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© by John Arkelian

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A Tale of Two Terrible Presidents

On July 8, 2018

© By John Arkelian

On Trump

Donald Trump is a clear and present danger to the vital interests of the United States. As a private citizen, he could be happily ignored as the petulant, grandstanding egotist that he is; but, as the nation’s chief executive, he poses a very real threat to America.  He daily demonstrates abysmal judgment, a dearth of basic civility, and instinctive nastiness of character – hardly the characteristics we want in a leader.  In place of wisdom and instead of setting a good example for others, Trump shamelessly demeans the public discourse and undermines national unity.  Intemperate, small-minded, and vindictive by nature, Trump continues to subvert democratic institutions, vital alliances, and common decency – in ways no one would have believed possible until his deplorable arrival on the scene.

Donald Trump insults the nation’s longstanding allies and shockingly cozies up to the autocrats who crush freedom and human rights in such places as Russia, China, Turkey, The Philippines, and North Korea.  Those odious regimes are hostile to our core values; three of them are outright enemies of the West.  Before he was even elected, Trump undermined the alliance that has safeguarded the West for nearly 70 years.  The central pillar of NATO is that an attack on one member is an attack on all.  By calling that critical premise into question, Trump undermined the cohesion and credibility of NATO, an act which was so such grossly irresponsible it ought to have instantly invalidated him as a candidate.  Instead, he somehow became president, from which high office he continues to undermine America’s closest alliances.  Our mortal foes (in Moscow, Beijing, Pyongyang, and elsewhere) must be jubilant over this one-man wrecking crew’s path of destruction.  If Donald Trump’s avowed intent and purpose were the weakening of America, he could not go about that task any more effectively than he’s doing right now.

We are agog and appalled at Trump’s dealings with the repellent regime in North Korea.  For months, he imprudently threatened “fire and fury,” a not very veiled threat of nuclear war that broke a necessary taboo simply by being spoken aloud, when he might, more sensibly, have heeded the advice to “speak softly but carry a big stick.”  Now, suddenly, Trump is embracing the murderous tyrant Kim Jung Un as though he were a pal, mere hours after going out of his way to grossly insult (and threaten) his country’s closest friend and ally.  Simply meeting with Kim handed that hateful tyrant a prize:  The North Korean dictatorship has been craving a face-to-face meeting with an American president (and the legitimacy and status such a summit would confer) for decades.  No such meeting should have occurred unless ironclad gains in countering North Korea’s nuclear threat had been achieved in advance.  Instead, Trump handed Kim a second gift, on a silver platter, by endorsing the North Korean view that the United States’ joint military exercises with South Korea are “a provocation” and unilaterally suspending them.  Incredibly, Trump ended his summit with Kim by declaring, “There is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea” – a cavalier assertion for which there is not a shred of evidence.  (Indeed, all current and past evidence of North Korean duplicity points sharply in the opposite direction.)  Adding moral offense to strategic injury, Trump went on to express admiration for Kim, whom he described as “very talented.”  That outrageous proposition is a hard slap in the face for all those oppressed, enslaved, tormented, and murdered by Kim and his forbears.  Trump says he trusts Kim and that he’s sure Kim “wants to do the right thing.”  And, Trump “knows for a fact” that North Korea is serious about denuclearization.  It’s as if the world has turned upside down, with demonstrable nonsense masquerading as statesmanship.  But this brand of nonsense is incalculably dangerous.

Congress (or at least those of its elected members with the foresight to put national interest above partisan advantage), together with the courts, the press, and the public (through civil society institutions and non-violent mass protest) must act to sideline Donald Trump and circumscribe his ability to do harm.  Until such time, if any, that Congress acts to impeach Donald Trump and remove him from the office he is so manifestly unfit to hold, it is imperative that all other components of the public polity embark upon relentless damage control.  Examples of how this might be done aren’t hard to devise.  Congress should enact legislation to explicitly bar the president from firing the special counsel Robert Mueller or otherwise interfering with his investigation.  The American Bar Association and leading legal academics should vigorously denounce the preposterous notion that the president has the legal power to pardon himself.  The public should apply maximum pressure on Senators and Representatives to decline to consider any further nominee by Trump for the Supreme Court until the result of the Mueller investigation is complete.

Congress should rein-in the executive’s war-making powers, with a view to the fact that the constitution gives Congress exclusive control over declaring war.  Congress should put other immigration issues to the side long enough to settle the status of persons who were brought into the country years ago as minors.  Congress ultimately has the final say on treaties (including trade treaties), too.  So, it should reassure valued trading partners that it will countenance no rash or destructive moves by the Administration.  Each time Trump says something inflammatory, no matter the subject, members of Congress should publicly contradict and condemn his destructive rhetoric and petulant musings.

On Putin

Opponents, rivals, and even truth-sayers (prominent among the latter being journalists) have a distressing way of being jailed or killed in Putin’s Russia.  And self-imposed exile in the West is no guarantor of impunity, either.  Several Russian exiles in the U.K. have died in highly suspicious circumstances.  One was Boris Berezovsky, a Russian oligarch and outspoken Kremlin critic who was found inexplicably dead in his home in Britain in 2013.   In 2006, Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB agent who defected to the West, died a slow, painful death after ingesting tea poisoned with the deadly radioactive isotope polonium-210.  A subsequent British inquiry named the two Russian agents who came to Britain to kill Litvinenko, leaving a radioactive trail of evidence from Moscow in their wake.  The inquiry ruled that the substance used is one that is only available to state-actors, and that it was inconceivable that the murder took place without the knowledge and consent of Russia’s autocrat himself.  Then, in March 2018, a former Russian spy, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter Yulia, fell deathly ill with poisoning by the nerve agent ‘Novichok.’  A policeman who tended to the stricken pair was collateral damage.  All three survived, though it was a near-run thing.  (In July 2018, two more people fell deathly ill from the same chemical weapon; it is supposed that they inadvertently handled some object discarded by the killers.)  In March, Britain’s foreign minister promised Parliament that, “no attempt to take innocent life on U.K. soil will go either unsanctioned or unpunished.”  But, did the punishment truly fit the crime?

Sending killers to a foreign county to commit murder is an act of state aggression, tantamount to an act of war.  Arming them with chemical weapons is a war-crime.  Some Russian diplomats were expelled (the Russians reacted in kind by expelling some British diplomats).  But, the gravity and abhorrent nature of Russian politically-sanctioned murders in Britain needs a much stronger response.  First, the U.K should seize any assets of  Putin and his regime’s allies on British soil (or on deposit in British banks).   Second,  the British authorities should indict Putin for murder and attempted murder and announce that it will not recognize any claim by him to state or diplomatic immunity (from arrest and prosecution) should he set foot on British soil.  The effect of those latter measures would be symbolic; but they would send the message, like no others, that no one is above the law; and that repugnant acts carry grave consequences.  The proposed measures would also lift whatever flimsy veil of respectability still clings (in the eyes of the ill-informed) to Putin and put a well-deserved dent in his cherished status as a world leader.

Copyright © 2018 by John Arkelian

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