As I posted on social media, I’ll let other cartoonists draw General Mark Milley on a pedestal.
General Milley got between Donald Trump and his nuke button days after the January 6 insurrection at the United States Capitol, committed by white supremacists on behalf of Donald Trump. Donald is insane and shouldn’t be anywhere near a television remote, less enough the button to nuclear weapons. General Mark Milley should be praised for his actions. But that praise isn’t a free pass to escape without criticism when it comes to major military fuck-ups.
After the terrorist attack at the Kabul airport that killed nearly 200 people, including 13 Americans, and injuring over 150, President Joe Biden promised reprisal. Within two days, the U.S. military launched a drone strike they claimed killed several members of the the terrorist organization, ISIS-K. They were wrong.
The New York Times conducted an investigation and found that the strike didn’t kill terrorists, but instead, killed ten innocent people, including seven children. And the military followed the driver for over eight hours. When it was first reported, General Milley resisted and called the strike a “Righteous strike.” Even after this, my colleagues and other opinion journalists were still praising General Milley. Yes, compared to Donald Trump, Milley is a saint…but that is a very low bar. Being better than Donald Trump doesn’t make you a good person. It just makes you better than Trump. Killing children is not “righteous.” Milley still has not apologized for this.
Conservatives have been demanding Milley’s resignation for stopping a president (sic) who had attempted a coup from using nuclear weapons. Now, they’ll probably add this to it, but not because they demand justice, but because it supports their political agenda. I hate that this cartoon will be used to help Trump supporters who also supported an attack against our government and nation. But I call balls and strikes how I see them.
These two issues are unrelated to me. Stopping Trump from nuking China is a very good thing. Killing innocents in a hasty rush for retribution and media coverage is very bad. I thought we got rid of doing reactionary stupid shit for ratings when we defeated Trump in the election. President Biden is supposed to be better. Let’s be better.
Also, would the military had ever acknowledged they killed ten innocent people, seven of them children, if a free press hadn’t reported it? They can also do better than condolences and thoughts and prayers. These were human lives. People in other countries are just as much of human beings as U.S. citizens. We did the very same thing ISIS-K did, killed innocent people, except we get to say “oops.”
Even with a president who is not Donald Trump, I will never blindly trust the government or the military. I’m not putting anyone on any pedestals because I don’t have any pedestals to give.
Creative note: I was thinking about this subject yesterday and taking Milley off the pedestal. That’s the point of me doing this subject. I wasn’t going to draw a cartoon today, but this subject kept waking me up. And as I was lying in bed wanting to go back to sleep, I kept thinking of different ideas for this subject. So, I had to do the cartoon today. This was going to be my Monday….but now I gotta find something else.
Prediction: A dozen other cartoonists will go after Milley’s pedestal tomorrow.
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Reblogged this on It Is What It Is and commented:
Goose and the gander thing? … “Even with a president who is not Trump, I will never blindly trust the government or the military. I’m not putting anyone on any pedestals because I don’t have any pedestals to give.”
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If we believe this to be true, and he who would disbelieve it needs help in a big way, they should definitely own up to it. It will never officially be called Milley’s fault–all he did was order the strike, no guilt there!–but someone will be made to pay for it. REMEMBER MY LAI! REMEMBER LT. CALLEY!
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It is true. The military has admitted it’s true. And after it was reported civilians were killed, Milley still said it was a “Righteous strike.”
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I expected it to be true, but how can it possibly be a “righteous strike”? I know the military uses an extreme form og double-spaced, but this is complete crap. If Biden keeps him on in his present position, he has lost any respect I ever had for him. Murder is murder, and 10 counts should get 10 life sentences, one of them for Gen. Milley.
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Al-Jazeera published a report within a day or two after the strike describing the actual people who got killed, and the aftermath, what the neighbors/family found. They said it was a horror show. So this wasn’t news to me. What amazes me is how long it took the US media to figure this out. It’s not hard to get AJ alerts on your phone….
For years, rumors of drone strikes killing innocent people have been circulating, but over here in America, I didn’t know who to believe. Was it a reliable source, or was it an America-hater who’s been debunked? Is AJ trustworthy or do they support terrorists? In the early days they got lots of criticism for airing Bin Laden’s videos.
Now, we have US media supporting what AJ published weeks ago. I don’t have time to track down everything that goes on in the world, so I have to rely mostly on the local paper. If it doesn’t hit that, I may never hear of it. It seems like the rest of the world knows this stuff goes on, while we live in our happy little bubbles. We’re still hearing how people feel abandoned to the Taliban, yet I see evidence that we were really just invaders/occupiers and needed to let Afghans figure things out for themselves. Have you read the SIGAR report that came out last month? The last 20 years have been a clusterfudge where even our supposed “reforms” and building programs didn’t do one bit of good.
Meanwhile, an interview in AJ with a family member of the people killed said he wants justice–not just an apology, but the people who did it being brought up in criminal court. This leaves people angry, and keeps creating more terrorists, so the problem never goes away.
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Clay, ironically Stephen King’s “The Dead Zone” was on TV Saturday afternoon. The premise is a man (played well by Christopher Walkien) who can see and alter the future meets a future populist president (played by Martin Sheen) running for Senator. When Walkien’s character sees Sheen launching a preemptive nuclear attack after a General tries to stop him, Walkien knows he must stop Sheen’s character before he gets elected. The similarities are staggering. Keith
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I saw that when I was a kid. It’s one of those films you forget about but can recall specific scenes.
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