Category: Politics

Take a deep breath. This is not an attempt to change your mind on this fraught, deeply divisive issue. This is the second post in a series looking into whether the policies of the two leading candidates can be described as significantly different in terms of their morality. Not the candidates, the policies.

Abortion, or women’s reproductive choice, is another major issue in the presidential election. Where do the candidates stand, and what does it mean?

When Vice President Harris speaks on this issue, she does so with clarity and sincerity. Even her extemporaneous remarks on this issue are (usually) coherent and forceful. Prior to becoming the presidential candidate, the Biden campaign had assigned her the lead role in public discussions on it, and she was effective with the liberal/progressive audiences with which she engaged.

At its most elemental, Harris says she will sign a new federal law reinstating the status quo before the Dobbs decision overturned Roe’s constitutional right to an abortion. However, there are several areas where she goes further. She has promised to rescind the Hyde Amendment, a bipartisan agreement (that has lasted decades) that says no federal funding can be used to procure an abortion. She has suggested (according to the American Civil Liberties Union) that this is “to ensure that everyone can get an abortion if they need one, no matter who they are, where they live, or how much money they have.” Harris also co-sponsored (and has not backed away from) the Women’s Health Protection Act of 2017, which would invalidate all state-level laws or regulations which restrict abortion or abortion access.

Just today, the Vice President announced she supports making an exception to the filibuster rules to pass her pro-choice law in the Senate. This is an important development. To remind, the Senate has a rule that for any vote to take place, debate must be allowed first, and if that debate becomes a filibuster, it takes a super-majority of sixty Senators to break the filibuster and continue to the actual vote. Her support, coupled with any Democratic majority in the Senate, makes passage of her proposed abortion rights bill far more likely. It also means that Republicans will accept the new rule change, and our nation’s abortion rules will go from one extreme (unlimited abortion) to another (abortion banned) with every change in the Presidency and Congress. And some thought things were bad before now!

In practical terms, when asked at the presidential debate if she supports any restrictions on abortion, Harris did not answer the question. When former President Trump said “You could do abortions in the seventh month, the eighth month, the ninth month” Harris responded “that’s not true.” This happened at the end of a back-n-forth exchange between the candidates, so perhaps the moderator Linsey Davis can be forgiven for not fact-checking the Vice President. Roe placed no limitation on abortion after viability; it only afforded the states the ability to do so. Some states under Roe placed no such restrictions, and many more have done the same under Dobbs. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in 2019 there were almost 5,000 abortions in the US after the twenty-first week; the pro-choice Guttmacher Institute estimates it was closer to 9,000. That’s between one or two every hour. And that same group denies these were abortions for late-discovered fetal anomalies, but rather (according to the women who had the abortions) they were for the same reasons as abortions in general.

Summing up, Vice President Harris sees abortion solely as women’s health care, there is no reason to place any limits on it, and she would use the powers of the federal government to prevent states from restricting the practice.

As clear and unapologetic as Vice President Harris is on this issue, former President Trump is vague and evasive. He was vigorously pro-choice for decades, but changed to pro-life when he announced his candidacy in 2015. When asked by Maureen Dowd whether “he was ever involved with someone who had an abortion?” he said, “Such an interesting question. So what’s your next question?” Responding to prompts from pro-life activists, he has taken positions all over the map on abortion, then walked those same positions back when they attracted negative attention. His one constant has been his promise to nominate Supreme Court Justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade, which he did.

In the post Dobbs environment, he has continued to waffle, saying he was against a six-week Florida state limit for abortions as “too early” but then denying that he said it. He often states these flips are due to hypothetical discussions, hyperbole, or sarcasm, although there is no evidence for this. His most recent touchstone has been that he doesn’t need to take a stand on abortion as a national issue, as his work to overturn Roe had made the issue one for each state and its voters. He even went so far at the debate as to (falsely) claim “that was what everybody wanted” (i.e. that abortion be decided at the state level).

While the former President at times speaks passionately about the issue and some of its more repulsive aspects, I don’t think it is too judgmental to say he doesn’t have set personal views on it. For him, it seems to be something transactional, in that he understands it is important to others.

One final comment on another part for the debate. When former President Trump tried to bring up the issue of children born despite an abortion, then left to die, moderator Linsey Davis replied with this fact check, “There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born.” This response was both telling and frightening. Telling in that it denies the fact there are people alive today who survived botched abortions; they even have their own affinity group. And chilling in that by the logic of the pro-choice movement, the product of an abortion is not a person but “tissue” or “a fetus.” So if that product just happens to be breathing when it is removed, it is not a child, so it can be left to die. If you don’t believe me, check out what the proud abortion doctor William Hern says on his own website!

How do we assess all this when it comes to the morality of the two candidates’ policies? It is important to separate the morality of the issue from that of the policy. Each side absolutely believes it is not only right but totally moral, while the opposing side is irrational, uncaring, and evil. It is important to note this is not where most Americans are. Polls on the issue of abortion reliably show that most people accept neither the full pro-life nor pro-choice side. Poll results can be easily manipulated by how the questions are asked, demonstrating how conflicted people are. Ask whether a teenager should be forced to give birth to her rapist’s child and you get a strong result. Ask whether a woman should be able to choose to abort in the third trimester for sex selection and you get the same strong result. Both cases are extreme, and they point out the relative weaknesses in each side’s argument. That doesn’t make either side’s case wrong; it just shows how fraught the issue is.

Vice President Harris has staked out consistent positions on this issue, although she denies some of the inconvenient facts along the way. Her positions would go well beyond the status quo under Roe. Former President Trump has been consistently inconsistent. He seems to want to be done with the issue, and I believe he thought he was with the Dobbs decision. There is no way to know what he might choose to support, but I think it is telling this is no longer an issue on which he seems comfortable leading.

Trump’s position is almost amoral, although his instincts are that there is something wrong about abortion. He seems to want to limit it, but would prefer to stop talking about it altogether. Harris has the certainty of a true believer, and her policies represent the furthest extent of those beliefs. On an issue which is so divisive and difficult, I don’t see either of them having a decided moral advantage here.

