An unprecedented attack for an officer of this rank: General Mark Milley, who resigned from his post as chief of staff of the American armed forces on Friday, attacked former President Donald Trump and said that no military would serve a “potential dictator.” .
“We do not take an oath to serve a king, a queen, a tyrant or a dictator. And we take no oath to serve a would-be dictator. (…) We take an oath to defend the Constitution,” said the soldier in full uniform during the ceremony marking his resignation after a mandate marked by crises.
The reference is transparent. According to a recent book by investigative journalist Bob Woodward, at the end of the Trump era, General Milley contacted his Chinese counterpart several times to reassure him about the American position without warning the Republican president.
Concerned about the billionaire’s state of mind, the chief of staff called General Li Zuocheng, particularly shortly before the American presidential election and on January 8, two days after the attack on the Capitol by Donald Trump’s supporters.
The chief of staff drew the ire of Donald Trump, who recently claimed that Mark Milley was guilty of “treason” and that at other times he would have been executed.
“Patriot” according to Biden, “traitor” ready for “execution” according to Trump
For his part, American President Joe Biden praised a “patriot who uncompromisingly fulfills his duty, unwavering in the face of danger and unwavering commitment to his country” at the ceremony on Friday. His “help was invaluable,” said the 80-year-old Democrat, emphasizing that the general was always “guided by the Constitution.”
“It was one crisis after another,” without interruption, Mark Milley recently confided to AFP about his mandate, which began in October 2019. In addition to Minister Lloyd Austin, the current head of state led, above all, American military aid to Ukraine after the Russian invasion. He estimated that a very long conflict could be expected until mid-September.
His transition was also marked by the American debacle in Kabul, when the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan in August 2021, at the end of a twenty-year war that Mark Milley himself described as a “strategic failure.”
His African-American successor on the front lines of discrimination
Gen. Milley also expressed regret at standing alongside Donald Trump as the president broke up a Black Lives Matter demonstration outside the White House to stand before one, Bible in hand to have the church photographed.
His successor will be Charles “CQ” Brown, currently head of the Air Force. He will be the second African American to hold the highest position in the Army, considered the most powerful in the world, after Colin Powell in the 1990s. An experienced pilot with 3,000 flight hours, including 130 in combat, he had also commanded American air forces in the Middle East and the Pacific.
This general came to attention in the summer of 2020, right in the middle of the “Black Lives Matter” demonstrations against racism, after the death of George Floyd, who was killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis (Minnesota). The senior officer had released a video in which he spoke of the discrimination he had suffered, including in the army.
General Brown’s Senate confirmation was long delayed because a conservative senator was deliberately prevented from demonstrating his opposition to the Pentagon’s decision to support female soldiers in obtaining abortions. CQ Brown was ultimately confirmed by a vote that bypassed this deadlock.