September 11, 2001 Re-imagined Redux

Back in May, President Trump abruptly dismissed "dozens national security advisors from US National Security Council (NSC). NPR reported that the Middle East section at the NSC was being reduced from 10 staffers to five.

Trump also dismissed his national security adviser, Mike Waltz, and gave that position to Marco Rubio on top of Rubio's job as Secretary of State, and Rubio's role as Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs.

Trump turned to Steve Witkoff, his longtime friend from his New York real estate days, to be his point man on the Iran nuclear negotiations. Witkoff, who has no national security experience whatsoever, is also the main negotiator in US efforts to end the Russia-Ukraine war.

Among those reported to have departed the NSC are Principal Deputy National Security Adviser Alex Wong, Senior Director for the Middle East and North Africa Eric Trager, Senior Director for Europe Andrew Peek, as well as communications team members like Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications Brian Hughes.

Trump finds NSC's processes, "unnecessarily complex," and sees the NSC giving priority to the opinions of career officials over his "policy preferences."

Trump's Director of National Intelligence — for now — is Tulsi Gabbard. She had the misfortune to state publicly that Iran did not have the intention to create a nuclear weapon, only to be publicly corrected by the President, who was clearly thinking ahead to his address to the Nation on bombing the bejesus out of Iran's nuclear facilities.

Trump's CIA Director is John Ratcliffe, his FBI Director is conspiracy theorist, Kash Patel, and of course, the man picked to be his Secretary of Defense is former Fox News personality, Pete Hegseth.

The US agency that may have the most important role in protecting Americans from any retaliatory actions from Iran, or other actors sympathetic to the Iranian regime, will be the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), led by former South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem.

Noem has no experience in national security or intelligence, knows little to nothing about counter-terrorism, counter intelligence, cyber security, terrorism fusion centers, joint terrorism task forces, suitcase nukes, dirty bombs, Iranian sleeper cells, radicalized lone operators and their profiles, extremist messaging and their messaging platforms (though Hegseth may know), underground terrorist financing operations, such as hawala, shell companies, or 'cash mules.' Iran knows all this and more, because this is the way they operate, not with nuclear weapons, but with C4 packed in Easter Eggs.

What I wrote in 2018 titled, "September 11, 2001 Re-imagined," haunts me. It should you, as well, viz.:

The next terrorist attack on American soil is not a matter of if, but when. Determined fanatics willing to die for their cause will usually outwit even a well-managed Department of Homeland Security staffed with highly motivated and trained officers. A bombastic “strongman” equipped with a keyboard and wielding a heavy-handed immigration policy will never be an effective counter to terrorism. A country divided against itself will never be ready, or resilient.

Pentagon, September 11, 2001

 

Guest Commentary on Impeachment in the Cheney Free Press Gets Me Riled Up

It was a "perfect call"

A recent opinion piece by Frank Watson in the Cheney Free Press got my ire up enough to compel me to respond. Watson and I have several things in common: we're both retired Air Force officers, we've both taught, we like to write, and we're both older than dirt. When it comes to our political views, the similarities end there.


Watson is firmly ensconced on the far right of the political spectrum. I lean liberal. Watson's recent offerings in the Cheney Free Press included pieces titled:

• "Socialism is a one-way trip to disaster"
• "Minimum wage creates more disincentives than reward"
• "Once useful to workers, unions have run their course"
• "When all else fails, it's time to impeach the president"

You get Frank's drift, or should I say, yaw, since he's a pilot. All these offerings by Frank are biased and full of logic flaws. But the opinion piece that really got me riled up was the last one, on impeachment.


Frank followed up a May 2018 commentary charging that the Mueller Investigation was a waste of money, with an October 2019 piece claiming that the impeachment inquiry of Donald Trump has no Constitutional basis — “there’s no impeachable offense.” Even if there is, he writes that if the House does go so far as to impeach Trump, the Republican-controlled Senate will surely not vote to impeach him. Because the Senate won’t impeach (according to Watson), it’s all a political stunt. I know what you're going to say, 'What about the fifty or sixty times the Republican-controlled House voted to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act, aka, “Obamacare” while Obama was still President? Wasn't that political theater?' Yeah it was, but Republicans are hypocrisy-challenged.


In what Watson must think is his most telling argument against impeachment he writes that if Democrats attempt an impeachment of Trump, Republicans may come back with an impeachment of Dianne Feinstein or even Nancy Pelosi. Never mind the fact that members of Congress are not impeachable. This childish “goes around comes around warning” is a pathetic argument against Congress fulfilling its constitutional and legitimate oversight obligation.



Let’s be clear, the fact that Donald Trump is a compulsive liar is not sufficient grounds on which to impeach him. The fact that he abused his office as President to extort a foreign power — the Ukraine — to manufacture dirt on a political opponent most certainly is.