Americans may feel inundated with political news these days, what with an election pending in little more than a month. And according to all the right people, the vote is between sweetness and joy or thuggery and fascism: what a choice! But elections happen everywhere, and they’re just as monumental to expats as to citizens. Let me explain.

Mexico had an election back in June, and the ruling Morena party won an overwhelming victory. The party leader and current Presidente, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (hereafter by his nickname, AMLO), is limited to a single term, so he was not on the ballot. But he is immensely popular, especially among the poor, and they rewarded his party (Morena) with absolute control over the Congress and elected AMLO’s hand-picked successor, Claudia Sheinbaum, as Presidente. The new Congress is in session (under AMLO), but Sheinbaum takes office in October.

AMLO describes his term in office as part of Mexico’s fourth transformation, directly calling to mind the enormous changes involved in events such as the War of Independence and the Revolution. He has made sweeping changes in the country, reinforcing his popularity with the masses. Still, some of his proposals were stopped by the independent Mexican judiciary branch, especially the Mexican Supreme Court. For his final month in office, with a Congressional super-majority, AMLO has initiated changes to the Mexican Constitution that were earlier thwarted by the courts. And this includes making all judges (even the Supreme Court) stand for partisan election (before they were appointed after passing a series of qualification checks).

There are critics–foreign and domestic–of the current Mexican judicial system. Conviction rates are low and many complain of favoritism to the wealthy. AMLO contends voting will make the justices responsive to the people: real democracy brought to the halls of justice. Critics claim judges will become beholden to political parties and no longer represent a check-and-balance on the system. Such was the case when Mexico was a one party state under the Partido Revolucionario Institucional or PRI, from 1929-2000.

There are foreign examples to draw upon. In 2017, Bolivia adopted a similar democratic approach to judicial offices, with disastrous results. Qualified candidates have withdrawn, party-hack justices have interpreted the constitution as the sitting leadership requests, and voters routinely leave the judicial ballots blank, expressing no confidence in the candidates. On the other hand, as AMLO notes, America often votes for its state and local judges. The American example is particularly interesting. While almost half of the states elect justices, no one suggests the system is better than appointments, and it incurs all the problems of campaigning, fund-raising, and partisanship. Imagine someone campaigning on the promise to indict a former President! Nevermind.

The Biden administration has been especially tough on AMLO’s judicial reforms. They have pointedly criticized them, suggested they are authoritarian, and threatened to challenge them under the tripartite USMCA trade agreement, which is due for review shortly. The Presidente has not taken this criticism lightly, calling it “interventionist” and “disrespectful” and freezing his relationship with the US Ambassador. However you look at this situation, the irony abounds: the party of democracy in the United States, which is considering stacking the US Supreme Court unless it changes its way, is criticizing a more-democratic approach to appointing Mexican Supreme Court justices, devised by a party with unheard of domestic popularity, in order to get that body to change its ways. Ain’t democracy grand?

Now for expats, the consequences are many. In the near term, no one knows how judicial reform will play out, which has international finance and business on alert: business needs predictability, and elected judges don’t provide that, in general. All the business moving to Mexico under the concept of friend- or near-shoring is dependent upon Mexico being a stable place to do business. Is that still the case? Will it continue to be? That uncertainty took the Mexican Peso from almost sixteen to the dollar about six months ago to almost 20 to the dollar, now hovering around 19 to one dollar. There will be downward pressure on the Peso until it is clear how judicial reform will play out in reality under Presidente Sheinbaum.

In the longer term, Mexico is indeed amidst a significant transformation. While those NOB may still think of Mexico as a poor, crime-ridden place, it has the twelfth largest Gross Domestic Product in the world, larger than Spain and tied with Australia and South Korea. It’s number seven in world tourism, seventh in auto production (close behind Germany), and fourth in beer production. Mexico is twenty-fifth in the World Happiness Index, but Mexican society remains unequal (twelfth worst in economic inequality). AMLO came to office promising change, especially for the poorest, and delivered on much of that agenda. Whether the Morena party can continue to fund those initiatives and consolidate its gains while avoiding sliding into the stagnant authoritarianism which beset the PRI is the unanswered question.

On both sides of the border, people make dire projections of the catastrophe about to engulf us. Some do so to get your attention: nobody ever clicked through a link with the title “the world isn’t ending today.” Some people want to believe it’s true, because we live in the most interesting times EVER. Some are just trolls. The word mundane, which has come to be synonymous with boring, originally meant “of the earthly (real) world, as opposed to the heavenly one.” In both meanings, most of what happens in today’s politics is, in fact, mundane.

Some of my friends describe the upcoming presidential election in the United States as a moral choice, in which an obvious evil must be rejected, once and for all. If you accept this premise, there really is no choice at all. But how does one come to this conclusion in the first place? By looking at each candidate’s records and policies. Otherwise you’re simply choosing sides and cheering without any basis. So let’s start fresh by reviewing the important issues and the policies, shall we? Or should we just jump to conclusions (as Amy Winehouse sang)?

Democrats and Republicans agree that immigration is one of the critical issues. The simple fact is immigration (legal and illegal) has been greatly increasing for almost forty years. In terms of the relative share of the total American population, it is roughly equal to the all-time record highs that happened in waves during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Whenever such numbers occur, anti-immigrant sentiment rises as a result of the sudden changes to the fabric of communities. That is what the US is experiencing now.

This is not a unique phenomenon, nor is the reaction uniquely American or nativist. Few countries accept as many immigrants as the United States does (some small ones do in relative proportion) and few countries have borders as permeable as those between the US and Canada/Mexico. Whenever countries accept a large number of immigrants, local governments struggle to deal with them, and poverty, crime, and social dislocation ensue. In America historically, the immigrants acculturate, and by the second or third generation, the children don’t even speak the grandparents’ native language. It is a problem that solves itself, so to speak, but that’s twenty-to-thirty years from now, and only if the immigration is controlled.

Fans of former President Trump will claim he has a much better handle on this issue than his opponent, but is that true? Certainly polls suggest a majority of Americans think this is the case. But there wasn’t a big drop in immigration during the Trump years, just more of the same. COVID did permit a temporary lull, but that only increased the pool of people waiting to enter. Trump did work with Mexico to keep migrants from entering while awaiting their asylum hearing, the so-called “Remain in Mexico” policy. Liberals derided this policy as leaving the migrants to be victimized by the cartels (more on that later), but it did reduce the numbers. He also caused changes in the types of immigrants by separating children from their parents, leading to charges of inhumanity. That message did get through to potential illegal immigrants, who changed conduct accordingly.

