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For only the third time in American history, the President of the United States is on trial in front of the Senate.  At stake: the Presidency itself.  Should a two-thirds majority find Donald John Trump guilty, he will be removed from office, and likely banned from running again.  

As the trial progresses we are hearing commentators and experts drawing analogies between the “impeachment trial” and more familiar criminal law.  While those analogies might be helpful in explaining some procedures, in the end the two are not the same at all.

We’ve Impeached

Impeachment is already over.  Donald Trump is an “impeached” President, joining the list of Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton.  Impeachment was the House of Representatives bringing charges for trial in front of the Senate.  It is analogous to what an indictment does in the criminal process.  And, much like a criminal indictment, there are few “due process” protections for the “defendant”.

That reality belies the complaints of the President, demanding representation and bemoaning the unfairness of things.  The President is now getting his rights: they’re coming up next week when his “dream team” gets three uninterrupted days on the floor of the Senate.  And besides, you can only hope that if you are investigated for a criminal indictment, that almost half of the investigators are your friends and supporters, like Jim Jordan, Doug Collins, and the rest (though I’d rather have friends who actually tried to influence the outcome rather than just disrupt it).

It’s Not a Crime

And the “trial” itself, though it has the trappings of a court drama, is really very different.  First of all, there is a judge, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court; but he has little influence over the proceedings.  The Senators are both judges and jurors: a simple majority determines the rules of the proceeding.  The usual fairness we would expect in a trial, hearing witnesses and seeing evidence, are not a given.  They are a “grant” of the majority.

The trial from impeachment is rather a mix of legislature, criminal law and civil law.  There is no “standard” of guilt, such as the “beyond a reasonable doubt” criminal bar, or even the “preponderance of the evidence” of a civil case.  The Senator/Jurors get to not only decide the facts of what happened, but whether those facts violate the Constitution, and whether those violations are so egregious that the President should be removed.  As jurors they determine the facts, as judges they evaluate the law. 

But removal from office (and baring from future office) is not a criminal penalty, and the Trial from Impeachment is not a criminal case.  The rights we assume in the criminal system are not enforced.  If the President is removed for criminal reasons, then the he would get criminal rights in a criminal court, after he is out of office.  

There are none of the Constitutionally mandated legal criminal protections that we are so used to.  Certainly the President could refuse to present evidence and testimony, “taking the Fifth” so to speak.  But unlike criminal action, the Senator/Jurors are allowed to infer guilt from his failure.   And the Constitution does not require a particular level of “guilt”.  If two-thirds believe the President should be removed, he is.

High Crimes

The term “high crime” is a “term of art” as used in the United States Constitution.  A high crime to the Founding Fathers, was a crime against the state, the Constitution itself, not a “big” crime or felony as we think of in criminal law today.  High crimes are acts against the State, but not necessarily against statutory criminal law.  

The current 1^st Article of Impeachment is for Abuse of Power, a term that is a “high crime” but not analogous to any individual Federal statute.  Under “abuse of power” there are contained various Federal crimes: misuse of public funds, violation of the impoundment act, offering bribes to foreign officials, encouraging foreign intervention in US elections.  But those are all “common” crimes, it is only when committed together by the President that they become a  “high” crime, a crime against the Constitution.

And the 2^nd Article of Impeachment, obstruction of Congress, is wholly outside the Federal Criminal Statutes.  The “high” crime is in preventing Congress from exercising its Constitutional Article I powers of oversight. The President claims a flawed theory of total blanket Executive immunity. He has completely refused all Congressional requests for information.  It is a Constitutional question, to be decided above the level of mere Federal law.

Clock and a Calendar

The Republican Congressman from Georgia, Doug Collins, made a huge fuss about the House Democrats rush to impeachment.  He didn’t understand the hurry, and kept saying that “…a clock and a calendar” drove them, as if that was some insult.

He wasn’t wrong, but not for the reason he thought.  Democrats did feel the pressure of time in the impeachment action.  The President, through his actions in Ukraine, made it clear that he would ask for and accept foreign aid to help him win election in 2020.  Those elections are now mere months away. To prevent the President from cheating, something had to be done. 

The “clock and the calendar” are still running.  This President began the Ukraine crisis literally the day after he was “cleared” by the Mueller Report.  Who knows what will happen the day after this trial is over. 

Perhaps Impeachment and Trial will serve as a check on his future actions, even if he’s not removed from office.  Perhaps it will not. If the Senate fails to be remove him, we will find out soon enough.

This is part of a series about ongoing political issues called “The Briefing Book.”

Driver’s License

 I went to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles the other day, to get a new driver’s license.  In Pataskala, Ohio, that’s not such a big deal.  The BMV is located in the old Post Office building by the railroad tracks in the center of town, about a half a mile from the house.  If you go at the end or beginning of the month you might have to wait for a while, but if you hit the middle there’s not such a big line. 

It’s set up like a deli.  There’s the “number” machine, where you take one, and a series of folding chairs where you can wait it out.  You usually find someone that you know in line to have a conversation with.   This time, it was the Russian woman who works at Kroger, and a kid I suspended from school a dozen years ago.

When you get to the counter, the worker there rapidly goes through the list of items you need to get your license or ID.  If you get the one that’s not acceptable for airlines and such, it used to be your old ID is enough.   Now with all the added security, or if it’s your first ID (let’s see, for me that was my first passport at three years old), they require:

• Birth Certificate – with original seal
• Social Security Card (or SSA printout)
• A document showing Ohio Residency
  • Current Insurance Bill
  • Current Utility Bill,
• And $10.

Social Bias

There’s a story teacher’s use to explain the concept of “social bias” in testing.  It’s a math problem:  

Joey mows grass, and he can cut three houses in two hours.  Unfortunately he ran out of gas, and was delayed by two hours.  He has six houses left to finish before it rains, how long will it take?

For kids in the suburbs there are really only two answers to the question.  The first, he’ll need another four hours to get the grass cut.  The second, it doesn’t matter, because he doesn’t have any gas.

But for kids growing up in the city, where the backyards are asphalt and mowing grass isn’t a thing kids do, this question sounds like:

Arthur was participating in the South Bay Regatta.  His ketch was caught crosswind while tacking across the sound, and lost sail.  How will Arthur return his ketch to the dock?

If you don’t know what a Regatta, a bay, a dock or a ketch is, you won’t be able to answer the question.  A city kid may not have ever seen a push mower, not had to ever buy gasoline, nor seen six houses with lawns to be mowed.  Need another example:  ask a suburban kid what a “transfer” is.  Odds are, they won’t have a clue. 

Now on Facebook

It’s driven on social media today. “Democrats want open borders, and Democrats are against Voter ID, so Democrats must want illegal immigrants to vote,” the memes say in one way or another.  And for some of those living here in Pataskala or in other suburbs, it seems right.  Getting an ID is easy, why would anyone be against requiring having an ID to vote?  After all, we need ID for so many other transactions in life, voting shouldn’t be an issue.

But it’s a lot like trying to explain the whole regatta thing.  Either you know it and understand it, or you don’t.  To suburban America it’s difficult to understand how getting an ID is a big deal.

Your Papers Please

Let’s just start with the paper work and  the whole “sealed” birth certificate thing.  In a world where apartments change rapidly, and stuff gets lost, how likely is it that you have an “original” or “sealed” birth certificate.  And if you don’t have one, who has the time to go to the County Courthouse, stand in line, and try to prove that you are you.

And then there’s the “residency” thing.  

Back at the founding of the “Republic,” the “right” to vote was only granted to property owners.  It was only later on that the ownership provisions were dropped, until today the term “citizen” is enough of a qualification.  But here’s the rub:  if you can’t prove “residency” you can’t register to vote.   It’s not just homeless people, it’s “squatters” that are living in situations that aren’t exactly “legal,” sub-letting or “crashing” at someone else’s place.  How can you get a utility or insurance bill in your name?

In America we say every citizen gets to vote.  But that’s not really true; the “paperwork” restricts voting to those who can legally prove residence.  And in a society where the divide between the “haves” and the “have not’s” is growing, the chasm between those that can vote and those that cannot is growing as well.

Right to Vote

Demand for Voter ID is a “social bias” kind of thing.  For those who have access to all of their paperwork, who have transportation, and who have $10 to spend on a government form:  it’s no big deal.  In short, if you live in the suburbs, have all “your papers” in order, a car to drive to the BMV, and a job that gets you time off at a time when the BMV is open, then getting an ID, or a License is easy.  Since those voters tend to be Republican, it should be no surprise that the GOP supports voter ID.

 Not everyone lives that way or has life is so “well ordered.”  But convenience, order, and financial stability are not “criteria” for earning the “right to vote”.  A right is a right, and democracy should make sure that citizens are enabled to vote, not restricted from it.

The Trial

The Trial of Donald John Trump continues in the US Senate.  Last night’s session went deep into the early morning hours, as Democrats forced the Republican controlled Senate to vote down each piece of new evidence and each possible witness. Their strategy caught the President’s “Team” unprepared, their pants beyond even down; they forgot to bring them.  But they managed to come back with echoes of the House Republicans, even Jim Jordan’s four part litany made its appearance.  

Surely the Republican Senators were squirming through the night, both because of the votes now on the record, and the national contrast between the sharp and articulate House Managers and the buffoonish “Team”.  But technically that didn’t matter:  in the end, Mitch McConnell has blocked new evidence and witnesses, at least for the moment.  

We’ll probably get to do the whole thing over again in a couple of weeks.

Polls

Today’s latest polls for the early Democratic Primaries (courtesy of RealClearPolitics):

• National – Biden 27, Sanders 20, Warren 19, Buttigieg 7, Bloomberg 5, everyone else ≤ 3 (1/18/20)
• Iowa – Biden 24, Warren 18, Buttigieg 16, Sanders 14, Klobuchar 11, everyone else ≤ 4% (1/20/20)
• New Hampshire – Sanders 16, Biden 15, Buttigieg 12, Warren 10, Yang 6, everyone else ≤5  (1/21/20)
• South Carolina – Biden 36, Steyer 15, Sanders 14, Warren 10, everyone else  ≤ 4 (1/10/20).

Polls are a lot like a picture of a scene taken from a car speeding down the interstate.  For a split second, the moment is captured forever “on film”.  What happens the next moment, or hour, may completely change the story.  But you have the snapshot.

Joe Biden

So looking at the “snapshots” above, Joe Biden seems to be in a good position. He is strongly ahead in the national poll.  And in the more significant local polls, Joe is somewhat ahead in Iowa, within a percentage of New Hampshire, and outdistancing the field in South Carolina.

And yet, Democrats are not at all sure about banking the future on the former Vice President.  In part, that’s because they feel one “outstanding gaffe” from Biden himself changing the entire scenario.  He’s made a political career of those gaffes, and every time he speaks, we are on the cusp of another (Biden’s Gaffes through history).  

Biden may be the Democratic “lowest common denominator” that all sides can get to, and he may be the surest chance of beating Donald Trump in November.   But he has to keep it together, and he needs to gain support from all wings of the Democratic Party.

Winds of Change

So the Democratic nomination is not “wrapped” up.  There is a strong force on the “left” wing of the Party, Democrats who want a sea change in America’s economy and corporate structures.  And they are split between two candidates:  Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.  

For the purest in the Social Democratic set, Bernie Sanders is the gold standard.  He has led the cause for more than thirty years.  He stood so long for his independent brand of “Democrat-ism” that he is the icon, the symbol of radical change.  Elizabeth Warren grew under his shade and protection.   Her campaign must seem a bit more than “ungrateful” to Bernie’s supporters.  They must feel that it’s Bernie’s turn.

