McRaven As A King-Maker

The Daily Mail reports that, in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal published Monday, William McRaven says he backs Joe Biden. "Describing himself as 'pro-life, pro-Second Amendment, small-government, strong-defense and a national-anthem-standing conservative' McRaven did not mention Donald Trump by name but has been an outspoken critic in the past." Moreover, "[h]e wrote: 'I also believe that black lives matter, that the Dreamers deserve a path to citizenship, that diversity and inclusion are essential to our national success, that education is the great equalizer, that climate change is real and that the First Amendment is the cornerstone of our democracy."

    What's Biden's stance on abortion? According to a recent article in the women's magazine, Bazaar: Biden's public option for the Affordable Care Act will cover abortion; he now opposes the Hyde Amendment which limits federal funding of abortion; he wants to protect Roe v. Wade and stop state restrictions on abortion access; and he plans to restore federal funding for abortion, both here and abroad, including to Planned Parenthood. In other words, Biden will allow abortion on demand and make you, the taxpayer, pay for it.

    What's Biden's stance on the Second Amendment? From his own campaign web-site, Biden states that he supports the following:

• Repeal of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act;
• Ban the manufacture and sale of "assault weapons" and "high-capacity" magazines;
• Regulate possession of existing assault weapons under the National Firearms Act;
• Buy back the assault weapons and high-capacity magazines already in our communities;
• Prohibit a person from buying more than one firearm per month;
• Require background checks for all gun sales, including private sales;
• Introduce legislation banning people deemed by Social Security to be unable to manage their affair from owning or possessing firearms;
• End the online sale of firearms and ammunition;
• Incentivize state “extreme risk” or "red flag" laws;
• Give states incentives to set up gun licensing programs; 
• Put America on the path to ensuring that 100% of firearms sold in America are smart guns;
• Hold adults criminally and civilly liable for directly or negligently giving a minor access to a firearm, regardless of whether the minor actually gains possession of the firearm;
• Require gun owners to safely store their weapons;
• Stop “ghost guns”; and,
• A lot more....

    Is Biden for small-government? He's a Democrat. What do you think?

    Is Biden for a strong defense? Biden makes a few general comments about building a strong military and ending the "forever wars" in Asia, but most of his proposals sound like going back to a "business as usual" as under the Obama Administration. Morever, on September 11, 2020, Defense News reported:

    Former Vice President Joe Biden said this week that, if elected president, he doesn’t foresee major reductions in the U.S. defense budget as the military refocuses its attention to potential threats from “near-peer” powers such as China and Russia.

    But internal pressure from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, combined with pandemic-related economic pressures, may ultimately add up to budget cuts at a Biden Pentagon.

    In an interview with Stars and Stripes on Thursday, Biden avoided any sweeping pronouncements about how defense spending might change in his administration. “I don’t think [budget cuts] are inevitable, but we need priorities in the budget,” Biden said, adding that the Pentagon must invest in emerging technologies.

    “We have to focus more on unmanned capacity, cyber and IT, in a very modern world that is changing rapidly,” Biden said. “I’ve met with a number of my advisors and some have suggested in certain areas the budget is going to have to be increased.”

    Biden vowed to better equip the National Guard and that he would work to reassure allies rattled by his opponent’s “America First” approach. He said he backs a small footprint for U.S. troops in the Mideast, but couldn’t promise a full withdrawal given the complicated conditions in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.

     Is Biden a national-anthem standing guy? As best I could determine, Biden has not come out against kneeling for the national anthem. His campaign website has a lengthy list of promises to promote blacks and black interests. On September 29, 2020, ABC reported: "Biden has embraced the concept of 'Black Lives Matter' and often talks about disparities in the country, telling ABC’s Robin Roberts that there’s a 'fundamental difference' between the two candidates on race." Earlier, on June 2, 2020, the Washington Post reported: "And posing for a photo with the activists, the 77-year-old presumptive Democratic nominee took a knee — a highly symbolic act that’s come to signal support for the demonstrators protesting police violence across the country." So, all together, this indicates to me that Biden is a kneel during the national-anthem kind of guy.

    So, swinging back to the issue of this post, William McRaven has chosen a candidate that stands opposite of everything which McRaven lists as defining himself as a conservative. Either McRaven is a complete liar about holding conservative values, or McRaven believes that supporting a neo-Marxist movement like BLM, amnesty for illegal aliens, multiculturalism, and the pagan religion of global warmists are more important than unborn children, the right of self-defense against criminals and oppressors, the original intent of federalism, and national defense.

    But McRaven has actually gone much further. Last October, McRaven published an op-ed in the New York Times titled, “Our Republic Is Under Attack From the President,” urging that Trump be removed from office — “the sooner, the better.” 

