Interesting Restoring Draft Article. Biden Time Article Too. Kurd/Turks Complicated Issue. Democrat Platform Full of Fiscal Termites.

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This article was sent to me by a dear friend, a true friend of the military and a fellow memo reader.

I told him I had the usual concerns about a draft driven military but after reading the op ed the author touched on all of my concerns and seems to have approached them with answers outside the box.  (See 1 below.)

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This too was sent to me by a dear friend and fellow memo reader.  (See 2 below.)

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More on the Kurds' issue. (See 3 below.)

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Democrat Platform has termites. (See 4 below.)

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Dick

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1) Why Bringing Back the Draft Could Stop America’s Forever Wars

Ackerman is the author of the memoir Places and Names: On War, Revolution, and Returning and three novels, including Waiting for Eden. He served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, received the Silver Star, the Bronze Star for Valor, and the Purple Heart.

By Elliot Ackerman

Around Memorial Day each year, I take my children to Arlington National Cemetery.

I’ve got friends buried there, and I think the best way to tend to their memory is to tell my kids stories about them. Who knows, maybe when my kids are grown up, they’ll pass some of those stories down to their own kids. I try not to take them on Memorial Day itself, as it is packed, so usually we wind up there after school the week before. Two years ago on our visit, a detachment from the Old Guard–the ceremonial troops who work at Arlington–was lined up in formation behind a riderless horse and caisson. My kids asked me what was going on, and I explained that the soldiers were preparing for a funeral.

As I told this to my daughter, I caught myself staring across the Potomac, toward downtown Washington. Observing the indifferent afternoon hustle, a sadness came over me. But I was with my kids, so I shook it off. We visited a few more graves, I told a few more stories. Then we left.

On the drive home my daughter asked if someday she would have to fight in a war.

“Only if you want to, kiddo,” I answered, but could feel my response stick in my throat.

I then glanced into the rearview mirror, at that little sliver of her face that was just her eyes, and I watched as she tried to understand the difference.

2019 marks the first year someone born after 9/11 will be eligible to enlist in the armed forces to potentially serve in Afghanistan or another theater in the global war on terror. Never before in our history has an American been able to fight in a war that is older than they are. Currently our civil-military divide is arguably as wide as it has ever been. The burden of nearly two decades of war–nearly 7,000 dead and more than 50,000 wounded–has been largely sustained by 1% of our population. From Somalia to Syria, American forces are engaged in combat. With recent military posturing against Iran, against North Korea, it is also easy to imagine our country sleepwalking into another major theater war. To avoid those outcomes–a major theater war, the continuance of our “terror wars,” the attendant loss of life–we must move the issues of war and peace from the periphery of our national discourse to its center. And the only way to do that, I increasingly believe, is to reconsider the draft.

Congress has also taken a renewed interest in the draft, having created in 2016 a bipartisan National Commission on Military, National and Public Service charged with two missions. The first is to determine “whether the Selective Service registration requirement should be extended to include women”–this in light of the 2015 reforms that allow women unrestricted military service. The second is to “explor[e] whether the government should require all Americans to serve in some capacity as part of their civic duty and the duration of that service.” The commission is slated to submit these recommendations to Congress and the President in March 2020. This past January, while it continues to hold hearings in communities across the country, it released its first interim report.

The report found that Selective Service is “a mystery to most Americans,” who were not aware that all men ages 18 to 25 have a legal obligation to register in case of a draft. Although the draft was abolished in 1973, the Selective Service registration requirement was resumed in 1980, when after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, a capability to conscript was again deemed critical to the national defense. The system for registering for Selective Service is passive: it occurs when you apply for your driver’s license or federal student aid. Most American males aren’t even aware that they’re registered for the draft. Furthermore, the commission’s interim report deals explicitly with the numbers we’d be talking about if a draft ever again occurred. Under the military’s current standards, 71% of Americans ages 17 to 24 do not meet the physical or mental qualifications for military service. People often assume the draft was compulsory for an entire generation, but this was never the case. Of those killed in Vietnam, the war most inextricably linked to the draft, 69.3% were volunteers.

To wage war, America has always had to create a social construct to sustain it, from the colonial militias and French aid in the Revolution, to the introduction of the draft and the first-ever income tax to fund the Civil War, to the war bonds and industrial mobilization of World War II. In the past, a blend of taxation and conscription meant it was difficult for us to sustain a war beyond several years. Neither citizens nor citizen soldiers had much patience for commanders, or Commanders in Chief, who muddled along. Take, for example, Washington reading Thomas Paine’s The American Crisis as a plea to his disbanding army before it famously crossed the Delaware (“These are the times that try men’s souls …”) or Lincoln, whose perceived mismanagement of the Civil War made his defeat in the 1864 presidential election a foregone conclusion (until Atlanta fell to the Union two months before the vote). The history of American warfare–even the “good” wars–is a history of our leaders desperately trying to preserve the requisite national will because Americans would not abide a costly, protracted war. This is no longer true

Today the way we wage war is a historical–and seemingly without end. Never before has America engaged in a protracted conflict with an all-volunteer military that was funded primarily through deficit spending. Of our current $22 trillion national debt, approximately $6 trillion is a bill for the post-9/11 wars. These have become America’s longest, surpassing Vietnam by 12 years. And it’s been by design. In the aftermath of 9/11, there was virtually no serious public debate about a war tax or a draft. Our leaders responded to those attacks by mobilizing our government and military, but when it came to citizens, President George W. Bush said, “I have urged our fellow Americans to go about their lives.” And so, the war effort moved to the shopping mall.

