November 1, 2016
AN AGONIZING CHOICE
Originally I had intended to postpone
writing the customary first of the month issue until the country had cast its
votes and we have an inkling of what the future might hold under the new
president. But I have a professional meeting in the middle of the month, that
requires a great deal of preparation, and there won’t be sufficient time to
discuss the pre-election situation in the depth it deserves. This is why I
decided to stay with the routine and prepare the data for the first of the
month. It was providential because, like everybody else, I had no idea what the
afternoon of Friday the 28th would bring. It takes me about two days
to write the Issues, proofread them, have them once more independently
proofread before they go the webmaster on the last day of the month, which this
time happens to be a Monday. Since I didn’t want to completely spoil the
weekend with work I started on Friday morning without any inkling what the
afternoon would bring. Instead of writing a completely new version I shall
present what had already been written because it can serve as background for
the new revelation that will shape the election campaign up to November 8th and
beyond.
In previous issues I have already
presented the reasons why I feel that neither of the current nominees has the appropriate
qualifications one would expect from a President of the country and thereby the
“leader of the free world.” Instead of repeating myself,
the reader is invited to look at the installments starting with April 1, 2016 because
nothing has happened in the meantime to invalidate these assessments of Donald
Trump and Hillary Clinton. The earlier prognosis that Hillary’s e-mail server
and the Clinton Foundation problems would become headlines has proven correct
and so have the statements about Trump’s character flaws.
Let me, therefore, just briefly
summarize last month’s events and why so many of us have such great difficulty deciding
for whom to cast their vote, or why a great many will not participate in this
process at all. The highlights until October 28th were the two debates,
allegations of Trump’s sexual impropriety and a steady stream of e-mails, via
WikiLeaks, that throw an unfavorable light on Hillary.
Although Trump had clearly lost the first
debate, he was gaining momentum prior to the second one and the Hillary
campaign, that was already beginning to suffer from the e-mail scandal, had to
do something to reverse the momentum he was gaining. For this reason they
rolled out a 2005 video where Trump and Billy Bush, a cousin of George W. and
Jeb Bush, engaged in highly graphic banter. Trump boasted that due to his fame
and popularity he can sexually molest good looking women and get away with it. He
was clearly egged on by Bush and one comment, where he bragged that he could grab
women in their genital area, was regarded by the Democrats as their ticket to
win the election because he could now, in addition to his other flaws, be
portrayed as a sexual predator. During the rest of the month up to 11 women
came forth with allegations about Trump’s sexual misconduct and the media had a
feast. The video clip was played over and over again and even Megan Kelly on
the Fox News channel, which is reliably pro-Republican and supports the
standard bearer of the party, couldn’t resist venting her distaste on a daily
basis of such an unsavory character. Yet, let us put this event into context. Boasting
about sexual exploits is common among some men when they are by themselves and
is regarded as “locker-room” talk. Trump’s bragging is legendary and one only
needs to remember his statement during the primary season that “I could shoot
somebody on Fifth Avenue
and people would still vote for me.” Nobody in his right mind suggested at that
time that he is a born killer.
Since distortions as well as outright
lies are such a prominent aspect of all aspects of life in our society let me
now digress for a moment and discuss this prime evil of our time. Both
candidates accuse each other of lying and both are right. But there are several
types of lies that can tell us something about the person. The most common is
defensive where one professes innocence when confronted with proof to the
contrary. The most recent example is Hillary’s lying about her private e-mail
server, where she now claims that it was a “mistake.” Of course it was a
mistake, but the evidence also shows that it was apparently a deliberate
evasion of the guidelines governing the conduct of State Department personnel. She
did so, in all probability, to prevent the public from gaining access to the
contents of her conversations via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). This
law was enacted by Congress in 1966, over President Johnson’s objections, precisely
to ensure some degree of accountability by government officials to the public.