Opponents of the former President cite his inflammatory rhetoric, building a wall, his use of “child cages,” the “Muslim ban,” and the aforementioned child separation policy. But only a little of the wall got built, the cages proved to be from the Obama era, the “Muslim ban” wasn’t (and passed review by the Supreme Court). Trump continued his inflammatory and false rhetoric, but his administration abandoned its separation policy in response to public disgust. Yet the overall immigration numbers still kept increasing.

Now he claims to be prepared to finish the wall and to begin mass deportations. Setting the aside the wall, which is not a solution, the threat of mass deportations riles up both his followers and critics. This is not a simple process, regardless of what the former President says: lawyers, judges, cops, federal agents, soldiers, and everyday government employees would have to be involved in such an operation, and its legality would be scrutinized every step of the way. While the senior leadership in DC may wave its hand and say “away with them,” there are thousands of people who will simply stop if they think what they’re doing is wrong or illegal. So it’s not an easy or fast fix.

That said, there are approximately ten million immigrants in the country who have either illegally overstayed their visa, or not shown up after their asylum request was rejected (important note here: people claiming asylum show up for all their hearings, hoping to “win” and gain entry into the country. After their final rejection–and over ninety percent are rejected–they are given a date to report to ICE for processing and deportation. This is the appointment where they never show up.) We know who these people are, we know generally where they are, and we know they have exhausted the legal means to remain in the country. A reasonable policy question is: why can’t some of them be deported? What is the point of all these processes if nobody is ever deported? President Obama ran a robust and effective deportation policy with little fuss.

The Biden administration is correct in pointing out that the near riotous situation at the border two years ago has greatly calmed down. President Biden made a grand show of rescinding all of Trump’s border policies on day one, and predictably a huge migrant tsunami ensued. After first denying it, then ignoring it, impending elections forced the administration to act. They re-adopted some Trump policies (like Title 42, which operated to close off some immigration during the pandemic), and assigned Vice President Harris to work on the root causes of migration (not the border Czar, a term only used by those who don’t know how government works). All of which had little effect.

The administration then tightened rules on families entering, created a streamlined (app-based) application for asylum from certain countries, and started rejecting those who crossed the border at other than border crossings. This helped to normalize the border, but did not reduce the overall numbers. Finally, late in the game, President Biden sent Secretary of State Blinken to meet with Mexican President AMLO and his team. Quietly, Mexico began to implement the El Carrusel (the merry-go-round) policy. As detailed in a recent Washington Post piece, the Mexican government rounds up 10,000 migrants a month and buses them from near the US border, where they are preparing to cross illegally, all the way to the southernmost, poorest Mexican states adjacent to Guatemala. The Post interviewed one Venezuelan family which has ridden the carousel four times! This policy, which takes desperate people and sends them (chutes-n-ladders style) to remote parts of Mexico furthest from the United States, is the main reason the border is quieter. How this is morally different than Remain in Mexico is unclear, at best.

Biden may be President, and this is his policy, but he’s no longer a candidate for re-election. What of Vice President Harris’ views on immigration? When she ran for the Democratic party nomination in 2019-20, she called for border crossing to be changed from a criminal to a civil offense. Now she says the law on border crossing “should be enforced” but without any further guidance, which leads to this question: is it not being enforced now? The Vice President has noted that border crossings are at a four-year low, but has made no comment on el carrusel: how does she view this policy, coordinated between the Biden administration and the Mexican government?

She vocally supports the bipartisan immigration bill which former President Trump maneuvered to kill, attempting to keep immigration as a major issue in the election. The bill would have tightened and streamlined the asylum process, created new pathways to status for immigrants, and added resources for Customs and Border Protection (CBP). It was an important step in the right direction, but in no way would it solve the immigration problem. It was simply the art of the possible at a point of extreme partisanship. Former President Trump opposed the timing of the bill, but it is unclear where he stands on it ultimately, if he were to return to office. Some of the key provisions of the bill were subsequently enacted by President Biden under executive orders, leading to the obvious question (which David Muir asked Vice President Harris at the recent debate, without an answer): why didn’t the administration enact these measures earlier?

Finally she still supports “comprehensive immigration reform” without any further explanation as to what that means. That could mean tightening, loosening, or nothing at all.

As is obvious by now, much of the debate over immigration is shallow and for show. And like any show, it needs a climax, which recently happened in the village of Springfield, Ohio. This town, about an hour west of Columbus, is a sagging reminder of the Midwest-that-was. It was a local manufacturing hub until all the jobs went away. The population fell from over 80,000 to under 60,000. Recently, federal, state, and local officials worked together to welcome Haitian refugees to Springfield. These immigrants are here legally, the vast majority entering under a short-term provision due to the endemic violence and recurrent natural disasters in their home country.

The Trump-Vance ticket seized upon baseless claims that Haitian migrants are catching and eating the pets of Springfield residents. The claims seem to rest on a photo of a man carrying a duck or goose, which turned out to be in a different city, and unsubstantiated social media posts. All of this is of course ridiculous, and the Harris-Walz ticket rightly lampooned the claims. Even if it were true, so what? Desperate people do desperate things. What is missing here is the obvious but overlooked part of the story, and that says a lot about our immigration challenges.

Who thought it was a good idea to place, or assist in the placement of, 12,000-20,000 Haitian refugees in a small, wilting, Ohio town? Why are we making long-term plans for refugees brought in under a temporary program? If the town asked for this, where was the expert judgment of state and federal officials telling them, “this won’t end well?” If the Haitians are just settling there of their own accord, why doesn’t the government have any ability to limit the size of the community? Meanwhile, the two political parties post memes.

