Reeling from the Afghanistan debacle, America is confronted with yet another disturbing military story today*, thanks to an upcoming book by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa of the Washington Post. As reported, in January this year, the U.S. Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley assured his Chinese counterpart, General Li Zuocheng, that America would not carry out any surprise attack on China. Milley made this call behind the then-sitting president Donald J. Trump. The reason? Milley was afraid that Trump might initiate a U.S.-China military conflict. If true, Milley would have exercised Trump's presidential power without Trump's order. That would amount to a military coup. 

Milley cannot afford to keep his silence about the above report. He has to tell the truth, the sooner the better. Anything less than that would be unacceptable to Americans. Half-truth would not cut it. 

If somehow a smoking gun is found, a deep state of generals would be more fact than fiction.

By the way, according to Wikipedia, "a deep state is a type of governance made up of potentially secret and unauthorised networks of power operating independently of a state's political leadership in pursuit of their own agenda and goals."

--- Lingyang Jiang

* https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-milley-secretly-secured-nuclear-codes-called-china-in-final-days-of-trump-presidency