In fairness to Bush, when read as a response to a terrorist attack designed to disrupt American life, his remarks are understandable. However, when read in the context of what would become a two-decade military quagmire, those same remarks seem negligent, even calculated. This is particularly true for a generation of leaders (both Republican and Democrat) who came of age in Vietnam, when indignation at the draft mobilized the boomer generation to end the war, one that otherwise might have festered on like the wars today.If after 9/11 we had implemented a draft and a war tax, it seems doubtful that the millennial generation would’ve abided 18 successive years of their draft numbers being called, or that their boomer parents would’ve abided a higher tax rate to, say, ensure that the Afghan National Army could rely on U.S. troops for one last fighting season in the Hindu Kush. Instead, deficit spending along with an all-volunteer military has given three successive administrations a blank check with which to wage war.

And wage war they have. Without congressional approval. Without updating the current Authorization for Use of Military Force, which was passed by Congress one week after 9/11. Currently we live in a highly militarized society but one which most of us largely perceive to be “at peace.” This is one of the great counterintuitive realities of the draft. A draft doesn’t increase our militarization. It decreases it.

A draft places militarism on a leash.

In the run-up to the 2018 midterm elections, 42% of Americans didn’t know whether we were still at war in Afghanistan. There are few debates in public life that should merit greater attention from its citizens than whether or not to commit their sons and daughters to fight and possibly to die. Imagine the debate surrounding troop levels in Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Syria, if some of those troops were draftees, or if your own child were eligible for the draft. Imagine if we lived in a society where the commitment of 18- and 19-year-olds to a combat zone generated the same breathless attention as a college-admissions scandal. Imagine Twitter with a draft going on; snowplow parents along with millennial cancel culture could save us by canceling the next unnecessary war.

By the end of Vietnam, after President Nixon eliminated the draft, the U.S. military was in shambles. It had morale problems. Drug problems. Racial problems. It had lost America’s first war, and with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and our failed bid to rescue our hostages from Tehran on the horizon, it seemed poised to lose the next one. From the detritus of the post-Vietnam military, a generation of officers–Colin Powell, Norman Schwarzkopf, Anthony Zinni, to name a few–began the decades-long work of thoroughly rebuilding and professionalizing its ranks. The most visible result of their toil played out in 1991, with scenes of ultra-sleek U.S. battle tanks trouncing the Iraqi military (the world’s fifth largest at the time) in a whopping hundred-hour-long ground war. More recently, we’ve seen the high-tech efficiency and lethality of our military in its rapid ouster of the Taliban from Afghanistan and in the rush to Baghdad in 2003.

Today, among many officers, particularly those senior officers who shepherded in that change, the idea of returning draftees to the military seems entirely regressive. Why would you degrade the finest fighting machine the world has ever known? It’s not a logic without merit, but professionalization has had its own drawbacks, ones that are perhaps more insidious to the fabric of a democracy than a draft would be.Not long ago, I was speaking on a panel about the integration of women into frontline combat units. The Department of Defense had recently approved its new policy, and I argued that it was the military’s job–particularly that of my own service branch, the Marine Corps, which began implementation at a stubborn pace–to execute and support that policy, regardless of reservations. A retired Marine colonel in the audience became incensed. He stood, prodding: on average, women weren’t as strong as men. Could I deny this? No. Men and women were often sexually attracted to one another. Could I deny this? Also no. Then how could I argue for integration when it would so clearly degrade our ability to fight and win wars?

I replied that our military didn’t exist solely to fight and win our wars. Our military was also a representation of us.

The colonel then turned to the crowd and, as if to prove his point, announced that if we took all the women in the room and pitted them against all the men in a “fight to the death,” everyone knew who would win.

The idea that the military exists solely to fight and win our nation’s wars is as juvenile as the colonel challenging the audience to throw down. Might makes right is not the policy of the U.S. government, or at least shouldn’t be. If our military doesn’t represent our values, it can threaten to undermine them. The Founding Fathers understood this. Their revolution relied on citizen soldiers, and they were suspicious of standing armies. It’s a suspicion we’ve since shrugged off.

 The concern about degrading our military’s capabilities through a draft is legitimate. Conscription has only ever been used in this country to augment a core force of volunteers, and often to great effect. Our World War II military was 61.2% conscripted. In Vietnam, it was 25%. The question then becomes: Could you introduce a certain number of conscripts into the all-volunteer military at a lower rate without a meaningful degradation in its capability? And what would that rate be? Ten percent (130,000 people), 5% (65,000 people), 1% (13,000 people)–and would those numbers be meaningful?

What would be most meaningful might not actually be the number of individuals drafted, but the specter of the draft itself. The idea that citizenship has a cost, that you owe something to society. Which leads to the question of who owes what?

One of the central criticisms of the Vietnam-era draft was that it drew disproportionately from those of low socioeconomic backgrounds, while the children of the wealthy and influential were able to finagle exceptions. Under rules promoted by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, draft boards across the country were required to call up men with IQ scores below the military’s minimum standards to offset the recruitment deficit caused by college student deferments. Take for instance Harvard College, in which 19 alumni were killed in Vietnam, compared with Thomas Alva Edison High School, in lower-income northern Philadelphia. Despite being approximately one-quarter the size of Harvard, Edison high school suffered 64 alumni killed in action. Of the Harvard alumni killed, only one was a draftee.