All of which is to remind my friends that immigration is a classic “wicked problem,” that is, one that defies simple solutions. Our policies must work to mitigate the urge to leave, normalize the border, and allow in the mix of people (including refugees) that we want: not just anybody who wants to come. Oh, and do all that in a safe, legal, and humane way. I see very little from either candidate–their records or their proposals–that indicates a serious attempt to solve the problem. Trump is characteristically offensive about immigrants; that cannot be denied. Harris has been inconsistent, although she claims “my values have not changed.” When I first heard this, I thought, “if your policies can totally change, but your values haven’t, maybe your main value is ‘what do I say to get elected?'”

We can and should argue about the effectiveness of the policies in play. But to wrap up an exceedingly long post: are you sure the morality of this issue is clear? I’m not.

I generally avoid jumping headlong into the daily political sewage of a Presidential campaign, but sometimes the subject matter gets too close to home, and the level of feces gets so high, I just can’t resist.

This is one of those times.

Vice President Kamala Harris has chosen Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate in the 2024 campaign for President. Among the personal achievements attesting to his leadership is a career in the US Army National Guard, reaching the rank of Command Sergeant Major (CSM), the highest enlisted rank in the service, a feat which is indeed rare. You don’t achieve that rank without impressing many people for many different reasons, and it is indeed something to celebrate and honor.

Predictably, Governor Walz’ record has come under attack. These charges against him surfaced during his first campaign for the US House of Representatives, and again when he ran and won for Governor. However, the scrutiny of a national campaign is unlike any other. What are the charges?

First, he made an off-hand claim, during a 2018 meeting to consider new gun control restrictions in his state, that “We can make sure those weapons of war, that I carried in war (emphasis added), are only carried in war.” Gov. Walz never served in war, or even in a war zone. He did deploy to Europe during Operation Enduring Freedom, but saw nothing even vaguely resembling combat. The charge against him is “stolen valor,” that is claiming the honor due only combat veterans. He has made this claim only once, and it was about the weapons, not his service. I am inclined to pass this off as an inartful phrase. If more such video clips emerge (remember, scrutiny), it would be a major problem.

Second, he has referred to himself as a retired CSM, which is incorrect. Upon retirement, his rank reverted to Master Sergeant, as he had not completed the full requirements for the higher rank. As a person who left reserve duty as a Major, I can assure you my permanent rank is Captain, as I did not meet the requirements to retain the title of field grade officer. It’s a technicality, but not one to be taken lightly: it will say “CPT, USA” on my niche in Arlington National Cemetery. Walz has at times referred to himself as a former CSM, which is correct. Again, I believe we should give him the benefit of the doubt on this, as it is a technical issue about which only those very familiar with ranks and privileges would know or care.

Finally, Walz was CSM for a US Army National Guard artillery battalion when he retired. The unit was subsequently deployed into combat in Iraq, leading to the charge he abandoned his unit on the verge of deployment. There are things one needs to understand about this situation. First off, the battalion CSM is considered one of the “top three” in the unit: the commander (a Lieutenant Colonel), the executive officer (usually a Major), and the CSM, the senior enlisted person. This is the leadership team and the US Army makes it point to ensure the leadership team is intact before deploying a unit to combat: it undermines unit morale when the troops see a senior leader leaving when they are going into a fight. It can’t always be avoided, but it is a rare event.

A US Army Reserve or National Guard deployment is negotiated long in advance of formal orders. It begins with the Department of the Army contacting the unit and engaging in a ‘frank and earnest’ discussion about deployment. Yes, your unit readiness report is great, but how is morale? Your leadership team is excellent, but are they all ready to go? CSM, what about the troops: are there many pregnancies among the spouses, or children with special needs or any other considerations weighing on the deployment? How will it affect the community, as these are citizen-soldiers? Only when the Army leadership has completed a face-to-face discussion with the unit leadership is a deployment order agreed to and issued.

Much is made of the date of then CSM Walz’s retirement, and the fact it predates the deployment order. Now you know why that is irrelevant. If you don’t believe me, look into the statements from CSM Walz’s colleagues at the time, who explain that he confided in them he was considering retiring to run for Congress in lieu of deploying. So he knew about the probable deployment, knew what it meant to his unit, and chose to leave. He is also quoted by these colleagues as indicating he could do more for the common good in Congress than in the battalion. There is a ring of truth to that statement, if also a whiff of ambition.

There are four hundred and thirty five members of the US House of Representatives, and I can guarantee you every new one is last in line for influence. It is not that they are unimportant, just that their prospects to make a difference are in the future. There is only one Command Sergeant Major in a battalion, responsible for being the senior enlisted advisor to the Commander. They are critical to the success or failure of the mission, as the Army is more dependent on its non-commissioned officer corps than any other service. Being the Battalion CSM of a deployed unit in combat is the pinnacle of an enlisted redleg’s (artilleryman’s) career.

Those charging Gov. Walz with cowardice or desertion go too far; there is no evidence to support that. And yes, the Army deployed his unit and it performed its mission with a replacement as CSM; that is what the Army does. Yet the fact remains that he cites his military service proudly, while at the critical moment, he did not answer the call. He probably chose wisely: his post-military political career has been quite successful.

Sometimes military leaders have to make terrible choices, like which part of the unit to sacrifice to save the rest. Sometimes they have to make sacrifices themselves. Then-CSM Walz did not “abandon” his unit. At the critical moment, heading into combat for which he had spent a career preparing, he consciously chose to pursue a more promising future. Whatever choice leaders make tells you much about them as leaders, much more than what rank they wore, or what office they achieved.

The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court walks into a bar. The bartender asks “what are you drinking?”

The Justice says, “I’ll have an Old Fashioned. Anything new happening today?”

The bartender shrugs, “not unless you count that the American justice system is dying.”

“Is that so?” the Justice replies. “Make it a double then!”

Have you read the Supreme Court ruling in the case of Trump vs the United States? At one hundred and nineteen pages, few have. But that didn’t stop the hype machine from making instant analysis, just to get you riled. Fear not, I have now read it, along with a bunch (technical term) of legal analysis–both for and against. And now I’ll give you what you need to consider to form an enlightened opinion.

