Category Archives: national security

national security, political news

Game of election denial … breathtaking!

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Never in my life — not ever! — have I witnessed a rhetorical game being played out to the extent that it has been regarding the result of the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

I’ve been around a bit, as I am now 76 years of age and have been following politics pretty closely for, oh, about the past 60 years.

Donald Trump’s choice to become the next director of national intelligence was merely the latest Trumpkin to play the word game with Democratic lawmakers. Jay Clayton, in testimony this week to a Senate committee, refused to say that President Biden won the 2020 election.

Here’s how Al Jazeera reported the exchange between Clayton and senators:

“Senators pressed Clayton about his views on the 2020 race between Biden and Trump, and he acknowledged that Biden had been ‘certified’ as the victor. But he avoided directly saying Biden ‘won’ the race.

“In one exchange, Democrat Jon Ossoff asked Clayton point-blank, “’Who won the 2020 election?’

“’I’m not going to do this with you,’ Clayton responded.

“’This is a job interview. We’ve established that you have an obligation to be honest and forthright with the committee,’ Ossoff replied. He then repeated, ‘Who won the 2020 election?’ Clayton responded that he had ‘already answered the question.'”

Clayton danced the same two-step with Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona. He refused to say Biden “won” the 2020, but that he was “certified” the winner by virtue of the electoral votes he received.

It baffles me to end in sight why these individuals would choose to damage the integrity of the electoral system based on the Big Lie being fomented by the liar in chief. This game has been going on since that election, which President Biden won a slim but undeniable Electoral College majority and a 7 million popular vote majority. Trump, though, still has none of it and, of course, he instigated the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol that injured hundreds of people and killed several others.

Trump’s team has repeatedly refused to answer the simplest of questions regarding the 2020 election. They have demonstrated their disgusting fealty to a convicted felon over the U.S. Constitution. They make me sick.

military news, national news, national security

Well … at least this war won’t last forever

I am going to give Donald Trump a shot-glass full of credit for the war with Iran — that he started — but which is about to come to an inglorious end.

The war that Trump began was thought to be a “forever war,” which he said during the 2024 campaign he would avoid. It’s coming to an end, but with Trump getting virtually nothing from the Iranians.

I am delighted to see progress moving clumsily forward on a peace deal with Iran. We lost 13 American service personnel’s lives. Thousands of Iranians died during the course of our bombing and missile strikes and I am sorry about that terrible loss of life. The war, though, appears to nearly over.

The Strait of Hormuz will reopen soon, one hopes. But get a load of this: The Iranians will be able to sell their oil on the open market, earning billions of dollars to shore up their shattered economy. The sides are arguing over an inspection protocol designed to ensure that Iran keeps its promise to not seek to develop a nuclear bomb.

Trump called the deal hammered out over years of negotiation to deny Iran a nuclear arsenal the “worst in history.” He tore it up upon taking office in January 2017. The only problem with that deal — in Trump’s view — was that it had President Obama’s name on it, along with Secretary of State John Kerry. But here we are, nine years later, and we’re back to where we began with an arrangement that looks a great deal like the one that Kerry and the president hammered out with out allies in the region.

Trump wanted regime change in Iran. He didn’t get it, although he is able to boast about killing the ayatollah in an airstrike during the first week of the war.

All the while, we hear from Trump about that moronic idea of dying the DC Mall Reflecting Pool blue to commemorate the nation’s 250th birthday; we watch the JFK Center for the Performing Arts take down Trump’s name from the edifice and Trump launching into this idiotic wee-hour social media rants about Cabinet officials and Democrats seeking to undermine him.

This isn’t anyone’s definition of “winning,” Mr. POTUS.

At least the war he started, though, is about to end. I would offer a wish that we could get down to actual governing … but I know that’s an impossible task.

national news, national security

War then is different from war now

I have just binge-watched a Netflix documentary on World War II, thinking it would offer a poignant reminder of how a nation can be drawn into war, dedicate itself to defeating a determined enemy and then rebuild itself and the enemy it has just destroyed.

WWII, of course, produced the Greatest Generation of Americans, some 16 million of whom signed up to get into the fight for the nation’s life. My father was one of those 16 million, enlisting on Dec. 7, 1941, the very day we were attacked by Japanese air and naval forces in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Dad is long gone now, as are most of those patriots.