There is a simple calculation that makes Warren’s candidacy even more difficult for Bernie’s supporters to swallow.  The math is pretty simple, subtract Warren from the race and add her votes to Sanders.  It puts him ahead nationally, and everywhere else except for South Carolina.  Warren dilutes the field, leaving it open for Biden to sweep in and take over.  

This is politics, not tidily-winks, and all things are fair in politics and war.  Warren didn’t have to get anyone’s permission to run for President, and her supporters would say that it’s Bernie that is diluting the race.  And we now know that Warren and Sanders had serious discussions about this problem two years ago. Part of that discussion certainly had to be how to get one of them to NOT run.  Whether the question of a woman running came up, and what either said about that isn’t the point, though that issue is now a serious concern on the campaign trail.  

Clinton’s Attack

At least one person sees a path to the nomination for Bernie Sanders.  Hillary Clinton has weighed in on the 2020 election campaign, using a “Hulu Documentary” to attack him.  Unable to run herself, she is loath to allow Sanders the nomination.  There are probably several reasons for this.  There was no love lost between Sanders and Clinton in 2016, and her mathematical calculations probably conclude that Sanders cost her the Presidency.  Secretary Clinton may simply be getting paybacks.

But there are two other factors that might be influencing the former candidate.  One is the close ties the Clinton’s have to Wall Street.  The term “Republican lite” was defined for Bill Clinton’s Presidency, and if nothing else, Sanders presents a threat to America’s investment houses.

Snapshots

Or, like many moderate Democrats, Hillary may have reached the conclusion that Sanders might be able to win the nomination, but could never win the Presidency.  Even against an impeachment-wounded Donald Trump, Sanders would be painted as a “radical, socialist, communist,” an image that could be fatal.  Unlike Clinton herself, or Biden, or other seasoned candidates; no one has gone “full negative” against Bernie Sanders.  Democrats haven’t, because they needed Sanders’ support and his supporters, just as Clinton did in 2016.  So no one has even tipped over “the rock” of Sander’s career as a “millionaire socialist”.

So today, as we stand at the edge of the Democratic primaries, we wait.  Wait to see if the Bernie supporters have really found a font of political support in the young.  Wait to see if somehow Warren/Sanders becomes one movement.  And, we still wait for Joe Biden to “drop the ball” once again.  

Elections are snapshots too.  Few Democrats in America believed that the Trump snapshot taken in November of 2016 could happen.  But it did; now Democrats are haunted by the possibility it could happen again. And, unlike polls, those election snapshots have consequences.

Today, a day that will live on in American history, the third removal trial of an American President begins. However you feel about Donald Trump, it is a momentous time.

Many will say this is “the tipping point” in the future of our nation. Will we either be a nation of narcissism or compassion, World responsibility or selfishness, on the arc for justice, or against the curve. It is time to decide.

The tipping point is not just today, or even what ever happens in this trial. The “point” is much wider, extending to November and America’s choice for our future.

But make no mistake about it: we are at that point in history. We, the People, have the opportunity and obligation to choose what that future will be. The trial in the Senate may not give us the answer to that choice, but 2020 will.

It is hard to imagine a more critical turning point. Perhaps the election of 1800, when the Federalists grudgingly left the government in the lawfully elected hands of their bitter ideological rivals, the Jeffersonians.

Trump, if he understood history, could draw a contrast with the election of 2016, demanding that the Democrats did not fulfill the Federalist precedent and allow him to govern. He’s not altogether wrong.

But their is a critical difference between the time when John and Abigail Adams got in the carriage and left Washington before Jefferson was sworn in, and when the Obamas gracefully lifted off the Capitol lawn in a helicopter, no longer Marine One. While Adam’s barely lost to Jefferson by seven votes in the Electoral College, Jefferson carried the national popular vote by over 60%. American government may have been narrowly divided, but the people were not.

In 2016 Trump won the electoral college by a narrow but comfortable margin. But the People’s vote went for his opponent. That does not mean his election was illegitimate – but it did demand some recognition of the majority’s thwarted will.

But from the Inauguration Day three years ago, Mr. Trump willfully delegitimatized his opposition. “It was the greatest election landslide in history,” “the largest inaugural crowd ever,” and the “votes against him the fraudulent and illegal,” were the opening gambits in his campaign of “America First”.

To Mr. Trump, the winner, no matter how narrow or conflicted, got the spoils. And so he began a campaign of altering America’s government and values. Now, three years in, we have a clear vision of what that campaign will yield.

What will Trump’s America look like in 2021? Make no mistake, if you are rich, you are likely to get richer. If you profit from polluting our air, water and land; your profits will expand. If you are a white man aggrieved at the loss of prior privilege, you may find your advantages reinstated.

And if you want your personal religious beliefs enforced as law in women’s health, education, and as American societal norms, than “four more years” is your goal.

All of that, no matter where you politically stand, might be the outcome of a fair election. The loser could get in their carriage or helicopter and fly away. But the Trial today isn’t about any of that.

Today’s trial is about the President and his henchmen trying to alter the very fabric of Constitutional government. George Washington was most aware of the powers he could not use, and the actions he should not take. As our first President, unanimously chosen by the People and the Electors, he could have done most anything. But he recognized that his most important role wasn’t just to lead, but to teach. It is little surprise that the words precedent and President are confused; Washington was most aware of presiding so as not to abuse his authority.

To quote the musical “Hamilton,” “History had its eyes on him.” And he governed with that in mind, even teaching us, “How to Say Goodbye.”

Now, 232 years later, we have a President who ignores Washington’s precedents and obligations for the sake of power and control. For that, not the results of 2016, he is being tried before the Senate today.

What we do here, and November, will unalterably change the world.

History has its eyes on us.

The trial of Donald John Trump, President of the United States, begins Tuesday. All 100 members of the Senate have been sworn in, pledging to be fair and impartial in the matter before them.

That may last through Chief Justice Roberts’ formal call to order. But after that —all bets are off.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s goal is to have the trial as over as quickly as possible with an overwhelming “exoneration” for the President. Anything that gets in the way of that goal, including the truth, is expendable.

McConnell is even considering sandwiching 48 hours of presentations, split evenly between the House Managers and The President’s defense team, into four days. That’s twelve hours a day of speeches. That might seem a laudable goal: Senators working hard sitting in silent “jurydom” from 1 pm to 1 am. But it’s not about work – it’s about burying the discussion from the American people.

A more traditional schedule, 1 pm to 9 pm for six days would allow millions more citizens to see what’s going on. Sure some will make the midnight show anyway – but most would be left out. For McConnell that’s all to the good.

Less public exposure means less public pressure on his vulnerable members: Gardner of Colorado, Collins of Maine, McSally from Arizona. And even less pressure for McConnell from Kentucky, who is facing the strongest opponent in his career, and one of the lowest approval ratings in the country.

For the House Managers public pressure is what it’s all about. Public pressure on wavering Republicans to consider hearing witnesses: John Bolton, Mick Mulvaney and the OMB executives who were told to hold the Ukraine money. Those witnesses would allow the American people to hear directly what the President did. Even if it doesn’t convince twenty Republican Senators to remove, the number needed to crossover – it will give the American citizens more information for their vote in November.

But McConnell’s goal is to hear less, see less, and wrap up the trial as soon as possible.

And don’t hang your hopes on John Roberts for a fair trial. He is dedicated to procedural fairness — but he’s also dedicated to his mentor, Bill Rehnquist’s words from when he presided at the Clinton impeachment: “I did very little and I did it very well.”

Roberts will certainly stay in his lane.

So it’s process tomorrow, and the House Managers for the next two or three days. Then the President’s team gets the same amount.

So sometime next week we will reach the crisis: can the House Managers call witnesses? If so, will the President’s team? And if witnesses are allowed will the President try to blanket them with “executive privilege”? Will the Chief Justice and Senate allow him to get away with it?

Odds are we’ll never get to hear witnesses, or at least that’s what the majority of Senate Republicans want us to believe. If they have their way, the coverup will begin.

The President announced his “dream team” to defend him in the Senate.  Their job is to convince Senators that the President did not commit a crime.  If that doesn’t work, then whatever crime he did commit, it doesn’t fit the Constitutional definition of “treason, bribery, or high crimes and misdemeanors”.  And if all that fails, then the team will try to show that the process was so flawed, that even a President who abused his power should not be removed.

Judge Starr

It’s “have it my way” anyway you look at it.  Two stellar attorneys lead the “team”.  First is Ken Starr, the man who left the bench to serve as Solicitor General under President Bush (41).  He then became Justice Department Special Counsel, and began the investigations of Bill and Hillary Clinton soon after they entered the White House.  Starr trundled through their financial, social, and finally personal lives, and after four years, finally hit pay dirt.  Big Bill had a sexual relationship with “that woman” Monica Lewinsky, a twenty-one year old .

It’s About Sex  

It was a national scandal, and Clinton compounded it by testifying in a court-ordered deposition. He tried to split legal hairs about the nature of oral sex.  It didn’t work, and a Court found he committed perjury.  And for that, Starr convinced Congress to impeach him.  The Senate never came close to removing him from office.

Starr’s career continued to representation of billionaire Jeffrey Epstein in his 2006 sex scandal with underage girls in Florida.  Starr helped Epstein get a “sweetheart deal” with South Florida US Attorney Alexander Acosta.  Afterwards, Acosta became Secretary of Labor under the Trump Administration, but resigned when the Epstein scandal broke out once again less than a year ago.  Epstein, of course, was re-arrested and imprisoned awaiting trial, where he died under questionable circumstances.   

After a stop as Dean of Pepperdine Law School, Starr landed in Waco, Texas, for a six-year stint as President of Baylor University.  Sexual abuse came back to haunt him once again. Members of the football team and a fraternity president were convicted of multiple sexual assaults.  The coach and athletic department tried to coverup the crimes. In the end Starr lost his job, along with the coach and athletic director.

So now he’s got plenty of time to represent the President.

Professor Dershowitz

Then there’s the redoubtable professor of Constitutional law from Harvard, Alan Dershowitz.  The Professor has spent a career defending the infamous: from Claus von Bulow’s murder case to the OJ Simpson “dream team”.   He is currently involved in defending movie producer Harvey Weinstein in his sexual abuse trial. Dershowitz claims to be a life-long liberal Democrat, and says he voted for Hillary Clinton.  He also has been a die-hard supporter of Zionism and Israel, which might explain some of his ongoing defense of Donald Trump.  

Dershowitz was also on the 2006 Epstein team, and has been implicated in some of Epstein’s sexual improprieties.  Dershowitz claims his only sex was with his wife. His statement, that he was never was “out of his underwear,” is contested by multiple girls who claim that he was involved in “massage” activities and more.

Besides the Epstein connection, the Trump legal team has one other strong bond:  commentating for Fox News.  Starr, Dershowitz, Trump personal attorney Jay Sekulow, former Florida Attorney General Pam Biondi, and Starr’s successor as Special Counsel Robert Ray are all part of the team, and all passed the apparent “try-outs” in their Fox News appearances. 

So what arguments can we anticipate from the Trump “Epstein/Fox News” Team?

Unitary Executive

From the beginning of the Trump Administration, Professor Dershowitz has taken a consistent view.  He advocates the Constitutional theory of the “unitary executive”, an argument that states that all actions of the executive are direct outgrowths of Presidential power.  The Professor argues that the President wouldn’t “investigate himself” and therefore the Justice Department has no jurisdiction over Presidential actions.  

Dershowitz saw the Mueller investigation as unconstitutional, and that the President had the authority to fire Mueller at any time for any reason.  His argument that “the President cannot obstruct himself” gives Mr. Trump total leeway to prevent any investigation of his administration’s actions.

