Children are frequently better at detecting falsehoods than adults. The childhood rhyme “Liar, liar, pants on fire!” was a common schoolyard chant when I was in grade school all those many years ago. Today, that would probably be grounds for removing the child who said it from school. It’s “Hate Speech”, right?
Recent events should prove to us that indeed, we have been lied to, and for a very long time, by individuals who were formerly considered above reproach. Who, you ask? Generals and Admirals at the Pentagon and in the field is the simple answer. As these individuals allowed themselves to become political animals rather than apolitical defenders of our nation as has always been the ideal for that profession, they have allowed our sons and daughters to be sacrificed on the altars of their career ambitions.
As part of his farewell address when he left office in 1961 after serving eight years as our 34th President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, himself a former Five Star General, and Supreme Commander of all allied forces in Europe during World War Two, warned Americans of the dangers of what he referred to as “The Military Industrial Complex”.
War, after all, is a very profitable business for those corporations who manufacture the implements of modern warfare. Far too many senior officers retired and then became lobbyists for the very corporations who produced the machines and ammunition used in the conflicts in which they previously engaged. Lloyd Austin, our current Secretary of Defense, is a classic example of that behavior. After retiring from the United States Army, Austin served on the Board of Directors of several major corporations which supply arms and technology to our armed services.
Only during wartime can military personnel expect rapid advancement in rank, so it it is to the advantage of those who seek a military career to have an active ongoing conflict, or even several, in progress at all times. This simple fact cannot help but affect the judgement of high ranking military officers, and some are unfortunately more unscrupulous than others, placing their career advancement ahead of the lives of those under their command. These people, (and I count Generals Austin and the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, among them) by telling the politicians in power what they want to hear, not necessarily the truth, do this nation a great disservice.
Their subordinates are infected with the same disease. Milley’s advancement of the leftist ”Woke” policies of the Biden-Harris administration, such as embracing the concept of “White Rage”, is contemptible. He is simply parroting the statements and concepts of his boss, Secretary Austin, who ordered a stand-down of military forces after Biden took office in January, to supposedly purge our military of “White Supremacists” and encourage the study of “Critical Race Theory” by our military personnel.
Meanwhile, nothing was being done to develop a cohesive plan for the upcoming withdrawal of our forces from Afghanistan. Austin and Milley dutifully told Biden what he wanted to hear, that the Afghan government, and particularly its military, was strong enough to prevent a takeover by the Taliban forces we have been fighting for the last twenty plus years, expending enormous quantities of national treasure and thousands of American lives.
How many more American lives will be lost to Islamic terrorism because of this catastrophic failure of leadership is anyones guess. One thing is certain. Nothing will be done beyond lip service by the Biden-Harris cabal. It will all be Trumps fault. Biden is already claiming that he was bound by the Trump withdrawal plan, and could do nothing to change it. Strangely, that concept didn’t apply to a host of other Trump initiatives, including the Keystone Pipeline, the Border Wall, stopping mass illegal immigration and border security. Those items could be changed with the stoke of a pen.
People are going to be held accountable by the American public for these failures in judgement and leadership. The only question is what form that is going to take. One thing is for sure. The liars have been caught with their pants on fire, for all to see.