Who gets drafted has always been just as important as whether or not there is a draft. In conflicts like Vietnam and the Civil War, the draft exacerbated social inequalities by providing exemptions for the wealthy and influential. A certain type of draft could, however, become a tool to promote greater equality. It could create greater social cohesion. And, lastly, it could create greater accountability between our policies and our population. In the era of the 1%, of hyper- partisanship, of identity politics and divisiveness, a reverse-engineered draft could prove a powerful tool to counteract these corrosive forces.

Here’s what a reverse-engineered draft could look like:

The Department of Defense would annually set a certain number of draftees for induction into the armed forces for two-year enlistments, which is half the typical enlistment of a volunteer. This number would be kept small as a percentage of the overall active-duty force, let’s say 5%, or 65,000 people, which is roughly the size of the Coast Guard. By keeping the number small, we would retain the culture of professionalism born after the troubles of the post-Vietnam military. Upon induction, new service members are typically assigned military occupational specialties, like medic, truck driver or radio operator. However, in the past, another way people gamed the draft was to gain cushy assignments through influence within the military. In a reverse-engineered draft, inductees would only be eligible for military occupational specialties within the combat arms–infantry, tanks, artillery and the like. And with the recent integration of women, the gender divide would no longer be an issue as women would also be eligible not only for the draft but also for frontline service

And no one could skip this draft, unlike previous drafts, where through the practice of hiring substitutes during the Civil War, or the hiring of certain podiatrists during the Vietnam War, the well-off adeptly avoided conscription. This placed the burden of national defense on those with the least resources. And when those wars turned to quagmires, elites in this country–whose children did not often fill the ranks–were less invested in the outcome.

Which comes to a final, essential aspect of the reverse-engineered draft: those whose families fall into the top income tax bracket would be the only ones eligible. These are the children of the most influential in our country, those whose financial success in business, or tech, or entertainment have placed them in a position to bundle political contributions among their friends, or have a call returned by a Senator or member of the House. If the college-admissions scandal surrounding William Singer’s company the Key is any indication, it shows that this is a demographic that does not sit idly by with regard to their children’s well-being.

The military does–as the agitated colonel pointed out–exist to fight and win our nation’s wars. But it is also one of our great engines of societal mobility. Those who enlist are taught a trade, and if they earn an honorable discharge they’re granted tuition for college under the GI Bill. From the greatest generation to my own millennial generation, the social result has been transformative. And the military will continue to attract the professionals who wish to serve out a 40-year career, as well as the ambitious citizens who wish to pull themselves up by their bootstraps with a four-year enlistment and the GI Bill. Our military continues to be an engine of societal mobility, but it also needs to return to being what it once was, a societal leveler, in which men and women of diverse backgrounds, at an impressionable age, were forced together in the pursuit of a mission larger than themselves.

Why send our sons and daughters to fight and die in the name of unity? Couldn’t they sign up for Habitat for Humanity? Yes, they could, and opportunities to serve outside the military would still be important. However, an argument for mandatory national public service that excludes military service forgets perhaps the most important consequence of a draft, which is that with a draft the barrier to entering new wars would be significantly higher.

We were more than 10 years into the wars before I ever heard anyone talk about the draft. It was the summer of 2012, a weekday afternoon in August, and I was in a motorcade escorting the body of Gunnery Sergeant Jonathan W. Gifford, who had been killed in Afghanistan a couple of weeks before, to Arlington National Cemetery. His coffin was loaded on a caisson, a riderless horse trailing behind, just like that day with my daughter. I was sitting shotgun while my friend T– drove. I’d known Gifford awhile, the two of us having served in the same special-operations unit, but Gifford and T– had been closer friends. As T– stared across the Potomac, to the lunchtime hustle of downtown Washington, he was angry, “Not a single person out there cares that Giff’s dead. They don’t even know.”

“Is what it is,” I said, affecting the doomy pragmatism fashionable among professional soldiers of that time.

T–, however, was less sanguine. “F-ck it, man. I’m for a draft,” he said while gazing past the river, as if with those words alone he might condemn all those oblivious civilians to a yearlong tour in Helmand province.

T– was the consummate professional. He’d deployed as a special operator in Afghanistan, Iraq and several other war zones. If anyone believed in the sanctity of the all-volunteer military, it should have been him. So he couldn’t be serious. Could he imagine how we’d perform with our ranks filled with draftees. “We’d suck at fighting,” I said.

And he answered, “I’m not sure we need to be as good at this as we are.”

At the time it surprised me to hear the most seasoned military professional I knew call for a draft. But it shouldn’t have. That day we’d been fighting for more than a decade and were poised to fight on for at least another. The professionals across the river rushing to lunches while we buried Giff infuriated T–. Their indifference fueled these wars. As a soldier with three kids, too close to retirement to start a new career, he could say their indifference was, literally, killing his friends. And, with each successive deployment, also threatening to kill him. But could we blame civilians for their apathy? No one asked them to care about the wars. How to make them care? His answer was the draft. It’s become mine too.
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2) This is a bit of a read, but a pretty good evaluation of the situation.

 This is from the blog titled Monomakhos, written by a professional pharmacist in Texas.  He has an excellent style, no holds are barred, and he calls a spade.  I read everything he writes.  This one is a doozie...

