A reported US military principle supposedly holds that ‘elected leaders have a right to be wrong’. And that ‘the military’s role is to execute orders’. This principle is rightfully being tested by Trump’s rapid withdraw of US military support for the Kurds who were our best ally in fighting ISIS extremists in Syria and Iraq.
Retired General Joseph Votel, who stepped down this year as head of US Central Command, and other former top officers have issued sharp warnings in the days since the withdraw that left Kurdish forces exposed to Turkey’s better-armed military offensive and created another flood of refugees. Votel recently coauthored an article in the Atlantic saying this “abandonment threatens to undo five years’ worth of fighting against ISIS and will severely damage American credibility and reliability.”
Retired Admiral William McRaven, who headed U.S. Special Operations Command, wrote in a recent opinion piece that the US is not powerful because of its military or economic might. It’s because our “ideals of universal freedom and equality have been backed up by our belief that we were champions of justice, the protectors of the less fortunate.” He implied, that our President has betrayed that.
At what point do people in power and those who directly protect President Trump decide that his threat to both our Constitution and our national security is unsustainable? The loss of our Constitution or our nation’s security may not be an existential threat to our union or the rest of humanity, but such threats do exist.
At what point will those with the force of law (their pledge to defend the Constitution) or the law of force (the 2nd Amendment) take action to remove the profoundly destabilizing force of a reactionary and morally rudderless leader?
Even without Trump’s dangerously delusional decision making our political system’s fundamental reliance on public voting is a dangerous problem we need to resolve. Not because too few vote. Or inevitable election tampering. But because too many voters cast their ballot based on gut preference for a candidate or a single issue of self-interest instead of a researched and well-informed mindset of essential values, vital issues or a clear understanding of fundamental principles.
This catastrophic flaw in our ‘Democratic system’ has entrapped both political parties into perpetuating multiple but irreversibly related unsustainable policies (deficit spending, increasing income inequality, global warming, species extinctions, immigration injustices, war on drugs, rising health care costs, subsidies on fossil fuel and large scale agriculture, an unjust criminal ‘justice’ system, legal political corruption, unrestrained campaign financing, social media, election reform, divided dysfunctional government…).
At what point will our political systems and structures fail as a result of our culturally adopted principles of “peace through strength”, “market forces will solve the problem”, “freedom without accountability”, or “prayer will save us” – and give way to our finally codifying the fundamental principles that our nation was founded on. Those “Truths’ that “We hold to be Self Evident” that “all” people are “created equal (according to “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God”) and “that they are endowed…with certain unalienable Rights” and “that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”? Or, in summary, “Liberty and justice for all”.
There is a saying in the CIA that ‘there isn’t a problem that can’t be solved with a well place explosive’. Let’s hope that it’s Trump’s fear of the ‘deep state’ or his moral decision that motivates him to abide by his pledge to protect the U.S. Constitution. It should be increasingly obvious to him and his supporters that it is in everyone’s best interest to use the legal powers engineered into our Constitution by our founders instead of the violent powers they also offered us in the Amendments to it Constitution.
Just for the historical record, Trump was not the only U.S. President to abandon the Kurds. President Woodrow Wilson had championed self-determination of the non-Turkish inhabitants of the defeated Ottoman Empire after World War I. The leader of the Kurdish delegation arrived at the 1919 Paris peace talks with Wilson’s words in the pages of his Quran hoping his long-oppressed people would be granted their own state. But Wilson signed off on the new borders that France and Britain pushed. That divided the Kurds between Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria.
In the 1970s, the US encouraged Iraqi Kurds to rebel against Saddam Hussein who was the primary rival of our strong ally, the Shah of Iran. A year later the Shah and Saddam struck a deal and the US cut off support for the Kurds. Thousands were slaughtered by the Iraqi military.
After Desert Storm in 1991 President H.W. Bush hinted of U.S. support for an uprising against Saddam. Iraqi Kurds and Shiites did rise up, but American support never came, and they were gassed and gunned down by the tens of thousands while the world looked the other way.
Notice the pattern? There remains a fundamental flaw of the primary (not fundamental) principle of international law. The United Nations only ‘legal’ capacity is protecting the rights of nations, not human rights within each nation’s borders.
The fundamental principle of government according to Thomas Paine’s “Common-Sense” pamphlet, is the protection of human freedom and security. This continues to be ignored today by most governments in the world, including the US. And it will not end well for anyone (even the US) given the evolution of weapons and war.
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