Hillary, as well as her staff at the State Department, knew fully well that she
was circumventing the rules; they informed her about it, but she went ahead
anyway. Earlier this year she testified before Congress that there were no
State Department confidential e-mails on her server but FBI Director Comey
proved this to be untrue.
The second type of lie can be called the
offensive lie. This has been used by all governments as an excuse to start a
war. Hitler manufactured the Gleiwitz incident to justify the invasion of Poland and most recently our war on Iraq also
was based on a lie. Saddam Hussein did not have WMDs. The UN inspectors
searching for them were still in the country when the Bush administration
ordered them out because they were in the way of the impending invasion. An
honest administration that had no hidden motives would have let the inspectors
complete their job and subsequently deal with the result within the UN
framework.
To their credit the British investigated
the events leading to Tony Blair’s assistance in the promotion of, and
subsequent participation in, the Iraq war. The final Chilcot Report rendered
a blistering indictment (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jul/06/iraq-inquiry-key-points-from-the-chilcot-report).
This brings up the question: Why can the
British honestly investigate the reasons for the mistakes made by their
leadership but Cheney and Bush, who can be regarded as war criminals by the
standards of the Nuremberg trials which America
instigated, are free from public scrutiny and accountability? Yet it is this
war and the urge for “regime change” which has created all the disasters in the
Middle East and North Africa that are still unfolding, as well as the refugee
crisis that floods Europe. Hillary now says
that her vote in the Senate for the war was a mistake. But it was not simply a mistake,
just like the private e-mail server for government business was not simply a
mistake. These actions are evidence of poor judgment and disregard also of
international law. The war was a crime and I warned against it in these pages
starting on December 2001 (War on Terrorism).
It is indeed frustrating when private citizens, on basis of their
limited information, can see disasters unfolding and find themselves unable to
effect meaningful change, while elected officials, who clearly should know
better, pursue policies that are bound to be ruinous.
The third type of lie can be called the
Muenchhausen lie and is used extensively by Trump. Baron Muenchhausen (1720-1797)
was of German nobility and had experienced an adventurous life including service
in a campaign of the Russian army. During retirement on his estate he regaled
his dinner guests with tall tales of his exploits. They were essentially
harmless massive exaggerations to portray himself in a
heroic light and it is unclear how many of these he really believed. His tales
were subsequently fictionalized and became a favorite children’s book. In Trump’s
case he not only exaggerates his effectiveness but also misinterprets events he
has heard about and when confronted with facts he refused to accept them. The
“dancing Muslims” at the fall of the Twin Towers as described in Twin Specters Haunting America’s Politicians
(April 1, 2016) is a typical example.
On the other hand, Trump does have a
streak of honesty which comes out in unguarded spontaneous eruptions that are
then distorted by his adversaries. A typical example occurred during the second
debate. When Hillary commented that “It’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament
of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country,” He interjected: “because
you’d be in jail.” He had insisted for months that the system was “rigged,” by
which he not only meant voter fraud at the polls and the media bias against
him. Furthermore, the Justice Department and the FBI also had not properly
carried out their duty in regard to Hillary’s e-mail server as well as
potential malfeasance in regard to the Clinton Foundation while she was
Secretary of State. In the August 1, issue (Brexit, The Refugee Problem and
America’s Election Choice), I mentioned that if Hillary Rodham had been a lowly
cipher clerk in the State Department and had used a private e-mail server for
official correspondence, she would not only have been fired but probably imprisoned
for sharing state secrets. The media were appalled by Trump’s outburst and told
us that if elected President Trump would put Hillary behind bars. But what he
had said in a spontaneous manner was the truth. If our justice system had not
been corrupted by political pressures, FBI director Comey would in all
probability have recommended criminal investigations to the Justice Department
in July of this year. Instead, he closed the case with merely pointing to
Hillary’s extreme carelessness.