In addition, Professor Dershowitz reads the US Constitution as giving the President near absolute powers in the area of foreign policy, thus making many of the accused actions in the Ukraine affair perhaps scandalous, but not illegal.  And finally, Dershowitz reads the impeachment powers in the Constitution as extremely limited to the strict reading of the words, “treason, bribery, and high crimes and misdemeanors”.  Since the President hasn’t been indicted or convicted of any Federal crimes, he cannot be impeached.

Federal Indictment

Judge Starr is likely to make his argument based on his work as Special Counsel.  He will claim that the House of Representatives exceeded their authority be opening the investigation of the President, a job he sees defined as a job for the Justice Department.  He will argue that the U-Haul truck load of evidence he passed to Congress in 1998 was that kind of investigation, and that the four month House Intelligence Committee inquiry is unacceptable.

So Starr will argue that unless the President is facing Federal Criminal charges, he cannot be impeached.  And Dershowitz will argue that the Justice Department cannot investigate or charge the President.  The sum of their position:  “heads I win, tails you lose”. 

Back to Law School

Others will argue that the House “process” denied the President due process rights.  And somewhere, someone, probably Jay Sekulow, will recite the famous Jim Jordan litany.  It has four stanzas:

• The phone call between Trump and Zelenskiy was “perfect”
• Zelenskiy has stated there was no pressure
• There was on “quid pro quo” since Ukrainians didn’t know the money was held up
• The money was eventually paid anyway.

It’s already been used in the “teams” official response to the Impeachment notice.

Another famous Harvard Constitutional Professor, Lawrence Tribe, describes the Dershowitz position as “alternate law” (as opposed to “alternate facts”).  Adam Schiff is likely to make the same case on the floor of the Senate.

It probably won’t make for great television for most Americans.  Not too many folks are fascinated with explanations and legal interpretations of the US Constitution.  But as someone who enjoyed sitting in law school classes (no, I didn’t get my degree) I am clearing my schedule. 

This week, I’m going back to school!

If you read my posts enough, you know that I try not to let The Rachel Maddow Show drive my topics too much.  I am a constant viewer, and Rachel does an outstanding job of prepping and analyzing issues, problems, and events.  She always gets the viewer thinking, and I don’t want to try to compete with all of that.  

But her interview of Lev Parnas on Wednesday and Thursday nights is too good to pass up.

Transmission 

Wednesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent the two Articles of Impeachment to the Senate for trial.  Pelosi created a great deal of controversy. She held the Articles after their passage in the House on December 19^th.  The actually “transmission” of those Articles via hand delivery to the Senate Chamber took place on January 15^th.  The Congress was out of session, gone to Christmas, Hanukkah or whatever, from December 20^th to January 6^th. That didn’t seem to matter to Pelosi’s critics.

But the delay worked in the Speaker’s favor.  While they were out, key witness John Bolton signaled that he would be willing to testify.  Emails from the Office of Management of Budget and the Defense Department (released not to the House Committees but to the media through a Freedom of Information Act request) further confirmed the President’s orders to withhold money from Ukraine.  And this week, the General Accounting Office ruled that holding the Ukraine funds was against the law.

  In addition, the Courts ordered the Justice Department to return documents and cell phones to Lev Parnas. He was the “button man” in the Rudy Giuliani pressure campaign in Ukraine.  Parnas and his attorney then turned that information over to the House Intelligence Committee, who released a lot of it to the public.  It also went into the package of evidence going to the Senate.

New Evidence

That evidence included a letter from Giuliani to newly elected Ukrainian President Zelenskiy. That letter confirmed that Giuliani was acting as private counsel to Donald Trump, President of the United States.  There were also notes from phone calls, confirming that “the deal” was to get Zelenskiy to investigate the Bidens.

Parnas also had a series of recovered text messages confirming much of his work in Ukraine.  There were also disturbing texts from Republican Congressional candidate Robert Hyde. They implied that Hyde was following US Ambassador Yovanovitch and even hinting that “…if you want her out” it could be arranged.

Lev Speaks

But the big reveal came in Rachel’s interview.  Parnas laid out the following points.

1. From the beginning Giuliani’s plan was to get the Ukrainian government to investigate the Bidens, not Ukrainian corruption. And President Trump knew every move.
2. Giuliani and Parnas were empowered to speak for the President of the United States.
3. When Ambassador Sondland testified, “…everybody was in the loop,” that included not just Trump and Mulvaney, but Bolton and Vice President Pence as well.
4. The Giuliani “team” included not just Parnas and Fruman, but also “Fox Attorneys” Joe DiGenova and his wife Victoria Toensing. Congressman Devin Nunes and his staff, and Attorney General Bill Barr were involved as well.
5. One of their goals was to strike a deal with then Ukrainian Prosecutor Lutsenko.  He wanted Ambassador Yovanovitch removed in exchange for dirt on Biden.  Yovanovitch was removed.
6. That when Lutsenko failed to give them the dirt and was removed by Zelenskiy, they needed to cut a new “deal”.
7. Money for Ukrainian defense and perhaps even more importantly US recognition was what Ukraine wanted.  That was the “quid” for the Biden investigation “quo”, and everybody on the team and in the loop, knew it.
8. That Parnas was trying to cut a deal with oligarch Dimitry Firtash.   US charges against Firtash would be dropped, if Firtash would help get “Biden Dirt”. And everyone, DiGenova, Toensing, and Parnas would make a whole lot of money in the process.

Ignore at Your Peril

It’s pretty damning testimony – and information that the Republican Senate doesn’t seem to want to hear.  There are some caveats however.  Parnas is accused of a felony, illegal campaign contributions. These are  similar to the charges that put Trump attorney Michael Cohen in prison for three years.  That raises the bar on questions about his credibility.  And some of his accusations, like a lot of the House Intelligence Committee testimony, is second hand. “Rudy said the President said” and “Victoria and Joe said Attorney General Barr said”; are definitely one step away from first hand information.

But it all fills in gaps in an overall tale. The President looked for dirt on Joe Biden and used the powers of the Presidency to try to get it.  The Senate needs to hear this obvious story.  If they don’t, then they are like little kids, sticking fingers in their ears and yelling “♫ La, La, La, La, La ♫” so they can’t hear the truth.  

There will be a price to pay for such intentional ignorance.  If it doesn’t happen in the hallowed Senate hall, then it may well happen at the ballot box on November 3^rd.

Tuesday and Wednesday have been stark contrasts in the possible future of the United States of America.  Tuesday night, we heard a spirited debate by six of the remaining candidates for the Democratic Presidential nomination.  Wednesday, we saw the solemn procession of the House Managers as they marched the formal Articles of Impeachment of Donald John Trump, President of the United States, across the Capitol to the Senate.

Presidential Debate

The debate was spirited, with even billionaire Tom Steyer getting involved in the discussion.  While the general outlines on issues for all the Democrats are similar, Tuesday highlighted the differences.  In foreign policy the divide was over withdrawing all troops from Afghanistan and Iraq, or not.  In health insurance the choices were Medicare for All, soon or now; Medicare for some and private insurance for the rest; or Medicare stays the same with a public health option added on to an extended Obamacare, and private insurance.  Everyone gets covered and prescription prices go down.

And everyone wants to deal with the environment.  The difference in the discussion was how high a priority it must be.  My concern is that it seemed like a side-discussion, thrown in as part of the debate about President Trump’s new North American trade deal.  It didn’t have the legs to go out on its own, except with Tom Steyer.  You know, it should be Pete Buttigieg’s issue; he’s the only one of the six who will be around to deal with the effects.  Maybe he’s afraid the issue highlights his youth, as if being thirty-seven on a stage with a bunch of seventy year olds (sorry Senator Klobuchar, you’re not) isn’t clear enough. 

It’s not just splitting hairs:  it’s all-important stuff.  But no matter which Democratic candidate wins the nomination, we can be assured that we will reduce troops in the Middle East, expand health care to somehow include everyone, and push a panic button on climate change.    

Absent Voices

I will admit I missed some voices in the fray.  Cory Booker and Kamala Harris are gone from the competition.  It’s not just the absence of a black candidate in a Party that depends on the black vote: they brought dignity, strength, and differing views that “the six” can’t duplicate.  Andrew Yang and Michael Bennet, still running, did not qualify.  Yang brings a refreshing outsider view to the discussion, while Bennet offers a carefully thought out program of unifying the nation. 

Note:  I was surprised to see James Carville, architect of the Bill Clinton Presidential Campaign, come out and endorse Bennet.  Carville is no ideologue.  He works for winners, money, or both.  He’s always got an angle, and coming into what looks like a campaign on life support seems more than a surprise.  He knows a lot, so maybe we will find out what we don’t know about the Bennet Campaign. 

I can’t say I miss Marianne Williamson, though I’m sure Saturday Night Live will.  

Inside and Outside

And then there’s the “outlier,” Mike Bloomberg.  He can’t be in the debates; his billionaire self-financing won’t meet the qualifications.  But he’s out there, spending more money than anyone, even Trump himself.  He offers an even more moderate alternative to the Democratic base.  The good news is, whether he gets the nomination or not, he has committed his money to defeat Donald Trump.  So has Tom Steyer.

You can’t mention this week’s debates without at least giving a nod to the internecine battle of “the left” between Senators Sanders and Warren.  It’s nothing if not personal.  In 2018, Warren and Sanders had a private conversation about their running for President.  In the course of the conversation, Warren says Sanders said a woman couldn’t win.  

Now, less than a month before the Iowa caucuses and with Sanders ahead of Warren in the polls, the conversation has come up.  Sanders flat denies he made the statement, Warren says he did, then pivots to why women make better candidates.  After this last debate, they had a standoff on the debate stage where Warren told Sanders he called her a liar.  Well, he did.  I guess friendships can’t survive the crucible of Presidential politics.

Scoring the Future

The debate score:  Klobuchar sounded good and so did Buttigieg.  Warren and Sanders did fine other than the little tiff, but they don’t surprise anyone with anything different.  Biden did fine, though I would argue the bar has lowered for his performance.  But he passes on the “he’ll do” test, which seems to be enough.  Steyer still seems like the guest at the dinner that will go home afterwards.

So now it will be an “eternity” until the good Democrats of Iowa gather in school gyms and churches to walk around the room, find their candidate, and go through the arcane process of “caucusing”.  It’s an oddity of our democracy that such a small number of voters will have such an enormous impact on our choices.  

And who knows what they will be thinking.  Events overtake the best-laid plans of any candidate.  A Presidential impeachment trial, the third in the nation’s history, will begin next week.  The “Pelosi delay” strategy has already paid off.   Lev Parnas threw an entire tank of gasoline on the fire in his interview last night.  I don’t expect twenty Republicans in the Senate to vote for removal; in fact I’d be surprised if there are four who want witnesses.  But Democrats will hang a “rigged trial” around Republican necks in the election like those burning tires in South Africa.  And in this era, when modern history was last week and ancient history last month:  who knows what comes next?

“Hunter Biden promises Dad’s protection to Burisma for $50000 a month”.  It’ll be next October’s headlines in the New York Times, fresh from the latest Wikileaks dump of Burisma emails.  “We are serving mankind by revealing information,” Wikileaks will arrogantly claim, though the one piece of information they won’t reveal is who hacked the emails.  “We don’t reveal our sources”.  It all echoes 2016:  if only FBI Director Chris Wray would open an investigation.

It could happen.  