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BIDEN TIME.

As the hysteria regarding the recent Ukrainian phone call continues to escalate, it’s clear who the first casualty is going to be, one Joseph Robinette Biden, perhaps the only Democrat who had a decent chance of beating President Trump in 2020.

So why did the Democrats do it?

The propensity towards autophagy by Leftists, in general, is one reason. It was LBJ who famously quipped: “You know what the difference between a liberal and a cannibal is? Cannibals only eat their enemies.” Ouch. There are other, more prosaic reasons as well.

But first, we have to understand one preponderant point: and that is that all things being equal, President Trump is well on his way to winning reelection. The economy is on fire, wages are up and black and Hispanic unemployment are at all-time lows. As for the Border crisis, Trump has bent the arc of the narrative to his way of thinking. Even liberals today are admitting that there is indeed a crisis on the Southern border. Equally as important, Trump has not taken the Establishment bait and gotten us into another useless war (this time with Iran). All of these metrics point to an Electoral College landslide.

And everything and the kitchen sink has been thrown at Trump. Remember Michael Avenatti and Stormy Daniels? Omarosa? Michael Cohen? The list is endless. Boredom invariably sets in. “This time we got him!” Only “this time” went the way of the wind. So, why not engage in a little premature impeachment? What else do the Democrats have in their bag of tricks?

There’s another, more nefarious reason for the Ukraine hysteria. And that is this: it’s becoming more clear by the day that Biden is displaying clear signs of physical and mental deterioration. Some smart guy at the DNC decided that they had better take him outnow. Ukrainegate provided them the excuse they needed. Personally, I see the fingerprints of Obama all over this one, or maybe Hillary. (More on that later).

 Most pundits feel that with Biden’s exit, the path has been cleared for Sen Elizabeth Warren. Probably so but she created her own Hunter Bidenesque problem when she was asked if she would forbid her own VP’s son from doing what Hunter did. She totally flubbed the answer. She went into John Kerry/2004 mode: look to the GOP to play that video of her incessantly. (Probably with the song “Half-breed” playing in the background or maybe “Cherokee Nation”.)

However, I think the path to the nomination will be deprived to her. Hillary Clinton is making stentorian noises lately, warning the commonweal that President Trump is “a clear and present danger”. And Sen. Bernie Sanders was just admitted to the hospital with some cardiac condition. Personally, I think he’s toast. The situation as they say, is fluid. 

The bookmakers in London have Hillary at 20:1 odds of entering the race. If so, she’ll steal it in a walk. But first, Biden has to go down and go down hard. He’s got to look like a mendacious old fool who drools when he talks. That way, she can present herself as the “savior of the American Republic”. And now Mark Zuckerberg has declared himself to be Warren’s bitterest enemy should she get the nomination. As for the oligarchs of Wall Street, they’ve already indicated that they won’t open their checkbooks should she get the nomination.

 Thus, within a matter of one week, the Big Tech and Wall Street knives have already come out for Warren. Zuckerberg’s “hot mic” moment wasn’t a coincidence. And then there’s Trump who will be calling her “Pocahontas” 24/7 should she get the nomination. In any event, there is no way that Warren is going to be able to walk back to the neoliberal center because the Bolshies have taken over the Democrat Party lock, stock, and barrel. Wall Street and Big Tech can –and will–make common cause with President Trump as long as the Stock Market keeps its steady climb and stays out of impeachment territory.

 So yes, Dear Readers, I stand by prediction of last year. La Clinton will enter the race. She has too. She’s the only viable candidate that the Democrats have. But there’s another reason as well, a more personal reason.

Did you read that transcript between Presidents Trump and Zelinsky? Did you catch that curious verbiage about “Crowdstrike” and “the server being in Ukraine” somewhere? That is what is called “pay-dirt”. Ukraine is nothing but a tar-baby and the premature call for impeachment is nothing but a spoiling attack to prevent Attorney General Bill Bar and his minions from going to Kiev and finding out some pretty interesting things about “foreign meddling in our election”. Only it won’t be about the 2020 election but about 2016.

And Hillary’s name will come up time and again the more that Barr uncovers. And other oldies but goodies like the Brothers Podesta. And Adam Schiff. And more. The Ukrainian hysteria is a twofer in that it not only takes out Biden but inoculates Hillary from any further revelations. Yes, Trump violated an unwritten rule of presidential politics and that is you don’t sic the Justice Department on any opponent —or their families. But Trump did both. I imagine he did so because he’s confident that he’s got the goods on pretty much everybody in the Deep State. In other words, he’s war-gamed this out to the seventh iteration.

 In any event, the old rules don’t apply anymore. Mainly because the body politic is like a wire that’s been stretched to the breaking point and is in danger of snapping at any time. We live in a horribly divided country in which each side sees the other as totally illegitimate. I imagine that our nation is somewhere along the lines of 1856. Civil war was on the horizon but the blood was so bad between North and South that there was no going back. Conflict was inevitable.

When Obama was President, we conservatives sucked it up and took it like a man. We believed in the Civics 101 mythology we were taught in junior high. And worse, like chumps, we believed that the other side played by the same rules. Unfortunately, we were suckers really. We didn’t notice that the other side stopped playing by those rules back in 2000 when they sabotaged the incoming Bush 43 Administration during the interregnum. We still held out hope that things would quiet down by about 2018 but then we got bitch-slapped by the Kavanaugh confirmation. What we witnessed then was nothing less than pure evil. And that’s why we’re going to the mattress on this one. Fortunately, this time, we have a leader who is willing to fight fire with fire.

