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“Joe Biden’s Inflation” – and Other Idiocy

Election Day marks the merciful end of a silly season in the US that starts around Labor Day. It’s a time when we watch television at our mental-health peril. The years of presidential elections are the worst; mid-terms, like 2022, are the next worst.

Bombarded with screeched messages, we develop coping mechanisms. We may wear out the “mute” button , or record everything on a DVR to fast forward through political ads. Perhaps we simply try to tune out most of the noise. Unless we stop watching or listening altogether, though, some particularly obnoxious idiocy breaks through to our beleaguered consciousness.

For me, the worst has been the notion that we’re experiencing “Joe Biden’s inflation”.

Too Much Credit or Blame

Let’s start with a fairly obvious general point: Presidents usually get too much credit for good current economies and too much blame for bad ones. Determinants of the state of an economy are numerous and complex. Policies emanating from a president vie with those from other forces, especially the markets and Congress.  Those market forces at work are increasingly international in scope. Any big event anywhere affects everything, everywhere.

While it’s not impossible for an announced policy to have some immediate impact on the economy, it takes months and even years for most initiatives to move the economic needle significantly.

In this case, the foolishness of “Joe Biden’s inflation” goes well beyond merely overstating a president’s immediate impact on the current economy, however. The reasons could hardly be clearer; there are two major factors and two subtler ones, in place before the major factors, that set the table for inevitable inflation, or worse.

Obvious Cause #1: Covid-19

In General

Who thought we were going to get out of the worst pandemic in a hundred years without significant inflation, at the very least? Preventing financial collapse was the goal; inflation was inevitable. (As an aside, complaints about stimulus programs are rich, aren’t they? First, almost everyone supported them and lined up to take credit. New designs were required when a certain president’s name had to appear on the check. It wasn’t Biden’s. Second, stimulus checks deserved support. Third, the notion of Biden’s predecessor being a financially responsible conservative is hilarious.)

Consider fuel as one example. (It’s the best single factor to discuss because it affects the price of everything, like food, it is used to transport.) One of the very few advantages of the pandemic was that traffic disappeared overnight. There was no such thing as rush hour. Anyone with a reason to drive reached their destination in record time. Millions discovered stars in their night sky.

With the collapse of demand for fuel, prices dropped. Producers had to cut back production dramatically to avoid ruin. Emerging from the crisis brought not only restoration of more normal demand, but also two to three years of pent-up demand. Ramping up production involves far more than flipping a switch. Such high demand and low supply meant prices could do nothing but skyrocket.

As prices begin to settle back down, in fits and starts, should that be attributed to Joe Biden’s taming of inflation? If so, we’ll be re-assessing that every minute as the market for crude shifts. In a recent trip through parts of Europe, gas ranged from 1.90 to 2.20 Euros/liter. That’s $7.18 to $8.32 per gallon. Boy, that Joe Biden has enormous influence on global markets! Since it’s up again since I got home, it’s undoubtedly higher yet in Europe.

An intelligent discussion on the merits of Biden’s action on the Keystone Pipeline is possible, if anyone is interested, but it had nothing to do with the prices we’ve been paying at the pumps.

Handling of the Pandemic

First there was portrayal of Covid as a liberal hoax. When its existence became undeniable, next came denial of its severity – just another flu, if that. Keeping a safe distance was for sissies, even though experts had determined that the virus spread by people breathing on one another. It was somehow unpatriotic (?!) to wear a mask. Doing so to protect others was for losers.

In The Infodemic (Columbia Global Reports, 2022), Joel Simon and Robert Mahoney examine the ruinous approaches to Covid employed in two groupings of countries. The subtitle serves as a summary: How Censorship and Lies Made the World Sicker and Less Free. The first group was of authoritarian states like China, Iran and Russia, where censorship of truth is a blunt instrument. Those telling the truth about the virus were silenced by any means necessary.

In the second grouping, referred to as populist-led democracies, the authors say “governments relied on a more sophisticated and increasingly effective means of censorship, drowning the truth in a sea of lies.” (11) This they dub “censorship by noise”. Thus, “alongside the Covid-19 pandemic, there was an infodemic, a deluge of lies, distortions and bungled communication that obliterated the truth”, (10) with catastrophic consequences for public health and genuine freedom.

The three countries in the group of democracies whose similarly terrible handling of the crisis is described in detail are Bolsonaro’s Brazil, PM Modi’s India, and Trump’s USA. While aspects of Brazil and America’s responses were so similar as to suggest some coordination between Trump and Bolsonaro (sloughing off responsibility to more local officials being one example), some of the most bizarre behavior of any of the three countries came out of the White House. Historical analysis of American behavior for the years 2016 – 2020 will place us in relentlessly unflattering company.

Why Handle a Pandemic So Badly?

Donald Trump always knew he could not beat Joe Biden in a fair election in 2020, and behaved accordingly. That’s why he was so furious with Elizabeth Warren for not bowing out earlier (after disappointing primary showings), and throwing her support to Bernie Sanders. Trump believed he had a chance to beat Sanders.

Similarly, Trump was at his projecting best when he declared so long before the election that someone would try to rig or steal it. He knew that because he was planning to rig or steal the election. Step one was to declare victory early election evening. He went ballistic when thwarted by Fox News correctly projecting Arizona for Biden.

To have any chance against Biden, Trump knew he had to have an economy going gangbusters. So, he tried to deny the virus away, then minimize it. Then he was desperate to push ridiculous miracle cures. He ordered a hundred million doses of the vaccine while it was being developed, considering it his chance at re-election. He lost all interest in vaccination when clear it would not be ready before the election, other than getting it quietly for himself.

Some of the most heartbreaking stories from the whole ordeal were from caregivers relating how patients used their dying breaths to deny the existence of the virus that killed them.

Obvious Cause #2: Putin’s murderous rampage in Ukraine

It’s often called a “war”, but, as conducted by Vladimir Putin, it seems more a series of war crimes. While Putin devises ways to kill civilians with the evident hope of persuading them to give up, it becomes more evident that most Ukrainians would rather die than re-subjugate themselves to Russia. Meanwhile, the lack of enthusiasm Russian soldiers exhibit for the conflict seems understandable.

In any event, the economic effect is to lessen or negate each country’s participation in various global markets. Either or both are major players in a number of important markets – from oil, to wheat, to neon. (Europeans are wondering how they’ll stay warm this winter.)That last one, neon, is interesting. Ukraine is, or was, the world’s largest supplier: 70% of neon gas and 90% of highly purified semiconductor-grade neon used in chip production. Guess what happens to prices when supply of oil, wheat, neon and other essentials goes down suddenly and drastically.

Now, there actually is a president who spent every day in office giving aid, support and encouragement to Vladimir Putin’s every interest in the world. At the top of that list was destruction of NATO. Putin’s fondest aspiration is to be The One who restores Russia to its USSR glory, at least. The Mueller Report documents in exquisite detail the extraordinary lengths Putin’s Russia went in support of Trump’s 2016 bid for the White House. No effort or expense was spared.

Meanwhile, amid the chaos of American policy for those years, the one objective Trump worked on effectively and consistently was the evisceration of NATO, which had managed to keep peace in Europe since the last World War. Not a day went by, seemingly, without doing something to further alienate one or more of our allies. The traitorous quid pro quo could not be clearer.

The American electorate scuttled Vladimir and Donald’s plans in 2020, leaving Putin to do it the hard way. Startled, and perhaps a bit unnerved, by the speed and effectiveness with which Biden was resurrecting NATO and re-establishing America’s stature in the world, Putin invaded. Disastrously. The results are death, destruction, and yes, massively inflationary market disruptions – all done with the fawning approval of Donald Trump for his favorite “genius”.

The Inflation Table Was Already Set – Tariffs and Worker Shortage

Having written about this before, and cited the full-blown analysis available in the December 2019 edition of Fortune magazine (“Why Trump Is Bad For Business”), we’ll keep this relatively brief. Before anyone had ever heard of Covid-19, there were clear signs the economy was headed for trouble due to two flawed policies.

The irony is that Covid might have provided cover for these missteps, by taking the blame for a broken economy. An honest and competent attempt by an average president to encourage people to distance themselves sensibly and mask up would have gotten us to the vaccines in much better shape. Then, vaccines and boosters taken by all (other than the hard core 1-2% anti-vaxxers) would have provided finishing touches on a course that saved hundreds of thousands of lives and greatly lessened the economic impact.

It’s doubtful that such an approach would even occur to Donald Trump.

Trump’s Tariff War With China

As many have said, “Somebody had to do something about China.” Yep, somebody did, and still does. That something is not a tariff war. What’s needed is something tied to China’s piracy of intellectual property.

Tariff wars serve mainly to increase prices across the board to consumers. To the buyers of raw materials and finished goods, tariffs function very much like an enormous sales tax. It’s not impossible but it is rare for tariffs to help a US manufacturer or industry, or to hurt a Chinese competitor. More often, tariffs hurt more American companies than they help.

And, by the way: so cowed was China by this “getting tough” with them that they became more belligerent regarding Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the entire Pacific.

Trump’s Immigration Policies Choked Off Supply of Labor

Because he has employed so many of them over so many years, Donald Trump knows better than most that immigrant workers are as likely as anyone to work hard and behave well.  The “murderers and rapists” nonsense is the red meat upon which his base feeds, however. So, people seeking asylum are “illegals”. Immigrants are taking all these jobs from our college kids who were hoping to pick turnips in the hot sun all summer. And so forth.

The truth is that the number one thing holding back our economy is a lack of workers across the board. Help Wanted signs are everywhere. The labor shortage is a double whammy; not only is it stifling growth, but it’s also raising prices. Scarce workers cost more, obviously.

Meanwhile, we still await serious discussion, by adults, of whatever changes are needed to develop immigration policies we believe in enough to enforce.

In Short

There was a president who made the inflation we’re facing longer lasting and more severe than it had to be. It isn’t Joe Biden.

Other Idiocy

Out of all the other harmful and dangerous idiocy out there, let’s briefly address one more: Election denial.

I’ve seen estimates that over half of Republican candidates for office across the country in 2022 are election deniers, and that about 60% of American voters will have an election denier on the ballot. Recognizing there can be some divergence in how the term is defined, the point here is not to get mired in definitional disputes or statistics.

The point is that support for the notion that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump should be disqualifying from holding public office for any candidate by reasonable voters of any political persuasion. Yet an incredible number of such candidates are on the ballot.

There has never been any basis for such a belief. For those with lingering doubts, despite the loss of 64 cases and the absence of any evidence, there is Lost, Not Stolen (https://lostnotstolen.org/). A group of leading, life-long conservative Republicans produced this exhaustive, documented study of all the baseless allegations of a stolen election one might hear. They categorically obliterate every argument made about the results in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. They conclude: “In fact, there was no fraud that changed the outcome in even a single precinct.”

Anyone arguing the 2020 election was stolen at this point is either (1) psychotic; (2) truly stupid; or (3) simply lying.

Let’s be clear on what’s at stake here. In many US jurisdictions, there are a number of Republicans hard at work to change the outcome the next time Donald Trump, or someone of his ilk, makes the call he made to Georgia Secretary of State Raffensperger. In response to “Find me 11,780 votes!” they don’t want to hear “That’s not how we do things in America.” No, they want to ensure the answer next time is “Sure. In fact we’ll ‘find’ a few extra hundred to make it look better.”

Conclusion

I yearn for the good old days when “liberals” and “conservatives” argued about taxes, too much vs. too little regulation, big government vs. small, and the like. Indeed, I miss the day when one could have any discussion on the merits.

The argument now is whether basic American principles like checks and balances, the rule of law, and free and fair elections are worth preserving. Not content with “mere” voter suppression and grotesque gerrymandering, some now have voter nullification as the goal.

In a saner time, it would be safe to assume that anti-democracy, un-American cretins would be routed off to political oblivion. How we vote today, and perhaps in the next election or two, will determine whether our votes will continue to matter.

Ken Bossong

© 2022 Kenneth J. Bossong

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Live Hearings: Must-See TV

“January 6” has become a date that needs no reference, like “9/11”. Writers and speakers need provide neither the year nor further explanation to convey what’s being addressed. Events too awful to watch and too momentous not to watch tend to have that effect on audiences.

All sentient Americans, regardless of political persuasion, should be glued similarly to televisions starting tonight. Indeed, it is both more important and more compelling than gazing at spectacle to discover what’s been learned through careful study of events leading up to, during, and since 1/6/21.

The Hearings

Aired live starting tonight, 8 – 10 p.m. (Eastern Time) on networks with at least a modicum of interest in something resembling news, are hearings conducted by the US House of Representatives committee charged with investigating the attack on the Capitol.

The American public is owed no less than a thorough, careful investigation and comprehensive report. That reporting aspect begins in earnest tonight. Citizens and taxpayers paying public servants to mind the store will be wise to watch.

Talk about reality TV.

Yes, This Is a Big Deal

If we learn nothing else, it should become evident why certain individuals did not want this investigated at all. Think about that: the Capitol of the United States is attacked by a large, violent mob while Congress is doing official business and they DON’T want to investigate.