The multi-part series showed remarkable footage from the worldwide battlefield fought on four continents: North America, Asia and Africa. I was struck by a quote delivered to our enemies by President Franklin Roosevelt, speaking on the eve of our nation’s full entry into the fight against the tyrants who sought to conquer the world. “Our enemies asked for it,” FDR said, “and now they are about to get it.”

And so they did get it. Full force.

If we fast-forward about 85 years to the present day we find ourselves in a war that we started. A succeeding president decided to engage in an act of war against Iran. Unlike FDR, who responded by asking Congress to “declare that a state of war exists,” Donald Trump has decided to flout the constitutional requirement that presidents should follow if they are to commit young Americans to combat. We have commenced a war that few Americans want, even fewer of us know the game plan. But we’re in a war. Make no mistake.

I watched this documentary expecting to draw these comparisons. I’m glad I did. Watching this film from start to finish reminds me that the U.S.A.’s founders knew how to limit a president’s power to take this nation to war. If only the current commander in chief was smart enough to grasp it.

national news, national security

Who’s the hero and who’s the fraud?

Let’s see … Donald Trump laid out his boorish qualities after Robert Mueller died today at age 81.

Mueller was the former FBI director who served as special counsel tasked with examining whether Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election, which Trump won by a whisker.

Trump responded to Mueller’s death by declaring on social media, “Good. I’m glad he’s dead.”

Let’s take a brief look at the men’s history, shall we?

Young Donald Trump couldn’t be bothered with serving his country during the Vietnam War. He found a doctor who could tell the draft board that Donald suffered from bone spurs in his feet. He didn’t serve during the war. Trump went on to inherit a bunch of cash from his father to start his own real estate business and pursued a career in self-enrichment prior to his election in 2016 as POTUS.

Young Bob Mueller heard that his best friend and roommate had died in battle in the Vietnam War. Mueller then enlisted in the Marine Corps and served in combat during his entire tour in ‘Nam. He received a Purple Heart for battlefield injuries and was cited for valor throughout his career in the USMC.

Mueller came home, graduated from law school and then was appointed FBI director by President Bush right after the 9/11 terror attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. Mueller turned the FBI into a terrorist-hunting organization and helped lead the war against international terrorism.

I am compelled to ask: Who between these men is the patriot and who is the patsy? Who has contributed to this nation’s greatness and who is leading it into oblivion?

Donald Trump has said he’s glad Mueller’s life has ended? What a disgrace!

national security

Iran posed ‘no threat to U.S.,’ says top aide

This might be the least surprising news event of the past six months, but it still is worth a closer look.

The head of the U.S. counterterrorism effort, Joe Kent, has quit his job, saying that Iran — which U.S. and Israeli warplanes have been pummeling with airstrikes — posed no imminent threat to the United States.

According to Kent, an acknowledged expert on terrorism, Trump went to war for no reason. Yep. No reason. We’ve lost more than a dozen service personnel because of a made-up pretext that Trump concocted to show off his macho nerve.

Never mind that when he was of the age to serve during an earlier war, the young Donald Trump got a doctor to say he suffered bone spurs. He dodged the draft in a shameless afront to the nation’s calling him to duty. Those of us who did answer that call in the 1960s cannot forgive the rich kid using his connections to avoid military service.

But … I digress.

The issue today is the counterterrorism expert telling the world that we have gone to war against a nation that poses no imminent threat to the United States. Trump, again not surprisingly, dismissed the man who has resigned. Never mind that he chose him to perform the duty of advising the president on ways to combat terrorism.

This looks for all the world like one more example of the slap-dash decision making process that has become the two Trump administrations’ modus operandi. What’s worse is that the POTUS has no concern about the lives he jeopardizes while ignoring the details that go into decisions that put young Americans in harm’s way.

national security, national security team

Sen. Hothead joins Trump team

Well now, Donald Trump has just fired one of the most incompetent members of our national security team and replaced her with a fellow who once challenged a Senate committee witness to a fistfight in the middle of a hearing.

I don’t know about you, but I do not feel one little bit safer now than before.