Does it matter if government officials
or persons who want to be President lie to us on a daily basis? Of course it
does; it erodes trust and breeds fear which can become paranoia. In the case of
President, or Secretary of State, it is even worse because they have to deal
with foreign governments. If they lack respect at home how can they expect to
earn it abroad? This is the situation our country finds itself in at present. President
Nixon, when confronted with the Watergate scandal, looked into our collective
eyes and said: “I am not a crook.” Well, he did obstruct justice and had to
resign. President Clinton wagged his finger at us exclaiming emphatically: “I
did not have sexual relationships with that woman; Miss Lewinsky.” But when her
blue dress with presidential semen stains appeared that was the end of that lie
and under oath he lawyered: “it depends on what the definition of is is.”
Although the impeachment trial went nowhere, Clinton did lose his license to practice law
for five years and he had to pay a $25,000 fine. While running for his first
term Bill Clinton told us that by electing him we’ll get two for one,
indicating that Hillary would be a full partner. With Hillary’s election we’ll
again get two for one. The sleaze, as well as the misjudgments of the years
from January 1993-Jauary 2001 is likely to return with a vengeance because the
world has changed since then and become far more dangerous.
In the 1990s Russia was prostrate and suffered
from the effects of “privatization” which created billionaires, while throwing
the masses into poverty. China
was not yet a full-fledged player on the world stage and Europe
an obedient listener to her master’s voice. America
reigned supreme and behind the scenes the neo-cons, of whom nobody knew
anything, were plotting on ways and means to keep America’s dominance for all time.
The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was hatched and the world was
regarded as theirs for the taking. With the Bush- Cheney administration they emerged
into daylight. The Obama administration forced them somewhat into the
background again but the idea of regime change was not beholden to party
labels. Hillary had pursued it in Libya
as well as in Ukraine (Ukraine
Crisis March 15, 2014, Ukraine:
Let Truth be Told, April 1, 2014) and now is eager to achieve the ultimate
price of forcing Russia
back into her helpless Yeltsin type period. But Putin stands in the way and this
is the reason why he has to be branded as a current source of evil. Since Trump
had said that he wants to make some kind of accommodation with Russia, especially over Syria, Hillary called him in the
third debate Putin’s puppet. He objected, but to no avail. In the current issue
the Editors of The New Yorker wrote,
under the title of “The Choice,” a paean for Hillary combined with what amounts
to a hatchet job for Trump. A picture of the front cover is shown below.
The issues in this campaign, apart from
the sex interlude, revolve mainly around the economy, taxes, health care,
immigration, lawlessness, composition of the Supreme Court, and similar ones that
may be called bread and butter concerns of the citizenry. While these are
indeed important the one issue which overrides all others has so far hardly
been touched by either one of the contestants or the media. It is the foreign
arena where forces in and out of government are working for regime change in Russia and Iran. If President Duterte of the
Philippines were to keep insisting that American troops should leave his
country he is likely to be added to the regime change list. Although this idea
has taken root in the leadership of both political parties it is the most
dangerous for our future and should have been extensively aired in the debates.
We know where Hillary stands, she is for regime change, but we have no idea
what a President Trump would really do.
Donald Trump is a master of evasion.
When confronted with a direct question he does not like, he changes the topic.
He is also not beholden to his own previous firm statements. For instance, he
insisted over and over again that Mexico would pay for the “beautiful
wall” he intends to build between our two countries. Reality is beginning to
sink in and he has changed the mantra to pointing out that the Mexicans will
pay later. The deporting of 11 million Latinos who have moved illegally into
our country has also been pointed out to him as a non-starter, so he changed
his rhetoric to immediately deporting only the criminal element and he would
deal with the others depending upon circumstances later. Initially he declared
climate change a hoax, but is now willing to listen to both sides of the
debate. His fund of historical information seems to be non-existent because
similar to George W. Bush he has never found time to read substantive books. Maybe
the clue to his conduct is that he is both a business man and an entertainer.