They also really don’t want you to watch these hearings. They know they have much to fear from the truth coming out, and self-interest is paramount. Such individuals disqualify themselves from the honor of public service. If they remain in office, or regain office, that will be our fault.

I’m no fan of conspiracy theories in general, but any notion that this attack was all there was to it, no more than a spontaneous eruption of overzealous support for the candidate who summoned them, is preposterous on its face – as criminal as that behavior was. The day and timing chosen for the attack tell you all you need to know about the planners’ intentions (a car was even provided to whisk Mike Pence away) although their grasp of the Constitution was infantile.

There are a lot of dots to connect here. If the picture that comes into focus is that of 800 rioters arrested so far actually being the least of our concerns, very significant indictments better be on their way. If not, the next coup attempt, while just as evil, might be smarter. Not that this one is over, yet.

This Is the Chance

“Just give me the facts!” is a common refrain directed at the media. “Don’t tell me what to think, or how to feel. I am so sick of spin, and worse. Report; tell me truthfully what happened. Go where I can’t go, dig out the facts, and give them to me straight. I’ll take it from there.”

For all who lament the state of modern journalism, this is your/our chance: Watch live (or record and watch later) every minute of these January 6 hearings. Skip, mute, or record for later, all the talking-head commentary that networks provide before, during breaks, and after the hearings. Listen, consider, and decide for yourself: What really happened here? What is credible, what isn’t, and why?

What is the big picture that emerges? Is there a big picture? If a compelling take on what has happened seems irrefutable, what does that series of conclusions mean for what is happening now in our country? What should happen going forward?

Then, if you feel like it, listen to others’ commentary.

If nothing else, and perhaps best of all: Watching carefully will enable a discussion on the merits about where we are with our republic, and what we can do to keep it. Imagine that.

Ken Bossong

© 2022 Kenneth J. Bossong

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Still Pondering Black History Month, 2022
(A White Guy’s Reflections)

A blizzard of thoughts and feelings accompanied this year’s Black History Month – before, during, and ever since. I’ve long had a love/hate relationship with Black History Month, anyway.

What I Love

I love learning of special people I’ve never heard of before and their remarkable ideas, exploits, and inventions.

I love having new heroes from hearing their stories of overcoming immense obstacles of hardship and hate.

In late January, a friend delightedly said he had seen John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme and an album by Sam Cooke on display in a Target store. It was, of course, for Black History Month. I love seeing overdue celebration for the deserving, with the chance it brings of enriching more lives.

Far more invitations to speak about the music I have studied and particularly love, Jazz and Blues, have come my way in February over the years. Giving this great music the presentation it deserves is immensely gratifying.

What I Hate

I hate the fact that I’d never before heard of those special people and their remarkable ideas, exploits, and inventions.

I abhor the hardship and the hate these new-to-me heroes had to overcome. Why they faced obstacles of hardship and hate is even worse.

My one visit to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland was in mid-2017. I did not begrudge the enormous roomfuls of stuff expected for Elvis, the Beatles, and the Stones. (The huge, comprehensive, albeit temporary, display for John Mellencamp was a bit surprising, though.)

What I dreaded was what I’d find for Chuck Berry. Sure enough, the visitor got to see a guitar or two, a jacket or two, some pics, a nice plaque. Easy to miss was one of the best things in the museum: a piece of paper containing the lyrics to “School Days” in Chuck’s handwriting. Berry’s exhibit was lumped in with similarly underplayed tributes to Bo Diddley, Fats Domino and Little Richard in a section for early contributors.

It was infuriating, especially shortly after Chuck Berry’s death, which should have converted the place into a shrine for the music’s most important founder.  

I hate it when I hear a white person sneer, “When’s it gonna be White History Month?” Admittedly, it does make me chuckle thinking of the time I asked my mother on Mother’s Day, “When is Kids’ Day?” Bet you got the same answer if you asked your parents that question: “EVERY day is Kids’ Day.”

In short, I love Black History Month, and hate that it’s still necessary.

The Bad Stuff

At least as unfortunate as leaving significant contributions by African Americans out of American History is hiding so much awful stuff that has happened to them. The result is a number of Whites who seem not to grasp where we really are, and how we got here. Aggrieved they are, to be hearing about all this race stuff. Articulating this can take any number of forms, but it often goes something like this:

Yeah, slavery was bad, but that ended after the Civil War. Segregation was wrong, too, but we got past all that in the Civil Rights era. My people [Irish, Italian, Polish, etc.] weren’t welcomed here either. They called us names, denied us jobs, made us live in tough neighborhoods. We climbed our way out through determination and hard work.

The first two sentences of this are beyond naïve; indeed, they’re essentially false. Sure, they’ve put racial atrocities behind them. (What systemic racism?) The last three sentences present grotesquely false equivalencies.

Most lessons offered in February for Black History Month are remarkably benign, actually, focusing on neglected good stuff. Grasping an accurate, balanced perspective on the truth, however, requires a dive into some very disturbing history with real-world consequences to this day.

The Really Bad Stuff

I am no historian, much less one who devotes life to digging up every negative thing that’s ever happened to anyone. Something’s been hard not to notice, though, even from a very young age: Many have crazy ideas about other people based on skin color. Along the way, a resolve formed to both (a) appreciate cultural contributions on their merits and (b) face the facts as I found them on the bad stuff. This was for my own good.

When subjected to an aggrieved-white-person harangue, I find myself asking if they’ve ever heard of one or more of the following:

Specific Violent Incidents
Memphis  1866
Clinton, Mississippi  1875
History of Ku Klux Klan
The 1898 Coup/Massacre in Wilmington, NC
East St. Louis Massacre of 1917
The Red Summer of 1919
Tulsa 1921
Lynchings – of thousands, over decades

Discrimination by Operation of Law
[For background] The actual thriving, for a while, of many African-Americans working hard and playing by the rules, when given the chance during early days of Reconstruction
The Black Codes
The presidential election of 1876 and how it was resolved by the so-called Compromise of 1877, effectively ending Reconstruction and issuing in a new era of terror for Blacks
Jim Crow laws, era, and way of life
Redlining
Restrictive covenants
The “crime” of Miscegenation
Mississippi’s ratification of the 13th Amendment – in 1995/2013
Neo-slavery/involuntary servitude/forced labor

How I wish this were an exhaustive list! Unfortunately, it comprises mere shavings off the tip of an ugly iceberg. And these are just ones I know about. Here’s a depressing thought: The atrocities known must be far fewer than all that actually happened. Some attempts at covering up horrific racial crimes undoubtedly succeeded.

What is known is horrific enough. Anyone doubting as much is sincerely welcomed to look into any or all of the above with reputable, documented sources. Read them, and weep. (And, as always, if anything in this post is wrong, PLEASE say how and why in an email to KenBossong@gmail.com.)

Short Summary

At the end of the Civil War, there were some genuine attempts, by the Republican-led federal government, to give former slaves some chance at success. These attempts to meaningfully implement the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments are collectively referred to as Reconstruction.

Newly freed Blacks were not the only poor people in America. If there was one thing many white people, especially those doing poorly, could not stand, it was seeing formerly-owned black people doing better. Many were.

Early on, freed people eagerly availed themselves of much that had been denied them as slaves, especially education, beneficial work, and the vote. Some immediately excelled in all lines of endeavor. As individuals found success in business, the arts, law, medicine, sciences, education, and public service, the communities in which they lived similarly began to thrive.

Violent reaction by individuals and groups of Whites began immediately in response to Blacks being elected to office, acquiring land, and starting schools, churches, and businesses.

An incalculably important pivot point in history was the resolution of the bitterly contested presidential election of 1876. The short version of this Faustian bargain is that the Republicans got their candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes, sworn in as President. In exchange, they essentially agreed to forego Reconstruction. That included withdrawal of federal troops whose presence had helped keep “freedmen” somewhat free.

Predictably, this provided carte blanche for white supremacists. Both the frequency and severity of racial violence grew apace. Although provocation ranged from negligible to non-existent, the truth is that innocent men, women and children were killed, and whole neighborhoods, even towns, were burned to the ground. Groups like the Klan ran amok. Folks brought snacks, and the kids, to public lynchings.

“Legal” Machinations

More insidious than individual acts of violence, however, was the deliberate, carefully orchestrated discrimination institutionalized within legal structures. This is the (also incomplete) second part of the “Really Bad Stuff” list above. Those who scoff at the notion of systemic racism want no part of this information.

Herein lies an extraordinarily important point often missed for being more subtle than murder and mayhem. Practices like redlining and restrictive covenants – enforced as a matter of law – present a whole other aspect of evil, beyond acts of discrimination and violence. When odious statutes are passed, or such contracts enforced in courts, discrimination becomes official public policy. Cloaking hate in law makes a mockery of the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantees of Due Process and Equal Protection of the laws.

Please don’t miss the last item on that list of bad things, by the way: Neoslavery. Like every other concept in this post, the topic deserves its own book. Luckily there is one: the winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction, Douglas A. Blackmon’s Slavery By Another Name. No brief summary of this convincingly documented book could do it justice, but here’s a teaser: Human beings were no longer bought and sold; they were leased. By the tens of thousands, for decades.

When coal mines, quarries, factories, railroads, lumber camps, brickyards or farm plantations needed workers, officials would swoop into an area, arrest men over the age of around twelve for charges like vagrancy, and convict them. Sentences always included large, unpayable fines, and the men were taken away to work off their “debts” under unspeakable conditions. It was rigged so that the indentured servitude lasted for years, or until death for many. The scope and the details of the system are mind-boggling.

Bottom line: The Jim Crow era, in the century following the Civil War, was as shameful as slavery. (Slavery was an execrable institution for millennia before America existed; Jim Crow, sadly, was very much American.) Admirers included the worst people on earth; proof abounds that Jim Crow America inspired the Third Reich’s architects of the heinous Final Solution to their “Jewish Problem”. Hitler and his henchmen studied and emulated the implementation of race hatred through US legal mechanisms (compare the Nuremberg Race Laws to criminalizing miscegenation in 30 of the 48 states) after slavery’s official abolition. The patina of legal authority helped keep any foes the Nazis might have had at bay until it was too late.

The Sinister Sequences, or Why Cluelessness Matters

The point here is not that all Caucasians are inherently hateful or bad, of course. Those who are, however, have found demagoguery very lucrative. One reason is that too many of us have no idea about the subject matter of this post.

This really matters. Ignorance sets the stage for fear, the demagogue’s favorite tool. Absent the facts, almost anything or anyone can be cast as The Problem. Then, hate can stroll right in. This is not the “I-hate-Brussels-sprouts” kind of hate; this is blinding, irrational hate that is personal. Who benefits? Only the demagogue. This sinister sequence gravely harms everyone but the demagogue, who finds it irresistible because it works.

Race is the ultimate Us vs. Them (see post of 2/19/19), however. Those people are responsible for all problems – theirs and ours. Luckily, one can spot demagogues by their rhetoric. Lately, they’ve seized upon their two greatest threats to our society: being “woke” and “critical race theory”. They can’t stop saying either one. Whether unprompted or in response to any mention of racial justice, demagogues eagerly knock down their two favorite straw men.

The sequence at work for decades regarding race has been especially sinister. It perpetuates itself: Segregate; denigrate; then stigmatize. Repeat. Specifically, when the stigma is believed widely enough to stick, segregation and the rest simply flow. Marginalization ensues, preventing families from attaining financial or personal security for generations.

Less fancy wording makes clear these are the oldest tricks in the book: Deny certain people decent jobs and call them lazy; deny them education and call them stupid; force them to live crammed together in poverty and complain about their bad neighborhoods. And so forth. It’s OK to let some superstars do well; a certain few spectacularly so. Even for them, there can be a price to pay – the sense that you are the exception being used to prove the racist rule.

Why This Black History Month?

Getting back to the present, why did all these things especially resonate this year when so much of this is nothing new?

Indeed, for years, I’ve wondered whether folks who feel the wrong side won the Civil War, yet piously sing “Amazing Grace” on Sunday morning, have any idea what had made the hymn’s author a “wretch”.

This February’s musings, though, involved fellow Caucasians who know the right side won the Civil War, but seem oblivious to much of what has occurred from then to now.

Thoughts turned to conversations had with white friends and acquaintances.  For example, with the sight of officer Derek Chauvin snuffing out the life of George Floyd (with that smirk on his face, no less) emblazoned in my brain, I recalled people saying how disgusted they were by the images on screen. Not the images of the cold-blooded murder, you understand, but of knuckleheads skipping out of K-marts with televisions and sneakers.

Outraged they were, and frightened by the (overwhelmingly peaceful) protests that erupted in the wake of Floyd’s death – which they seemed to confuse with the looting. My brain juxtaposed these sentiments with an unforgettable brief exchange during coverage of the protests: Reporter: “What do you say to all the people worried about this unrest?” Protester: [incredulous] “Well, white people are doing the worrying, and we black people are doing the dying. What else is new?”

A Brief Aside

Is it necessary to say that, of course, vandalism and theft are not OK and should also be prosecuted? If so, then it’s also worth mentioning this: A much higher percentage of the few who tossed Molotov cocktails under police cars are being brought to justice than all those whose brazen criminal conduct caused the devastating financial carnage of 2008’s Great Recession.