GRU Hacking

We will never know whether it’s real or not, whether those emails were written by Hunter Biden, or by a young lieutenant in a St. Petersburg GRU facility.  The first step has already occurred.  The GRU – Russian Military Intelligence, hacked the Burisma Company computers.  They used the same “spear fishing” technique that worked so well on the Democratic National Committee, convincing employees that they were confirming passwords on a fake site.  A US computer security company announced the crime this week.

We don’t know what was taken.  But it really doesn’t matter.   The GRU is good at hacking, but they are just as good at creative writing.  Look how they manipulate social media to get Americans to believe that Democrats are mourning Iranian General Soleimani.  How hard would it be to dump hundreds of emails to Wikileaks, and bury in the pile a few that are a products of their imagination. 

Truth and the Media 

The mainstream media here in the United States only casually recognizes their impact on the 2016 election.  Clinton and DNC emails and other Clinton “scandals” dominated the headlines through the fall of 2016.  Meanwhile, the known scandals of Donald Trump, from porn stars to the Trump Foundation, seemed to go quietly under the radar.  In an election decided by 0.06% of the vote, it had a determining impact.

But like a junkie to a dealer, the media will go right back to the source in 2020.  If Wikileaks offers up “Burisma emails,” don’t think that anyone will pass them up.  “Well it’s already out there,” they’ll say, “people will read them on the internet”.  But the headlines will be trumpeted as “BREAKING NEWS” on the CNN and MSNBC chyrons.  It will be impossible to verify, and Hunter Biden will claim they are faked.  “We will leave it to the public to decide,” will be the high and mighty media claim.

Trump Re-Election Plan

It’s all a part of the Trump re-election strategy.  We know that, it’s what Rudy Giuliani has been doing for the past two years.  Rudy’s been searching for Hunter Biden dirt, asking already compromised Ukrainian politicians to “be honest”.  Honesty can be purchased for the price of a visa to the US. 

And now the Giuliani operation seems a little darker, as evidence reveals that US Ambassador Maria Yovanovitch was under surveillance by a Trump minion.  She stood in the way of Giuliani’s plan.  Evidence now shows that Robert Hyde messaged Giuliani’s associate Lev Parnas, “…if you want her out, they are willing to help if we/you would like a price,” and “guess you can do anything in Ukraine with money … is what I was told.”

New evidence also reveals that another fired prosecutor, Yuri Lutsenko, offered “dirt” on Hunter Biden if Ambassador Yovanovitch was removed.   Giuliani responded that “No. 1” was involved.  Yovanovitch was soon summarily ordered to leave Ukraine and return to Washington.

Everyone’s Involved

Giuliani’s plotting may all sound like some comedic spy story, a kind of “Get Smart goes to the Ukraine”.  But it all gets more serious when the GRU, already involved in feeding the CrowdStrike 2016 election conspiracy, hacks into Burisma.  And there’s a Washington angle to all of this as well.  

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has stood against witnesses testifying in the Senate Impeachment trial.  But if he’s forced to hear John Bolton and the others, there’s always a fall back plan.  Bring Hunter Biden in.  No matter what he says, or what he doesn’t say, it will keep his name on  “above the fold” on the front page.  

All ready for next October’s headlines.

All the Rhetoric

We’ve heard from both “sides”.  One side claims that the Obama Administration gave $150 Billion to Iran to finance terrorists around the world.  The other side cries that the Trump Administration is impulsively risking all-out war in the Middle East to destroy Iran. The reality is that both Presidents have a clear view of how they wanted to handle the “Iran Problem”.  

Let’s clear a couple of the issues up.  The Trump Administration didn’t act “impulsively”.  We just recently learned that Iranian General Soleimani was targeted months ago by the top Administration leadership, led by then National Security Advisor John Bolton.  Rather than an “impulse” decision by the President, it was a decision already made, simply waiting for the opportunity to be implemented.

And the Obama Administration didn’t “pay” Iran $150 Billion.  Iran did get $1.7 Billion from the United States, much of it in cash, as Iran was banned from the world banking system.  That money was principal and interest on $400 million in Iranian money, already paid by the Iranian government to the United States for weapons before the 1979 regime change. The weapons were never delivered.  Iran also got access to their assets frozen throughout the world banking system by American sanctions.  That Administration at the time estimated that amount to be about $56 Billion. 

Iranian Action

Iran has been a “bad actor” on the world stage for the past thirty years. Shia religious leaders overthrew the US backed regime, led by Shah Reza Pahlavi, in 1979.  Those leaders, called Mullahs, believed in a strict view of Shia Islam, and wanted to see Shia’s throughout the Middle East empowered. 

One of their first actions was to encourage Shia revolts in Iraq.  Shias are the majority in Iraq, but the dominant governing party was Sunni, led by Saddam Hussein.  From 1979 to 1989 Iran and Iraq fought a conventional war, costing half a million lives.  After the end of that war the Iranians opposed US intervention in the Middle East, starting with the Persian Gulf War in 1991.  

Direct opposition to the United States was difficult.  Conventional war, when troops meet in traditional battles, was a losing proposition for the Iranians.  Instead they chose to encourage “asymmetric” attacks, financing local militias throughout the Middle East to further their interests against the US, Israel, and the Sunni stronghold of Saudi Arabia.  Hezbollah in Iraq and Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, and the Yemeni rebel forces are all financed and supplied by the Iranian regime.

But Iran also wanted to have a more conventional base of military power.  The Mullahs wanted nuclear weapons, and in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s made a lot of scientific advances in pursuit of a “bomb”.  Iran is in many ways a modern nation, with a strong base of educated scientists.  Iran not only worked in nuclear issues, but also became adept in the new battlefield of cyber warfare.

Carrots and Sticks 

The Obama Administration divided Iran’s conduct into two parts.  They determined that the first part, building a nuclear weapon, was the most immediate threat to world stability.  So the Obama Administration worked to get Iran to delay their nuclear development.  It was a two-pronged approach:  the world sanctioned Iran, making it difficult for Iran to get goods in, or sell their main product, oil.  This strangled the Iranian economy, and also limited the amount of materials they could get to further their nuclear goals.

With that “stick”, the Administration offered a “carrot” to the Mullahs.  Come to the table and negotiate over nuclear development and there was the possibility that the sanctions might be lifted, and Iran could participate in the world economy.  From the Iranian side, this was an important “carrot”.  Iran continued to have a modern society despite the draconian theocratic regime.  Iranians wanted a modern economy with modern goods.  

So for two years the United States, China, Russia, United Kingdom, France and Germany negotiated with Iran.  In 2015 they reached an agreement, the “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action”.  In return for delaying nuclear research and development for at least ten years, Iran was allowed partially back into the world economy.  Part of that deal was the controversial financial payment made by the US government.

In the meantime the US and Iran actually cooperated in defeating a threat to both:  ISIS.  Using the philosophy of  “…the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” both Iranian backed militias and US backed forces allied to stop the ISIS Caliphate incursions into Iraq, and ultimately to destroy its base in Syria.

The JCPOA was never seen as a final document.  It was the first step in a three-step process.  The second phase would address the “asymmetric” military actions of the Iranian government and their support of the various militias.  The third phase would be a final resolution ending Iran’s nuclear possibilities.

But the Obama Administration was over before the second or third phases began.

Maximum Pressure

The Trump Administration came in with a totally different concept.  They had no desire to “deal” with Iran on a co-equal basis.  Instead, they wanted to apply “maximum pressure” on Iran, first through increasing economic sanctions, then through indirect military pressure.  Their belief is that the Iranian people will not continue to support the theocratic regime if they are forced to suffer under draconian sanctions.  

The first move was to withdraw from the JCPOA, and institute even stricter sanctions.  In addition, the US began to increase support for Saudi Arabia’s fight in Yemen, pitting Saudi’s surrogates in battle against Iranian surrogates.  And the United States doubled-down on support for Israel, backing harsh Israeli actions against Hamas protests in Gaza, further Israeli settlement in the West Bank, and moving the symbolic US Embassy to Jerusalem.

It was all part of the plan, to pressure Iran economically, and force them to defend all of their far-flung militia-allies throughout the Middle East.  The US hope was that either the Mullahs would come to the negotiating table again, this time in a much weaker position.  Or, even better, the Iranians would overthrow the current regime.

Seen in this light, the assassination of the Iranian General in charge of the entire militia program is not quite such an aberration.  It’s just one more increase in the pressure.

Who’s Right?

It’s hard to figure which strategy will work.  It took two years to negotiate the JCPOA, only the first step in a long process.  On the other hand, the “maximum pressure” strategy has raised world tensions, and allowed Iran to begin nuclear development again.  

But both strategies are more than just “knee-jerk” reactions, and both ultimately have the same goal:  to end Iranian nuclear development and support for extremist militias.  The election of 2020 will determine who gets to find out if their plan works.

Apple Pie

We live in a age of divisions.  That’s as American as “apple pie”.  I grew up in such an age.  That was the time when our hard working parents who won World War II, what Tom Brokaw called “The Greatest Generation,” ran right into their children unwilling to accept their life choices.  It was about Civil Rights and Vietnam, but it was also about the value of life over economic and social success.  The children wanted to satisfy the spirit rather than the wallet.  

Sure it was the “Age of Aquarius” (cue the Fifth Dimension) and we all remember the pictures of kids dancing in the mud at Woodstock.  But it was also about the Greatest Generation’s commitment.  They first sacrificed in World War II, and then many changed that into sacrificing for the all-mighty dollar.  Their children wanted more than that.

Model Family

I grew up in that family.  My parents were both veterans of the War.  They came back to the United States to start a life together.  Mom was from London; she came home with Dad to Cincinnati. They first went into business for themselves, bottling soda pop with an imperious name:  The United States Bottling Company.  It was just the two of them, Mom mixing syrup in giant vats for the bottling machine, Dad going from store to store marketing the product.  

Their hard work was ended by the Ohio River, flooding out the “plant” and ruining the pop.  All that was left was the paper shares of stock.  Dad decided to take his sales skills into a new industry, television. Mom decided to stay home and take care of what turned out to be three children.

Climbing the Ladder

They climbed “the ladder” together.  Dad went from local salesman at WLW-T in Cincinnati to national salesman for Ziv Productions.  Then it was sales manager, and then station manager at WLW-D in Dayton.  By the 60’s they were doing well; a house in suburban Kettering, kids in the play, sports, and music at the local school, two cars in the driveway.

Mom and Dad were still involved in the world.  Mom was always finding ways to help people, volunteering for different community projects.  And Dad, a suit and tie businessman, allowed WLW-D to lead the way in discussing the controversial issues of the day in Dayton.  They were concerned about making the world a better place.

Like any family we had our issues.  But in the end, that Greatest Generation couple produced a surgeon, an artist, and a teacher.  All three children went into professions serving the community in one way or another.  I guess that was rebellion, no one followed Dad in business. But it was rebelling with full support from our parents.

The Next Generation

Now we are those folks:  “OK – Boomer”. 

Divisions in our society are nothing new.  But today, we face a different kind of generational division.  Our children look at us “Boomers” as failing.  We have brought them the age of “Trump”, of “Red and Blue” so divided that it shakes the very foundations of our country.  

And we have committed the ultimate sin.  We are literally leaving the world, the earth, in a perilous state and facing irrevocable change.  It only takes a look in the paper (which our children would never do) to see Australia burning, Venice drowning, Greenland melting, and drought in the jungles of Central America.  It’s not what we’ve done; it’s what we have failed to do to stop this procession.

Old White Guys

We “Boomers” have allowed truth itself to become a tennis ball bouncing back in forth in the game of political rhetoric, so much so that the evidence of our own eyes isn’t enough.  Somehow, we allow the “deniers” to stop every attempt to fix the problem.

