Nothing to see here, move along.

So goes the thinking of Gen. Mark Milley, who 'distinguished' himself to Americans and everyone else with his 2021 Afghanistan pullout, speaking this time about China.

According to Defense One, which got an exclusive:

Everyone needs to calm down about war with China, Gen. Mark Milley said on Friday.  

The Joint Chiefs chairman warned against the rise of “overheated” rhetoric of a looming U.S. war with China, and he said he doubts China’s chances of “conquering” Taiwan. But, he added, the United States should continue to quicken arms shipments to the self-governing nation and its own military capabilities, just in case.

Following this year’s Chinese balloon scare, the China heat is on. In the last two weeks, members of Congress in hearings aimed a list of concerns about China—everything from nuclear weapons to computer chips, invading Taiwan, and allying with Russia—at Milley and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. Milley has taken to telling lawmakers that war with China—and Russia—is “not imminent or inevitable.” It’s part of an effort to lower the heat, he said.

“I think there's a lot of rhetoric in China, and a lot of rhetoric elsewhere, to include the United States, that could create the perception that war is right around the corner or we’re on the brink of war with China,” Milley said in an interview with Defense One. 

“And that could happen. I mean, it is possible that you could have an incident or some other trigger event that could lead to uncontrolled escalation. So, it's not impossible. But I don't think at this point I would put it in the likely category,” said Milley. “And I think that the rhetoric itself can overheat the environment.”

Which, to paraphrase Chesterton, sounds like a guy running around with a firehose at a time of flood.

Milley, according to reports, is cautious to a fault, always downplaying pretty much challenge no matter how big a crisis may be, even as it is staring in front of him. In the past, he and his superiors refused to send troops to our border when millions began invading illegally -- which only brought even more millions. He balked at dispatching troops to riot-plagued U.S. blue cities in 2020 when antifa was burning U.S. courthouses and destroying commercial areas and looters were running rampant. Troops are the only thing that stops such activity, as the early history of Ronald Reagan demonstrated. Now San Francisco is in such a crime crisis it's begging for federal help. But Milley is always going to Milley.

Along with his absurd caution in the face of any conflict, he's highly susceptible to over-reactions, too -- as when he called up his counterparts in Beijing and assured them during the messy U.S. presidential transition that if President Trump ordered China attacked, they should fear not, as he would give them advance warning.

That's some judgment he has, curiously at odds with his view that China isn't a threat.

Now he's saying the Chicoms aren't much of a problem at all -- in the face of China's intensified rhetoric against the U.S., its actual military threats to U.S. air and sea operations in the South China Sea region, its ramped-up threats to Taiwan, its growing technological superiority (the failure of U.S. hypersonic weapons as China's advance ought to be a flashing red light), its string of successes in the creation of "Sino-states" at the world's critical roads, ports, and transport hubs around the third world, its effort to dislodge the dollar as the world's reserve currency, and now its diplomatic successes. As if those things weren't specific enough to suggest that something is happening and pretty rapidly happening, there was also China's balloon incident over the U.S. where Milley's Pentagon allowed it to fly from military intallation to military installation across the U.S. mainland, collecting and transmitting real-time data about U.S. capabilities back to Beijing, brazenly, unencumbered, until public pressure forced the Biden administration to finally relent and shoot it down. That was after the balloon had already gathered and sent all its data back to its communist masters. The balloon rubble contained technology that was clearly U.S.-made, meaning, they've ramped up their espionage, too.

None of that's a problem, but so-called extremism in the U.S. military ranks is. A recent study found that after all that hullabaloo and expense, the military found all of about 100 extremists in the two-million strong armed forces. Nor is the fact that U.S. military readiness is now a problem, U.S. ammo supplies are now a problem, and military recruiting is at a post-Vietnam-style nadir.

In short, Milley licks when he should bite, as the Russian saying goes, and bites when he should lick.

The latter part of the phrase in fact is a big problem with him. Not only did he continuously undercut his commander in chief, he spent a lot of time embracing wokesterism in the military ranks, speaking of all his readings on "white skin privilege," permitting critical race theory to be introduced into the military ranks, sowing division, and conducting a witch hunt of all the "extremists" (read: Trump supporters) within the military ranks. Downplaying the China threat leaves him a lot of time to keep doing that.

He's a walking judgment problem, unable to distinguish small and non-existent issues from major serious ones that lie at the heart of his mission.

There's one piece of evidence after another that China is trying to seriously challenge our country and its ideals on all fronts, including on the military front.

Milley finds that the one thing to downplay, as if everyone who can see it is falling victim to their own overheated rhetoric, except him. Based on Milley's record, we'll take that as a counterindicator. This guy has got to go.

Image: U.S. Secretary of Defense, via Flickr // CC BY 2.0