First off, let’s demolish some partisan talking points, so they don’t cloud our thinking. Prior to the announcement, which came on the last possible day for release, some talking heads speculated that the Supreme Court had already given former President Trump what he wanted, since the delay involved in their deliberations pushed the trial charges brought by special counsel Jack Smith almost certainly past the election in November. According to this line of (dare I call it) thinking, the Supreme Court was in the tank for Trump, regardless of what they decided, since Trump could not be found guilty before voters chose for President. Except for the fact that he is already once-convicted, many times indicted, and is there anybody who doesn’t have a formed opinion about Donald J. Trump? Some may not know whether they will or won’t vote for him, but no conviction was going to stop him from being the GOP nominee. And by the way, there was a very good reason for the long delay: this was a seminal case in American jurisprudence!

From the breathless discussion about Seal Team Six (more on that later), you might think the President was once not above the law, but suddenly that changed on July first. Except it didn’t. Since the Clinton presidency, all Attorneys General and all Departments of Justice have held that a sitting President cannot be charged or indicted for official acts during his term in office. So the President, while in office, has always been somewhat “above the law.” That was so for Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden. Any one of them could dial up the Seal Team, and face no criminal charge.

But that was only a departmental policy, not a decision from any court. Many courts had mentioned it, but the Supreme Court had never decisively ruled on it. The only case involving Presidential immunity was Nixon vs Fitzgerald, which held that in civil cases, the President “is entitled to absolute immunity from damages liability predicated on his official acts.” So this Trump case was incredibly important, as there was little precedent, except as noted. That precedent laid out important reasons a President could not be sued for damages, as it would prevent the President from completing his duties. So the concept of the President, as President, not being the same under the law was well understood. And the understanding included the concept that political or policy disagreements were best dealt with in the political process, up to and including impeachment.

What did the Supreme Court hold in Trump vs. the United States? It created a three part test for immunity.

• For official acts that are part of the President’s core functions, he has absolute immunity. So in appointing ambassadors or judges, ordering the military, hiring or firing federal officials and the like, the only appropriate redress is via elections or impeachment. No prosecutor can charge him, try him, or convict him.
• For all other official acts, he has presumptive immunity. These are acts where as President he shares authority, say, with the Congress, for example in executing appropriations. Presumptive immunity means a prosecutor could charge/try/convict him, but first the prosecutor must convince the judge that such an action will not infringe on the President’s ability to do his job. Which is a very high bar.
• For all unofficial acts, the President has no immunity. If President Trump decides to rob a 7/11, he can be perp-walked into trial.

While some are acting like American justice just died, I would note that some honesty peaked through the blustery hyperbole. In the New York Times, Maggie Haberman wrote, “The broad contours of the ruling — that presidents would be entitled to substantial protection for official acts — had been expected by political and court watchers for months.” If you only follow the news through the lens of Donald Trump, you might not know this, but informed opinion had pretty much figured this ruling out in advance. While the case was named for the former President, and directly affects his possible trials, the Supreme Court had a duty to provide a ruling protecting the Presidency, the nation, and the Constitution. Neither to protect Donald Trump, nor “get him.”

What the decision did was create a very clear test for the lower court to administer. Some of Jack Smith’s charges against former President Trump are now excluded as core functions. Some will have presumptive immunity. Some may be unofficial, and can proceed to trial. That won’t happen fast enough for anti-Trump partisans, but adherence to the Constitution is more important than getting Trump. The other, very important effect of this ruling is what it preempted. I can guarantee you that if the ruling had been of the “no-immunity” variety, many charges were pending. Charges against Presidents Clinton & Obama for drone strikes, including ones which killed American citizens. Charges against Biden as an accessory to murder for the illegal immigrant attacks in Texas and Georgia. I’m sure the left would have found more things with which to charge Bush and Trump.

It doesn’t matter whether you think any of these charges would have stuck. The precedent would be, charge the President you don’t like. And it would have been debilitating to the presidency, as Chief Justice Roberts noted in the majority opinion. That was the world we avoided, and it was not hypothetical. It was only waiting to be born.

Finally, what of the oft-quoted “Seal Team Six” hypothetical? If anybody mentions this to you, you will immediately know they are either mouthing a meaningless partisan talking point, or seriously confused. “Wait just a minute, Pat, didn’t Justice Sotomayor raise this very issue in her dissent?” Yes, yes she did. Her dissents are legend among serious jurists. That’s not me talking: she onetime got so lost in the emotions of her argument, she incurred a written rebuke (in Daimler vs Bauman) from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg! One can only imagine how bad things must be for RBG to have publicly criticized a fellow justice.

To make the point, arguing that this ruling fails to protect us from Seal Team Six is like arguing that the Covid vaccine doesn’t prevent cancer. Right. It doesn’t, nor was it intended to. President Biden can indeed order the Seal team to assassinate former President Trump right now. What does protect us from such an action? Not a Supreme Court decision on Presidential immunity, but the republican (note the small “r”) values of our government which demand fealty to a Constitution, not a person. An illegal order will not be followed by the chain of command, not only because they have no immunity (which in my example, President Biden would have!), but because they know it is wrong. If you think that is too slim a reed for protection, riddle me this: during the fifty-some odd years of the Cold War, nothing kept the President from ordering a random, reasonless nuclear strike. Yet I will bet–if you’re old enough–you never lost a moment of sleep about it. For the same reason.

Justice Sotomayor does make a strong argument that since all Presidents up to this point thought they were criminally liable after office, what could be the possible threat impeding them from executing their duties? But she gives the game away by failing to note the change: when has any former President faced four indictments and eighty-eight felony counts, suddenly applied in the months preceding an re-election campaign? And she signs off not with the customary “respectfully dissent” but “with fear for our democracy (sic).” With that, she models Lieutenant Commander Galloway in “A Few Good Men.”

So stop with the Seal Team Six (and other equally ridiculous hypotheticals) already. Understand that a world where a sitting or former President could be charged, tried, and convicted for official actions was not a hypothetical, but a nightmare waiting to happen. Consider what is going on in the news, the courts and public opinion not in terms of Trump, but in terms of how things will be when Trump is only in the history books.

The decision in Trump vs. the United States serves to enable a presidency without enabling any specific abuses. It prevents the kind of litigation which would only serve to tie the executive branch in knots. Whether it helps Trump in the short term is not the most significant factor. But hey, revel in another round of hypotheticals if you prefer.