And it’s not that the next generations, the Millennials and Generation Z, don’t understand money.  In fact, we have made then incredibly aware of costs and cash, letting them be strapped with the financial burdens of their education so they will spend their twenties in “servitude” to the debt.  It’s not surprising that we don’t hear a lot of thanks from them.  As one Millennial I know says:  “…we’ll have to fix things after the ‘old white guys’ are dead”.  While as an ‘old white guy’ myself I might resent it, that statement carries a lot of truth.

We who have let our political divisions threaten our world still have a last obligation to fix the problem.  Perhaps we will, though that makes 2020 the last, best chance for us.  But if we fail, our children will put down their cell phones, pull out their ear-buds, and get to work.  Their faith is that technology can lead us out of the crisis. 

I want to believe they’re right.

“He looked at me like I was stupid, I’m not stupid” – from Hamilton the Musical 

There’s a lot of misinformation and outright lies in politics today.  Whether we call it “business as usual” or “fake news,” it often makes it feel like there is no way to discover the truth.  But some tales are so fabulous, so ridiculous, that they aren’t really attempts at misinformation.  They are just insults.

CrowdStrike

Lets start with the fundamental conspiracy of the “Giuliani” set.  It states that Hillary Clinton, through the Democratic National Committee, organized Ukrainian officials to attack the US elections and get her elected President.  This is based on the tenuous connection of a co-founder of the computer protection company CrowdStrike, Dimitri Alperovitch. He was born in Russia (not Ukraine).  Supposedly he was connected to a Ukrainian oligarch, Viktor Pinchuk.  That connection:  Aperovitch, along with his role at CrowdStrike, is also a senior fellow on the Atlantic Council, a global think tank.  Pinchuk is a major donor to the Atlantic Council. 

That’s the entire link.  According to Giuliani, Pinchuk used his financial influence (that he doesn’t have) to get CrowdStrike and the DNC to attack the US elections, hack the DNC, and leak the DNC emails in the 2016 election.  He then says that CrowdStrike “spoofed” evidence that Russia hacked the American election.

Not only is Giuliani pushing this idea, but so is Russian Intelligence.  It not only creates confusion that benefits the Trump Administration, but it lets Russia off the hook for interfering in the 2016 elections.

Ukrainian View

In addition, Giuliani points to the Clinton “support” of the Ukrainian government during the election as evidence of this conspiracy.  Of course the facts for Ukraine are different. Hillary Clinton took a much stronger stand against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and theft of the Crimean Province. Donald Trump seemed to be willing to allow Russia to maintain possession of that strategic location.  Ukrainian leaders would certainly support the candidate that opposed Russia’s invasion.

Add that to Giuliani’s characterization of the US Embassy in Kyiv as the “Clinton Headquarters – Kyiv” because of embassy cooperation with a US citizen and former DNC attorney with the hunger-inducing name of Alexandra Chalupa.  Chalupa helped get evidence of Trump Campaign Manager Paul Manafort’s corrupt activity to the US media.  When the press asked the Embassy about that evidence, they were directed to Chalupa. That’s it.  But Giuliani uses that cooperation as proof that the Embassy was biased, and at the heart of the Ukraine conspiracy against Trump.

Defying Logic

The social media campaign waged in the 2016 campaign clearly benefited Donald Trump’s candidacy.  The concept that the DNC arranged to hack itself, and then drip out it’s own emails to the demise of the Clinton campaign, is ludicrous.  

I’m a Democrat.  We Democrats are capable of doing foolish things.  I was a Democrat when Senator Gary Hart, leading the race for the Presidential nomination, dared the press to find out about his illicit affair.  They did.  I was also a Democrat when Bill Clinton had sex with an intern in the halls of the White House. 

But while I can point to Democrats who made incredibly poor personal choices, I don’t think the Democratic National Committee would wage war against itself in the middle of the 2016 campaign. I can believe that the DNC was biased against the Bernie Sanders candidacy in 2016, but I don’t think it hacked itself and leaked it’s own emails to destroy the Clinton candidacy.  It not only defies logic:  but we aren’t that stupid.

Insurance Policy

The second conspiracy theory is that the FBI conspired to destroy the Trump Campaign and insure a Clinton victory in 2016.  This hallucination is based on the private text messages between FBI agent Peter Strzok and Department of Justice Attorney Lisa Page.

Strzok was the agent in charge of the FBI’s investigation into contacts between Russian Intelligence and the Trump Campaign, called “Crossfire Hurricane”. The FBI was warned by the Australian Ambassador to the UK that a Trump operative, George Papadopoulos, had prior knowledge of the DNC hacking and the Clinton emails.  

Papadopoulos got this information from Paul Mifsud, a known Russian operative.  In addition the FBI was getting information about Campaign Manager Paul Manafort’s contacts with Konstantin Kilimnik, also linked with Russian intelligence.  And finally a third Trump advisor, Carter Page, had already been connected to a Russian “spy ring” in New York.

Crossfire Hurricane

“Crossfire Hurricane,” was vetted to the highest levels of the FBI, including Director Comey and Assistant Director McCabe.  The Clinton email investigation was publicly announced, both when Comey determined that there was no crime committed, and then when he reopened the investigation two weeks before the election.  But the FBI made no mention of “Crossfire Hurricane” either during the election or afterwards.  It didn’t come out until Congressional hearings in March of 2017.

Strzok did have an “insurance policy,” the existence of “Crossfire Hurricane”.  A single leak to the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, or CNN would have had a dramatic impact on the 2016 election, a choice determined by less than 78,000 votes out of almost 130 million.  He didn’t use it.  Comey could have stood in front of the press, as he did with the Clinton investigation in July of 2016, and announced the investigation.  He didn’t either.

If Strzok, Comey and McCabe conspired to stop the Trump candidacy, they had everything they needed to do it.  But they didn’t.  So when they accused of having “the insurance policy” there is that fatal flaw.  They didn’t use it.

Angry Democrats

And then there were the thirteen, or seventeen, or eighteen “Angry Democrats,” the lawyers on the Mueller investigation team.  Trump supporters claim that those lawyers were biased against the President, and therefore the Mueller Report was unfair towards him.

But reality again pushes back against this “theory”.  First, Mueller himself was apolitical, even though he was a registered Republican.  And second, you have the top prosecutors in the nation, all “Angry Democrats,” investigating for almost two years.  They didn’t “close the deal” of Trump/Russian conspiracy, despite all of the evidence showing that it occurred.  They had to settle for the Trump argument that the campaign wasn’t organized enough, good enough if you will, to conspire with anyone.

If they were “Angry Democrats,” they set aside their political biases to do a solid investigation.  If they erred, the did so in favor of the President, Donald Trump.  At several critical decision points, the investigation didn’t act like “Angry Democrats,” but like cautious Federal lawyers investigating the President of the United States.  

Not Stupid

So Democrats attacked social media and hacked their own computers to rig the 2016 election for their candidate. The FBI rigged a counter-intelligence investigation to prevent Donald Trump from winning the election. And when he did win, despite these efforts, thirteen or seventeen or eighteen of our finest Democratic Prosecutors spent two years trying to impeach Donald Trump.

And none of it worked.  So if you follow all of the conspiracy theories against the Presidency of Donald J Trump, you must reach the following conclusion:  Democrats are really, really stupid.

We’re not.  And if you fall for this nonsense and buy into these fabrications, you should ask another question. 

How stupid are you?

Limbo

We are in “Impeachment limbo,” caught between the House and the Senate, waiting for someone to blink.  Speaker Nancy Pelosi is holding onto the Impeachment Articles, waiting for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to outline the Senate’s trial procedures.  McConnell is refusing to budge, saying send the Articles, or don’t.

What the Speaker wants is a commitment from Leader McConnell to hear witnesses in the trial.  McConnell is refusing to commit to anything, standing on his power to control the majority in the Senate.  It might seem like a classic power standoff between the two Houses, but it’s really much more than that.

Here’s what’s at stake.  McConnell wants to get Impeachment over, the President acquitted, and move onto the Presidential elections of 2020.  He knows that there is no where near the sixty-seven Senators needed to remove the President, so let’s get it over with.  From a Republican standpoint, an uninspiring and dry presentation of already known information with “no new news” and a quick acquittal that would allow the President to declare “exoneration” is the goal.

Controlling the Trial

The Republican leader doesn’t want to hear witnesses, voices that could change the voting equation in the Senate, or more importantly, in the 2020 election.  So he stands firm in his “stare-down” with the Speaker.  His only problem: can he keep an “antsy” President, desperate to get the trial on and over, under control.  That isn’t easy.  The President is pressing for his counsel to be the “screamers” from the House: Jim Jordan, Doug Collins, and John Radcliffe.  Trump would like a replay of the House proceedings, with the Democrats presenting facts, and the Republicans attacking the process.  It’s not the boring, quiet, and sleep-inducing procedure McConnell wants.  Trump wants a circus; McConnell wants spiritless droning.

I anticipate that Speaker Pelosi will allow the President to build a little more pressure on McConnell, and then transmit the Articles.  Leader McConnell will then begin impeachment proceedings with no witnesses, and, after the opening presentations, the Senate will go through a series of votes on whether witnesses will be heard.  McConnell may be boring, old and seemingly lifeless.  But he knows how to count votes in the Senate, and right now, he has the fifty-one votes to control it. 

The likelihood is that President Trump will get his acquittal.  And it will be in large part because of two men:  Mitch McConnell in the Senate, and Attorney General Bill Barr.  McConnell because he is using all of his acumen to control the proceedings, and Bill Barr because he used all of the powers of the Attorney General to stifle investigations of the President.

Investigating the President

Let’s look back at the last two Presidents who faced Impeachment.  Two different Independent Prosecutors in the Department of Justice investigated Nixon for almost two years.  Every possible witness was deposed and then questioned in front of the Grand Jury.  The House Judiciary Committee was presenting with volumes of evidence, testimony, and dozens of witnesses.  Nixon was an “unindicted co-conspirator” in indictments brought by his own Department of Justice.  

In the case of Bill Clinton, another Special Prosecutor, Ken Starr, spent almost four years investigating.  It took a U-Haul truck to get all of the Starr evidence, Grand Jury testimony, and video evidence to the House Judiciary Committee, including a damning video deposition by the President himself (“…it depends what the meaning of the word is, is…”).  And even with all of that evidence already available, in the Clinton Trial the Senate still heard from witnesses, including Monica Lewinsky.

In both the Nixon and Clinton cases, the Department of Justice did their job of investigating potential crimes.  Even though the Attorney Generals, the leaders of the Department, were political appointees, they saw a higher duty as the chief law enforcement officers of the United States.  Nixon’s Attorney General Eliot Richardson, resigned rather than fire his Independent Prosecutor.  Janet Reno, Attorney General in the Clinton Administration, made it clear that the investigations were protected from Presidential interference.  

When the Congress considered impeachment in both Nixon’s and Clinton’s cases, all of the potential witnesses were already on the record.  Nixon and Clinton both allowed the subordinates to be questioned.  While Nixon tried to use executive privilege to shield some evidence, it was his own Justice Department that took him to Court to pry the White House tapes loose.

A Loyal Servant

Bill Barr seems to have chosen loyalty to the Trump over dedication to justice.  We saw it from the beginning, when the Mueller Report was held up while Barr peddled false conclusions.  In those conclusions, we saw that Barr examined at least ten indictable charges of Trump’s obstruction of justice, and waived them all.  And we now know that Barr limited the scope of the investigation.  Donald Trump was all but named in the Federal indictment of Michael Cohen (individual one) but Mueller was barred from that part of the investigation.