For a nation so sensitive to property damage, it should be a national scandal that precisely one banker received jail time in the US. Then there are the individuals trusted to rate securities who knowingly slapped AAA grades on junk. But, I digress.

Back to Why This Black History Month?

Do a quick word association with the phrase “race riot” and the majority of responses will be Watts in 1965, or Detroit or Newark in 1967. Not a glimmer of recognition is likely to be found of the unrelenting racial terror and violence aimed at Blacks by Whites that preceded (and undoubtedly had a cumulative role in provoking) Watts, Detroit, and Newark.  Or that, to this day, white people are doing the worrying and black people are doing the dying. Cluelessness precludes the context and perspective needed.

That’s nothing new. What seems kind of new in 2022, though, beyond the usual passive acceptance of history’s whitewashing, is a dogged, active, almost desperate pursuit of ignorance. Ignorance is the stated goal, and knowledge is the enemy. Lately, we have the specter of teachers, school board members, librarians, election officials and other public servants fearing for their lives for doing their jobs and speaking plain truth.

It’s bad to not know. It’s worse to not try to know. It’s worse yet to not want to know. This, however, is active, proud, explicit advocacy for ignorance. It’s lying, and wanting to be lied to. Unsurprisingly, the “advocacy” bears little resemblance to rational debate. They can’t prove that facts are false, so they just attack those presenting the facts.

That’s not to say falsehood advocates can’t be clever. It’s strategic genius to cast the fight as being whether parents can have any say over what’s taught in school, for example. Of course, parents have a role in curriculum, but that role can’t be to insist their children be shielded from knowledge. Yet, this was the difference in Virginia’s last race for governor. “Parents’ Rights!” is a much more appealing rally cry than “Keep our Kids Dopey like Us!” or “Teach ‘em the Lies We Need!”

With startling clarity, the last thing these parents want is for their children to be taught the truth in school. Nope, slaves were treated like family. The Civil War was really the War of Northern Aggression. It was fought over states’ rights, you see, not slavery. All these minorities have to do is work hard, but they won’t do it. All this affirmative action crap is unfair. In fact, we’re the victims here. Oh, how I long for a color-blind society!

Calling All Patriots

Here’s one more reflection that ran through this white guy’s brain during and since Black History Month. It was the iconic scene from the movie A Few Good Men. Tom Cruise’s JAG officer, Lt. Kaffee, cross-examining Jack Nicholson’s Col. Jessup, has asked whether he ordered the Code Red.

Jessup: I’ll answer the question. You want answers?
Kaffee: I think I’m entitled to them.
Jessup: You want answers?!
Kaffee: I want the truth!
Jessup: You can’t handle the truth!

Actually, we can handle the truth; we must. Averting our eyes from the truth does not alter reality; it just hampers our ability to cope with it.

Our choice is not between being ”woke”, or patriotic. It’s between loving America enough to consider all of its history (including the painful parts), in order to unleash all of its incredible potential – or not. Real patriots categorically reject what keeps America from attaining its full promise.  They repudiate the sinister sequence of Ignorance>Fear>Hate.

Ignorance is not bliss; it’s misery. Centuries of needless misery aren’t over just yet. The FBI is hot on the trail of those responsible for a wave of bomb threats at more than one-third of the nation’s 101 historically Black colleges and universities throughout this Black History Month. (And why did America need HBCUs? Oh…) How’d you enjoy those Senate confirmation hearings for soon-to-be Justice Jackson? Black lives mattering is a controversial notion?

This is not a call for white people to wallow in guilt or self-loathing. Rather, the suggestion is actually to mean what we say when reciting the Pledge of Allegiance:
I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands: One Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Then behave like we mean it. Imagine what we could achieve together if we simply ensured that every American family knew they had a real, reasonable shot at success.

Time To Unshackle Ourselves

America’s true greatness lies in the liberty, justice, and opportunity it offers. (No wonder we have immigration challenges.) Yet, utterly at odds with such lofty core values, there’s been this tragic, senseless interweaving of white supremacy. Why not rid ourselves of the latter by discarding what has never belonged? Could there be a better way to celebrate our 250th birthday on July 4, 2026?

Pipe dream? Maybe not. A quarter-page ad in the real estate section of a recent Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer led with “This Ad Won’t End Discrimination In Real Estate. People Will.” Continuing:
“If recent events have taught us anything, it’s this: we have more work to do. Racism is real, tragically so. Discrimination in all its forms still casts a long shadow in this country, and too many are being denied the opportunities that all Americans deserve.” There follows a description of the group’s code of ethics, and then:
“As the Bucks County [PA] Association of Realtors we believe that fairness is worth fighting for, and we won’t stop until the fight is won.” Then, in bold, there’s an urging that any discrimination be reported to hud.gov/fairhousing. From a segment of an industry once in the middle of restrictive covenants and redlining, it’s a step.

Is a quarter millennium long enough to wait before fulfilling the promise of our American Experiment and its truths, self-evident since 1776? It’s certainly long past time to undo completely the horrendous mistakes flowing from that deal with the Devil in 1877.

Ken Bossong

© 2022 Kenneth J. Bossong

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The Idol And His Protégé

In the midst of his murderous plunge into re-subjugation of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin oddly paused with an attempt to justify his actions. “Oddly” because Putin, while he lies as naturally as he breathes, seldom cares enough what anyone thinks to bother with attempts at justification.

Yet, there he was speaking of his “denazification” of Ukraine, even as he channeled 20th Century fascists in action and intent. Commentators were quick to note how bizarrely, ironically irrational this was. (Best seen so far: Trudy Rubin in the February 25 Philadelphia Inquirer.) Yes, Ukrainian President Zelensky is Jewish.

In speaking so, Putin presents a case of the master learning from his follower. In four years of emulating Putin, and catering to his every whim, Donald Trump was his equal in scope and depth of dishonesty. The Donald displayed unmatched skill, though, in one special technique of dishonesty: projection. As pointed out in the Other Aspects post of October 16, 2020, Trump is the unquestioned GOAT at projection.

The erstwhile Republicans who have chosen to abandon principle and sanity to follow Trump use it constantly. That is, they falsely accuse others of wrong-doing in which they are actually engaged. This is expected of trumpsters by now, but this was his idol projecting? It must make Trump so proud, though to be sure, Putin’s technique could use some refinement.

But, like the commentators, I digress. Let’s get back to the news of the day. Emboldened by four years of worshipful enabling and assistance by the then-President of the United States, and now desperate to make a move because that party is over, KGB thug Putin risks unthinkable catastrophe with one last attempt to reclaim the “glories” of the USSR. He invades.

What Vladimir Did for Donald

Memo to the US Department of Justice: Un-redact the Mueller Report. Today. Now.

Memo to all fellow Americans: Read the Mueller Report for yourself. Today. If you really don’t have time for all that today, read the Other Aspects post of November 1, 2020.

Then read the Mueller Report for yourself, as soon as you can, and think about how the crimes reported and everything that has happened since fit together.

There’s also a bonus for Donald in the current events: delight that Vladimir is bringing hell to Zelensky, the guy who wouldn’t lie about Joe Biden.

What Donald Was Doing for Vladimir

Perhaps the better wording is: What wasn’t Donald doing for Vladimir? For anyone wondering why Vladimir Putin wanted Donald Trump elected, and then re-elected, so very desperately, the answer is clear. It wasn’t just the constant, indefensible aid and comfort (Helsinki, anyone?) that continues to this day.

At the very top of Donald’s to-do list from Vlad was the one thing Trump did consistently for four years: everything he could to undermine NATO. The only way to make sense of his behavior on the international stage is to view it in light of one goal – the systematic dismantling of NATO. Even to America’s detriment? Certainly.

The Deal on Full Display for Those Who Look

What Vladimir Putin sought to get out of this arrangement could not be clearer – namely, not having to bother with what he’s doing today. If successful, he’ll see no reason to stop with Ukraine. He’s the one destined gloriously to restore the mighty USSR. If successful with that, by the way, why think he’ll stop with “merely” rehanging the Iron Curtain at those borders?

What Donald Trump sought to get out of this arrangement also could not be clearer – unlimited power and money, and a Putin-like status in the United States. Think he was kidding when he wondered aloud about the need for term limits on the presidency? Trump doesn’t kid.

Vladimir saw considerable success in skillfully sowing further division among the American people (really; it’s all in Mueller) as well as among the members of NATO. However, “genius” though he may be, Putin’s best efforts couldn’t overcome the number of US citizens who considered Trump’s performance as president when voting in 2020. It was too bad for both Vladimir and Donald that Joe Biden was actually qualified to be president, and not as dislikeable as Hillary Clinton.

Thus did the election of 2020 disrupt the deal. Whether their plan is scuttled for good or merely delayed, if some have their way, is up to us.

It was essential to America’s interests that one of Biden’s top priorities be to restore relations with our genuine allies. He’s done well with that, which is why Vladimir and Donald are so upset.

Meanwhile, Trump would be foolish to think Putin cared about him beyond his usefulness while positioned as US president. Did he hope to solve his financial woes by being cut in with Putin’s oligarch buddies in sharing corruption bounty? Trump, of all people, should know loyalty is a one-way street, for guys like him.

Further Musings

It never ceases to amaze that human beings arrange their affairs so as to permit a single individual, so often a despicable individual like Putin or his protégé, to do so much harm.

I’ve heard it said that the best form of government would be a “benign dictator”. The problem, of course, is that there’s no such thing. Human nature does not permit it; dictators find no reason to be benign.

That’s why, aside from the Bible, the Constitution of the United States is the greatest and most important document ever produced. It is our republic, if we can keep it.

Ken Bossong

© 2022 Kenneth J. Bossong

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Of Inglorious Exits… and Entrances… and Stays
(Or “Who Are the Bad Guys?”)

From last post’s homage to Integrity, we turn to the consequences of its absence.

I love my country more than words can say, but why, oh why, can’t we get our exits right? There is nothing sweet about the sorrow with which we part our engagements.

These were the kinds of thoughts washing over me while viewing our exit from Afghanistan last year and the ending of what is dubbed “America’s Longest War”. They have since been supplemented by many other impressions and reflections that demanded a post. And, do I have a book for you to read!

Beyond the Bad Optics

President Biden should have known it would be trouble to comply with the Afghan exit agreement in place. This is especially so since the prior administration had negotiated withdrawal, in typical fashion, only with the forces it was US policy to oppose, to the deliberate and pointed exclusion of the government it was US policy to support. This, you understand, is the Art of the Deal.

That it would be a bad deal was almost a foregone conclusion. Joe Biden should have understood that better than anyone. Most criticism of him is not for leaving, but for not insisting on doing it well, or at least competently. For some reason, he seemed to feel obligated to adhere strictly to a given timetable.

Those thinking our exit from Afghanistan was the worst part of this 20-year misadventure are terribly mistaken, however.

One of the “Must-Read” Books of 2021

Any doubts on that point are obliterated throughout The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War by Craig Whitlock (Simon and Shuster, 2021. Page numbers from the book appear in parentheses below.)

Timely publication of such a book is beneficial. By way of comparison, the Pentagon Papers came out four years after Robert McNamara commissioned the report on America’s involvement in Vietnam. Daniel Ellsberg leaked the top secret report to the New York Times. Their publishing of installments led to litigation of one of the most important prior-restraint First Amendment cases in Supreme Court history. Since the report already existed, the hardest part of informing the public was obtaining the landmark 6-3 decision clearing the Times to resume publishing.

With the precedent of the Pentagon Papers case established, Whitlock’s task was to assemble the vast amount of information under-girding his book. With six years as a foreign correspondent for the Washington Post writing about al-Qaeda and affiliates, followed by seven years as a beat reporter covering the Pentagon, he “knew Afghanistan was a mess.” (xiii) He sought the big picture that was being missed: What went wrong?

The Source Material

Understanding the sources is crucial to grasping the book’s significance. The Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR; there can be no discussion involving federal government without acronyms – hang in there) had undertaken a project called Lessons Learned. They interviewed hundreds of officials and war participants, hoping to identify mistakes for future avoidedance. Those interviewed spoke with remarkable candor, apparently assuming no public access.

SIGAR issued some dull reports from the Lessons Learned interviews, but Whitlock and the Post sued for the source material – notes, audio and transcripts. After a three-year Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) battle, the author hit the jackpot.

His second major source was George W. Bush’s Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, famous for dictating memos so numerous as to be nicknamed “snowflakes”. George Washington University’s National Security Archive sued under FOIA for the snowflakes relating to Afghanistan, which they shared with Whitlock.

A third source was a series of interviews of U.S. Embassy officials who had served in Kabul by the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. The Foreign Service officers were also blunt.

Fourth are hundreds of interviews conducted by the US Army for historical research; that stated goal again spurred the troops into raw, straightforward sharing.

Finally, the University of Virginia’s Miller Center undertook an oral-history project on the presidency of George W. Bush. Whitlock obtained transcripts of interviews with military commanders, cabinet members, and other senior officials.