 Pelosi to her credit is up for the fight as well. Whatever else their faults, Democrats are always willing to fight dirty. And unlike Republicans, they always have. That doesn’t mean that they can’t make mistakes. I believe that the call for an impeachment “inquiry” is just such a mistake. Pelosi for some reason went against her better political judgment and caved to the Jacobins in her party. It is an unforced error but with the Democratic Caucus baying for Trump’s blood she felt she had no other choice.

But why Ukraine? Why now? Because there isn’t anything else. Ever since Trump and Melania came down that escalator four years ago, the Left has done nothing but scream “Orange Man Bad!” That is their entire message in a nutshell. Surely an immoral, thrice-married boor like Trump had serious skeletons in his closet. If not, his megalomania would force him to make criminal acts while in office. Maybe the Establishment could goad him into war. After all, it was pretty easy to do with Bush 43 and as for Obama, all they had to do to get that esteemed Nobel Peace Prize winner to cause more wars (eight as opposed to Bush’s two) was fawn over him. Surely an oaf like Trump would fall for the ruse as well.

Only he hasn’t. So how will this play out? Will Trump be impeached? And if so, will he be removed from office?

Here, your humble host will offer a prediction. Not only will Trump not be impeached but you will see several other Democrats and Deep-Staters take the plunge. Biden will be the first casualty. And don’t be surprised if Hunter goes to prison. If however, we begin to see other highly placed Democrats begin to lawyer up, then we will see a speedy end to the whole impeachment “inquiry” pretty darn quick. After all, we mustn’t forget, Speaker Pelosi did not call for a formal House vote on impeachment. It’s just an “inquiry” at this point. That makes it very easy to walk it back. 

And then there’s Cocaine Mitch, the second-most-powerful man in Washington and Swamp Creature extraordinaire; he knows how to play the game. It was McConnell, more than anybody else who made Trump’s election possible in 2016 when he used the so-called Biden Rule (the irony!) to keep Antonin Scalia’s Supreme Court seat open. The “Murder Turtle” is both a master tactician as well as a master strategist and so it is along these lines that you have to discern what he said about holding a Senate trial. If Trump is impeached, the Senate will have “no choice” but to have a trial. 

Those words seem noncontroversial, rather prosaic. After all, it’s in Article I of the Constitution: the House impeaches, the Senate tries. When spoken of by McConnell however, they most certainly are not. He’s telegraphing to the cognoscenti that the defendant, who has some of the canniest lawyers in the Union, will have the opportunity to call his own witnesses. Enter Jim Comey, John Brennan, James Clapper, Hillary Clinton, and who knows who else? Skeletons will come rattling out of closets faster than you can say “Jackie Robinson”. The last thing the Deep-staters want is to put their hand on a Bible and hope that they don’t perjure themselves. Pleading the Fifth will only make it worse for them. In such a scenario, the advantage goes to the defendant.

 So what will happen? My guess is that the number of Democrats who are calling for impeachment (or an “inquiry”) is at an all-time high –right now. When the Republicans force the issue and demand a floor vote, then the actual number will somehow shrink from what it is today. And they will have to have a formal vote in order to empower the House to have subpoena power as well as actually impeach the President. Right now, they’re playing tiddlywinks. Nadler’s and Schiff’s hearings have as much relevance as brushing up on your Klingon in order to be ready for next month’s Star Trek convention.

Time is not on the Democrats’ side. That’s why they want this to be over before year’s end. Pelosi herself said that. Otherwise, it’ll suck all the oxygen out of their candidates’ primary fight. And then, if that happens, they will definitely lose the election. So if the Democrats have any hope at all of wrapping an impeachment vote up before January 1, 2020, they have to buck up and do the legal thing and call for a formal impeachment vote. Otherwise, Giuliani, Pompeo, Barr and anybody else whom they summon can just tell them to go pound sand. Delay, obfuscate, claim Executive Privilege, be out of pocket, and then delay some more. Trump’s plan is to make Nadler and Schiff beg for any scrap of paper day in and day out. Label every memo, e-mail, document, or even doodle that they request as “confidential” or “classified”. Make them go to the courts to force the President’s team to release them. Even paper clips. And the courts are notoriously slow. In short, drag out the inquiry phase for as long as possible.

 And that’s the last thing that the Democrats want. Especially over something as trivial as a perfectly legal phone call. Pelosi may think she is Hannibal but Trump is definitely Fabian.

Trump is also the greatest, nastiest street-fighter who’s ever occupied the White House (at least since Old Hickory himself). Trump relishes the fight and his people are up for it. As such, there is no guarantee that this will be over before the year is out. In either case, the Democrats are going to have to try to peel some Republicans off in order to give impeachment any validity. If they don’t do that, then the Senate can simply vote along party lines and swat it out of the park if and when it comes to them. In that case, impeachment will be not merely an asterisk after Trump’s name but an asterisk by an asterisk and it will go down in the history books as a purely partisan hack-job. Essentially a nullity.

And worse, that will have been the Democrat’s only chance to take him out. As the old cliché goes, when you strike at the king, you must kill him. Otherwise he becomes stronger and he’ll turn on you.  

