• Frank [he/him, he/him]
    hexagon
    ·
    2 years ago

    Apparently during the last Taiwan Strait Crisis a Chinese military officer called Taiwan to give them a heads up "Hey we're not actually targeting the missiles at you this is just for show" and they executed him for treason.

    • Awoo [she/her]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      Huh that's weird. I read quite recently that they have pretty cordial relations and are regularly making such phonecalls with US generals regarding south china sea stuff. I read that they have a pretty respectful relationship. That was a US general saying it though not Taiwan.

      EDIT: Oh here's an article about some https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3150486/top-us-military-official-defends-phone-calls-chinese-counterpart-during

      There's some more recent ones here: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/7/7/top-us-general-mark-milley-speaks-with-chinese-counterpart

      Seems like Gen Milley is pretty friendly with them.

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]
        hexagon
        ·
        2 years ago

        Seems like Gen Milley is pretty friendly with them.

        That's good, at least. And there's hopefully still plenty of back-channel stuff they can do.

        • Awoo [she/her]
          ·
          edit-2
          2 years ago

          Every time I've seen Milley speak he's seemed like a man that deeply deeply does not want any wars to happen. So yeah it definitely seems like a good thing. I like and trust him a lot more than the rest of the establishment that he has to work for/around.

          • Frank [he/him, he/him]
            hexagon
            ·
            2 years ago

            I do like it when generals are strongly invested in having a long boring career.

          • reddit [any,they/them]
            ·
            2 years ago

            I'm interested to see what becomes of Milley, not because I think he's particularly great or anything but because every time I've seen him speak it's like I can see some future timeline where he's got a much larger political role. I can't put my finger on why but it's like I am briefly getting visions of DNC ghouls maneuvering him into some position as some kind of moderate compromise candidate for... Something.

            • Awoo [she/her]
              ·
              edit-2
              2 years ago

              Oh I definitely see that too. Let's say you have some massive internal power struggle in the country and then you coup the country and you need a figure that everyone agrees is a principled neutral moderate who just genuinely seems to care about doing right and projects the image of "good" to his audience. That seems to be Milley. Genuinely doesn't want to get thousands of people killed and seems to recognise the gravity of the responsibility his role holds.

              Also that authenticity he projects is something people like fucking Biden or Pelosi would kill to have because they're fake pieces of shit.

              Also I can't see anyone wanting to assassinate Milley even under some terrible internal divisive thing. He's got it all going on swirling around him. The only thing that might push him out is not being a hawk but even hawks will see having him around if they need to project all these things is useful.

          • Frank [he/him, he/him]
            hexagon
            ·
            2 years ago

            Probably the most dangerous kind of person in the world. Someone who read the theory, understood it, and made a decision to use it as a weapon in service of capitalism.

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]
        hexagon
        ·
        2 years ago

        Yeah I thought it was pretty harsh. And it was from a wiki article so who knows if that's even what actually happened.

        • TrashCompact [none/use name]
          ·
          2 years ago

          I was going to say, knowing western reporting, isn't there like a 51% chance that the dude was just reassigned and, because it's not a visible position, western journos decided he was killed? They do that shit with the DPRK multiple times a year.