This combination of documents and interviews is what Whitlock calls a secret, but unflinching, history of the war.

Beyond Mere Griping

Now, those who carry out orders often question whether people giving them know what they’re doing – sometimes with good reason. What we have here, however, is very different than any generic complaining. The charges here are specific, detailed, and damning. Further, they are leveled by an extraordinarily wide range of individuals, from famous names atop organizational charts to unnamed eyewitnesses. Some are admissions by those giving the orders.

The accounts spare no one, and it is a rough ride indeed for each of the three administrations prior to Joe Biden’s. Partisan types will find some chapters much more fun than others. Cynics will revel in them all. For the rest of us, it’s eye-opening, infuriating, and heart-breaking.

A mind boggling array of mistakes, wrong-doing and failures was enabled by the nature of the information shared as events unfolded. Reports too often comprised a stream of spin, wishful thinking, exaggeration, omission of bad news, and outright lying. A combination of misfeasance and malfeasance spread over two decades and three administrations. Along with good intentions gone awry, it was born of fear, ignorance, arrogance, hubris, illogic, stubbornness, and dishonesty.

Initial Support

Before delving into a few of the details, it’s worth noting an interesting point made by Whitlock in the Forward:
Unlike the Vietnam War, or what would happen in Iraq in 2003, support for moving against Afghanistan following 9/11 was nearly unanimous. Widespread international sympathy over that day’s carnage brought support from outside America, as well. (Whitlock wryly notes that in Iran, “hardliners stopped shouting ‘Death to America’ at weekly prayers for the first time in twenty-two years”. xii)

We knew who hijacked the planes, and where Osama bin Laden had found safe harbor. This stood in stark contrast to the supposed grounds for the Gulf of Tonkin resolution – or to the lack of tie-in between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.

When the bombing of Taliban targets began in October of 2000, it was hardly controversial, then. What unfolded in the ensuing years is hard to comprehend, even in retrospect.

Early “Success”

Initial forays in October met with stiff resistance. With a new war strategy drafted by three men in four hours, however, US officials were surprised when the tide of battle suddenly turned in their favor in November. US and Northern Alliance forces seized major cities in a matter of days. Referring to October’s slow starting phase, Rumsfeld mocked references to Vietnam: “It looked like nothing was happening. Indeed, it looked like we were in a – all together now! – quagmire.” (11)

The US wasn’t sure how to take its unexpectedly quick success. Military brass favored limiting US presence both as to time and scope, given the impression that there was little left to do. Meanwhile, President Bush and his policy advisors found an ambitious program introducing American-style democracy irresistible. As White House security advisor Stephen Hadley put it, “once the Taliban was flushed, we did not want to throw that progress away.” (14) Sloppy practices, wishful thinking, objectives at cross purposes, and self-delusion crept into the mix, never to leave.

Not explicitly stated in the book, but apparent in the narrative, is that the Taliban deftly employed against US and Alliance forces a tactic roughly akin to Muhammad Ali’s rope-a-dope in boxing. It worked.

Missed Opportunities

Two chances for genuine success were missed in December of 2001. The more famous arose from intelligence placing Osama bin Laden in the caves and tunnels of Tora Bora, 30 miles southeast of Jalalabad. A two-week bombing campaign commenced on December 3. About 100 US commandos and CIA operatives were on the ground, with some militiamen having ties to Afghan warlords.

Why such a small force? Because Central Command had denied urgent requests for more from CIA and Army commanders who feared bin Laden would escape with al Qaeda survivors to Pakistan. Which is exactly what happened. (23-5) It would be another decade before the US would find bin Laden again.

The other opportunity was diplomatic (25-7). The United Nations facilitated a meeting in Bonn in which Afghan factions met with diplomats from the US, Europe, and Central Asia to discuss ending hostilities and Afghanistan’s future. Among the two dozen Afghan delegates were no representatives of the Taliban. That’s right: the group with whom hostilities needed to end weren’t there. This was the opposite of the mistake made nearly two decades later by Trump negotiating only with the Taliban, ending whatever hope remained for the government’s viability.

Exclusion of the Taliban doomed the accord reached in Bonn (naming Hamid Karzai interim leader and providing for a constitution and elections) on December 5 to failure. “A major mistake we made was treating the Taliban the same as al Qaeda,” according to Barnett Rubin, an American expert on Afghanistan serving the UN at Bonn. “Key Taliban leaders were interested in giving the new system a chance, but we didn’t give them a chance.” (26) Whitlock cites other experts who considered the dismissal of Taliban as inconsequential foes, needing simply to be punished, an enormous mistake.

Once the US made its move in Iraq, Afghanistan became a relative afterthought. This made righting the course even less likely. Hours before President Bush’s infamous “mission accomplished” speech about Iraq aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003, Rumsfeld publicly claimed major combat had ended in Afghanistan. Even with some hedging about pockets of resistance, his statements were beyond misleading. If only. 95% of eventual casualties hadn’t yet occurred. (43-4)

Happy Talk

As the going in Afghanistan gradually got much tougher in the ensuing months and years, sunny reports of progress flowed. They came from all sides, spokespersons to presidents. Some pronouncements were carefully worded to mislead; others dripped with swagger. At times, setbacks were omitted and data altered. These practices continued unabated, sometimes veering into the absurd.

Even while staying because things got worse, then, we had a steady stream of turning the corner; degrading the insurgency; turning the tide; and being on the right road. One whopper in particular saw repeated use over the years: Heavy resistance and even increased casualties were signs of progress, actually. They were the result of our having the enemy on the run.

The commander of US and NATO forces, Army Gen. David McKiernan, may have been the first general in Afghanistan to admit publicly there were aspects of the war not going well. Defense Secretary Robert Gates sacked him in May of 2009. (114, 145-6)

The “Bad Guys”

Despite multiple significant provocations, like attacks on East African US embassies in 1998 and on the USS Cole in 2000, the US knew virtually nothing about al-Qaeda on 9/11. In a University of Virginia oral-history interview, Gates said “the fact is that we’d just been attacked by a group we didn’t know anything about.” (19) Gates was CIA director in the early ‘90s and replaced Rumsfeld as Defense Secretary in 2006. This permitted a blurring of the lines between al-Qaeda and the Taliban from the outset.

Lumping the two groups together as “bad guys” would typify a simplistic approach that plagued the American effort for its duration. (20)

Perhaps the most striking document reproduced in the book follows page 108. It’s a snowflake memo from Rumsfeld dated September 3, 2003. Its entire contents:
“I have no visibility into who the bad guys are in Afghanistan or Iraq. I read all the intel from the community and it sounds as though we know a great deal but in fact, when you push at it, you find out we haven’t got anything that is actionable.
We are woefully deficient in human intelligence.
Let’s discuss it.”
So, after four months of hostilities in Iraq and nearly two full years in Afghanistan, the US Secretary of Defense was distressed to realize he didn’t even know who the bad guys were. Let’s discuss it?

The Taliban were Afghans with local objectives. Al Qaeda, on the other hand, was an international terrorist group of Arabs whose leader, bin Laden, was in Afghanistan because he’d been expelled elsewhere. There were some similarities in extremist religious beliefs, and bin Laden’s permitted presence justified action against the Taliban, but the two groups’ goals otherwise varied. The Taliban had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks, for example.

Considering the Taliban a homogeneous group was also a mistake. When Brig. Gen, James Terry asked an Afghan general to tell him about the Taliban, the reply was “Which Taliban?” Puzzled, Terry asked to learn about all types. There were three: (1) “radical terrorists”; (2) those “in it just for themselves”; and (3) “the poor and ignorant, who are simply influenced by the other two groups”. (101-2)

All along, we remained deficient in something at least as important as knowing who the enemy was: what motivated them to fight.

Oh, Whatever

The simplistic approach went well beyond conflating al Qaeda with the Taliban. It seems almost no one deployed to Afghanistan had even a basic introduction to the culture, language, norms or practices of the people.

When field artillery officer Maj. Daniel Lovett reported for Afghan training in 2005, an instructor (in cultural awareness, no less) started by saying “When you get to Iraq…” When Lovett corrected him, the reply was “Oh, Iraq, Afghanistan. It’s the same thing.” (70)

By way of unconventional warfare, the US military sometimes seeks to influence the thinking and emotions of people where the action is, by employing psychological operations, or “psy-ops”. Maj. Louis Frias deployed to Afghanistan in 2003 to lead the psy-ops effort, and prepared by reading Islam For Dummies on the plane ride.

One of the projects Frias led was to develop a comic book to convey the concept of voting. The project bogged down when diplomats at the US Embassy and military commanders all insisted on having their say on the content. Frias’s six-month tour of duty was over before anything was produced. He heard that something went into production, but had no idea about any effect. (67-8)

A couple years later, another psy-ops crew widely distributed soccer balls adorned with several images, including a verse from the Koran. Since placing holy words on a ball to be struck by foot was a sacrilegious insult, the military found itself publicly apologizing. (69)

Futile Attempts to Maintain an Army and Police

Any hope America had of ever extricating itself from Afghanistan in a manner considered successful depended on leaving behind a country that could defend itself and maintain reasonable order. This required establishment of both an army and police.

All attempts failed, with gory details of how and why throughout the book. That they would collapse at the first sign of America leaving was such a foregone conclusion that Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson demanded of Biden’s critics a detailed explanation of how the exit could have been managed without chaos and confusion.

“Please be specific”, he wrote on 8/26/21. “Did you see the Taliban waiting patiently while the US-trained Afghan army escorted U.S. citizens, other NATO nationals and our Afghan collaborators to the airport for evacuation?”

Pakistan

Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan is 1500 miles of mostly rough, mountainous terrain. Controlling it was undoable. Add to that the Pakistanis’ remarkable skill in playing both sides, and you had a puzzle the US never solved in two decades.

Most dramatically, it was Pakistan where Osama bin Laden fled upon escaping Tora Bora, and where the US found and killed him years later. But fighters and the supplies they needed were back and forth in ways reminiscent of Cambodia and Vietnam, only more so.

Pakistan military ruler Pervez Musharraf appeared to cut ties with the Taliban at the behest of the US after 9/11, and positioned himself as an ally. Pakistan not only allowed America to use their land, airspace and seaports, but also turned over a number of al Qaeda figures. Some were as significant as 9/11 plotters Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi bin al-Shibh. (82)

US opinion differed on whether Pakistan could not, or rather would not, help similarly to stem the Taliban’s cross-border insurgency. A discussion recounted in the book sheds some light. US ambassador to Pakistan Ryan Crocker one day got Ashfaq Kayani (the head of Pakistan’s spy agency, ISI) to explain: “one day you’ll be gone again…you’ll be done with us, but we’re still going to be here, because we can’t actually move our country. And the last thing we want with all of our other problems is to have turned the Taliban into a mortal enemy, so, yes, we’re hedging our bets.” (86-7)

Among the “Good Guys”

The only actors who may have been worse than the Bad Guys were some of the supposed Good Guys. Chapter ten of The Afghanistan Papers is The Warlords. In renewing relationships begun as far back as CIA assistance to mujahedin fighting the Soviets in the ‘80s, the US found itself aligned with warlords so despicable as to be almost cartoonish. The stories of Addul Rashid Dostum, Sher Mohammad Akhundzada (“SMA”), and Fahim Khan, among others, must be read to be believed. (115-127)

Despite their brutality, corruption, opium production and trafficking, murder, and other mayhem, such individuals played key roles in the battle against the Taliban. So vile were they, however, that many Afghans regarded the cruel and oppressive Taliban as the lesser of two evils.

Creeps

Many kinds of creep are featured in The Afghanistan Papers. One of the most damaging is “mission creep”. Every chapter highlights another instance in a repeating cycle over the 20 years of three administrations drifting from one ill-defined objective of sorts to another.

The mission had little choice but to creep, though, because it was never adequately defined. A chapter in the book is “An Incoherent Strategy”. The quotes, relating to the later Bush years, are among the most trenchant in the book, but apply to every phase of the 20-year operation.

Indeed, we were there so long that wrong-headed policies and tactical mistakes were recycled more than once, often by officials oblivious to the prior failures.

British Lt. Gen. David Richards, who led NATO forces in 2006, said flatly in a Lessons Learned interview, “There was no coherent long-term strategy…instead we got a lot of tactics.” (105) His successor, US Army Gen. Dan McNeill also found no plan in 2007. His instructions? Kill terrorists, build the Afghan army, and don’t fracture the alliance. “I tried to get someone to define for me what winning meant, even before I went over, and nobody could,” he related to Lessons Learned. (109)

In an effort to coordinate policy and strategy for Afghanistan and Iraq, President Bush appointed Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute his “war czar”. His Lessons Learned interview yielded this: “We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan – we didn’t know what we were doing. What are we trying to do here? We didn’t have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking.” (110)

Those who served bravely and well, and who paid for it with their lives, their limbs, or other aspects of their physical or mental health, deserved far better. At every phase of the conflict, straight and sensible answers to questions about what they were doing, and why, were lacking. It was a frustration they shared with the superiors they asked.

