BY VICTOR DAVIS HANSON | P J MEDIA
In a recent Washington Post op-ed, three retired
generals, Paul Eaton, Antonio Taguba, and Steven Anderson, warn of a supposedly
impending coup should Donald Trump be elected in 2024.
The column seemed strangely timed to coincide with a
storm of recent Democratic talking points that a re-elected Trump, or even a
Republican sweep of the 2022 midterms, would spell a virtual end of democracy.
Ironies abound.
From Election Day in 2020 to Inauguration Day 2021, we
were told by the Left that democracy was resilient and rightly rid the nation
of Trump.
The hard Left, for one of the rare times in U.S. history,
was now in complete control of both houses of Congress and the presidency.
Spiking inflation, supply-chain shortages, near-record
gas prices, open borders, the flight from Afghanistan, multi-trillion-dollar
deficits, and polarizing racial rhetoric all followed.
In response to these events, Joe Biden’s popularity
utterly collapsed. His own cognitive challenges multiplied the unpopularity
of his failed policies.
In reaction, the Left again pivoted. It suddenly
announced that should it lose congressional power in 2022 or the presidency in
2024, democracy was all but doomed.
Apparently, what changed Democrats’ views was that
democracy was working all too well in expressing widespread public disgust . .
. with the Left.
Even more ironies followed.
The three retired generals shrilly write of the dangers
of insurrection and coups. Yet the FBI found no such insurrection or conspiracy
in the buffoonish riot on January 6.
Only serial media misinformation and lies turned a ragtag
band of misfits into an existential threat to the nation.
Almost every media talking point turned out
to be untrue. No Capitol police officer died at the hands
of the mob. (Early reports that Officer Brian Sicknick had been beaten into a
coma by protesters were incorrect. The Washington, D.C., medical examiner ruled
Sicknick died the next day of a stroke.) The media all but ignored the lethal
police shooting of a military veteran and unarmed petite female trespasser, for
the apparent crime of trying to enter Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office through a
broken window. There were no gun-toting “insurrectionists” arrested inside the
Capitol.
Another irony. The three retired generals say
nothing about the Russia collusion hoax in which Obama administration officials
at the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the CIA helped to seed a fake
dossier — paid for by candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
Ex-British intelligence operative Christopher Steele’s made-up opposition
research was designed first to derail Trump’s campaign, then to disable his
transition and finally sabotage his presidency. All that seems rather
coup-like.
In truth, coups were regularly discussed during the last
four years — but only in the context of a by-any-means-necessary way of
deposing Donald Trump extralegally before his term ran out.
In August 2020, two retired officers John
Nagl and Paul Yingling, urged Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General
Mark Milley to remove Trump from office if Milley felt
it necessary after a contested election.
Both officers knew that the law forbids Milley from
interfering in the chain of command, given his mere advisory role to the
president.
Yet Milley himself had dangerously violated
his purview at least twice. He once ordered subordinate officers to
report to him first should Donald Trump consider any nuclear action against
China. And Milley additionally called his Chinese communist counterpart to
warn him that he would tip the Chinese off about any preemptive American strike
on China.
Earlier, Rosa Brooks, a former Obama Pentagon legal
official, wrote a now infamous essay in Foreign Policy, listing the choices
available in removing Donald Trump from his less than two-week-old presidency.
Among the possible means, she listed a potential military coup.
Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military
Justice forbids even retired military officers publicly attacking or
disparaging their current commander-in-chief. Yet several retired
generals and admirals serially did just that during the last administration,
smearing their president in every imaginable way, from being a Mussolini-like
fascist to a veritable Nazi.
The officers published in the Washington Post
are clueless as to why the military is now suffering its most dismal public
approval ratings of the modern era — with only 45 percent of the public
registering trust and confidence in their armed forces.
The nation is clearly not blaming the courageous soldiers
in the enlisted ranks. But it has had enough of the Pentagon’s loud top brass
who seem more interested in stirring up political divisions at home than
adopting winning strategies in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, or deterring China
and Russia.
The officer corps too often broadcasts its woke
credentials, calibrated for career advancement. Top-ranking officers upon
retirement too predictably head for corporate defense contractor boards and
procurement lobbying firms.
To restore the military’s reputation, officers should
eschew politics to focus on restoring strategic deterrence and military
readiness. They should keep clear of divisive domestic issues. They should
stop virtue signaling to the media and influential members of Congress.
