I don’t know about you, but I still vividly remember that day on Jan. 6, 2021 when the rabble, egged on by the then-President of the United States, marched triumphantly toward the U.S. Capitol. It felt strange and scary. Yet, I was still not prepared for the assault itself, the attack on the police, the breaking of the barricades, then the breaking of windows and doors and entering the Capitol.

It reminded me of things that happen in third world countries — people from the streets taking over public buildings and then toppling the government.

I suppose you could argue that it wasn’t that. But I remember an old saying of my Dad: “If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…then it is probably a duck!” Whatever it was, it wasn’t pretty. We had never seen anything like it in America.

With those memories still vivid in my mind, I found interesting a recent article in the New Yorker titled “Trump’s Last General.” It described in detail what was going on in the Pentagon during these chaotic days. The article focuses on the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley. Milley had been appointed by President Trump. He had tried hard to work with Trump, but the volatile President often made things difficult.

On January 6th (the only day that our Capitol has been assaulted since the War of 1812,) Milley finally sent the National Guard to help after speaking with leaders of Congress and the Vice President who had been under attack. Yet, that same day, he never got a call from his Commander-in-Chief. “Trump,” he said, was both “shameful” and “complicit” in what had happened.

In describing events of that awful day, Milley said: “It was a very close-run thing.” In describing those engaged in and supporting the attack, he said: “They shook the very Republic to the core,” He then reflected: “Can you imagine what a group of people who are much more capable could have done?”

However, the bigger story going on was not just what the military did to stop the insurrection, but what it didn’t do in efforts to thwart the election itself. Worrying that he might not win, President Trump had, even before election day, started talking about a “rigged election.” He wanted a more malleable team at the Pentagon to support this narrative.

Just days after the election he sacked his own appointee, Mike Esper, as Secretary of Defense, and sent to the Pentagon someone who had been a “low-level counter-terrorism” official to be the acting Secretary along with several other “political minders” without much military experience. This alarmed not only General Milley but Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, who had a military background and had been in the same class at West Point with Esper. Both Milley and Pompeo were concerned by a pattern of action which seemed to point to having the military become involved in efforts to change the election results.

Milley had meetings with the other Chiefs of Staff who agreed to resign en masse if the White House tried to drag the military into voiding the election. Pompeo said that the “crazies had taken over.” The two of them conducted almost daily phone calls with Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, at the White House to urge that there be a peaceful transfer of power. They called these phone calls “land the plane” conversations. “Our job is to land this plane safely and to do a peaceful transfer of power on the twentieth of January,” Milley told his staff. “This is our obligation to this nation.”

We are fortunate that our military leaders stood up under such political pressure. They stood strong. They stayed out of the election. For that, the Nation should be grateful.

Rolland Kidder is a Stow resident and a Vietnam veteran who served in the U.S. Navy.