And when the “Whistleblower’s Report” came to the Department of Justice, it was disregarded without investigation.  There was no FBI referral, simply a Department statement clearing the behavior.  “These aren’t the droids your looking for, move along.”  It hard to imagine that Bill Barr’s hand wasn’t in that decision.

So for the President’s actions with Ukraine, there was no existing body of evidence, no volumes coming over in a U-Haul, no video depositions to see.  The House was required to do all of that investigation themselves, all under the pressure of time, and the disruption of the Republican “screamers”.  Remember young Congressman Matt Gaetz’s storming of the secure ‘SCIF’, the closed hearing room?

Obstruction

And all of Barr’s actions allowed witnesses to avoid testimony.  The key figures in the Ukraine story, Mulvaney, Bolton, Duffy and Giuliani have not been heard.  

Witnesses heard Bolton call the pressure on Ukraine a “drug deal”.  Duffy’s emails show that the funds for Ukraine were held on order from “POTUS” (President of the United States).  Mulvaney has publicly said that the funds were withheld.  And Giuliani, well, he’s still seems to be trying to get “the deal” done.

Whether the Senate would remove the President or not, it seems likely that the testimony of these witnesses would serve as damning proof of Presidential abuse of power.  And that’s something that Mitch McConnell doesn’t want.  

He, and Donald Trump, can thank Bill Barr for giving them the choice. 

Wyoming Wrestling

As a sophomore in high school, I was a wrestler.  Of course I ran track in the spring, and later track would become my predominant sport, but in 1972 I trained for wrestling all fall, even running distance to get ready.  Our Coach, “Tink” Miller was a young, new teacher, just out of the University of Cincinnati wrestling program.  He was a dynamic leader, who could take you onto the mat and show you what he needed you to do.  

We wrestled in the middle school, the “old” high school in Wyoming, Ohio.  The program shunned the facilities in the brand new high school.  That balcony above the gym couldn’t get hot enough.  Coach Miller wanted the steam heat in the old school, he wanted to test us, and make us sweat.  We practiced six days a week, the day after Thanksgiving, and Christmas Eve, and the days after Christmas.  We were a tough, smelly, and dedicated crew.

So it surprised me that Coach Miller allowed the seniors to miss practice on February 2nd.  There was no excuse for missing Wyoming wrestling practice, and the seniors led the way enforcing attendance.  But that day, they were all gone.

Vietnam

When I was growing up, the Vietnam War went on and on and on.  The United States first started major combat operations in 1964, when I was eight.  By the time I was eleven in 1967, there were almost half a million American forces there.  Not only did the conflict rage in Southeast Asia, by 1967 protests against the war here at home were growing.  The Presidential election of 1968 was fought over Vietnam, with the winner, Republican Richard Nixon, promising a secret peace plan.

But by 1972 when I was fourteen, we figured out that the “peace plan” was to gradually withdraw and let the South Vietnamese take over, “Vietnamization”.  Americans were still going to Vietnam, and unlike today, it wasn’t an “all volunteer” Army.  Most of the US soldiers in the jungles were drafted, required to serve whether they wanted to or not.  

Conscription

The “Draft” was nothing new in American life.  The Continental Congress asked the states to conscript men for their militias during the Revolutionary War, and both the North and the South required men to serve during the Civil War.  In World War I men eighteen to forty-five were required to register for service, and almost half of the total army, 2.8 million men were required to serve.

But the draft that we knew it began in 1940, in the lead up to World War II.  The system was set so that when you turned 18 you registered with the Selective Service System.  You were required to take a physical, and then your “status” was determined.  If you were healthy and didn’t have an “exemption” from service, you were certified 1-A, ready to go.

There were a series of exemptions that could keep you out of the Army.  If you weren’t physically able to serve, you were classified 4-F.  If you were in a job that was too important to leave, you were 2-A.  There were other exceptions as well, but the US military had to fill the quotas for numbers.  In World War II, ten million American men were drafted out of the sixteen million who served.

The Draft was a universal experience for American men.  After World War II was over, the US government decided to continue the system.  My Dad, drafted in 1941, served until 1946.  But he had friends who served in World War II and then were re-called to fight again in the Korean War in 1949.

The system went on through the 1950’s and 60’s.  Elvis Presley was drafted and served in the Army in Europe about the year I was born.  The heavyweight-boxing champion, Mohammad Ali, went to jail rather than be drafted to go to Vietnam. 

Dodging Service

The draft system had some big flaws.  If you could stay in college, you could get a deferment.  If you stayed long enough, you might avoid being “called up” – drafted for service.  And if you were in a religious group that banned fighting, Amish or Quaker for example, you could be a “conscientious objector”.  You still might get drafted, but you would be in a non-fighting role.  That didn’t mean you were safe, you might be a combat medic, in the middle of the fight.

But the biggest flaw was that if your family was wealthy, there were ways to avoid the draft.  Stay in school, get a doctor to say you were medically unfit, or get hired in the right job, and you could avoid going to war.

Making the Draft Fair

In the protests in 1968, that was one of the biggest arguments; that the draft was unfair.  So in 1969 the government switched to a lottery system.  It was like a big “bingo” machine, with every day of the year in the hopper.  The birthdates of men born eighteen years before were pulled out and announced.  Born on September 14, 1951?  In 1969 you were number 1, the first group of eighteen year olds to go.  While religious and medical exemptions continued, the rest were done.  As the song goes – “…and it’s one, two, three, what are we fighting for?  Don’t ask me I don’t give a damn, next stop is Vietnam!” (Country Joe and the Fish).

The Lottery

So February 2^nd, 1972, my senior wrestling teammates were all together, watching television, and waiting to find out what their lives were going to be like.  For some, they got good news.  Their birthdates were “pulled” late.  If you had a “number” of 125 or higher, you weren’t likely to be drafted.  You could go on planning for college, and life.  But if you had a low number, you needed to prepare:  you were likely to go to war.

The seniors came into practice late.  Most were pretty excited, and jumped into the drills to pound on us younger and tired wrestlers.  But for a few, there were long faces and long conversations with Coach Miller, then back into the practice fray.  The draft was looming, but the Harrison Invitational was this weekend.  Back to work, got to make the weight.

By the end of 1973, the Vietnam War was winding down.  No one after that was drafted, though you still had to “go downtown,” register, and get your draft card.  And they still pulled the numbers, just in case they needed to re-start the draft again.  I was in the last group pulled, in 1975.  It was a “good” number, my birthdate, September 14, 1956 came out 343^rd.  Even if they did start drafting, I would be a long way down the list.

Today

They soon stopped even issuing draft cards, and for a few years didn’t even register folks.  It wasn’t long though, in 1980 President Carter ordered the Selective Service to begin collecting registrations again.  So every eighteen-year old man is required to register with the Selective Service, even today.  

The US military has been an all-volunteer force since the end of Vietnam in 1975.  When men and women join up, it’s for four years or more, not the two years of active service of the draft years.  We avoided the kind of wars that require long-term service of large numbers of ground troops, the kind of situation that calls for draftees.  But if that comes up again, the Selective Service has the lists and is ready to go.  And the “bingo hopper” still works.

The Clock

It’s twelve hours since Iran launched missile attacks against US bases in Iraq.  According to the Pentagon there were no US casualties.  According to Iran up to eighty Americans were killed.  Everyone is entitled to their own facts, I guess.

The United States and Iran are at a breathless “pause”.  Each has climbed the ladder of escalation. After months of tit-for-tat actions in the Persian Gulf, the Iranian backed militia Hezbollah bombed an Iraqi base and an American contractor was killed.  The US responded by bombing three of the militia’s bases.  Hezbollah responded by attacking the US Embassy in Baghdad.  The US responded with a drone strike that killed Iran’s number two leader on the road to the Baghdad airport.   And then Iran responded with last night’s missile strike. 

The world is waiting for President Trump’s response.  He supposedly will speak to us all this morning, and what he says will determine how far our current crisis will go.  If the President is “all talk” but no further action, then there is time.  If he launches further strikes, we will be back on the ladder, climbing to war.

Enter the Peacemakers

After these actions, the United States and Iran are unlikely to “sit down” with each other.  The assassination of General Soleimani placed the two sides far beyond the ability to talk face to face.  So who can mediate, what world leader can step in and say to both sides that they have risked too much, and taken world fears too close to reality?

The Swiss legation in Tehran right now represents American interests.  But the Swiss have never been peacemakers; they are instead honest brokers in a world where honesty is rare.  They aren’t the ones to bring peace.  And the United States often uses the government of Pakistan to communicate to Iran, but we really don’t trust them.  Pakistan has so much at stake in the outcome that their own interests outweigh their ability to broker a deal.

French President Macron could serve as the go-between.  France has economic interests in Iran that makes them committed to peace, and Macron’s on and off relationship with Trump might be effective.  But while France could negotiate, they aren’t in a position to force a deal between two parties that have gone so far.

So who’s left?  There’s one world leader who has enough respect from Trump, and can pressure the Iranian mullahs to accept the personal insult of Soleimani’s death.  He’s waiting for his chance to be the world leader, to take charge on the global stage.  And he’s already moving into position, speaking to the European and Turkish leaders.

It’s Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia!!!! (I feel like there should be a Hamilton moment, a fanfare like – Hercules Mulligan!!)

Putin’s Eye on the Prize

Keep in mind Putin’s ultimate goal:  to bring Russia back to the stature of the Soviet Empire of the early 1980’s.  So he’s been in Europe in the last week, and was in Ankara, the capital of Turkey just days ago.  Putin has been allied with Iran in the Middle East for the past several years, including helping Iran keep Syrian President Bashar Assad in power.  And even in the past few days, as relations between Iraq and the United States have deteriorated Putin has made offers of military assistance to the Iraqi government.

Putin’s Russia is a major player in the Middle East.  Russian troops have taken over the American outposts in Northern Syria.  Russia has already made arms sales to Turkey, ostensibly a NATO ally of the United States. By becoming a force in the Middle East, Russia becomes an economic factor when it comes to controlling the Strait of Hormuz, and European oil supplies.  

America’s allies have questions.  Why did the US abandon the Kurds in Syria, but move troops to protect Syrian oil fields?  Why did the US go from a tit-for-tat response to Iranian provocations, to assassinating the second most powerful government figure in the country?  In short, can America be trusted as a stable partner.

So if not the US, then Putin.  He can become the “new” peacemaker, and by doing so, gain more influence over the Middle East, Europe, and the world.  The era of “Pax Americana” may be over.  “Pax Rodina” may be coming.   

The Colonel

Colonel Larry Wilkerson has “street cred”.  He flew combat helicopters in the Vietnam War, graduated from both the Ranger and Airborne Schools of the US Army, and earned degrees in international relations, national security, and English literature.  He was on General Colin Powell’s staff in the military, and then followed Powell into civilian life as his Chief of Staff at the State Department.

Wilkerson is outspoken about how Powell was “used” by the Bush Administration to justify the invasion of Iraq.  Powell’s speech to the United Nations about Iraqi nuclear weapons development was critical in the lead-up to the invasion.  That speech was based on information “cherry picked” from intelligence by the Bush Administration, led by Vice President Cheney, information turned out to be false. 

Wilkerson understands force, understands the military, and understands intelligence.  Last night on MSNBC, he called the intelligence leading to the assassination of Iranian General Soleimani  “…a bunch of bull.”  He added, “We have surrendered the strategic initiative to Iran”.  

In the interview, Wilkerson added an anecdote from the Obama administration. He said that Obama told him in a White House meeting in the Roosevelt Room, that,  “…there’s a bias in this town toward war”.