But most importantly, officers should quit
all their coup porn talk — either to remove a president they don’t like, or to
project their own reckless, insurrectionary behavior onto their political
opponents.
https://pjmedia.com/columns/victor-davis-hanson/2021/12/23/please-stop-the-coup-porn-n1543876
_________________
RELATED
ARTICLE
Why Is the Left Suddenly Worried About the
End of Democracy?
By Victor Davis Hanson | Townhall.Com
To answer that question, understand first what is not
behind these shrill forecasts.
They are not worried about 2 million foreign
nationals crashing the border in a single year, without vaccinations during a
pandemic. Yet it seems insurrectionary for a government simply to nullify its
own immigration laws.
They are not worried that some 800,000 foreign nationals,
some residing illegally, will now vote in New York City elections.
They are not worried that there are formal
efforts underway to dismantle the U.S. Constitution by junking the 233-year-old
Electoral College or the preeminence of the states in establishing ballot laws
in national elections.
They are not worried that we are witnessing an
unprecedented left-wing effort to scrap the 180-year-old filibuster, the
150-year-old nine-person Supreme Court, and the 60-year tradition of 50 states,
for naked political advantage.
They are not worried that the Senate this
year put on trial an impeached ex-president and private citizen, without the
chief justice in attendance, without a special prosecutor or witnesses, and
without a formal commission report of presidential high crimes and
misdemeanors.
They are not worried that the FBI, Justice Department,
CIA, Hillary Clinton, and members of the Obama administration systematically
sought to use U.S. government agencies to sabotage a presidential campaign,
transition, and presidency, via the use of a foreign national and ex-spy
Christopher Steele and his coterie of discredited Russian sources.
They are not worried that the Pentagon
suddenly has lost the majority support of the American people. Top
current and retired officers have flagrantly violated the chain-of-command, the
Uniform Code of Military Justice, and without data or evidence have
announced a hunt in the ranks for anyone suspected of "white rage" or
"white supremacy."
They are not worried that in 2020, a record 64 percent
of the electorate did not cast their ballots on Election Day.
Nor are they worried that the usual rejection rate in
most states of non-Election Day ballots plunged - even as an unprecedented
101 million ballots were cast by mail or early voting.
And they are certainly not worried that partisan
billionaires of Silicon Valley poured well over $400 million into selected
precincts in swing states to "help" public agencies conduct the
election.
What then is behind this new left-wing hysteria about the
supposed looming end of democracy?
It is quite simple. The Left expects to lose
power over the next two years - both because of the way it gained and used it,
and because of its radical, top-down agendas that never had any public support.
After gaining control of both houses of Congress and the
presidency - with an obsequious media and the support of Wall Street, Silicon
Valley, higher education, popular culture, entertainment and professional
sports - the Left has managed in just 11 months to alienate a majority of
voters.
The nation has been wracked by unprecedented crime and
non-enforcement of the borders. Leftist district attorneys either won't indict
criminals; they let them out of jails or both.
Illegal immigration and inflation are soaring. Deliberate
cuts in gas and oil production helped spike fuel prices.
All this bad news is on top of the Afghanistan
disaster, worsening racial relations, and an enfeebled president.
Democrats are running 10 points behind the Republicans in
generic polls, with the midterms less than a year away.
Joe Biden's negatives run between 50 and 57 percent - in
Donald Trump's own former underwater territory.
Less than a third of the country wants Biden to run for
reelection. In many head-to-head polls, Trump now defeats Biden.
In other words, leftist elites are terrified
that democracy will work too robustly.
After the Russian collusion hoax, two impeachments, the
Hunter Biden laptop stories, the staged melodramas of the Kavanaugh hearings,
the Jussie Smollett con, the Covington kids smear, and the Rittenhouse trial
race frenzy, the people are not just worn out by leftist hysterias, but they
also weary of how the Left gains power and administers it.
If Joe Biden were polling at 70 percent approval, and his
policies at 60 percent, the current doomsayers would be reassuring us of the
"health of the system."
They are fearful and angry not because democracy doesn't
work, but because it does despite their own media and political efforts to
warp it.
When a party is hijacked by radicals and uses
almost any means necessary to gain and use power for agendas that few Americans
support, then average voters express their disapproval.
That reality apparently terrifies an elite. It
then claims any system that allows the people to vote against the Left is not
people power at all.