 Absent a party-line vote that would take all of two hours, the Senate has another option. It’s up to Leader McConnell to set the time and dates of the trial. As stated above, he could simply call for a floor vote and it’ll be over. Another nothing burger. Or, he could start the trial in February or March and let it drag out throughout the entire primary season. He could even schedule it during the Democrat Party convention. He could even table it.

So those are the considerations that the Democrats have to take into account. What does Trump have to take into account?

First, he’s got to make sure that all the Republicans are on board. So far, with his tremendous fundraising capabilities, I’d say he’s got them locked in. In addition, no Republican wants to go into the 2020 elections having gone against the President. Any vote against Trump will spell electoral doom for them. My hunch is that even cucks like Romney won’t vote for impeachment when and if the time comes. And then there’s all that money which has been rolling into the RNC coffers since Pelosi announced impeachment. Ronna Romney McDaniel (Romney’s niece) won’t give one penny to some GOP squish.

 Second, he’s got to make sure that the few primary challengers he has (Bill Weld, Joe Walsh, Mark Sanford) die premature electoral deaths. Already many states have canceled their GOP primaries because they are on board with the idea that an incumbent President is the de facto nominee of the Party. Thus the minuscule number of votes that any of Trump’s erstwhile opponents get will be wither into thin air.

Third, he has to make sure he’s not dragged into another foreign quagmire and finally, he has to hope that the economy keeps humming along. So far, he’s played his hand well. I imagine that he has something up his sleeve which he’ll pull out when the time is right. Perhaps a formal peace treaty with North Korea or an end to the trade war with China. Maybe even an opening to formal talks with Iran. Who knows? Anyone of those events would derail the crazy train that the Democrats have put this country on.

 In any event, Republicans are not nearly as civic-minded as they were in 1974. Back then, they let Nixon know that they would support impeachment. Foolishly, they thought that by standing on “principle” they would be rewarded at the ballot box. Nothing of the sort happened. 1974 was a bloodbath for the GOP and it paved the way for Jimmy Carter in 1976. I imagine –I hope–that they’ve learned their lesson since then. The Democrats certainly did during the Clinton impeachment. Not only did they stand by their man, they were rewarded for it at the ballot box. Instead of Clinton’s scalp, they got Newt Gingrich’s instead.

Of course, there’s always the problem of a third-party spoiler. Evan McMuffin prevented Minnesota from going to Trump in 2016 by siphoning a minuscule number of GOP votes. New Hampshire was lost to the Democrats by less than 1,000 votes because then-Sen Kelly Ayotte voted for some mild gun-control measure. But third-parties are equal-opportunity spoilers: Democrats to this day blame Jill Stein of the Green Party and Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party from depriving Hillary of the votes needed for her to become President. Already Tulsi Gabbard, who has been treated horribly by the DNC, is making third-party noises because the Establishment is doing everything in its power to make sure that the Democrat Party remains a warmongering one. She’s not going to the take the “muh democracy” bait and provoke Russia just because Goldman-Sachs wants her to.

 As far as the optics of impeachment itself is concerned, we must consider the last two Presidents who had to face that specter: Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. Nixon had a growing bipartisan consensus against him, Clinton did not. Nixon also had a worsening economic situation, Clinton did not. Nixon’s poll numbers were in the toilet, Clinton’s were relatively robust. So far, Trump is far closer to the Clinton model than to Nixon in almost all these particulars.

Moreover, Trump has something that Nixon didn’t: an alternative media which is spoiling for a fight. While I sense a growing cuckoldry (I’m looking at you, Paul Ryan) at FOX news, the night line-up is solidly on Trump’s side and they’re not giving an inch. And they’re beating the pants off of MSNBC and CNN. 

We are seeing the contours of the fight taking shape already in the Biden-Ukraine fiasco. Even hard-core leftists like Bill Maher see the stunning hypocrisy in the Hunter Biden/Burisma Holdings situation. And Trump is not shy about drawing attention to the Left’s hypocrisy and crimes. As mentioned, he’s a street-fighter, one not averse to hitting below the belt if need be. 

While this may upset the country-club wing of the GOP, it’s just fine and dandy with the actual voters. Sure, he’s not “acting presidential” but where exactly did “acting presidential” get us so far? Unnecessary wars in Iraq and Syria? The destruction of Libya, the only sane, prosperous and stable regime anywhere in the Arab world? The destruction of Europe because of the refugee crises started by the neoliberal elites? I’m sorry, but Obama’s impeccably creased slacks did nothing for the American commonweal. He presided over the weakest recovery of all time and stood idly by while Al Sharpton poured gasoline on the fires of racial resentments which boiled over time and time again.

Trump has no problem in reminding people of this fact. He may beat his own drum but what other choice does he have? He’s not going to get a fair shake from the Corporate Media. Neither did Andrew Jackson in his own day. And yet Jackson not only fought off impeachment but kept his promises and closed the National Bank. He even survived an assassination attempt –the first President to do so. And he left office after two terms more popular than he was when he entered it. 

It’s been a week since Pelosi announced impeachment and the Republican National Committee is rolling in the big bucks. Its counterpart, on the other hand, is dead broke. As for Trump himself, he’s raised 2 billion dollars already. But most importantly, the average Republican is now firmly on his side. They have seen what a rigged system it still is. And they’ve seen the abject hatred that the other side has for Mr and Mrs America. It’s beyond Beto O’Rourke saying “we’re going to take away your guns” or Kamala Harris wanting to forcibly reduce our hamburger consumption. The average Republican voter believes that the average Democratic office-holder hates him. And that goes double for their acolytes in the Media and Hollywood. And they’re right, the elites hates Middle America. 

