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That was my feeling exactly, but forgot to put that in the original post I made. I feel very strongly about this, as you do. What he did is contrary to every tenet of the culture and code that exists (or used to exist) in our military.

In my opinion, when Milley convened that meeting with the JCS, every one of them should have stood up straight at his subject matter, and said the course of action he was pursuing was wrong and contrary to the UCMJ, and any one of them should have jumped the chain of command and gone directly to the Secretary of Defense.

If no action was taken, they should have gone directly to the President.

You are absolutely correct. (as is Freeper DariusBane at post #21 where he states: "...I think you HAVE to make an example of Milley in order to restore discipline in the chain of command. Why should a 1st sgt follow a captains guidance or a company commander a battalion commanders guidance?..." Why indeed?

The Pentagon upper echelons are filled with political people. That is why I posted this to someone who maintained Hegseth was not qualified (before he was confirmed):

This is why, even under fire from some of our fellow Freepers, I have advocated without restraint for a Secretary of Defense such as Pete Hegseth. (Note: I respect many of those who disagreed with me on this, and that includes many with far more experience and responsibility than I ever had...I simply disagreed with them. This is not meant to throw shade on them.)

He (Hegseth) pretty obviously will have a red phone straight to the top. He is going to face huge resistance from the embedded Deep State military leadership.

Many say he doesn’t have the flag officer experience and he doesn’t know the structure and workings of the military beyond his combat experience. I say what has Lloyd Austin showed us, beyond the ability to be AWOL in the military and how to get away with it?

Many say he doesn’t have the corporate experience to manage what is essentially the largest corporation in the world, the Defense Department. I say, we had Robert Strange McNamara, and how did that work out for us.

What is going to happen in the Defense Department in the next four years is not going to be military management of resources that a full four star General might better navigate.

And it is not going to be a display of fine corporate management with meetings, Powerpoint presentations, and metrics to show success or failure.

What I hope is going to happen in the next four years in the Defense Department is going to be an internecine, political version of what happened in Fallujah in 2004 where our Marines went house to house, door to door, and room to room to root out insurgents in the most brutal urban combat since the Hue Campaign in 1968.

Pete Hegseth and his teams of Pentagon Door-kickers will meet resistance every bit as burrowed in as those insurgents in Fallujah, and just as unwilling to give up their anti-American, Deep State Marxist gains. They will need to be fought hand to hand.

In that light, I would rather have someone who is undeniably accomplished, aggressive, and proficient at kicking down doors and killing everyone inside (if merited) and who fully understands the one single issue above all others that needs to be eradicated in today’s military: the elimination of all things DEI, which is wholly incompatible with the concept of proficiency. Like a metastasizing cancer, it has invaded and destroyed any semblance of competency in our military whenever it comes into contact with the principles of DEI.

I have read Pete Hegseth’s book, and he understands the nature and criticality of this DEI threat to our military.

I am heartened by the thought that there are thousands, if not tens of thousands of people in this system who will be willing to help Trump and Hegseth in this endeavor, after having watched the degradation of this formerly fine, competency-based system, and will no doubt line up with both of them to overthrow it.

And I thought this as well (before Hegseth was confirmed):

My heart aches to consider what is going to happen in this internecine warfare that is going to take place in the DOD. I think it will take place because Trump sees the evil that is inherent in wokeness, and Hegseth has seen the result of that evil in action. Trump and Hegseth will both be pulling in the same direction, and with equal intensity. So the battle is going to happen.

Like the contests that routinely took place between Soviet and American submarines in the Cold War, much of this warfare between Wokes and Conservatives is going to take place out of the sight of the public, as if it were taking place at 600 feet below the surface of the North Atlantic. We are only going to be aware of some of the big battles that spill into the Media, but invisibly, in a network stretching to all but the most remote enclaves of the military, Confrontations are going to take place. Records are going to be looked at. People are going to be questioned. Careers are going to be ended. People will be called to answer for their actions. Some may be unfairly accused, and some that were active in perpetuating Marxist principles will somehow skate free.

So, my heart aches to consider the necessary battle to take our military service off the path that only leads through tyranny. And yes, I do firmly believe that woke principles are rooted in Marxism, and as such, can only lead to tyranny. And we just cannot have our military on that surefooted path to disaster. We can't.

When I saw these pictures below, words cannot express how profoundly appalled I was:

This image of these black female cadets raising their fists was disturbing to me:

I saw them all raising their fists in uniform, and THIS is the first thing that my mind visualized:

Those fists being raised by West Point cadets is DIRECTLY derived from the clenched, raised fist symbol of Communism. That disturbed me to see that coming from Cadets.

But the feelings I had were nothing compared to the ones stirred up in me when I first saw these images shown below:

When I first saw these images, I could not comprehend it. Just couldn't.

When I see a stupid college kid wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt, I feel a collage of emotions ranging from general contempt to an odd pity that they are so malleable and ignorant. I see how that is. Ignorant Dumbass.

However, when I saw this Cadet above opening his shirt and showing the inside of his cover, I felt emotions ranging from deep rage to an unexpected fright.

And the fist he held openly, in sight of other Cadets. The Communist Fist.

I could not absorb this. And finally, when I was able to fit it into a reality-based context, it unexpectedly frightened me, because the military had been a pillar of my life. I grew up as the dependent son of a Naval Officer whose career stretched through the end of WWII to the Vietnam POW's coming home, with a destroyer off the coast of Korea in combat, and another destroyer off the coast of Cuba in October of 1962. I grew up on military bases in the Pacific during the Vietnam conflict.

When I graduated from High School, I enlisted alongside my best friend, and the two of us went off to Boot Camp and Jet School together.

I wasn't always an enthusiastic Navy brat or enlisted man on deployment, even if I did sign up for it. But I served my four years and did the best I could and advanced as far as was possible.

With the passage of years, I came to realize just what my life as a military dependent had brought to me in experiences, coupled with what I had learned about myself and the world during my enlistment, I was (and still am) nearly overcome with gratitude for my country for allowing me to serve and learn all those things about work, life, purpose, principles, and ultimately to learn about myself. Serving, I learned my own capabilities.

All on the government dime.

And those capabilities took me through every door in my career since then. Not a day goes by when some lesson I learned during those four years in the US Navy can't be seen in any action I take.

And that is why I felt so angry and even a bit frightened seeing those pictures.

I knew things had been changing, but it seemed like, overnight, there were open Marxists serving OPENLY in the US Military! And I believe that is what frightened me. As an amateur historian, I am cognizant of the evil that Leftist militaries can wreak on their citizenry. To think I had been so asleep at the wheel that open Marxists could be standing on the porch of their barracks, in uniform, raising their fists, and even taking pictures, or opening a shirt to show Che Guevara and writing on his cap his open support for Communism...well, it frightened me.

It didn't frighten me that there were open Communists at West Point as much as it frightened me that I could have been so blind for so long. And I was.

That is why I see someone like Pete Hegseth as a hill we should choose to fight on. If he is denied confirmation, or does get confirmed but fails to excise this cancer from the US military, I can live with that, because if we don't get someone in there who is interested in doing battle, then we have lost anyway. And perhaps nobody can fix it. It might not be possible.

But if he is confirmed, and Trump takes office...there is at least a chance. And that is a hill we should fight on and get Pete Hegseth to fight on, because our military is worth that much to us, and it means even more to me.