As John McCallum, the Managing Editor of the Cheney Free Press writes in his article in the same edition of the paper, “Impeachment is not a criminal proceeding, but rather one dealing with violation of the public trust. We trust our leaders to … not abuse the power of their office to benefit themselves.”



Furthermore, the Trump Administration’s strategy of obstructing Congress’s constitutional oversight responsibility, on top of President Trump’s clear obstruction of the Mueller Investigation, is a violation of 2 U.S. Code § 192, “Refusal of witness to testify or produce papers.” It also flies in the face of the Constitution, and goes against established precedent. Not that Trump has ever concerned himself with either.


A 1982 executive branch memorandum, which remains in force, explicitly states that it is executive branch policy “to comply with congressional requests for information to the fullest extent consistent with the constitutional and statutory obligations of the Executive Branch.” This memorandum is known as the Reagan Memorandum.


The Trump Administration's efforts to obstruct Congressional oversight has been termed "unprecedented," by a former House General Counsel. Trump has made his feelings about the House's impeachment inquiry very plain, calling it a "kangaroo court." He vows to prohibit testimony by government officials and to withhold documents subpoenaed by Congress. This in itself is impeachable.


In its 1974 Judiciary report a House of Representatives Committee identified three types of general impeachable conduct: (1) improperly exceeding or abusing the powers of the office, (2) behavior incompatible with the function and purpose of the office, and (3) misusing the office for an improper purpose or for personal gain. Trump's attempt to extort the newly elected President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, to dig up dirt on Joe Biden, a political opponent, and telling him that U.S. Attorney General William Barr and Rudy Giuliani (Trump's personal attorney) would be contacting him about the matter, qualifies in all three areas.


Another example of misusing the office for an improper purpose or for personal gain is Trump's continuing violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution. He demonstrated his disdain for the Constitution when he directed that his own Doral Golf Resort be used as the site for the 2020 G-7 Summit. A bipartisan backlash ultimately dissuaded him from this, after which he called the Emoluments Clause, "phony." 


And then there's what we learned from the Mueller Report.

All told, an embarrassment of riches.

But Watson thinks it's all a political trick designed to help Democrats win the 2020 Election. There's actually a pretty good argument that the impeachment inquiry could hurt Democrats leading up to 2020. Some Democratic Congressional Members in swing states still feel that way. But as it turns out, Democrats have more respect for the rule of law, and the Constitution, than do Republicans. And certainly more than Frank Watson.

Crow for Thanksgiving

I spent some time over the weekend researching recipes for cooking crow, which I’ll be having for Thanksgiving. I’ll share what I find with media journalists and pundits, who like me, were outspoken in our belief that Americans would never elect a person like Donald Trump to the Presidency of the United States of America — that “shining city on a hill.”

In an earlier post (and in the Tri-City Herald), I discussed how Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders launched insurgent campaigns against the major parties, and why Trump won and Sanders lost. Essentially, the Republican Party was more ‘democratic’ than the Democratic Party.

As a result, I opined that the GOP was stuck with a candidate they didn’t really want; a candidate whose chances of winning were “slim to none,” and, as Jeff Greenfield wrote in Politico Magazine, “whose temperament and character might put a dangerous, unfit person into the Oval Office.”

I also said, “there’s a very good chance the GOP may lose the Senate,” and concluded by saying that, “What happens to the Republican Party after the election depends on what the Republican Party leadership does now.”

What happened instead is history. Trump won.

Hillary supporters are consoling themselves with the fact that she won the popular vote. If this were a popularity contest, Hillary would win the title of the least disliked candidate.

Not only did Trump become President-Elect, but Republicans retained control of the Senate and the House, and gained another “trifecta” — a situation where one party holds the governorship, and majorities in both state legislative houses. Republicans now have 25 trifectas, while Democrats have only 6.

The map of America is glaringly red. This does not bode well for those seeking an end to, or even a rollback of restrictive voting rights laws, nor to the gerrymandering that disenfranchises voters of a particular “persuasion” (i.e., minorities). Furthermore, when President Trump pushes through his SCOTUS nominee(s), relief from a court that already gutted the Voting Rights Act will be unlikely.

So instead of the Republican Party reexamining what it did wrong to end up with a candidate like Donald Trump, they’ll congratulate themselves on how democratic they were in allowing an open nominating process that resulted in nominating a “man of the people.”

Meanwhile, democrats will spend the next six weeks wailing about how unfair the Electoral College is. Then the DNC will begin strategy sessions on how they can emulate the RNC and obstruct Trump and the Republican Congress at every opportunity. At the same time, they’ll be asking their supporters to sign President Obama’s “Thank You Card,” while simultaneously dunning them for contributions to the cause — whatever that is.

I may be eating crow this Thanksgiving, but I’ll still have something to be thankful for — the end of this election.

Sing a song of six pence,
a pocketful of rye.
Four and twenty blackbirds
baked in a pie.
When the pie was opened,
the birds began to sing.
Wasn’t that a dainty dish
to set before the king?

Trump Campaign Unveils New Poster