This is kill-ball. And if Trump doesn’t win, then it’s over. It’s that stark of a choice. If we don’t explode into a civil conflict then we’ll be well on our way to becoming a banana republic. Impeachment?   Bring it on . . .

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3)

Turkey and the Kurds: It’s More 

Complicated Than You Think 

By Andrew C. McCarthy

By Ruth King

We are grateful for the Kurds’ help, and we should try to help them in return. But no one wants to risk war with Turkey.

On Monday, President Trump announced that a contingent of fewer than 100 U.S. troops in Syria was being moved away from Kurdish-held territory on the border of Turkey. The move effectively green-lighted military operations by Turkey against the Kurds, which have now commenced.

Some U.S. military officials went public with complaints about being “blindsided.” The policy cannot have been a surprise, though. The president has made no secret that he wants out of Syria, where we now have about 1,000 troops (down from over 2,000 last year). More broadly, he wants our forces out of the Middle East. He ran on that position. I’ve argued against his “endless wars” tropes, but his stance is popular. As for Syria specifically, many of the president’s advisers think we should stay, but he has not been persuaded.

The president’s announcement of the redeployment of the Syrian troops came on the heels of a phone conversation with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. This, obviously, was a mistake, giving the appearance (and not for the first time) that Trump is taking cues from Ankara’s Islamist strongman. As has become rote, the inevitable criticism was followed by head-scratching tweets: The president vows to “totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey,” which “I’ve done before” (huh?), if Turkey takes any actions “that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits.” We can only sigh and say it will be interesting to see how the president backs up these haughty threats now that Erdogan has begun his invasion.

All that said, the president at least has a cogent position that is consistent with the Constitution and public opinion. He wants U.S. forces out of a conflict in which America’s interests have never been clear, and for which Congress has never approved military intervention. I find that sensible — no surprise, given that I have opposed intervention in Syria from the start (see, e.g., here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). The stridency of the counterarguments is matched only by their selectiveness in reciting relevant facts.

I thus respectfully dissent from our National Review editorial.

President Trump, it says, is “making a serious mistake” by moving our forces away from what is described as “Kurdish territory”; the resulting invasion by superior Turkish forces will “kill American allies” while “carving out a zone of dominance” that will serve further to “inflame and complicate” the region.

Where to begin? Perhaps with the basic fact that there is no Kurdish territory. There is Syrian territory on Turkey’s border that the Kurds are occupying — a situation that itself serves to “inflame and complicate” the region for reasons I shall come to. Ethnic Kurds do not have a state. They live in contiguous parts of Syria, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran. Most are integrated into these countries, but many are separatists.

The Kurds have been our allies against ISIS, but it is not for us that they have fought. They fight ISIS for themselves, with our help. They are seeking an autonomous zone and, ultimately, statehood. The editorial fails to note that the Kurds we have backed, led by the YPG (People’s Protection Units), are the Syrian branch of the PKK (the Kurdistan Worker’s Party) in Turkey. The PKK is a militant separatist organization with Marxist-Leninist roots. Although such informed observers as Michael Rubin contend that the PKK has “evolved,” it remains a formally designated foreign terrorist organization under U.S. law. While our government materially supports the PKK’s confederates, ordinary Americans have been prosecuted for materially supporting the PKK.

The PKK has a long history of conducting terrorist attacks, but their quarrel is not with us. So why has our government designated them as terrorists? Because they have been fighting an insurgent war against Turkey for over 30 years. Turkey remains our NATO ally, even though the Erdogan government is one of the more duplicitous and anti-Western actors in a region that teems with them — as I’ve detailed over the years (see, e.g., here, here, here, here, and in my 2012 book, Spring Fever). The Erdogan problem complicates but does not change the fact that Turkey is of great strategic significance to our security.

While it is a longer discussion, I would be open to considering the removal of both the PKK from the terrorist list and Turkey from NATO. For now, though, the blunt facts are that the PKK is a terrorist organization and Turkey is our ally. These are not mere technicalities. Contrary to the editorial’s suggestion, our government’s machinations in Syria have not put just one of our allies in a bind. There are two allies in this equation, and our support for one has already vexed the other. The ramifications are serious, not least Turkey’s continued lurch away from NATO and toward Moscow.

Without any public debate, the Obama administration in 2014 insinuated our nation into the Kurdish–Turk conflict by arming the YPG. To be sure, our intentions were good. ISIS had besieged the city of Kobani in northern Syria; but Turkey understandably regards the YPG as a terrorist organization, complicit in the PKK insurgency.

That brings us to another non-technicality that the editors mention only in passing: Our intervention in Syria has never been authorized by Congress. Those of us who opposed intervention maintained that congressional authorization was necessary because there was no imminent threat to our nation. Contrary to the editorial’s suggestion, having U.S. forces “deter further genocidal bloodshed in northern Syria” is not a mission for which Americans support committing our men and women in uniform. Such bloodlettings are the Muslim Middle East’s default condition, so the missions would never end.

