Mark Milley Rejects Tom Cotton’s Suggestion to Resign Over Afghanistan Debacle: ‘My Dad Didn’t Get a Choice to Resign at Iwo Jima’
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Mark Milley dismissed Senator Tom Cotton’s (R-AK) suggestion that he ought to resign over the Biden administration’s handling of Afghanistan.
As Milley testified on Tuesday before the Senate Armed Service Committee, a great deal of the hearing focused on how he and General Frank McKenzie recommended that the U.S. should’ve maintained a troop presence in the country. This contradicts an interview Biden gave back in August where he insisted his top military advisers didn’t warn him against his withdrawal timeline.
As Cotton remarked that Biden “rejected” Milley’s advice, he said, “I understand that you’re the principal military advisor — that you advise, you don’t decide, the president decides — but if all of this is true, why haven’t you resigned?”
Milley shot down the notion, saying his resignation would be “an incredible act of political defiance,” and that his role is to advise the president in his command over the military.
As a senior military officer, resigning is a really serious thing. It’s a political act if I’m resigning in protest. My statutory responsibility is to provide legal advice or the best military advice to the president. That’s my legal requirement. That’s what the law is. The president doesn’t have to agree with that advice. He doesn’t have to make those decisions just because we’re generals. It would be an incredible act of political defiance for a commissioned officer to just resign because my advice isn’t taken. This country doesn’t want generals figuring out what orders we’re going to accept and do or not. That’s not our job. The principle of civilian control of the military is absolute. It’s critical to this republic. My dad didn’t get a choice to resign at Iwo Jima. Those kids there at Abbey Gate, they don’t get a choice to resign. I’m not gonna turn my back on them. I’m not gonna resign.
Milley concluded by saying that as long as his orders come from civilian authority and are within the bounds of the law, “I intend to carry them out.”
Milley’s comments come after he defended his alleged actions as described in Peril, the new book from Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Robert Costa. The controversy stems from questions about whether Milley’s conduct amounted to an attempt to wrest civilian control over the military away from former President Donald Trump.
Watch above, via MSNBC.
