had won a war, instead of losing one, along with 13 men and women, and hundreds of Americans whom he had abandoned behind enemy lines.
"We fully intend to successfully evacuate all American citizens," Milley had lied. "They are priority number one."
This was lie number 2. Americans were such a priority to Milley that left them behind in Afghanistan and brought terrorists “home” instead.
We “have American citizens and Afghans who supported us for 20 years also at risk. This is personal, and we're going to get them out,” Milley told the press.
This was lie number 3.
During the evacuation, Milley dismissed all questions about everything from his failure to predict a rapid Taliban conquest to the decision to shut down Bagram Air Base by referring to any criticisms as suitable only for an AAR or After Action Report. Now the action is over and it’s time for accountability.
Gen. Milley, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, bears direct responsibility for the disastrous decisions that handed Bagram Air Base and Kabul itself over to the Taliban.
He’s responsible for failing in his fundamental commitments to protect Americans.
He’s responsible for allowing the Taliban and Al Qaeda to decide which Americans and Afghan allies would be evacuated.
He’s responsible for undermining military readiness by focusing on critical race theory and studying “white rage”, instead of preparing for the Taliban conquest.
“There was nothing that I or anyone else saw that indicated a collapse of this army and this government in 11 days,” Milley insisted at the press briefing.
But intelligence reports had warned of a rapid collapse. And, as a Washington Post article noted, “On Sept. 27, 1996, Taliban forces captured Kabul overnight, flooding in from all directions after a 15-day sweep of the country.” Milley keeps claiming to be a student of history, yet the only history that he seems to be interested in is fake critical race theory history cooked up by an illiterate New York Times racist, which condemns America as racist in its DNA.
Gen. Milley can claim, like some German military men, that he was just following orders.
But during the Trump administration, Milley had made a point of boasting that he would defy orders he considered wrong. An act of treason. Even as the Taliban were accelerating their conquest, a book containing a leaked story about Milley preventing an imaginary “coup” – and committing treason in the process - was all the rage. Milley had no problem defying President Trump. Yet he enabled Biden’s disgraceful surrender in Afghanistan.
Milley betrayed his country. He betrayed his oath to defend the Constitution. He should be court-martialed and sentenced to a long term in federal prison. Everyone responsible for America’s most humiliating defeat since Vietnam is guilty of the same betrayals and ought to face impeachment and court-martials and jail time.
In these surreal times under the Biden administration, there is now talk that military personnel who refuse to be vaccinated may face court-martials. Can it be that Milley, who lost a war and the lives of 13 of our heroes, who surrendered Kabul and American hostages to the Taliban, won’t face a court-martial for his actions?