Biggest on the Block

It’s easy to see how Washington would have that bias.  The US has the largest military in world history.  We spend huge amounts of money to maintain it, last year budgeting almost $700 billion.  We have more of everything, from ships to planes to tanks.  And while there are larger armies in the world by number of soldiers, the US has more of everything else.

And of course, we have nuclear weapons.

So military solutions are often “the easy” ones.  When there’s a world crisis that lends itself to blowing something up, we have the best means to do it.  We are like the biggest and strongest kid on the block.  When other kids annoy us, or even threaten us, it’s easy to simply swat them away.  

No one can resist the ultimate force of America, “…the American people in their righteous might” as Franklin Roosevelt noted after Pearl Harbor.  But there is a key modifier in that sentence, and in America’s role in the world.  America has the ultimate force, but America must also be “righteous”.  America cannot be seen as a world “bully” and maintain that “rightness”.  When the US has acted (and we have) as the “bully”, we find that the national unity that flows to that power, stops.

Americans Together

Roosevelt’s call to arms after Pearl Harbor led to the development of the US military as the greatest world force, a force maintained today.  Roosevelt after Pearl Harbor, and Bush after 9-11, could call on the full force of the American people.  Few opposed their efforts, and there were long lines outside of enlistment offices.  America knew it was time to defend itself.

But in other times and other wars, Americans have had questions.  It didn’t take long to figure out that Vietnam was not a war defending the “homeland”.  When we committed thousands of combat troops in 1964, millions of citizens began to question our motives.  By 1968 it was the major issue in American politics, on American campuses, and in the streets of American towns. 

Draft Army

Vietnam reached into the lives of most Americans because of the draft.  The US Armed Forces then were based on conscription.  At eighteen, American boys were selected to serve, and sent into combat in Vietnam.  By the end of the war the draft system was based on a simple lottery, if you were born on the wrong day, then eighteen years later you were on the way to Vietnam.  Have a “good number” and you got to stay home.

After the end of Vietnam, the United States military moved to an “all volunteer” force.  And while those soldiers are incredibly effective and loyal, when we stopped the draft it somehow became “easier” to send troops into danger.  After all, they volunteered, they chose this.  It was less of a national burden to send troops to Kosovo and Bosnia and Iraq.  And even the “righteous” war in Afghanistan against the forces that attacked us in 9-11 has dragged on.  Al Qaeda is defeated and bin Laden dead, but we continue to battle, for so long that the soldiers fighting today might not even have been born when planes struck the World Trade Center.

An Easy Solution

So it’s easier to send our forces to fight in far away fields.  It’s even easier when those forces can be piloted remotely, from a base in Virginia, as the bombs fall in Baghdad.  No one mourns the loss of a drone, even if it costs millions.  We proved that when the Iranians shot down one of ours a few months ago, and our response was a cyber attack.  The choice to use military force becomes less “righteous” when it’s done with an upscale video game controller.

As the use of military force becomes easier to do, it is incumbent upon the decision makers to chose more deliberately and carefully.  And that’s where we stand today.  Do we believe that the President and his small coterie of militant advisors made a “righteous” choice in trying to provoke war with Iran?  There is no question that Soleimani was a “bad actor”, a purveyor of terrorist acts throughout the Middle East.  But there is “no new news here,” he’s been that same “bad actor” for the past twenty years and more.  

It seems that the neo-cons, some of the same folks that led us into Iraq eighteen years ago, are happy to lead us into Iran.  They decry the “righteousness” of their cause, trying to paper over the divisions of America with a patriotic war.  Pompeo, Esper, and good old John Bolton have got what they want from Donald Trump.

But they gave up control when we killed Soleimani.  As Colonel Wilkerson said, it’s not our call, “…we have surrendered the initiative”.  Now it’s up to Iran.  Their response will determine what we will do, whether it will be war or peace or that tenuous balance point we’ve maintained in between.  

It’s hard to be righteous, when it’s not your call.

Wrapped in the Flag

If you glance through Facebook, you see it.  There are memes and statements, demanding absolute loyalty to America’s new policy in the Middle East.  “This is war, you must stand by the flag,” and  “protect our soldiers in the line of fire,” appear in one form or another, over and over again.

The assassination of Iranian General Soleimani by US drones is an American political sledgehammer.  Question the action, and you must be “soft” at best, or a traitor at worst.  Stand with the President or stand against your country.

Of course all of that isn’t true.  It’s perfectly OK to question President Trump’s actions in the Middle East.  We don’t know his “plan” other than the threats and bluster we read on Twitter.  His wild threats, and Mike Pompeo’s pompous assertions demanding trust in their unknowable plan, do nothing to relieve national skepticism.  Leaders lead through confidence, education, and reason.  The Trump Administration has revealed none of those traits.

So the question we have to ask:  is this a Trump strategy for the Middle East, or is this a Trump strategy for 2020.  Or, perhaps even scarier, is this a random act decided between the fourteenth tee and green at Mara Lago with no strategy involved at all.

Middle East Strategy

If it’s a Middle East strategy, it’s a risky one.  At the best, the United States has determined that it’s all or nothing with Iran.  In the past decades, the primary goal was to make sure that Iran couldn’t become a nuclear power, able to use the ultimate weapon to pursue their acknowledged goal of Middle East domination.

That was the tradeoff the Obama Administration made.  They would accept the “asymmetric warfare” Iran waged, led by General Soleimani, as long as Iran abandoned the strategic objective of getting a “bomb”.  Previous Presidents, Obama, Bush and Clinton; were well aware of Soleimani’s role in encouraging the terrorists militias in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Palestine.  They also were aware that until we invaded Iraq in 2002, Iran served as the counter-balance to Iraq’s military aggression led by Saddam Hussein.  We changed that dynamic, taking the “cork out of the bottle” in Iraq and leaving a huge vacuum in leadership.  Iran wanted to fill that vacuum.

Iranian Power

It’s so much more than just “power” though. Iran is the center of Shia Islam, and sees with some justification, the repression of Shias throughout the rest of the Sunni Islamic Middle East.  Iran also has a different ethnic group, Persian, rather than the majority Arab of the rest of the Middle East.  So Iran’s not just using their influence to gain power for themselves, but also for minority groups throughout the region.  

So Clinton, Bush and Obama accepted that Iran would support groups that the US often opposed.  And, sometimes, the US and Iran would find mutual enemies and work together.  The most recent battles against ISIS, a Sunni extremist cult, found Iranian supported militias and US forces working shoulder to shoulder.

But in the Trump Administration all relationships are transactional:  support today if it benefits us, enemy tomorrow if there’s profit in that.  Ask the Kurds, or our NATO allies.  

Protests in Iran

It’s odd that this attack occurred right now.  The Iranian government was rocked by protests in their own country; marches and demands by young Iranians to change policy.  The US economic sanctions were working; many Iranians wanted change. The Iranian people have never been a “monolithic” Shia block.  They are a modern people, highly educated, and want better conditions, and more say in their government.

But there are no protests against that government today.   The Facebook campaign in the United States may or may not be working, but in Iran, the actual remains of General Soleimani have served as a unifying force.  It may be just what the Iranian theocracy needed:  now it’s all “death to Americans”.  Their nation is focused, and ready to sacrifice.

New Middle East Strategy

Secretary of State Pompeo states we have a “vast alliance” to stand against the aggressor Iran.  Let’s hope that’s true.  We know that the traditional Iranian enemy, Sunni Saudi Arabia will be happy with the new US stance.  Saudi is in a “proxy war” with Iran in Yemen, and the Iranians were escalating beyond “proxies” with attacks on Saudi oil producing facilities.  Now the US has stepped into the breach to force Iranian attention in our direction.  The MBS-Kushner axis may be at work (MBS – Muhammad bin Salman, the Crown Prince and leader of Saudi Arabia and Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law).

Iraq is faced with a no-win situation.  The Iraqi government exists because of US support.  Should the US withdraw, Iraq will become an Iranian vassal state.  In the end, Sunnis have controlled Iraq, but the nation is two-thirds Shia.  The pressure of Iran is intense.  It’s why Iran and Iraq fought an eight-year war in the 1980’s.

Unless the US is willing to become fully involved in war with Iran, it’s hard to see a “reasonable” outcome in this situation.  Iran isn’t likely to abandon their allies in the Middle East, and if that’s the price the US wants, it will be the US military that will have to extract it.

Ground war in Iran would be ugly, much worse than Iraq or Afghanistan.  There are fewer “friendlies” in Iran than there were in Iraq, and the opposition will be better organized and dedicated than Afghanistan.  It’s not a matter of who has “the most” power, but whether that power is enough to dominate a stubborn and determined opponent.  That hasn’t worked historically:  Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq all come to mind. 

Wag the Dog

There was a movie released in the 1990’s just before the Bill Clinton scandal was fully revealed.  It was about a President who started a war to distract from a sex scandal.  Wag the Dog became a watchword of the Clinton impeachment:  what would the President do to change the subject from impeachment and Monica?

Is this escalation against Iran a Trump ploy to mobilize his base in the United States, in the face of Senate trial for impeachment, and the drip-drip-drip of negative revelations?  You can hear echoes of “campaign” in the President’s tweets:  the false equivalence of Baghdad and Benghazi, and the fifty-two targets in Iran for the fifty-two hostages in 1979-80 that a Democrat, Jimmy Carter, couldn’t get out.  

Last week, Office of Management and Budget emails were revealed showing the President directly ordered Ukrainian aid to be held.  This week the Senate will determine whether witnesses will be heard in the impeachment trial.  If the Senate hears Bolton, Mulvaney, Blair and Duffy, it seems clear that their story will further damage the President.  If the Senate refuses, then Democrats will run with the “Senate Republican cover-up” story.  

This weekend we found out that a sanctioned Russian bank might have backed millions of dollars of Deutsche Bank loans to Donald Trump (Forensic).  And the pressure is growing as the US Supreme Court determines whether Mr. Trump’s taxes will be revealed to Congress or the Courts.  It might be a good week to change the subject.

No Backing Out

Whatever the reason, the United States has changed the dynamic in the Middle East.  We are on an “adventure” in foreign policy, a journey into the unknown.  Whether this is a strategy to succeed in the Middle East, or the 2020 election, it’s put Americans and the Middle East at greater risk of violence and war.  And there’s no backing out.

The Guns of August

It was a summer day in the Balkan city of Sarajevo in 1914.  The town was then in the Bosnian Province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  The Crown Prince of the Empire, Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife Sophia were in town after inspecting the Austrian troops. They came for the feast of St. Vitus and to show Austrian loyalty to the region.  A parade we held in their honor, and they waved their way through the town in the back of an open car. Suddenly an assassin jumped in and shot them both.

The assassin, nineteen-year old Gavrilo Princip, was an impassioned member of the “Black Hand”. This was a Serbian society that wanted to unite the Southern Slav states into a nation separate from the Empire.  Serbia was already independent, and wanted Bosnia to join as part of what would ultimately become Yugoslavia.

But the assassination of the Archduke had consequences far beyond his death.  Austria-Hungary rightfully blamed Serbia, and mobilized troops at the Serbian border.  Serbia responded with troop mobilization as well, and asked for help from their ally, Russia.  Russia began to bring their troops up, and Austria-Hungary turned for help to their ally, Germany.

Germany was already planning for European conquest. They attacked Russia’s ally France.  And thus World War I began, with the killing of one man.

Soleimani

Thursday, the United States used a drone attack to assassinate a leading Iranian General, Qasem Soleimani, as he travelled to the Baghdad Airport in Iraq.  Soleimani was the mastermind behind twenty years of Iranian involvement in “irregular” forces, defined by the United States as terrorists, throughout the Middle East.  These include Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, the Popular Mobilization Force in Iraq, and the Houthis who are fighting against the Saudi Arabian backed government forces in Yemen.