Postscript: The immunity ruling highlights another problem with the need to “get Trump” before this year’s election. The New York state felony trial, a state jurisdiction and dealing with strictly non-presidential conduct, was the one trial most secured from Trump’s ability to pardon, immunize, or halt if he were to regain office. Judge Merchan pushed the trial forward relentlessly, despite objections by Trump’s defense team and counsel from outside observers that there were many reasons to take one’s time. This became the first trial to convict a former President on a felony charge. Now, because the judge admitted to court evidence from White House personnel, he has delayed sentencing at least until September, as he considers whether his admission of such evidence was prohibited by the ruling in Trump vs the United States. Whatever you thought of the case (I wasn’t a fan, although it was obvious Trump was guilty as charged), once again haste has complicated the outcome.

This is a 1997 work by British journalist and amateur historian Paul Johnson, who died last year. You may ask yourself, “Why read a history book that is a quarter century out of date?” I’m glad you asked. Partially, it came to my library as a gift (thanks, Catherine & John), partially because it is well written, but mostly because it is out of date. Think about it: history is the process of sorting the current and transitory from the long-lasting and important. What is good today may look less so with the lens of time: bell-bottom jeans, anyone? A history book written before 9/11, Bush v. Gore, Covid, and the Trump phenomenon is unspoiled by the need to address those issues. And the truth it seeks to find can be tested against what we as readers now know, which the author could not know many years ago.

Weighing in at more than one thousand pages, this is not your beach-reading selection. I took it with me on a long cruise (more on that soon), and I easily won the “who has the most ridiculously large-sized book to read” pool-side contest. I needed an extra towel to use as a chest lectern to read the tome. Despite its heft, Johnson’s work is well-written and easy to read. He was a self-proclaimed English leftist who gradually evolved into a conservative, and he admits to having a traditional English public (meaning private/elite) school education, which was long on English history but barely mentioned the colonies with the exception of some troubles in the late eighteenth century.

He writes with the detachment of a foreign observer, but the insight of a close family member. That he was an admirer of the American experiment is clear throughout the work, but he feels free to point out the warts and all of our history. The book highlights the tensions in the American experiment: the emphasis on individual liberty and the acceptance of slavery, the democratic language hung like garland on a republican system of government, the city-on-a-hill idealism and the realpolitik of Native American policies. All through it, he highlights an important American creed: the right of the person to “get along” (his wording) by succeeding at whatever he wants to do without help or hindrance from the government. The bounty of the American expanse, especially in land, means to this day there is room for the productive person to leave behind whatever society, religion, or caste holds him back, and come to America and succeed.

Among Johnson’s most penetrating insights were:

• the unique nature of the Founding Fathers and the Constitution they created. Lost in today’s criticism of them is the fact they created not only the best, but the first written constitution, and one which has lasted the longest and been most successfully adapted.
• The importance of compromise in American success, both in political and personal activities. When Americans have been willing to accept half a loaf (metaphorically speaking), they have been most successful. When they insist on purity of thought and policy, they have failed. The original concept of the separation of Church and State lies in the former, while Prohibition is in the latter.
• The long history of partisan media, which only briefly in the twentieth century veered toward something self-described as “objective journalism” but then morphed into a elite, independent interest group. Today’s partisan media sources are actually a return to what the Founders saw as normal, even if they didn’t like it then, either.
• A similar history of political violence that dwarfs anything happening today. A good dose of history provides solid immunity to those shouting about the “unprecedented” this or that event. We’re not tarring-n-feathering one another, beating Representatives near to death in the Capitol, or loosing the FBI and IRS on political opponents. Wait, hold up on that last one.
• While Johnson’s conservative views are evident, his consistent appraisal of Presidents defies partisan approaches. Coolidge and LBJ do well, Bush ’41 and Clinton do not. He prefers Reagan to Carter, but Nixon to either. His overall positive appraisal of Nixon brings howls from liberals and progressives, but his factual account of Nixon’s record is unassailable, and while no one apparently voted for him in 1972, he won the greatest electoral/popular victory in American history, a sin for which the newly self-appointed media opposition will never forgive him. The author criticizes both FDR and JFK for widespread mendacity and libertine behavior, but gives the former his due in enacting the New Deal.

Worth reading? absolutely. There’s a free copy floating about in the library aboard the Celebrity Silhouette. Versions are no doubt in your local library or available cheap on line. One final amusing anecdote: When I considered the work’s reviews on Amazon, I noted the vast majority were positive. Some got quite excited that Johnson confused some civil war generals or the dates of specific events. But the interesting ones went like this: ‘I enjoyed this book until it got into current events, when it became clear the author had clearly lost his mind (i.e., disagreed with my views).’ All I could think of was: is it more likely a well-published author suddenly lost his way at the end of a history work, or is it more likely your views don’t have the historic pedigree you thought, and perhaps need to be rethought? Good books are like that, they cause you to think, not just react.

Most of my friends will immediately recognize this title, that of Francis Fukuyama’s 1992 nonfiction book about what comes after the Cold War. When published, it was a sensation, although the number of people who actually read the magazine article summarizing it greatly exceeded those who waded through his 339 pages of dense politics and philosophy. I had the opportunity to meet Mr. Fukuyama for a private lunch one day (benefit of working in the Pentagon), so I was obliged to be in the latter group. With the benefit of that experience, I can strongly recommend the article, as the gist of his argument is there.

Frank’s work was widely ridiculed–again, by those who never read all of it–after the 9/11 attacks. He didn’t predict an end to conflict, just the fact that the Cold War proved two things: freedom is better than authoritarianism as a governmental system, and capitalism is best at economic production. Those truths have stood the test of time since he wrote them. But those who stopped at the bumper sticker (history is over, end of story) just didn’t get it. They didn’t know history, and they were wrong because of it.

I used to think not knowing history was practically criminal. For example, I would hear people say, “why do I need to know who went to war with whom?” (they never got the who/whom part right, but that’s a different argument for a different day). I often quipped back with a quote from Leon Trotsky: “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” Otherwise peaceable Palestinians who lived in Gaza are suddenly realizing what happens when someone starts a ruinous war on your behalf. You don’t get to opt out, you just get to suffer. But lately I’ve decided there is something worse than not knowing history; it’s learning bad history.