The Obama Years – Showing Them the Money

A recently-elected President Obama announced a large Increase in troops to carry out counter-insurgency, but with an odd twist. There would be a strict timetable for the mission of 18 months. This attempt to appease critics of the quagmire was seen widely as an obvious mistake, benefiting the Taliban.

Accompanying the troop surge was a massive effort to strengthen the Afghan economy and government. Even while denying nation-building, the administration sent unimaginable scads of money for any conceivable kind of project, whether wanted by Afghans or not. There were so many projects, and so much money, officials struggled to keep track. Even among projects completed, many were useless for being in areas our forces could not, or would not, secure.  

Anyone looking for the stereotypical “throwing money at a problem” could hardly do better than this. The harm here goes beyond just waste. The main impact was to ratchet up Afghanistan’s already-pervasive corruption by orders of magnitude.

Among the many mind-boggling stories (unused new schools becoming Taliban bomb-making factories, etc.), one in particular lingers long after reading. After the Taliban destroyed a bridge in Laghman, eager US officials hired a local construction firm to replace it. That firm’s owner had a brother in the Taliban. “Together, they had built a thriving business: the Taliban brother blew up US projects and then unwitting Americans paid his sibling to rebuild them.” (165)

Joseph Heller had to employ creative genius in Catch 22 to satirize the insanity that can occur during war; Whitlock achieves similar effect here simply presenting what actually happened.

Amid it all, reports to the press and public remained a steady stream of happy talk, deception, flawed data, and misleading statistics. There was even a bizarre ceremony in Kabul celebrating the “end” of the war on December 28, 2014. Not only was the war not over; it wasn’t going well at all. In truth, the perfect opportunity to end it had occurred over three years earlier, when bin Laden was eliminated on May 1, 2011.

Then There Was Trump – Bombs Away

After Donald Trump took the reins, he said some things that sounded familiar – the country’s weariness with the war, a resolve to win – but he did make some changes. Most dramatic was rescinding Obama’s restrictions on airstrikes in Afghanistan. With that, the amount of munitions dropped more than tripled and the number of airstrikes doubled.

Civilian deaths had resulted from awful mistakes during prior administrations, and we’d been slow at times to acknowledge the truth and express suitable remorse. Many analyses, not just in this book, identify these episodes as a major impediment to winning Afghan hearts and minds. Trump’s barrage was at a whole new level, however. According to Brown University’s Cost of War project, Trump’s first three years doubled average annual civilian deaths from airstrikes. (246)

This approach was the greatest recruitment tool ever handed to the Taliban; their fighting numbers swelled accordingly. (247) At that point, many Afghans now considered the Taliban the least of three evils – warlords, Taliban, and Americans (and the US-supported Afghan government).

Lessons Learned?

Is there a more painful irony than the title for the interviews conducted to prevent future mistakes? Anyone old enough had to recall desperate people clinging to US helicopters leaving Vietnam. We better learn some lessons this time.

The takeaway is not the wisdom of isolationism. Ever wonder what might have happened had the Japanese not attacked Pearl Harbor? No, the world is a worse and more dangerous place when America abdicates its leadership role, especially to bad actors. Somewhere between isolationism and running helter-skelter into conflicts we don’t understand, with no idea what to do, there is plenty of room for a properly engaged United States.

An even worse takeaway would be “Whatever you do, don’t speak candidly about your public service!” Security has its place, and appropriate use of classification can protect vital interests . A recurring theme of Other Aspects, however, is this: Any public policy needing to be defended with dishonesty is fatally flawed. Any public servant lying to the public without hesitation is no public servant, and needs to find another line of work. America works best when officials behave knowing that informed citizens are interested and paying attention.

It is impossible to overstate the importance of comprehensive, high quality intelligence. Success in a complex, dangerous world demands nothing short of excellence in the field. An anti-intelligence stance, like that of the last administration, must disqualify anyone seeking the presidency.

A Stab at Some Specifics

If we are going to send soldiers off to war, or any facsimile of it where life and limb are in jeopardy, at the very least we must be willing and able to:
– identify the bad guys
– be on the side of the good guys (which requires that there be good guys, and enough of them to have any chance of sustaining after we’ve left)
– articulate a coherent objective
– set benchmarks
– have some idea what will constitute victory
– think enough of our position and conduct as to permit honest appraisal and reporting
– know what we are doing
– know enough about the people, the region, and the cultures to understand what the conflict is about
– notice, and successfully adapt to, changing conditions

A Misadventure… and Yet…

There is a generation of Afghan girls who became young women having experienced some level of education. They know they deserved it, hopefully, and yearn to put that education to good use.

Similarly, it’s too soon to say that attempts to plant seeds among Afghans aspiring to another way of life – of whatever age, gender, or background – were futile.

This brings us to the dread topic of nation building. The twenty years saw frenzies of nation-building denial interspersed with frenzies of attempted nation building. Sometimes, they overlapped. It’s easy to see a toxic mix of hubris, arrogance and ignorance in the many, sometimes spectacular failures. To be sure, all three were involved.

Yet, there was something else, too. In the face of grinding poverty and relentless hardship, there is a desire based in human decency to share what we cherish of our American lifestyle. For that, we need not apologize. Yet, all is for naught unless we are effective. If we care as much as we’d like to think we do, it’s worth investing the time, energy and resources to understand people whose life experiences differ so drastically from our own.

Never Easy

None of this is to suggest that Afghanistan should have been easy. The place and its people are as different from the US and Americans as any on the planet. Climate and terrain are harsh and unyielding. The society is still largely tribal, with the very notion of a central government (or voting, or taxes, or anything other than local authority and tribal customs) utterly foreign to most. (38-9) In many areas, warlords rule. Anywhere but in the (relatively) sizable cities, life is a hardscrabble struggle to survive. Agrarian practices can be centuries old, and poppies are the leading crop. Poverty abounds.

Even the concept of time is different in Afghanistan compared to impatient Westerners. In 2006, US Ambassador to Afghanistan Ronald Neumann reported on a Taliban leader warning “You have all the clocks, but we have all the time.” (95) As the headline of a piece by Karen DeYoung in the 9/4/21 Washington Post put it, “As in the battlefield, the Taliban outlasted the U.S. at the negotiating table.”

Such striking differences made it more vital, not less, to carefully study the situation, to confront and convey reality, to respect the task at hand, and to proceed with thoughtful, strategic care. Reassess, think, and if nothing else, say “Hold it! What the hell are we doing here?” if we can’t even tell who the bad guys are.

All Americans, regardless of political inclination, have much to gain from pondering the issues raised in The Afghanistan Papers – and much to lose from ignoring them. Lessons learned? We owe it to ourselves and each other, even as Vladimir Putin now prepares to do what thuggish dictators so often do to divert attention from their failures.

Ken Bossong

© 2022 Kenneth J. Bossong

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There’s Much to Discover in Latest Lawsuit

Papers and newscasts mentioned that former President Donald Trump filed class action lawsuits Wednesday against Facebook, Twitter and Google over their suspensions of his accounts.

Three thoughts immediately came to mind; one in particular persists.

Thought #1: The First Amendment

The first, the suit’s lack of merit, has been mentioned widely elsewhere, citing various experts. As Paul Barrett, deputy director of NYU’s Center for Business and Human Rights was quoted in the Washington Post, Trump has the First Amendment “exactly wrong”. Facebook and Twitter have a First Amendment right to “determine which speech their platforms project and amplify – and that includes excluding speakers who incite violence…”

Indeed, the interesting question is whether, as many argue, such platforms have a duty to exclude such speech as crossing the line from speech into harmful conduct.

Thought #2: Irony

This was an offshoot of the first: the obvious irony of this purported conservative beseeching the Judicial Branch of the Federal Government to tell private companies how to run their businesses. (They must provide him accounts?) At least these defendants are large, powerful entities that can take care of themselves, compared to the countless individuals and small businesses ruined by dealings with him over decades.

As pointed out in prior posts, the Donald is “conservative” only when – and to the extent – it serves his immediate, personal interests. Any notion of his being a champion of the First Amendment is simply laughable.

Thought #3: Imagine the Discovery

But, most of all, the overriding thought was: Oh, how I would love to do discovery in defending these lawsuits! Lawyers for the defendants must be salivating at the prospect. They, along with prosecutors and investigators waiting in the wings, might almost hope the cases aren’t summarily tossed like the 60+ frivolous election cases. After all, this could be fun.

A Little Background

Before they go to trial, parties in legal cases both reveal and seek information reasonably available about the case they’re in. That applies to both the facts and legal arguments. The process for doing so is called “discovery”. Robust discovery is encouraged and often required.

It’s good for TV and movies to have last-minute “OMG!” surprises at trial. (Hey there, fans of Perry Mason.) It’s good public policy, however, to have parties better understand their opponents’ cases – and their own – earlier. Among the advantages of clarifying legal and factual issues up front are increasing the chances of (a) settling the case and (b) having a focused trial result in justice when the suit can’t settle.

Important point: We value discovery so highly that its scope is very broad. Generally, you don’t have to prove information would be admissible at trial in order to obtain it in discovery, for example.

Typically, all three methods of pre-trial discovery are under oath: interrogatories – where parties answer each other’s sets of questions; depositions – where witnesses testify; and (my favorite) requests for admissions – where parties must either admit or deny assertions made by the other party.

So…

It follows that anything arguably relevant is fair game for development via discovery. There are some very interesting items of relevance to the suspending of these accounts, given the events of January 6. Surrounding, but not necessarily limited to, January 6.

An obvious defense – perhaps the obvious defense – available in these lawsuits is that the plaintiff and his followers were misusing the defendants’ platforms to engage in dangerous, criminal, even seditious, conduct. The insurrection, horrendous in itself, is also both culmination of prior activity and precursor to future threats. (What exactly is to happen, by the way, when DT is NOT restored to the presidency in August?)

So, prepare those interrogatories, draft requests for admissions, and by all means schedule multiple depositions. And remind everyone that perjury is still a crime worth prosecuting.

Why’d He Do It?

This plaintiff has employed diversionary tactics often in the past. When something negative is brewing, outrageous statements and actions meant to distract are automatic. With various state and federal prosecutors poring over records, the organization being indicted, and Rudy Giuliani’s law license being suspended in New York, the seriously negative is just beginning to percolate. Perhaps he thought a pre-emptive strike in which he portrays himself as a victim might help.

On the other hand, maybe he just wanted his bullhorn back. He isn’t the lead story much anymore. It’s awful.

Finally, it may just be his latest fund raising scam.

Regardless, he may have been better off this time staying away from courtrooms and litigation. He’s going to be seeing more of each than he’d like, some on the criminal side, soon enough.

Ken Bossong

© 2021 Kenneth J. Bossong

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After a Glimpse Into the Abyss, It’s Truth or Bust

If I had written seven to ten years ago a satire depicting what has actually happened in the last five years, it would have been universally dismissed as too outlandish, and too dark to be funny. That could never happen here.

Now that it has happened, and threatens to continue, we the people have work to do.

Of all the assaults on societal norms in the last four years, the worst (and that’s saying something) is probably the assault on truth. We have been awash in a never-ending torrent of every kind of dishonesty.

This is no accident, or unfortunate byproduct of carelessness. It is a deliberate and appallingly effective strategy. Even worse than the volume and the outrageousness of the lies is the liars’ desired outcome: convincing people – lots of people, as many as possible – that square is round if they say so.

It’s not just about fooling people, then; it’s getting them to submit to the notion that the difference between true and false either doesn’t matter or doesn’t exist.

That’s where we are teetering, it seems, with millions of Americans. That matters, tremendously. So much does it matter that (other than combating the pandemic) our top priority as a nation should be committing to truthfulness – all the time, every one of us, even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts. In big things and in small.

What To Do Right Now on a National Level

Address Compellingly the Most Destructive Lies Circulating

At the top of the list is the apparent belief of millions of Americans in various ways that “the election was stolen.” It’s not enough to just call these beliefs “debunked” or “discredited”, though they certainly are both. Such blithe and passing characterizations assume that the facts are self-evident. That assumption is not serving us well as a nation.

For one thing, it’s condescending. For another, those holding such beliefs assume the “other side” is lying. People willing to steal an election would be willing to lie about it, they might suppose. It behooves us to have inarguable facts available to every American of good faith interested in the truth. Those too far gone to care what’s true are not the target audience here.

There seem to be five or six of these myths that are particularly widespread. Let’s consider two examples.

More Votes than Voters

One we keep hearing is that 200,000 more people voted in Pennsylvania than were registered to vote. Donald Trump’s tweeted version was that there were “205,000 more votes than voters.” I gather this is not only demonstrably false, but a misrepresentation of the original falsehood.

It seems Pennsylvania State Rep. Frank Ryan issued a release saying the Department of State have 202,377 more people voting at all (including 170,830 more voting for President) than a system called SURE had reported from voting in all the counties combined. The PA Department of State pointed out that Ryan had accessed incomplete information from SURE, before a number of counties had entered final data. That’s all there is to it, apparently.

In saner times, such an embarrassing misrepresentation would be withdrawn with a sheepish apology. That it hasn’t and continues to be repeated means we need a respected, non-partisan entity to destroy this lie in clear, unmistakable detail. Then publish and widely disseminate the analysis with similarly undeniable truth on other 2020-election-stolen whoppers.

