Pleiku, part one

+1 to anyone who recognizes this title. +1 more if you can anticipate the quote I’ll introduce below. +1 more still if you guess where the analogy leads! Take credit in the comments, please.

In August, 1964, the US Navy reported that it had been attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin by North Vietnam. President Johnson responded by deploying US ground forces into South Vietnam. The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong attacked these forces, but the President resisted a major response until after the Presidential election in November (foreshadowing here). In February, 1965, the Viet Cong attacked Camp Holloway, an American helicopter base in the central highlands near the village of Pleiku. The battle was little more than a large raid: it lasted about twelve hours, involved some fierce hand-to-hand fighting as the Viet Cong penetrated the perimeter, resulted in eight American KIA, 126 wounded, and US military escalation. It was the first blood of the US war in Vietnam.

McGeorge Bundy was one of Kennedy’s “best & brightest” who argued for greater US involvement in Vietnam under Johnson. When asked years later about the importance of Pleiku, he said “Pleikus are like streetcars” in that one comes along regularly, and you just pick one to get where you’re going.

Where’s this going? In case you have been out of contact the last week or so, there is an impeachment going on in Washington. The proximate cause is President Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky. But that phone call was just a streetcar called Pleiku: a way to get where some always wanted to go.

Let’s get one thing out of the way here: what President Trump did on that call was anything but “perfect”–his term. It was base, demeaning, and unethical. He placed personal objectives above national security concerns. He crudely bargained with a foreign political leader for domestic political advantage. Is that impeachable? Sure, since impeachment is a matter for the House and Senate to define and try. Impeachable is whatever the House majority decides it is; guilty is whatever two-thirds of the Senate says it is. It is a political activity using judicial terms and methods.

That said, the hand-wringing about mixing politics and national security is overwrought. Recall Johnson’s actions before Pleiku: US forces were attacked prior to the election but didn’t get the airpower/retaliation the administration had already planned, because it was before the election. Nixon lied about a special plan to end the Vietnam war leading up to his 1972 re-election. Leading up the 1984 election, Senator Edward Kennedy offered to arrange favorable news coverage for the Soviet leadership hoping to forestall Reagan’s re-election. President Trump’s actions were (as usual) over the top, but hardly unprecedented. If you’ve never been to Washington, ***Newsflash***: politics happens there, even with national security issues.

Just eight months ago, Speaker Pelosi said “Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country. And he’s just not worth it.” (that last part was an A+ troll, btw). I don’t care which party you party with, those conditions are not met, especially when it comes to last one (bipartisan). It could have been different (has in the past), but it isn’t.

If the Speaker was serious about impeachment, she would have delayed the process long enough to get court rulings on the “obstruction of Congress” charges. Remember it was the Supreme Court’s decision against Nixon along the same lines that paved the way for his resignation in the face of a bipartisan impeachment. Trump’s cases remain in the courts, so there is no there, there (yet).

And of course, this impeachment did not occur in a vacuum. Calls for impeachment (including petitions, websites and a leadership PAC) started before Trump’s inauguration. Democratic Representatives introduced a motion to begin impeachment proceedings in December 2017; it received 58 positive votes (all from Democrats). Reasons for impeachment changed over time: foreign business ties, collusion to undermine the 2016 election, the emoluments clause, obstruction of justice, fomenting racial hatred, bribery and finally abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

In the few choice words of newly-elected Representative Rashida Tlaib, “we’re gonna impeach the m*therf*cker!” There are numerous other, less pithy but equally adamant quotes from Democratic office holders.

So we’re all riding a streetcar to get to the same destination: impeachment. Oddly enough, we all know exactly what awaits us there. There will be no surge in public opinion, for or against. There will be no conviction in the Senate. What is really going on here? What were the Democrats supposed to do, just ignore President’s Trumps gross overture in Ukraine? What else could they have done?

If you haven’t shut down my blog’s window in partisan disgust yet, I hope you’ll come back tomorrow for part two and my thoughts on the answers to those questions.