See, if you don’t know something about history, you can honestly learn about it and fill in the gaps. But if you have been taught something about history that is either factually incorrect or seriously biased, you’ll continue to insist you’re correct. You will resist the correction. Several current examples suffice:

Kissinger’s War Crimes.

Henry Kissinger recently passed. To say he was controversial is an understatement, as much as it would be to say he was important. Yet most of the press coverage focused on the allegation he promoted or encouraged various war crimes. The most prominent of these charges was that he extended the Vietnam war by “carpet bombing” neutral Cambodia, killing tens of thousands and undermining the Cambodian government so that it fell to the vicious Khmer Rouge. These are three factual statements, although seriously shaded to hide the truth. Kissinger did promote the extension of the war by bombing Cambodia. Many people did die in those attacks, although the number is suspect for reasons I will explain. The Cambodian government did collapse under attack by the Khmer Rouge. What is the bias?

The main supply line between North Vietnam and the Viet Cong guerrillas in the south was the famous Ho Chi Minh trail, a network of roads and jungle paths in Cambodia which paralleled the border. Note the bolding in Cambodia. The US bombing didn’t extend the war into Cambodia; the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) extended the war into Cambodia. The US Air Force simply followed. As to casualty figures, the Air Force was largely bombing jungle trails, so it used carpet-bombing tactics. The idea that tens of thousands of innocent Cambodians were wandering these trails night after night, when they knew bombs were falling, strains credulity. While most of the people killed were just doing a job, moving things from here-to-there, they were involved in the war effort. Finally, the US went on to support a coup d’etat which replaced Cambodian King Sihanouk with General Lon Nol, but neither leader was able to resist the Khmer Rouge, who overran Phnom Penh just as the NVA overran Saigon. Cambodia’s fall was as inevitable as South Vietnam’s.

Bombing an area militarized by an opponent is not a war crime (a lesson being recalled currently in Gaza’s hospitals, mosques, and schools). Neither is killing civilians engaged in combat support efforts. And the postwar history of the Khmer Rouge demonstrates there are things worse than US meddling. Kissinger’s legacy deserves a critical assessment, but war crimes? Sorry, no.

The Nakba.

Many press reports covering the “bigger picture” of the current war in Gaza mention the Nakba. The term means catastrophe in Arabic, and it is used as a descriptive nickname for what happened to the Palestinian Arabs in 1948. As the media “contextualized” the story, the nascent Jewish state forced a little less than a million Palestinians from their homes and turned them into stateless refugees. Again, it’s a factual statement, but leaves the full truth wanting. These stories remind me of my visit to Hiroshima two decades ago. As I walked into the Peace Museum, I was struck by the story it told: on a bright, sunny day, people were going peacefully about their lives when suddenly a thousand suns exploded above them. Seriously, no mention of the war going on, the sneak attack at Pearl Harbor, the Rape of Nanjing, the brutality of the Bataan death march or the various atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese Army. Just rainbows and unicorns and BOOM. Missing something?

In a similar fashion, the Nakba was preceded by the Palestinian Arabs rejecting the UN two-state solution and joining with five Arab armies in an attempt to kill all the Jews and destroy the Israeli state. They failed and were forced to flee. At the same time, several hundred thousand Jews were expelled from Arab countries where they had lived for centuries, and they primarily went to Israel for protection. A catastrophe? Yes. Traumatic? Of course. But this is what happens when you attempt to eradicate a people and fail; they simply won’t return to the peace table until their security is ensured. But the many pro-Palestinian protests you see at American universities stem from teaching only the Nakba, not the rest. Which is why many students draw the wrong conclusions.

The 1619 project.

Nikole Hannah-Jones’ 1619 Project is an attempt at re-evaluating all American history by tracing our roots not to 1776, but to 1619, the beginning of English chattel slavery in Virginia. The New York Times News division (not Opinion) promotes the project, suggesting they see it as historical fact, not simply an alternative view. There is an associated educational curriculum being used by primary and secondary schools across the nation. The crux of the project is that race, and specifically race-based slavery, is the appropriate prism to view the development of the United States. In the end, everything is about race. The American Revolution? Designed to protect southern slavery against the British abolitionist movement. The Second Amendment? Arms citizen-slave owners against possible slave revolts. America’s police system? Drawn from the fugitive slave patrols. America’s justice system? Incarceration of black men to prevent their development, just as in the old South. American capitalism? From the Plantations. I could go on, but you get the point.

Many professional historians have pointed out the serious fallacies in these arguments. Some proponents of the 1619 Project have backed off, suggesting they only wanted more–and more serious–consideration of race. Who can argue with that? But that’s not what they put forward. These factually wrong ideas are now out there, circulating in the young minds of America. We’ll see more incoherent and violent results in years to come.

Think not? As I wrote this post, the Economist covered a new poll of Americans 18-29. Not youths, young adults. Twenty percent thought the Holocaust was a myth. Another thirty percent couldn’t say whether the Holocaust was a myth (or not). And the results didn’t adjust by education: that is, having an American college degree didn’t make you more knowledgeable about the truth. How could that be? Secondary school history curriculum is perfunctory, and if you cover the Nakba, are you going to cover the Holocaust? It gets worse in college, where educators increasingly teach critical theory focused on oppressers-and-oppressed, leaving Israel in the former group. Which begets the ill-informed pro-Hamas rallies on today’s campuses.

Want to argue whether Henry Kissinger’s narrow focus on the Cold War was brilliant or myopic? Worthwhile. Does the Israeli war against Hamas end up radicalizing more Palestinians than there are now? Good question. What is the lasting effect of slavery on modern America? Start the debate! The examples I cite aren’t designed to illuminate, but to confuse. They stake out extreme positions, lacking context or just being plain wrong.

Back in the second century BCE (Before Christian Era), Carthage was a city state on what is now the Tunisian coast. It was the predominant maritime power in the Mediterranean Sea, a commercial and culture powerhouse. Rome was a local upstart at the time, but after the First and Second Punic Wars, it became clear that only one of them could remain. Cato the Elder, a famous Roman politician in the Republic, saw this more clearly than anyone else. He started using the catch phrase, “Carthago delenda est,” as an all-purpose sign-off in his speeches in the Senate, regardless of topic. In the phrase’s several variations, it translates as “Carthage must be destroyed.” Rome finally did that in 146 BCE.