The Old “Dead People Voted” Thing

Another widespread myth is the notion that tens of thousands of dead people voted. No, they didn’t. It still seems there is precisely one known case where a man had his long-dead mother vote in Pennsylvania (and he had her vote for Trump, no less). From Trump’s infamous January 2 phone call to Georgia’s (Republican) Secretary of State we know he was told directly that the number of dead people voting cases there was two. Yes, two.

There is no reason to believe any appreciable number of “dead people voted” in this election anywhere. So, we need that apolitical entity to gather all the information for each of the swing states.

Explain Clearly the Significance of the Dismissed Lawsuits

How Courts Work

Start with a reminder on how the courts work. The Judiciary is the branch of government that interprets the law, and then applies it to the facts found in deciding specific disputes. A party must prove a case in order to win it. Courts are where rumors, lies, and unsupported assertions go to die. Lawsuits seeking to overturn an election understandably have a significant burden to present compelling proof.

To grasp these election cases’ results, it helps to consider stages at which a case might fail. One can lose at trial, whether by judge or jury. Before that, there is summary judgment where one side convinces a judge that even if every allegation of the other side were believed, they still cannot win. Even before that, there is simple dismissal in many jurisdictions, where the court just throws out the case because there’s nothing there.

As might be expected, judges do not enjoy being reversed on appeal. If there’s any chance a case has merit, they’ll deny summary judgment to allow the finders of fact to figure it out at trial, with the rules of evidence in effect. Judges are even more reluctant to simply dismiss.

What Happened to the 60+ Cases

Of the over 60 cases filed contesting 2020 election results, it seems one motion was won. It involved the interpretation of a technical aspect of a law in Pennsylvania. The result had no practical effect on the outcome in Pennsylvania. Every other case lost.

Important to note: these cases did not just lose. Exasperated and incredulous judges summarily tossed them out as frivolous. THERE IS, LITERALLY, NO REASON TO BELIEVE THE 2020 ELECTION WAS STOLEN. NONE.

Again, a reputable entity with no axe to grind would help here. Get into details on some of the cases. That might include: how there weren’t even sensible allegations, much less any proof, in some cases; when supposed witnesses refused to come forth under oath; whether anyone is facing charges of perjury;  and if lawyers are facing ethics charges for filing frivolous pleadings, false affidavits, or anything in bad faith. Even if neither disciplined nor sanctioned, by the way, lawyers ruin their reputations filing rubbish in court.

Donald Trump was outraged that his appointing of judges did not make them his stooges. What we’ve been through should end any doubt about the critical importance of a truly independent judiciary.

What to Do Right Now on a Personal Level

In short: (1) hold ourselves to the highest standards of scrupulousness; and (2) refuse, however nicely, to accept known falsehoods from others.

Sending Information

Be scrupulous in what each of us says or sends. That includes care with important details, checking before forwarding or repeating; being skeptical of facts that don’t sound right; avoiding spin and exaggeration of facts either positive to one’s position or negative to others’; and exploring and admitting facts counter to our position.

That last one is interesting. Thomas Aquinas urged advocates to build up the opponent’s position before taking it apart, rather than denying any merit. It was good advice. Meanwhile, finding ourselves tempted to bend the truth in support of our position dictates considering what’s wrong with our position.

Receiving Information

Even as we hold ourselves accountable for telling the truth, so must we hold others, however nicely. The receiving end of false information has its own important challenges. Experience makes one a big fan of diplomacy, even while admitting it’s sometimes hard not to feel exasperation. As hard as it can be, a tactful, respectful, calm presentation of fact and perspective works best.

The question here is whether we’re engaging with another to get something off our chest, or to persuade. It is generally not effective to yell “That’s [expletive], you [expletive]ing [expletive]!!!” So if we’re looking to actually accomplish something, it’s take a deep breath and think about what we know that makes the information false, or where we can find a trustworthy, compelling answer.

To be clear, the approach suggested here is toward people of good will who have been conned. Those in high places who’ve been knowingly spreading such destructive lies are entirely different. Hold them to account, call them any name they deserve, and vote them out.

Humility’s Role

Unless you’re very different than I, you’ve been wrong more than a couple of times. And you’ve been “had” a few times as well. (See post of November 19, 2020.) It is neither fun nor easy to admit; sometimes it takes a while. The process of getting over being conned is somewhat similar to grieving, especially when we trusted, cared about, or held in high esteem the person or group who misled us. The stages can include slow realization, denial, anger, and embarrassment bordering on shame.

A dose of humility can help summon the patience it takes to give folks we care about the space they need to get over being conned. As essential as it is to counter falsehoods, it’s just as important to do so effectively – respectfully and with the truth.

Summary

It’s hard to believe we must exhort each other this way, but the saying is true: Honesty really is the best policy. And it’s anything but naiveté. We’ve seen where it brings us when we slip from spin to less than the whole truth, to little lies, to constant lies, to big lies, to constant Big Lies.

We can’t have it. None of it is acceptable, especially from persons in positions of trust, and from media outlets presenting themselves as “News”.

The Election of 2020 was actually a triumph of American democracy. In the midst of the worst pandemic in 100 years, more Americans than ever voted in the cleanest election it is possible to conduct in the real world. Voter suppression may have had an impact on the margins of the outcome, but it didn’t work regarding the outcome. Even the farcical hindering of the Post Office didn’t work. Extraordinary.

Yet, a series of endlessly repeated lies by the election’s loser, and his supporters, created an opening for our country’s enemies to dismiss our way of life as a pitiful sham. The culmination, at least so far, was on January 6, of course. Talk about un-American activity! It was planned and calculated to do us the most harm possible. It was also the last thing a new President needed.

As previously posted (again, post of November 19), Joe Biden, the Congress, federal and state prosecutors, ethics officials, and we citizens all must do our jobs.

After a glimpse into the abyss, it’s Truth or Bust. Demanding truth is not a luxury. Real patriotism requires nothing less.

Ken Bossong

© 2021 Kenneth J. Bossong

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This Should Be Interesting

Is You Is or Is you Ain’t?

For four years, most congressional Republicans have enabled and abetted Donald Trump’s criminal enterprise in the White House. Presumably, many of them were hoping to seek plausible deniability with “What was I to do? He was a President from my party!” after Trump was gone.

Thanks to the Mo Brooks, the Josh Hawleys, and the Ted Cruzes of the world, slipping quietly back into the ooze is no longer an option. (Oh, there’s a swamp in Washington, alright, but it consists not of talented, hardworking career public servants.) These guys seek to turn Wednesday’s joint-session formality of certifying Electoral College votes into the election reversal that it cannot be. Just when you thought nothing could be more embarrassing than all those utterly frivolous lawsuits…

This forces Republicans to take a stand, with the world watching. Mitch McConnell tried to stave this off, since it is a nightmare for the likes of him.

All will, in effect, declare whether they are members of the Republican Party or of the apparently newly-minted Trump Fascist Party. (Thank you, author Dick Hermann.) So, GOP or TFP? Will you begin the daunting process of reclaiming and restoring the party of Lincoln? Or will you try to vitiate the votes of millions of Americans, based on nothing, in a fruitless attempt to curry favor with a nihilist?

Treachery and Foolishness and Hypocrisy – Oh, My!

Members of Congress all know that Biden won the election, since there is literally no reason to believe otherwise. They know this was the cleanest election that can be had in the real world. Last I heard, there was precisely one case of a “dead person voting” actually proven. Some doofus in Pennsylvania acted to have his long-dead mother vote. For Trump.

The ones still trying to have it both ways must be incapable of shame for saying “It’s not ME, but all the people who believe this election was stolen. I’ve gotta represent them.” This is a weird combination of transparent hypocrisy and a boast about convincing many people of Trump’s stolen election lie. Feigning concern over non-existent voter fraud in order to attempt negating real votes is a special kind of treachery.

Another of Trump’s favorite Big Lies (the tactic itself a fascist favorite) is that a free press is “the enemy of the people”. He thus manages to emulate both Stalin and Goebbels, among others of history’s worst actors. On Wednesday, January 6, 2021, some real enemies of the people get to self-identify and join their hero in his march to infamy.

That act is absolutely disqualifying for future public service of any kind, at any level.

Meanwhile, one is left to hope the two-hour debates in each house of Congress will include a few true patriots rising to defend our country and its Constitution in words that resonate for years to come.

Tens of millions of us are watching. We will not forget and we will use our votes accordingly – for years to come.

Ken Bossong

© 2021 Kenneth J. Bossong

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Now What?! A Suggested Approach to Pre-Inaugural Angst

The pandemic rages on with more victims than ever. The President of the United States cares only about convincing as many of his followers as possible that the recent election was stolen, while knowing it was not. OMG, what crazy, stupid, lawless thing will the President do next? If we find ourselves anxiously fretting over this, the Donald has us right where he wants us.

OK, so how is one to react to the latest assault on our country’s democracy? Matter-of-factly. The time has come to stop rewarding Donald Trump and his followers with howls of outrage, however deserved. With the possible exception of the inherent pleasure they derive from wrongdoing, nothing pleases Trump or a true Trumpster more than the apoplexy they elicit with bad behavior.

So, it’s not “You make me so mad I can’t sleep!” Rather, it’s time to shrug and say, “We expected nothing but the worst possible behavior from you, Mr. President. Someone willing to obstruct justice as you have is certainly going to obstruct a transition. Hire your movers and the best criminal defense team you can find. Pitch a reality TV show. Please excuse us, though; we have a lot to do, repairing the damage you’ve done to this country.”

We Saw This Coming, Right?

We were expecting, maybe, bowing to the will of the people? A gracious acceptance of obvious reality? Cooperative transfer of power in the nation’s best interests? An end, or even slowdown, to the barrage of lies? Doing the right thing?

We thought that after the election Donald Trump would urge all Americans to take reasonable measures to protect themselves and each other? Tamp down the politicization of the pandemic? Do something that actually would help the economy?

This Republican “leadership” (excuse the expression) was going to rein in Donald Trump? They were going to say harming the country with lies demeaning its democracy was going too far? They’re going to get interested in saving lives after a quarter-million lost?

C’mon. Seriously?  

This is not to suggest that dishonesty does not matter; quite the contrary. Honest, experienced election officials – Republican, Democratic, and Independent – are receiving death threats for doing their jobs and telling the truth. Exhausted health workers report patients using their dying breaths to deny the virus killing them.

The most famous current report comes from South Dakota, where nearly a half million bikers sneered at science with a super-spreader event in Sturgis. There is no doubt why the Upper Midwest became one of the nation’s hotspots this fall. Unmasked and undistanced partiers went home to every state, and, combined with smaller but similarly foolish gatherings everywhere, have made the whole country a hot spot again. Dishonesty matters, alright, especially when believed.

A Few Undeniable Facts – Election

By all accounts, regardless of political persuasion, 2020 was the cleanest election anyone can remember. That stands to reason, since everyone knew it would be the most scrutinized election ever. Elections generally are clean; our system works. But the chance of getting away with election fraud in this one was closer to zero than ever.

Joe Biden won. His 306 electoral college votes were the same number garnered by Trump in 2016. For four years we’ve been hearing from the Donald that this was a “landslide”, despite losing the popular vote by around 2.9 million votes. In contrast, Biden’s 306 electoral votes in 2020 saw a corresponding popular vote victory of over 5.5 million. It’s a clear, solid win.

Any assertion to the contrary is not only incorrect, but a knowing lie. Everyone with access to the facts knows this election was clean. To suggest it was stolen is a slander against our country, and all those who work hard and well on its elections.

Overturning any election in court requires compelling proof. In cases filed against this election, forget about proving anything – what’s being alleged is incoherent. If any specific fact is asserted, it turns out not only false but often the opposite of the truth. The suits filed aren’t just losers; they are frivolous.

Yes, He Knows

By the way, of course Trump knows he lost. He knew he was cooked when Biden won the South Carolina primary and then did so well on Super Tuesday. Why else would he be furious with Elizabeth Warren for not pulling out of the race and backing Sanders? Trump knew he’d have a chance against Bernie. Why else did he pursue that idiocy in the Ukraine before Biden was even the nominee?

If he knows he lost, why this behavior now? The easy answer is he’s just being the Donald. It’s no mere sore-loser petulance, however. The sad truth seems to include: (1) This keeps him the lead story, even as a lame duck, as long as possible. (2) Whatever can be done to hurt Biden, he’ll do. (3) He enjoys harming people in general, and our country and its core values in particular. (4) There are a few more items on the to-do list Vladimir gave him. (5) He is helping himself to one last fleecing of his adoring followers. As has been reported elsewhere, the small print in the current fundraising indicates that little or no money raised actually funds the baseless lawsuits.

A Few Undeniable Facts – Pandemic

COVID-19 is not just another flu. It is more contagious, more stealthy, and much more deadly. Its presence in a person days before symptoms manifest means that people unknowingly spread the virus everywhere, unless they take measures.