    And the Democrats are convinced that the military will help remove Trump from office should he lose the election. For instance, in June 2020, Biden told reporters "he was 'absolutely convinced' that the US military would intervene to remove President Trump from the White House if he lost his re-election bid and refused to leave." In August 2020, in an open letter to General Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, published at Defense One, former military officers John Nagl and Paul Yingling wrote:

In a few months’ time, you may have to choose between defying a lawless president or betraying your Constitutional oath. We write to assist you in thinking clearly about that choice. If Donald Trump refuses to leave office at the expiration of his constitutional term, the United States military must remove him by force, and you must give that order. 

"Yingling is a retired lieutenant colonel with several combat tours, including serving as Gen. H.R. McMaster's deputy in the first Iraq war. Nagl, also a retired lieutenant colonel, is currently headmaster of the Haverford School in Pennsylvania," notes Byron York in a piece at the Washington Examiner. York goes on to point out another military officer suggesting military intervention:

A second scenario of military intervention came from another prominent former Army officer. Appearing on Bill Maher's Real Time, retired Col. Lawrence Wilkerson (a former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell) outlined a scene from the apocalypse on Inauguration Day. Wilkerson said he believed the military would stay in their barracks under most scenarios. But then: "I wonder what will happen if Trump calls his base to the streets with their guns. His base owns something like 60-70% of the 300, 400 million guns in America. If they answer that call and come to the streets with guns, then we probably are going to have a need for the military. And then, all bets are off as to how much blood might flow."

As York relates, "[t]t is chilling that retired military men are discussing military intervention in the transfer of political power based on Maddow-esque theorizing about the president's imagined motivations and actions."

    Wayne Allensworth also explores this phenomena, writing:

    In a recent segment on “Critical Race Theory” gaining traction at the Pentagon, Tucker Carlson wondered just why the Left was so intent on capturing the military.

    My answer: the Blob [ed: the Deep State] was contemplating the possibility of using the military as part of an attempt to block a second Trump term.

    It’s quite clear that the top military brass has been subject to “the Great Awokening” and Trump Derangement Syndrome as much as the rest of the federal bureaucracy. The military Establishment has steadfastly resisted Trump’s inclination to disengage from foreign interventions. Moreover, the Pentagon has also resisted Trump’s order to stop indoctrinating its personnel in “Critical Race Theory” [Trump’s Anti-Critical Race Theory Order is Necessary But Insufficient, by Timon Cline, AmGreatness.com, October 5, 2020].

    In his book Rage, Bob Woodward reports that former Defense Secretary and retired Marine General James Mattis once commented to then Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats that “There may come a time when we have to take collective action” against Trump, since Mattis deemed the president “dangerous” and “unfit” [Mattis told Coats Trump is 'dangerous,' 'unfit': Woodward book, by Tal Axelrod, The Hill, September 9, 2020].

    It’s likely that General Mattis’s view of Trump is widely shared among top level military officers.

    So how might the military figure into the Blob’s wargaming plans? Peter van Buren has contemplated a post-election scenario in which a “temporary” military government might be pitched as the only way to break an electoral deadlock and end post-election disorder [What if Trump Won’t Leave The White House? The fearmongers are at it again, this time with their mantle-holder Biden, warning of the coming dictatorship, American Conservative, June 30, 2020]. Van Buren reminded us that Trump’s opponents have never accepted his legitimacy, that “RussiaGate” was good practice for them—good practice for a coup, that is—and that they are gearing up for an all-out effort to dislodge him from the White House.

    Van Buren further noted that Joe Biden, who has claimed that it is Trump who “is going to try and steal this election,” has also stated quite plainly that if Trump refuses to leave the White House, he is “absolutely convinced” that the military would “escort him from the White House with great dispatch” [Biden: Military Will Remove Trump From the White House if He Refuses to Leave, by Julie Ross, Daily Beast, June 11, 2020].

    It’s worth mentioning that van Buren is not a Trump supporter, was a career foreign service officer, and is an honest man, an Iraq war whistleblower who wrote an excellent book, We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People, on his experiences in that country. I reviewed it here.) He does not believe that a Pentagon-backed coup is merely “paperback thriller material.” It’s a plausible scenario.

     You may also remember Michael Anton's essay, "The Coming Coup?" in which he warns that "we now have Democrats and their ruling class masters openly talking about staging a coup." And:

It started with the military brass quietly indicating that the troops should not follow a presidential order. They were bolstered by many former generals—including President Trump’s own first Secretary of Defense—who stated openly what the brass would only hint at. Then, as nationwide riots really got rolling in early June, the sitting Secretary of Defense himself all but publicly told the president not to invoke the Insurrection Act. His implicit message was: “Mr. President, don’t tell us to do that, because we won’t, and you know what happens after that.”

Andrea Widburg writing on this topic reminds us that "[i]n only five years, Obama had conducted a major Pentagon purge, firing almost 200 senior officers who held the old-fashioned belief that the military exists to protect America and should not be a social justice institution with limited firepower," leaving only hard-core progressives in charge.

    In short, based on the foregoing, McRaven appears to be part of a cadre of former and current high-ranking military officers who support the military intervening to remove Trump from office.