During the primary campaign he rejoiced in the role of entertainer where he
liberally fed the media with his antics. He carried this conduct over into the
Presidential race, but when his poll numbers started to fall precipitously
after the third debate he seems to have begun to listen to his friends who urged
him to stay on message. There might, therefore, be at least the hope that as
President he would regard himself as America’s CEO who strikes deals
with foreign leaders instead of applying a pseudo-moral compass that labels
everybody who disagrees with us as evil.
Hillary tells us that she has
tirelessly worked for women and children throughout her life in and out of
office. She also advocates equal pay for women, but apparently this policy has
not reached the Clinton Foundation, where it could most readily be implemented.
http://money.cnn.com/2016/10/21/news/clinton-paid-women-less. Her conduct as
Secretary of State certainly was not good for the women and children of the
Middle East and Libya
who are now exposed to privations they had never before endured. We should not
condone a policy that advocates further regime change when the results are
nothing but disasters for the people of these countries. Our moral outrage over
the conduct of certain governments is also highly selective and involves only
countries with which we have disagreements. Where, for instance, is the desire
for regime change of Saudi Arabia,
Egypt
and numerous other countries that also treat their people, and especially
women, abysmally? It, therefore, appears that the noble phrases of “free
trade,” “human rights,” etc. are the excuses to hide the real purpose. It is to
create, what may be called, an “Amerocentric planet” where all other nations obediently
cruise in the orbit we have assigned to them. This vision is abetted by the
arms industry which reaps hefty profits, and has Hillary’s full support. Yet it
must be exposed as a highly dangerous fantasy because, barring unforeseen
events, neither China nor Russia
will stand for it and has to lead to global war.
So where are we in regard to next week’s
election? The Democrats’ Bernie supporters will bite their tongue and vote for
Hillary regardless of her obvious faults. So will even some Republicans, simply
because they viscerally hate Trump. He has alienated the Republican leadership
during the primaries and he isn’t a Republican anyway. Philosophically he is unaligned
who runs on the Republican ticket because an Independent can’t win the
election. The Republican leadership knows this and is afraid that it would lose
its clout if Trump were to win. The current strategy is to concentrate on
retaining control of Congress and then subvert whatever program Hillary might
put up for a vote including Supreme Court nominees, while hoping for a better
standard bearer in 2020. This strategy
while sounding reasonable on the surface has a serious flaw because prior to
2020 Hillary’s continued baiting of Putin may have led to a shooting war with Russia.
Early on Trump had a chance to win the
majority of Independents but as the saying goes in this country “he blew it.”
His boisterous erratic conduct turned many of them off to the extent that some
regard Hillary as the lesser of the two evils, while others will either vote
for one of the third party candidates or abstain altogether. These seem to be
reasonable options but in fact they are not. As Mike Pence, Trump’s Vice-Presidential
nominee, has recently pointed out here in Utah, they actually amount to a vote for
Hillary. Anyone of the third party candidates cannot win and therefore would only
dilute the Trump margin. Staying home likewise would deny Trump a vote he needs
to win and give Hillary the advantage.
That was the reason for the “agonizing
choice” of the headline up to the early afternoon of October 28 when the stakes
for Hillary were raised even higher. More e-mail pigeons had come home again.
On that Friday afternoon FBI Director Comey sent a letter to Congress that, although
he had previously testified that the FBI’s investigation of Clinton’s e-mails was finished, new e-mails from
an unrelated case had come to the attention of his office and are currently examined
for their potential content of classified information. “Although the FBI cannot
yet assess whether this material may or may not be significant and I cannot
predict how long it will take us to complete this additional work, I believe it is important to update your
Committees about our efforts in light of my previous testimony.”
This is a serious blow to the Clinton campaign.
Previously it could dodge the issue with the comment that the FBI had not found
evidence for potential criminal conduct and the case was closed. The WikiLeaks
were relegated to Russian hacking and falsification of the material. It was, as
usual, all Putin’s fault, in spite of the fact that the admission of hacking
indicated the vulnerability of the data. Now the case has been re-opened and
this is bad news for Clinton.
She is no longer fighting just for her political life but even her personal one.