Transmission of COVID-19 is by personal contact, specifically most often by respiratory droplets. How long they linger, and under what circumstances, are still not fully understood. It’s easy to understand, though, that people breathing on each other spreads the coronavirus. Keeping a distance of about six feet, and knocking down droplets with masks, obviously help. So do circulating clean air, cleaning surfaces, and avoiding crowds.

At any time in our history other than the Trump Era, denying any of the above would have been regarded universally as sheer lunacy. Yet, one mask seen at a farm stand said “This Is What Tyranny Looks Like!” No. This is what common sense looks like.

The message from the White House has been “Ignore those fins of the great white shark. Everyone in the ocean!” (Indeed, not to beat the point to death, but the presidential response to COVID since March has been a real-world, large-scale rendition of the film Jaws, complete with mayor telling citizens to ignore the experts for fear of slowing an economy.)

The Need for Consequences

The expression is “No good deed goes unpunished.” The only thing worse than good deeds being punished, though, is bad deeds going unpunished. The wrongdoing recently, like that of the last four years, has been so voluminous and so serious as to require consequences. Otherwise, there will be no credible deterrent to future crimes and unethical behavior in high places. Don’t go after little stuff, but don’t ignore really bad stuff, either.

This is not for Joe Biden’s attention, by the way. He has even more important things to do. At every level, state and federal, we have good people who have made it their lives’ work to respond to bad behavior. Unfettered, these experts can be trusted to just do their jobs in various realms.

The Civil Case Realm

It is entirely appropriate in most jurisdictions to request both attorneys’ fees and sanctions in response to frivolous litigation. Without a shred of evidence, the suits being filed by or on behalf of Donald Trump are the epitome of frivolous. Every pleading in response to this nonsense should contain requests for sanctions and attorneys’ fees. It’s bad enough that gullible Trump supporters send their money in for this “cause”, only to have all or most of it diverted. Why should taxpayers have to fund the defense?

It is worth remembering that certain doctrines of law, like fraud and the RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) Act, operate in both the civil and criminal arenas.

One other thought: How about a writ of mandamus against public servants who refuse to do their job in critical areas? This tends to come up when dedicated professionals are fired in favor of political hacks and donors. There are very good reasons for the Hatch Act and for political appointees to be greatly outnumbered in the public workforce.

The Ethical Realm

It is unethical for any lawyer to file pleadings lacking any merit. (RPC 3.1: A lawyer shall not bring or defend a proceeding, nor assert or controvert an issue therein unless the lawyer knows or reasonably believes that there is a basis in law and fact for doing so that is not frivolous.)

It is separately and especially unethical to do so knowingly. (RPC 3.3: A lawyer shall not knowingly: (1) make a false statement of material fact or law to a tribunal; (2) fail to disclose a material fact to a tribunal when disclosure is necessary to avoid assisting an illegal, criminal or fraudulent act by the client… (4) offer evidence that the lawyer knows to be false… or (5) fail to disclose to the tribunal a material fact knowing that the omission is reasonably certain to mislead the tribunal…)

Attorney Ethics prosecutors, often called Bar Counsel, should prepare themselves for a wave of cases. The Rules of Professional Conduct are not limited to those in private practice, by the way; they apply to all licensed lawyers.

Lawyers aren’t the only ones with ethics standards. Other professions, like medicine, have them. All three branches of the federal government have offices to ensure ethical conduct. While Trump and congressional Republicans each consider whether there is any act whatever Trump could do that would draw condemnation, here’s a link to the Office of Congressional Ethics: https://oce.house.gov/learn/citizen-s-guide

The Criminal Realm

The enormity in volume, scope, and severity of the crimes committed by and on behalf of Donald Trump boggles the mind. And that’s just what we already know. History will teach that our President Law ‘n’ Order broke more laws than any other ever, perhaps more than all others combined.

Crimes (like perjury, fraud, treason) each have elements that must be proven. They either happened or they didn’t. They either can or cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

The topic of pardons would justify its own post. Suffice it to say (as I have been for a couple years) that on his way out, Trump will

  • Pardon a long list of bad actors who committed crimes at his behest or for his benefit and
  • Either resign and have Pence pardon him, or pardon himself – or both

Donald Trump may find one last constitutional crisis irresistible, so brace yourself for that self-pardon thing. I’m not aware of anything definitive on whether a president can do it, but there’s this from a memorandum opinion written in the time of Nixon out of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel:

“Pursuant to Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution, the ‘Power to grant…Pardons for Offenses against the United States…’ is vested in the President. This raises the question whether the President can pardon himself. Under the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case, it would seem that the question should be answered in the negative.”

As to Vice President Pence: he is not in Jerry Ford’s position; Trump is not in Richard Nixon’s position; and someday maybe we’ll count the number of Trumpian scandals that dwarf Watergate. Depending on how far Trump is willing to go with his treachery before January 20, the 25th Amendment, Section 4, might be the more to the point than Article II.

Finally, I’ve seen a suggestion that Biden should pardon Trump. I don’t think he should, and I don’t think he will.

A Quick Story

As an undergrad a long time ago at Rutgers, I bought an advance general admission ticket to a concert. I was excited because it was my first chance to see Archie Shepp, then as now one of my favorite tenor saxophonists. Excited enough was I to not pay attention as I approached the outside doors. Someone stuck out his hand and I handed him my ticket. While peering inside the lobby, I didn’t notice at first that the stub wasn’t given back to me. I looked back and the guy was gone, with my ticket.

At first, I was puzzled. Looking back inside the lobby, I realized they were actually taking tickets at the doors from the lobby into the venue. The ticket was gone, I couldn’t prove anything or identify the guy, and I couldn’t afford another ticket. I was almost as angry at myself as the thief. How could I have been so stupid? I hated the feeling of being “had”. (Indeed, until now, I haven’t told this story to very many people.)

It’s happened to most of us, one way or another, and we all hate the feeling of having been had. For at least two reasons, we don’t want to believe that’s what has happened. First, someone did something wrong to us. Second, we feel really foolish.

Millions have been had by Donald Trump. Some will never realize it; some will realize it, but never admit it. Some have realized it, or are beginning to realize it, already; for others it will take a while. It’s never easy, and it hurts. He’s quite the con man.

All cons are not the same, but it does feel better to learn from it and let it go. I’ve enjoyed many great events at Rutgers over the years. I’ve also seen Archie Shepp play three times now, worn out some of his albums, and loved every second of it.

So…

True and False.
Good and Bad.
Right and Wrong.

My parents taught me all about these concepts – which was which, and why the distinctions between them always matter. I’m eternally grateful. It’s time to fix the mess we’re in, preferably together. We’ve never needed these, our first principles and the building blocks of society, more.

To be effective, it’s better to skip the snark and the vitriol, but we must insist on fairness, and answer every lie with the truth. Investigate all wrongdoing, wherever the truth takes us. Prosecute proven crimes. Discipline breaches of Ethics. Do all this not out of spite or revenge, but simple justice. We can’t afford not to do it.

Matter-of-factly.

Ken Bossong

© 2020 Kenneth J. Bossong

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It’s Mueller Time, Now More Than Ever

The Mueller Report has grown in importance, not diminished, ever since it was published in March 2019. All that’s needed to grasp its crucial takeaways and the Big Question it presents is keeping in mind three key points.

I. Background For Understanding The Report

The Mueller Report was the most misunderstood big story of 2019. Its official title, Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election, is hardly catchy, but the Mueller Report never was the non-event it was portrayed to be. Given what’s transpired since its release and the looming election, it is more relevant (and understanding it is more important) than ever.

People just didn’t get major aspects of the Report. Attorney General Barr’s misrepresentation of its contents before its release contributed mightily to confusion and misperception, as intended. Indeed, the fog was necessary to keep the Trump administration going. The hope was, and is, that Americans not read the Report for themselves.

It’s a shame. Grasp three key concepts, and how they inter-relate, and the significance of the Mueller Report is right there for the taking at any level of detail desired. The three points are: (1) Mueller believed he could not indict Trump. (2) Therefore, Mueller would not say whether Trump had committed a crime. (3) Underlying everything is the burden of proof in a criminal case, “Beyond a Reasonable Doubt” (BARD).

The first point is discussed but seldom fully understood. The most subtle, intriguing, least discussed, and useful point for understanding what puzzles and frustrates people about the Report is the second. It’s explicitly there, though, just like point #1 from which it flows.

Reading the Report is highly recommended. Yes, it’s long and the redactions are annoying. (Speaking of which, many of the redactions were about Roger Stone’s then-ongoing case. That debacle has played out. ISSUE AN UNREDACTED VERSION, NOW!)  The Report isn’t literature, but the content – what took place – is spellbinding.  The following is a relatively brief guided tour.

Key Point #1: Mueller Never Was Going To Indict the President

Robert Mueller was Special Counsel charged with handling the investigation and reporting to the Attorney General. As such, he was working under the Department of Justice. The DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) had issued an opinion finding that “the indictment or criminal prosecution of a sitting President would impermissibly undermine the capacity of the executive branch to perform its constitutionally assigned functions” in violation of “the constitutional separation of powers.”

Ordinarily, an investigating prosecutor has a binary decision to make: either prosecute or decline to prosecute. This being no ordinary investigation, Mueller determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment. That’s because he adopted the OLC’s legal conclusion: It would be bad public policy and arguably unconstitutional to indict or prosecute a sitting President of the US. In his words, “we recognized that a federal criminal accusation against a sitting President would place burdens on the President’s capacity to govern and potentially preempt constitutional processes for addressing presidential misconduct.”

In other words, (a) An indicted president can’t govern; and (b) Since electing a president is a political process, removal should be political, too, rather than legal. Impeach, then indict. We know what happened with impeachment (see Senate Republicans, I Know What You Did Last Winter, post of 6/23/20). Thereafter, the proper order became: Elect someone else, then indict. We’ll learn more on Tuesday, November 3.

So, why bother to investigate, then? Mueller anticipated that question. Paring down his answer: The OLC opinion recognizes that (1) One does not indict a sitting president, but a criminal investigation of a sitting POTUS is permissible. (2) A POTUS does not have immunity after leaving office. (3) Individuals other than the POTUS may be prosecuted. Therefore, Mueller proceeded: “we conducted a thorough factual investigation in order to preserve the evidence when memories were fresh and documentary materials were available.” [See pages 213-4. All page references are out of the Report’s total 448.]

As it turned out, unfortunately, some memories were more flawed or fabricated than fresh, and important documents weren’t as available as they should have been.

Key Point #2: Mueller Would Not Say Whether the President Committed a Crime

Ordinarily, the threshold step in deciding whether to prosecute or decline is to assess whether a person’s conduct “constitutes a federal offense.”  Mueller believed fairness dictated that he not even reach that assessment, given that criminal prosecution was out of the question.

Why? Because the protections provided within a public criminal trial is how individuals get a chance to clear their name. “In contrast, a prosecutor’s judgment that crimes were committed, but that no charges will be brought, affords no such adversarial opportunity for public name-clearing before an impartial adjudicator.” (214) Such fairness concerns would be heightened in the case of a sitting president.

Get this, and you are on your way with the Mueller Report: It would be unfair to accuse informally, and not indict.

Key Point #3: BARD – the Highest Burden of Proof – Was in Effect

Parties in legal cases have one of three burdens of proof – i.e. the degree of certainty they must prove for their side of a dispute to prevail. For example, the most common burden of proof is the lowest, “Preponderance of the Evidence”. In effect in civil cases for damages, it means proving your version of the facts is “more likely than not” what happened. (Another burden, “clear and convincing” is in between the other two, used in limited instances not relevant here.)

At the other end of the spectrum, the highest burden of proof is in effect in criminal cases: “Beyond a Reasonable Doubt”. Prosecutors must show there is no reasonable doubt that (a) a crime was committed and (b) the defendant committed it. Note that it’s not Beyond All (or Any) Doubt. So, who decides which doubts are “reasonable”? The jury.

If defense counsel does a good job in arguing reasonable doubt, the judge instructs the jury properly, and jurors take their role seriously, prosecutors have their work cut out for them with BARD. Combine this burden of proof with the first two key points, and a prosecutor more interested in doing his job scrupulously than throwing his weight around, and what do you get? The highly nuanced Mueller Report.

Robert Mueller’s Uniquely Delicate Task

No one knew better than Robert Mueller just how unique and delicate his role was. Nationally renowned as he was as a federal prosecutor, Mueller was still a non-politician in a very public setting. He presented himself as a man determined to discharge his duties fairly and honorably. For example, I loved what he said to the press while conducting the investigation: nothing.

Robert Mueller was never going to indict a sitting president (key point #1). He was never going to even express an opinion as to whether his conduct was illegal (key point #2). Some “Witch Hunt”, wasn’t it? Had he bent over backwards any further to be fair to the president, Mueller would have broken his back.

Mueller took a lot of heat for it, too. Some thought him wrong with #1, that his authority in this assignment would have permitted prosecution of the president. Many thought him wrong about #2, if they even bothered to grasp the point. Displeasure with him was from all sides, the result of his being neither the avenging angel sought by Democrats nor the exonerator Republicans wished to portray.