After the Second World War, the United Nations (UN) recognized the enormity (note the correct use of the term) of the Nazi Holocaust of the Jewish people, and decided to establish a Jewish homeland where Jews everywhere could be safe. The UN did not give Israel to the Jews. There were Jews there since the Romans last tried to eradicate them in 135 CE (Christian Era). After the Bar Kokhba Revolt, the Romans razed Jerusalem and sold the Jewish people off to slavery, dispersing them across the empire. The Romans did a lot of that. They so wanted to eliminate all traces of Jewish culture, they made up a new name for the area; Syria Palestina. The name used by the Arab peoples living in the region today is a vestige of that almost-successful Jewish eradication.

When the UN partitioned then-Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states in 1947, the Jews celebrated a new homeland. Within days, six Arab national armies invaded, leading to a war of military units versus ad hoc groups of armed Jews. There were battles, terrorism, and reprisals. Somehow Israel survived. Twenty years of antagonism, terrorism, and bloodshed ensued. Israel realized there would be no peace with these Arab states until they gave up their publicly-stated goal to eradicate the Jewish nation. In 1967, Israel learned another war was being planned, and they struck first routing the Arab forces and capturing Jerusalem, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Golan Heights. Jews were once again free to pray at the Western Wall, a right they had been denied by the Arab leaders since 1947. But the existential threat remained, called to the world’s attention by the terrorist murder of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

In 1973, the Arab nations once again tried a surprise attack, on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. This war went well for the Arabs for days, but the tide turned and Israel so decisively destroyed the Egyptian and Syrian forces that only threats by the Soviet Union to the United States (and subsequent US pressure on Israel) ended the conflict. By 1978, Egypt had had enough, and it aligned itself with the US (vice the USSR) and signed the Camp David accords with Israel. Egypt and Israel both complied with the terms of the agreement. The Palestinians, who were welcome but not a party to it, refused to participate.

Resentment among the Palestinian people over their lack of control led to the First Intifada, a popular violent uprising, in 1987. More brutality, repression, and terrorism ensued. The conflict hit a turning point in 1993 when Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization signed the Oslo Accords, laying out a path toward a negotiated two-state solution. But neither side was willing to negotiate on critical issues: Israel would not give up Jerusalem, the PLO would not accept the right of the Jewish nation to exist. Hard to compromise with those positions. A Second Intifada in 2000 yielded only more misery.

By 2006, the corruption and decadence of the PLO administration in the West Bank prompted those Palestinians (two million strong) in the Gaza strip to elect Hamas, a terrorist militia group, as its government. On a related note, there have been no further elections in Gaza. Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state and the killing of all Jews in the Middle East. They seek only the compromise of the grave.

Why relate all this? Some people want to believe there is a misunderstanding between the Arabs and the Jews in the region, and if they could just compromise, all this bloodshed would end. But like Rome and Carthage, this will never end that way. Israel has tried time and again to find responsible partners for peace. When they have, they cooperated. Israel is at peace with Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan, and Morocco. The Palestinian Authority (the once-PLO government in the West Bank) has never been such a partner, and Hamas never will be (same goes for Hezbollah in Lebanon).

As I blogged a month ago, the Biden administration was semi-secretly working a peace deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Israel would get peace with the prestigious keeper of Islam’s holiest sites and the primary Arab benefactor. The House of Saud would get an explicit American defense promise, support for eventual nuclearization in the event Iran creates an atomic bomb, and both Jerusalem and Riyadh could focus their antagonism on Iran. The US gets greater stability in the Middle East, isolates Iran, and freezes China out just as they try to move into the region. If all this sounds too good to be true, it certainly was to Iran and Hamas. They had to do something to scuttle the momentum toward this agreement.

What was this attack? It was a terrorist attack in the form of a cross border raid. It was not meant to occupy territory or to overrun Israel. It was meant to humiliate the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), kill as many unarmed Jews as quickly as possible, grab as many hostages as possible, and cause Israel to overreact in the hopes it scuttles the deal. If you think that sounds like a Pyrrhic victory (one where the result isn’t worth the cost), you would be correct. But the Arabs attacked in 1973 on the same premise: we’ll lose in the end, but we’ll make them look bad for a time.

Was this an intelligence failure? Too soon to tell, but here is what I can say. There are Israeli press reports from the past few weeks about suspicious activities in Gaza. The Egyptians claim they warned the Israelis. It is not hard to hide evidence of a raid, and it looks like the IDF looked at the indications and thought, “this attack would make no sense” so they thought it was a feint.

Whose fault is it? There are some trying to place blame on the Netanyahu government for causing division in Israel, but those voices are mostly being (rightly) drowned out. Those IDF reservists who refused to report last month in protest are all under arms and headed to war today, as they should be. Israel is amidst a divisive debate about what kind of country it wants to be, but that is not the reason Hamas attacked. Hamas attacked because it wants to kill Jews. Period.

What happens now? Israel has announced a total blockade of Gaza, a tiny slip of urban blight between Egypt, Israel, and the sea (excellent background from the Washington Post here). No food, no fuel, no water. Things will get ugly fast. In the meantime, the Israeli air and ground forces are systematically eliminating any Hamas infrastructure in the strip, with attendant civilian casualties. Ground attack will follow.

What should happen? True to form, Hamas is threatening to start streaming the execution of the hostages it has unless the IDF stops. The Israeli government can’t save those poor souls, some of whom are Americans. Israel should announce it is disarming and demilitarizing the Gaza strip. Demand that Hamas surrender all hostages immediately, or else all Hamas personnel will be tried for war crimes. All military age men in Gaza (16-65 years old) must lay down their weapons and surrender, to be repatriated to whatever nation will accept them. Their families are free to leave with them. Any women and children remaining are welcome to stay under UN auspices. If there is resistance, the IDF will first eliminate it, building by building, then turn the area back over to the UN. It will never be a city, an enclave, or a terrorist base again. It can become the world’s largest, peaceful refugee camp. Or it can become a ruin, a warning to those who always choose violence. Maybe it would even become a tourist attraction in a thousand years.

Gaza delenda est.