‘If Trump Is Reelected, There Will Be No Mark Milley to Stop Him’

The Patriot

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General Mark Milley’s willingness to block Trump’s worst impulses puts a very different light on Senator Tommy Tuberville’s ongoing obstruction of military promotions. Perhaps Tuberville’s pro-life pretext is just that, a smoke screen providing a cover to gut the upper echelons of military leadership, such that Trump may have a free hand to load the Pentagon with loyalists if he wins the 2024 election. The first putsch failed. If Trump is reelected, the next one will not; there will be no Milley to stop him.

Steve Mittelstaedt
Ferndale, Wash.

“The Patriot” is a deeply insightful look at how the Constitution sits astride American political power dynamics. General Milley dealt with many complexities when serving as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Trump administration, most notably the challenge of balancing his sense of the obligations of his oath of office and the destructive, ugly fantasies of his commander in chief.

As Milley experienced, the press of time and situation rarely allows for good interpretation of the propriety of an order from someone in your chain of command—but Milley consistently did it exceptionally well. I was an enlisted service member. When I ended my term of duty as an Air Force sentry-dog handler, I was of the opinion that common sense and good moral judgment were likely to be inversely proportional to rank. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to accept that those qualities may simply be independent of military rank, as Milley’s tenure demonstrates.

In October 1968, on our last night on post at Tuy Hoa Air Base in Vietnam, my dog, King, and I were patrolling a section of beach adjacent to the South China Sea. At about midnight, my dog and I spotted a sampan about 75 yards offshore. The rule for fishing boats was that they had to be at least 200 meters offshore and have a running light aboard. The sampan was unlit and way too close to shore. I radioed in the sighting to Defense Control. The sergeant on dispatch replied, “Fire two shots over their heads.” My quick assessment was that those were probably two tired local fishermen who had drifted off course, and not a Vietcong recon team. I radioed back, “Firing a flare.” (When one has a radio or a rifle in one hand, and the leash of an alert 80-pound dog in the other, communications tend to be brief.) The flare signaled that we’d seen the boat and were instructing it not to come any closer. Clearly under surveillance, the people on the boat moved out.

My experience adjusting a military command was trivial compared with what Milley had to deal with during the Trump administration. There can be a risk in bucking orders. But Milley’s example provides a model for how and when to do it.

George Cartter
Vacaville, Calif.

What Mitt Romney Saw in the Senate

Behind closed doors, the hypocrisy and cynicism are even worse than you think, McKay Coppins wrote in the November 2023 issue.

Thank you for your article on the retirement of Senator Mitt Romney. Without his presence in the Senate, there is one fewer Republican willing to stand up for democratic principles and put the country above party and self-interest. His ethics and principles will be sorely missed in government.

Ken Derow
Swarthmore, Pa.

It is both charming and troubling that someone with Romney’s access and experience is surprised by the venality of his fellow senators and the illusory nature of American democracy.

Robert Scribner
Oakland, Calif.

Though Mitt Romney is correct that the Republicans in office now are a different sort of group than Republicans of the past, it’s wrong to say that the change is merely that they’ve fallen for a “demagogue” who doesn’t believe in the Constitution. The shift is far deeper and more insidious than that. Many of today’s Republicans have thrown away democratic principles for the acquisition of power. They disguise their betrayal of democracy with flag waving and hide their personal immorality behind Bible thumping; their main concern is satisfying whatever selfish impulse they are experiencing in the moment, regardless of who or what is harmed. This shift predates Donald Trump. His example just gives them permission to be more open about it.

Ginny Oliver
Santa Maria, Calif.

Behind the Cover

We decided for this month’s issue to use our cover as a table of contents, thereby placing the focus squarely on the stories and their authors. The cover as table of contents is a venerable tradition at The Atlantic : Our covers were used exclusively in this fashion from July 1905 to November 1947. This particular cover explicitly references the design—the typography, the layout, and the color—of The Atlantic in the late 1930s. Above, the August 1939 issue.

— Peter Mendelsund, Creative Director

This article appears in the January/February 2024 print edition with the headline “The Commons.”