In particular, we’ve heard a lot about how poorly Mueller “performed” in his congressional testimony. He was hesitating, halting, asking for questions to be repeated, relying on the report, refusing to opine or characterize beyond the report, appearing to stumble while searching for the correct words.

Perhaps a Mueller presentation may have been more fluid a decade earlier. In general, though, complaining viewers did not realize what they were seeing. Mueller said the Report was his testimony and that he would not go beyond it, then actually did what he said. He was absolutely determined not to prejudice other ongoing investigations, or go beyond the purview of this one. There was good reason to resist attempts to put words in his mouth that were not in the Report, or to give questioners a second chance to ask something coherent. Many pauses involved processing subtleties and complexities, while being exquisitely fair to all in a setting where an answer’s every nuance mattered.

My impression, then, was of a career prosecutor who came by his impeccable reputation honestly; of a life-long Republican who found this one of his most distasteful assignments; and of a patriot worried about the country he loves and serves. Getting Mueller wrong may have had something to do with how unaccustomed citizens became to seeing a person of stature inside the beltway behaving honorably on the big stage.

II. Takeaways from the Report

Armed with the three key points, one can delve into the Mueller Report and emerge with any number of important takeaways. Here are a few.

Russian Interference With the 2016 Election Was Massive and Undeniable

Volume 1 of the Mueller Report, 199 pages, is devoted to detailing the nature and extent of Russian interference in the 2016 election. It makes for astonishing and appalling reading.

The Report breaks Russian efforts into two broad categories: (1) a social media campaign led by something called the Internet Research Agency (IRA) and (2) a hacking and dumping operation by a Russian intelligence service known as the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Army (GRU).

The IRA

The social media campaign, begun as early as 2014 to generally undermine the US electoral system, fell in behind Donald Trump as an early candidate and then as the Republican nominee. IRA created phony entities under Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Some of them sounded like they were invented for satire, but had hundreds of thousands of followers. All told, as many as 126 million Americans were reached with false information and divisive messages.

Posing as American grassroots activists, the IRA also created, promoted, and held rallies in the US. The Russians sent notice of an event through the phony social media accounts, then recruited coordinators for the event from those who responded enthusiastically. IRA operatives would claim a schedule conflict as the event approached, leaving the recruited American coordinator to promote the rally with the media and run the show. An early (2015) event was a “confederate rally”; from June 2016 on, they were pro-Trump and anti-Clinton. Page 31 of the Report displays an IRA poster promoting a “Miners For Trump” rally in Pennsylvania.

A glance at the names of some fake IRA-backed groups active on Facebook alone shows the breadth of Russia’s insidious efforts at sowing discord: “Stop All Immigrants”, “Being Patriotic”, “Secured Borders”, “Tea Party News”, “Blacktivist”, “Black Matters”, “Don’t Shoot Us”, “LGBT United”, and “United Muslims of America” [page 25].

The GRU

The second category of interference, GRU’s hacking campaign, began in March 2016. It started with the email accounts of Clinton campaign volunteers and employees, including campaign chair John Podesta. By April, the GRU had hacked into the networks of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). Hundreds of thousands of documents were stolen.

Release of materials was timed to assist Trump and hurt Clinton. Example: the first dump of Podesta materials by WikiLeaks occurred on October 7, 2016, about an hour after release of the infamous 2005 “hot mic” video in which Trump boasted of sexual assault exploits to Access Hollywood’s Billy Bush.

There’s also this: On July 27, 2016, “candidate Trump announced that he hoped Russia would recover emails described as missing from a private server used by Clinton when she was Secretary of State (he later said that he was speaking sarcastically)” [page 5]. There’s that pesky sarcasm again; such a jokester, that Donald. However, “Within approximately five hours of Trump’s statement, GRU officers targeted for the first time Clinton’s personal office.” [page 49]

Information Warfare

The second sentence of the Report, on page 1, is this: “The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.” Elsewhere, it points out that the IRA referred to its own tactics as “information warfare”. In short, as said by former NJ Attorney General John Farmer, Jr. in a terrific piece in the 4/21/19 Philadelphia Inquirer, “Taken as a whole, those measures were a cyber invasion of our nation, an act of virtual war.”

In his testimony, Mueller said, “Over the course of my career I have seen a number of challenges to our democracy. The Russian government’s effort to interfere in our election is among the most serious.”

The Report Did NOT Say “No Collusion!/No Cooperation!/No Conspiracy!”

Far from it. It concludes that Special Counsel had not gathered enough evidence at that point to be confident of conviction.

This is the burden of BARD at work. In reviewing the Report, never forget that these are criminal law considerations. Note the use of careful language like “not sufficient to establish” throughout, in explaining instances where prosecution was declined. This is a prosecutor being careful not to charge unless very sure of sustaining the burden of proof. (His batting average for obtaining convictions on those charged was as high as it could be, thus setting the stage for disgraceful intervention in the cases of Roger Stone and Michael Flynn by Attorney General Barr and President Trump.)

The Report sets forth both an eagerness on the part of the Trump Campaign to conspire and numerous contacts between the campaign and Russian operatives.

Individuals were indicted for lying and obstructing, but no member of the campaign was indicted for conspiring with the Russians.

Three possibilities suggest themselves here. Either:

  1. There was no conspiracy because the Russians concluded from contacts with the Trump campaign – like the meeting at Trump Tower of 6/9/16 in which Donald Trump, Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort were disappointed not to receive dirt on Clinton – that they’d do better helping  Trump get elected without them;
  2. There was a conspiracy, but the obstruction of justice laid out in Volume 2 succeeded in preventing Special Counsel from proving it beyond a reasonable doubt; or
  3. To borrow a concept from Antitrust law, conscious parallelism occurred. (Bear with me here, or just skip this part.) Without explicitly agreeing to fix prices, competitors in a market sometimes simply behave as if they had. With no smoking gun, it’s harder to prove, but conscious parallelism is an antitrust violation. The question here would be whether the parties had the sophisticated wherewithal to pull off such a nod-and-a-wink political conspiracy.

Before letting this topic go, I should mention that the weakest part of the Report for me, admittedly no expert on criminal law, was the explanation of why that Trump Tower meeting of June 9 did not constitute criminal conspiracy. Pages 184 to 188 contain a fine explication of the law but an unpersuasive application of it to the facts. Counsel fusses over his ability to prove, BARD, two elements of conspiracy, thing-of-value and willfulness. Yet, it seems incredible that (a) the anticipated dirt on Hillary would not be a “thing of value” and (b) individuals so high up in a major party’s presidential campaign could be held so ignorant of basic election law as to be incapable of willfulness.

Obstruction of Justice

Volume 2 of the Report presents a compelling case of breathtaking obstruction of justice by the President and others. The details are as comprehensive as they are appalling. As with the facts underlying the Trump impeachment, Nixon’s Watergate cover-up shrivels into insignificance by comparison.

Here is the Conclusion to the executive summary of Volume 2:

Because we determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment, we did not draw ultimate conclusions about the President’s conduct. The evidence we obtained about the President’s actions and intent presents difficult issues that would need to be resolved if we were making a traditional prosecutorial judgment. At the same time, if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgment. Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.

The only reasonable conclusion to draw from Volume 2 is this: There is only one reason Donald Trump was not indicted for multiple counts of obstruction – he was a sitting president. So why doesn’t Mueller just say so? Because Key Point #2, above, is just as important as Key Point #1. This was as far as Mueller felt he could go.

If you doubt my assessment of this as a non-expert in criminal law, please consider a Statement made public on May 6, 2019 (available here: https://medium.com/@dojalumni/statement-by-former-federal-prosecutors-8ab7691c2aa1) by a group who are certainly experts – former federal prosecutors. They describe themselves thus: We served under both Republican and Democratic administrations at different levels of the federal system: as line attorneys, supervisors, special prosecutors, United States Attorneys, and senior officials at the Department of Justice. The offices in which we served were small, medium, and large; urban, suburban, and rural; and located in all parts of our country.

Their conclusion, supported with analysis: Each of us believes that the conduct of President Trump described in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report would, in the case of any other person not covered by the Office of Legal Counsel policy against indicting a sitting President, result in multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice.

The Mueller report describes several acts that satisfy all of the elements for an obstruction charge: conduct that obstructed or attempted to obstruct the truth-finding process, as to which the evidence of corrupt intent and connection to pending proceedings is overwhelming. These include:

· The President’s efforts to fire Mueller and to falsify evidence about that effort;

· The President’s efforts to limit the scope of Mueller’s investigation to exclude his conduct; and

· The President’s efforts to prevent witnesses from cooperating with investigators probing him and his campaign.

The Statement is signed by 1,027 former prosecutors. That’s right – over a thousand experts put the lie to the “fake news, witch-hunt, hoax”. If he’s indicted for multiple crimes after leaving office, Donald Trump will get what he deserves: the opportunity a trial entails to clear his name. If not, it will be official: someone is above the Law.

On “Exoneration”

An interesting exchange during Robert Mueller’s testimony was then-Rep. John Ratcliffe taking him to task for the second half of the Volume 2 Conclusion above, especially the last sentence not exonerating the president. The essence of Ratcliffe’s point was that Special Counsel lacked the authority to exonerate or not exonerate President Trump.

Mueller could have been accused of setting up a straw man and knocking him down (a pet peeve of mine, by the way), except for one important thing. He knew Trump was the type to claim falsely that the Report exonerated him and felt the responsibility to head that misconception off at the pass. Sure enough, Trump couldn’t wait to prove him right by claiming total exoneration – and that’s even with the Report’s detailed explanation why it did not and could not have exonerated him.

This chirping about exoneration makes an interesting contrast with Trump’s now-famous response to hearing that Mueller had been appointed: “According to notes written by Hunt, when Sessions told the President that a Special Counsel had been appointed, the President slumped back in his chair and said, ‘Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I’m f—-d.’ ” [page 78] He had every reason to believe that.

It is worth noting that, as in numerous other published accounts of President Trump’s misfeasance, the Report describes instances where underlings prevented further damage by ignoring, deflecting, delaying or refusing orders by Trump to engage in wrongdoing. Remarkably, it could have been even worse.

III. The Big Question

Taking a deep breath and a step back from all the technical details and legal arguments, we’re left with one Big Question. Oddly, it has received little public discussion.

We’ve seen the extraordinary lengths (time, effort, and expense) that Russia went to in aid of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign. The Report makes clear there can be no doubt on this and that more detailed evidence than anyone has time to read is available to prove it. Indeed, no one but Donald Trump even pretends to doubt it.

The question of whether such efforts were enough to alter the 2016 election’s outcome has lurked ever since. At this juncture, though, we’re more concerned with what effect Russia’s continuing efforts are having on the 2020 election. Let’s set that aside.

The Big Question is simply “Why?”

Why did Russia in general, and Vladimir Putin in particular, want Donald Trump to be President of the United States so very badly? Why does that continue?

Forgive me, fans of Hillary Clinton, but it cannot be that Putin was quaking in his boots at the prospect of a Clinton presidency. One of the most concerning aspects of President Obama’s eight years was how Putin consistently had his way with him – and no less so while Clinton was Secretary of State.

Notwithstanding false denials, there was the prospect of building a Trump Tower in Moscow. But if any hanky-panky were involved, it would be your garden-variety corruption that could occur whether or not Trump were President. In fact, the project, with or without wrongdoing, actually would have been easier without the glare of the presidency.

Why does Donald Trump admire Vladimir Putin, one of the world’s truly evil men, so unabashedly, to the point of hero-worship? Why and how does a president behave as Trump did in Helsinki? Why did Putin want Trump to be President so desperately that no effort or expense was spared?

Why the Big Question Matters

With no satisfactory answer, the question keeps presenting itself as each episode of President Trump’s bizarre and otherwise inexplicable handling of our international affairs unfolds. The long list includes seemingly impulsive and erratic behavior in troop movements, withdrawal from negotiated international agreements, and treatment of allies as enemies and enemies as allies.

With few exceptions, such behavior leaves experts in the affected fields, including (one hopes) the president’s own hand-picked advisors in the White House, aghast and repulsed. More importantly, such actions withdraw the US from the international stage, leaving the world a worse and more dangerous place. Every lessening of American presence and influence creates a void. Guess who is eager to fill the vacuum that Nature abhors. 

Again, if Donald Trump were to be re-elected, does anyone doubt that he would seek to withdraw the US from NATO? Guess who would be thrilled with that development.

Note the consistency in Russia’s strategy; it’s the classic Divide and Conquer. Yes, they worked to bolster candidate Trump and diminish Hillary Clinton. The most striking detail, however, was Russia’s unrelenting effort to sow anger, confusion, and especially division among Americans. Arguably, we needed less prodding than we should have, but they’ve been more successful dividing us than they could have dreamed. Similarly, Putin’s clear path to restoring Russia’s prominence is to divide those nations whose freedoms and way of life threaten him.

Again, why does Putin want Donald Trump to be President of the United States so very badly? Why was he so confident that a President Trump would deliver as he has? And, what’s in it for the Donald?

Finally, who wants a President of the United States about whom such questions can be asked credibly, with urgent concern? Guess we’ll see soon enough.

Ken Bossong

© 2020 Kenneth J. Bossong