This means that she must win the election regardless of cost. President Trump
would immediately appoint a new Attorney General who would order a thorough
investigation by the Justice Department, impanel a Grand Jury, or appoint a
special prosecutor to look into all aspects of the Clinton’s dealings during her tenure as
Secretary of State.
We are now in the unprecedented
situation where the presidential candidate of the likely to win party is being
investigated for potential malfeasance by a government agency. If the November
8 vote were to turn into basically a draw it is likely to be challenged by the
party with the minority vote. We will then be back in 2000 but this time the
Supreme Court is evenly divided with only eight judges. Since this is now a do or die fight for Hillary her campaign is
likely to go into overdrive trying to find some evidence that members of the
Trump campaign not only have business dealings with Russia but got paid for political
services.
We may now ask what motivated FBI
Director Comey to reverse himself 11 days before the election. Speculations
abound, but Director Comey would be well advised to follow the request by
Hillary as well as members of Trump’s campaign to give us a full account of the
reasons for his letter to Congress at this critical time. He is an intelligent
person who must have known that this would create turmoil with the election and
beyond. He should tell us the full truth regardless of personal consequences,
in order to put all rumors to rest.
Let us look at the enormity of what was
done. A large segment of our population is already voting for a candidate who
is under active investigation by the FBI for potential criminal behavior and
who may face indictment some time next year. If Hillary were to win it would be
impossible for her to bring the country together, as she has vowed to do,
because Republicans in Congress would continue looking into the charges and
block all her legislative proposals. The gridlock that currently exists in Washington is child’s
play compared to what is likely to follow after Hillary’s inauguration.
The current situation reminded me of the
summer of 1972 and President Nixon’s re-election campaign. In June of that year
the “dirty tricks” brigade broke for a second time into the DNC’s campaign
headquarters in the Watergate complex to fix listening devices and plant new
ones. They were caught and criminal proceedings were instituted. Nixon, who had
not known of the break-in, dismissed it as “a second rate burglary” and went on
to win the November election in a landslide. But it soon came out that the
burglars had been paid by the Committee to Reelect the President, which clearly
implicated the governing party. Nixon stood by his staff, tried to dodge this
potentially lethal bullet to the extent that he dismissed the Special
Prosecutor who had been appointed to look into this affair. This led to the
resignation of the Attorney General as well as his deputy and became known as
the “Saturday Night Massacre.” Nixon’s reputation was shattered and by August
of the following year he had to resign to avoid guaranteed successful impeachment.
This is a precedent, and the shoe is now
on the other foot. But the Trump campaign also has a real challenge. It can
gloat over rising poll numbers and hope for a win while their standard bearer
keeps putting his foot into his mouth on the campaign trail. Or it can come to
grips with the seriousness of the situation, as outlined above, and convince
Trump to literally put his money where his mouth is and follow the advice from
commentators on Fox News. He should buy 20 minutes TV time and address the
nation, reading from the teleprompter without sarcastic asides, about the type
of government he intends to form. It should be inclusive with Republicans as
well as Democrats and Independents and consist of persons known for their
effectiveness in their professions rather then career politicians.
Those of us, who do not want a Hillary
Presidency, with the consequences outlined above, deserve to know what he
intends to do. The usual “trust me” no longer suffices. The world is too
dangerous, and while our attention is riveted on the election, Russia’s one and only aircraft carrier, the
Kuznetsov, has passed Gibraltar and is sailing with its battle group towards Syria. Can we
protest when we have the USS Boxer amphibious assault carrier in the Persian
Gulf and the USS Harry S. Truman in the eastern Mediterranean?
Why is Putin doing this especially at this time? I believe he wants to tell
Obama that Russia
is not just a “regional power,” as he had called it, but a force to be reckoned
with. His country spans two continents and he has more than enough nukes to
wreak global havoc. These are realities and to avoid a catastrophe we cannot continue
with business as usual but new thinking is required.
This week will be another one for the
history books and we ought to pray that sanity will prevail.
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