A congressional debate should have been mandatory before we jumped into a multi-layered war, featuring anti-American actors and shifting loyalties on both sides. In fact, so complex is the situation that President Obama’s initial goal was to oust Syria’s Assad regime; only later came the pivot to fighting terrorists, which helped Assad. That is Syria: Opposing one set of America’s enemies only empowers another. More clear than what intervention would accomplish was the likelihood of becoming enmeshed, inadvertently or otherwise, in vicious conflicts of which we wanted no part — such as the notorious and longstanding conflict between Turks and Kurds.

Barbaric jihadist groups such as ISIS (an offshoot of al-Qaeda) come into existence because of Islamic fundamentalism. But saying so remains de trop in Washington. Instead, we tell ourselves that terrorism emerges due to “vacuums” created in the absence of U.S. forces. On this logic, there should always and forever be U.S. forces and involvement in places where hostility to America vastly outweighs American interests.

President Obama has wrongly been blamed for “creating” ISIS by leaving a vacuum in Iraq. Couldn’t be the sharia-supremacist culture, could it? No, we’re supposed to suppose that this sort of thing could happen anywhere. So, when Obama withdrew our forces from the region (as Trump is doing now), jihadist atrocities and territorial conquests ensued. Eventually, Obama decided that action needed to be taken. But invading with U.S. troops was not an option — it would have been deeply unpopular and undercut Obama’s tout that Islamic militarism was on the wane. Our government therefore sought proxy forces.

Most proved incompetent. The Kurds, however, are very capable. There was clamor on Capitol Hill to back them. We knew from the first, though, that supporting them was a time bomb. Turkey was never going to countenance a Kurdish autonomous zone, led by the YPG and PKK elements, on its Syrian border. Ankara was already adamant that the PKK was using the Kurdish autonomous zone in Iraq to encourage separatist uprisings in Turkey, where 20 percent of the population is Kurdish. Erdogan would never accept a similar arrangement in Syria; he would evict the YPG forcibly if it came to that.

Yes, we had humanitarian reasons for arming the Kurds. But doing so undermined our anti-terrorism laws while giving Erdogan incentive to align with Russia and mend fences with Iran. ISIS, meanwhile, has never been defeated — it lost its territorial “caliphate,” but it was always more lethal as an underground terrorist organization than as a quasi-sovereign struggling to hold territory. And al-Qaeda, though rarely spoken of in recent years, is ascendant — as threatening as it has been at any time since its pre-9/11 heyday.

Those of us opposed to intervention in Syria wanted Congress to think through these quite predictable outcomes before authorizing any further U.S. military involvement in this wretched region. Congress, however, much prefers to lay low in the tall grass, wait for presidents to act, and then complain when things go awry.

And so they have: The easily foreseeable conflict between Turkey and the Kurds is at hand. We are supposed to see the problem as Trump’s abandoning of U.S. commitments. But why did we make commitments to the Kurds that undermined preexisting commitments to Turkey? The debate is strictly framed as “How can we leave the Kurds to the tender mercies of the Turks?” No one is supposed to ask “What did we expect would happen when we backed a militant organization that is tightly linked to U.S.-designated terrorists and that is the bitter enemy of a NATO ally we knew would not abide its presence on the ally’s border?” No one is supposed to ask “What is the end game here? Are we endorsing the partition of Syria? Did we see a Kurdish autonomous zone as the next Kosovo?” (We might remember that recognition of Kosovo’s split from Serbia, over Russian objections, was exploited by the Kremlin as a rationale for promoting separatism and annexations in Georgia and Ukraine.)

It is true, as the editors observe, that “there are no easy answers in Syria.” That is no excuse for offering an answer that makes no sense: “The United States should have an exit strategy, but one that neither squanders our tactical gains against ISIS nor exposes our allies to unacceptable retribution.” Put aside that our arming of the Kurds has already exposed our allies in Turkey to unacceptable risk. What the editorial poses is not an “exit strategy” but its opposite. In effect, it would keep U.S. forces in Syria interminably, permanently interposed between the Kurds and the Turks. The untidy questions of how that would be justifiable legally or politically go unaddressed.

President Trump, by contrast, has an exit strategy, which is to exit. He promises to cripple Turkey economically if the Kurds are harmed. If early reports of Turkey’s military assault are accurate, the president will soon be put to the test. I hope he is up to it. For a change, he should have strong support from Congress, which is threatening heavy sanctions if Turkey routs the Kurds.

Americans, however, are not of a mind to do more than that. We are grateful for what the Kurds did in our mutual interest against ISIS. We should try to help them, but no one wants to risk war with Turkey over them. The American people’s representatives never endorsed combat operations in Syria, and the president is right that the public wants out. Of course we must prioritize the denial of safe havens from which jihadists can attack American interests. We have to stop pretending, though, that if our intentions toward this neighborhood are pure, its brutal history, enduring hostilities, and significant downside risks can be ignored.

Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at National Review Institute and an NR contributing editor. His new book, Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency, is available for pre-order and will be released by Encounter Books on August 13. @AndrewCMcCarthy

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4)

The Democrat platform for 2020 is simple: Out-promise everyone else on free government handouts. Education... healthcare... "climate change"... welfare... you name it... Never before in history have so many candidates promised so much. And one radical woman who has promised to out-spend them all. Even more than Socialist Bernie Sanders! It's not Hillary... Elizabeth Warren... A.O.C. or even Michelle Obama. It's someone even worse. And the steps she'll take during her first 100 days in office will send our nation into one of the worst financial crises in history... creating a nightmare for Baby Boomers. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++