Soleimani was one of the most powerful men in Iran, second behind leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.   There is no question that he was the author of many terrorist actions throughout the Middle East.  He was not a “good actor” in the region. The United States government believed that Soleimani was planning additional attacks in Iraq targeting US assets and personnel, so he was targeted and killed.

But unlike Osama bin Laden or Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi; Soleimani was a “state actor”.  The difference is that bin Laden and al-Baghdadi were leaders of non-state, irregular terrorist forces.  Both their organizations, al Qaeda and ISIS, were failing and widely dispersed. Those groups were  unable to respond to the US actions.  Soleimani was a general in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, an official position in the Iranian government.  With Soleimani gone, another general fills his position, and Iranian assets remain unchanged.

Act of War

Targeting another nation’s leadership is a technical act of war.  The United States, like it or not, has attacked Iran in a legal sense.  It should be no surprise to anyone that Iran will respond to the attack.

This doesn’t mean that Iran will launch conventional military attacks against US Forces.  They aren’t stupid; in a conventional war the United States has the overwhelming advantage.  Iran will respond in a way that gives them an advantage. They might use their irregular allies throughout the Middle East.  Or they could use their developed expertise in cyber-warfare, and somehow disrupt US networks or infrastructures.  It is called “asymmetrical warfare,” where attacks of one kind, like the US drone strike in Iraq, are responded to by random bombings, suicide attacks or electronic assaults in a totally different place.

Young Gavrilo Princip did not kill Archduke Francis Ferdinand and Sophia to start World War I.  There was no way that he could know the fuse he ignited, creating an explosion involving all of Europe, and ultimately the United States.  That was far beyond that young man’s nationalistic vision.

Neither he, nor the leaders of Europe, foresaw what would happen. Their actions resulted in the unintended consequence of a world at war, enormous loss, and irrevocable change. 

Unintended Consequences 

The assassination of Qasem Soleimani feels much the same.  

Iran will have to respond.  Where they will strike, and how the United States is prepared to respond, is difficult to know.  But, unlike World War I, we know that America’s current allies in NATO are not happy with US actions.  Most of the them were still abiding by the Iranian Nuclear Protocol, negotiated by the Obama Administration to stop Iran’s development of nuclear weapons.  President Trump repudiated that deal, and now has directly attacked the Iranian government.  

What will those allies do?  How will they respond if Iran closes the Straits of Hormuz, strangling world and particularly European oil supplies?  Or decides to disrupt the international banking network?  And where will Russia and China, both frequent allies of Iran, stand?  

And perhaps the biggest question is, has the Trump Administration actually thought through the consequences of the assassination?  Are we following a carefully thought through plan for the Middle East, and the world? Or are we living in an era of knee-jerk reactions and unintended consequences. It’s easy to fear that the latter is the case.

(and other misleading things)

Biden Did It

I was discussing the impeachment and removal of President Donald Trump the other day.  One of the participants argued that Biden did the exact thing Trump did:  use American funds to try to leverage a Ukrainian government decision.  We went down “into the weeds” of what Biden did back in 2016, as opposed to what the President did last summer.  Ultimately, the argument faded out:  neither side would accept the other sides “facts”.

To be clear, Vice President Biden was representing US, NATO and EU policy when he told the Ukrainian government that we would withhold aid unless Prosecutor Viktor Shokin was removed.  Shokin was uninterested in prosecuting corruption, particularly by the Russian backed Ukrainian oligarchs.  

We will soon hear from Trump’s “personal lawyer” Rudy Giuliani with accusations of Biden corruption.  Those charges begin with a Shokin deposition.  It shouldn’t be a surprise that a Russian backed former Ukrainian Prosecutor would be opposed to the Democrat.

President Trump, on the other hand, was actually (as opposed to threatening) holding congressionally mandated funds for Ukrainian defense.  And he and his “team” made it clear to the current Ukrainian government that they would have to announce investigations of Biden and Crowd Strike to get the money.   The announcement alone would provide more “Trump cannon fodder” for the 2020 campaign.  There was no US government policy or interest being furthered, just the personal ambitions of the President.

So, while the two actions seem to be similar, in reality, they are completely different.  And that’s the definition of a “false equivalency”.  We’ve heard a lot about those lately.

Baghdad

This week an angry riot began outside of the US Embassy in Baghdad.  The rioters were protesting a US attack on an Iraqi militant group.  The group had earlier killed an American citizen.  The rioters tried to “take” the embassy, and penetrated through the first layer of the multiple Embassy defenses.  President Trump ordered additional US Marine reinforcements in, and within hours those Marines from Kuwait were landing in the Embassy courtyard.  

More Marines or not, the Iraqi government finally helped to remove the protestors.  They made an agreement with the militant group to reevaluate US military presence in Iraq.

President Trump made the right decisions in this crisis.  The Embassy staff hunkered down in the heavily defended core, and the multiple lines of defense in the most strongly defended US Embassy in the world held.  As the crisis seemed to escalate, the President called in resources to reinforce the existing Marine guards.

Just Like Benghazi

Trump supporters have taken this success, and tried to draw a parallel with the Benghazi crisis of the Obama Administration.  “Trump acted,” they demand, “while Obama (and Hillary Clinton) let those people die in Benghazi”.  They are creating a false equivalence between the two crises.

Why is this false?  What happened in Baghdad was at the most heavily defended US Embassy in the world, one that has always been considered a high-risk station.  Benghazi was a lightly defended US Consulate, a condition that the Ambassador Stephens was well aware of when he went there.

In the recent case, US Marines and other troops from Central Command were on standby in Kuwait, 400 miles from Baghdad, about a two-hour helicopter flight.  At Benghazi, the closest US troops were in Italy, over 700 miles away, and not a prepared assault force.  One of the issues the Obama Administration faced was that the military was not prepared to rescue anyone in Benghazi, and by the time that could be arranged, the riots and killing was over.

Everyone Does It

Biden and Trump in Ukraine, Trump’s actions in Baghdad and Obama’s in Benghazi:  they are similar situations.  But both have huge practical differences that make comparing them uncertain at best, and a false equivalency at worst.

But the final “false equivalency” in today’s politics is in overarching theme:  “Trump is just doing what all politicians do, he’s just more blatant about it”, followed by the inevitable “Democrats did it too”.

That is not a false equivalency, it is just bull.  

Just Bull

Just a short list of Trump personnel in or going to jail:  Manafort, Gates, Flynn, Papadopoulos, Cohen, and Stone.  Another list of Trump Cabinet level officers who have resigned under fire:  Shanahan, Price, Zinke, Sessions, and Acosta.  There hasn’t been a President since Andrew Johnson that had so many senior staff under accusation.  Even Nixon only lost a couple cabinet members to Watergate.

The President of the United States constantly violates accepted norms of behavior.  He insults his opponents, belittles those who disagree with his policies, makes fun of the handicapped, and calls for the killing of those who speak against him.  Not sure about the last one?  Ask “the Whistleblower,” the one the President accused of “treason”.  “You know what we did with traitors in the old days,” are Trump’s words. 

The scope of Trump’s actions are wide. No Democrat has behaved this way.

There’s going to be a lot more false equivalencies made as the 2020 campaign season continues.  Don’t buy into them, and don’t let others get away with using falsehoods to buttress their arguments.  Whether folks accept or not, there is a single truth, a set of irrefutable facts, that should lead us to answers.  Stand by the truth.

Last night – the United States used an aerial drone to kill a senior Iranian General outside of the Baghdad airport. While Soleimani lead Iran’s influence on groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, he was also one of the top leaders of the Iranian government. There will be consequences.

The Jetsons theme song

Color TV

I was born in 1956.  Eisenhower was President, Elvis was about to be drafted, and televisions were small and in black and white.  So my “cartoon watching” days were in the early 1960’s.  Dad was working at a TV station (WLW-D in Dayton, he commuted from our Cincinnati home every day).   We got our “color” TV in 1963, the first in the neighborhood.

I watched the old favorites:  Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Popeye and Mickey Mouse.  But a new form of cartoons came about, the serial comedy shows.  Rather than just a five or ten minute adventure “hunting wabbits,” these cartoons were like the evening family shows, Father Knows Best, The Donna Reed Show, and of course Leave it to Beaver.  In 1960 a show about a family in the Stone Age, the Flinstones began, and in 1962, The Jetsons.

The Jetsons

The Jetsons was the story of a normal family in the year 2062.  Father George worked in a “white collar” job at the Spacely Space Sprocketts.  Jane, his wife, lived a middle class life, shopping and taking care of the home (with the help of various robots).  Daughter Judy was in high school, and son Elroy was in elementary school.

The show set the tone for what the future would look like.  The Jetsons lived in an apartment on stilts high in the clouds, and drove air cars from place to place.  All the sidewalks were moving, and most of the time, in fact almost all of the time was spent “in the air”.  The ground was still there, it was where homeless folks (called hobos back then) wandered, the stilt-like apartments had foundations, and birds stayed because the sky was too full.

We didn’t really know why the “middle class” moved up into the sky.  But we did get a cartoon version of what the future should look like.  Now, more than half way there, we are still waiting for our flying cars.

But there’s a lot of other cartoon “predictions” that are now matter of fact.  While we don’t yet have “Rosie” the robot maid, we are well on the way with robot vacuum cleaners and digitally controlled homes.  And maybe the Jetsons foreshadowed climate change, as they abandon the flooded or droughted earth to the homeless and move into the clouds.  

Wrist Radios

But the most predictive show was Dick Tracy.  This cartoon started as a comic strip about a detective who from 1946 on had a “wrist radio,” a watch that he could use to communicate to others on his team.  In 1964 the cartoon series debuted a “wrist TV”.  Well we got those.  Apple Watch has all of those traits, and even folks older than me are wearing them.  I’ve resisted that temptation; it’s just one more thing that I need reading glasses for.

But we are all carrying greater computing power in our pockets (and on our wrists) than any of us could access as late as twenty years ago.  It’s hard to imagine that the Apollo moon rockets, or the Space Shuttles, had less computing power than we all carry with us everyday. 

It Comes Around

What else has the “future wrought?”  Well, what’s a “long distance” call, in our age where we expect absolute connection with each other at all times?  And while today we have Uber Eats and Grub-Hub, back while I was watching the Jetsons we had milk and bread, ice cream and chips (Charlie Chips) delivered to the house several times a week.

Wires are gone.  My TV’s aren’t even hooked to cable anymore; I’ve “cut” away to use a streaming service.  It’s a bit of irony; I remember my television industry father talking about how the hundreds of cable channels would crowd out broadcast television.  He worried that the “stations” would get chased out of business.  Today those channels still exist, but cable service is getting relegated to a “pipeline” role.  Programming has passed onto the “streamers,” Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and the like.  

Connections

And what have we lost?  When my father passed away a few years ago, I cleaned out his home office (I’m writing this essay on his executive desk, shoe-horned into my home office now).  I found files of professional letters between the executives in his industry, congratulating each other on achievements, promotions, or anniversaries.  Typed by their secretaries, dictated either live or on “Dictaphones,” these courteous notes on onion skin paper were markers of a more “proper” time. 

Today, maybe it’s an email, or more likely a text.  We’ve lost the “class” by saving the time and effort.   And maybe we’ve lost those connections to each other as well.

So here we are in the “future”, 2020.  We are more connected, and somehow more isolated.  We are webbed into the world, but less present to each other.  And we are certainly more vulnerable as our pipeline for information gets narrowed to what can fit into ten seconds, in our pocket, or on our wrists.