Kristi Noem made a hash of our Homeland Security Department with her handling of the ICE goons she loosed on the streets of our cities. She spent $200 million of our tax money to produce glam-shot ads featuring her and touting the successes she insisted occurred during Trump’s administration.

We started a war with Iran, several American warriors died right away, and Noem couldn’t bring herself to offer a word of condolence to the survivors of the soldiers who died.

Trump cut her loose. Fine. Good bye and good riddance!

Up steps Oklahoma Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin to become the Homeland Security secretary. He’s a Trump loyalist through and through. No surprise there, given that’s what Trump wants in Cabinet nominees. What is astounding to me is that Trump would select a guy who about a year ago had to be called down by a committee chairman for wanting to settle a dispute with a witness with his fists.

Sen. Hothead actually stood up and challenged the witness right there in front of the whole world!

This is the guy whom Trump has chosen to lead our homeland security defense team? Trump said he always intends to hire “the best people” to advise him. Markwayne Mullin, to my eyes, appears to be one of the worst.

national news, national security

Border crisis need not produce this solution

Critics of this blog have long accused its author — that would be me — of being a “yes man” to all policies Democratic and a “hatchet man” to ideas that come from Republicans.

Wrong! As in really wrong!

I was the rare President Biden supporter who said long ago that the president needed to call the situation along our southern border what I believed it was: a crisis. He refused to do so. Instead, the president masked the situation in gauzy terms meant to disguise the reality along our southern flank, which was that people were continuing to seek refuge in the “land of opportunity, freedom and good fortune.”

Donald Trump came along and then sicced the Immigration and Customs Enforcement goons on our cities and border towns. The result of their heavy hand has made us even less safe. I want, therefore, to declare that Trump’s answer to the crisis is the wrong answer.

If the current POTUS had an ounce of compassion coursing through his overfed body he would have told the ICE agents to use extreme discernment in rooting out the bad guys. He didn’t. The ICE goons have picked up on the message from the top, which is that it’s OK to roust everyone, to beat many of them to within an inch of their lives, to separate children from their parents.

I like quoting one of my favorite philosophers, who happens to be fictional character on a once-popular TV show. You remember Tonto, the Lone Ranger’s sidekick who used to tell the world that “Two wrongs don’t make it right.”

Tonto is correct. It was wrong for President Biden to avoid declaring the southern border mess a “crisis.” It is wrong for Donald Trump to hire heavily armed and masked thugs to beat the living daylights out of U.S. citizens while searching for criminals.

It no longer matters what we call the border mess. We can fix the second problem and force ICE to rethink the way it enforces the law.

national security

Defending the ‘homeland’

The term “homeland” emerged from the rubble after the 9/11 terror attack that sent the United States hurtling into what amounted to a new world war … against international terrorism.

I want to discuss a couple aspects about the term briefly here and I might piss some folks off with what I am about to assert.

First of all, I dislike the term “homeland” to label the United States of America and our territories scattered around the world. Why does it bother me? I cannot explain it fully, but I will start by asserting that the very term sounds antiquated. It’s as if it belongs in the 19th-century glossary of terms.

The 9/11 attacks prompted President Bush soon afterward to create a Homeland Security department in the Cabinet. The first DHS secretary was Tom Ridge, the governor of Pennsylvania. He took office in 2003. The current DHS head is Kristi Noem, former governor of South Dakota. More on her in a moment.

I have believed almost since the beginning of our war against terror that the national security adviser could assume the role of protector of our nation. Think for a moment about the term “national security.” I know it encompasses worldwide threats, but they all have a common denominator: Do they affect the security of our home country?

Furthermore, I also have believed — since the 9/11 attacks — that President Bush’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, has escaped any serious responsibility for her office’s failure to act on known threats to our security. I heard little commentary from the pundit class wondering: Why didn’t Rice’s team pick up on the clues that reportedly had been spread like bread crumbs along the trail?

Homeland Security has become the subject of recrimination these days, as DHS Secretary Noem has presided over the immigration cops’ handling of the task of ridding the country of criminals who are here illegally. She has lied her way through hours of testimony before Congress and has laid blame on the victims of two fatal shootings who died at the hands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement goons in Minneapolis.

Is it at all possible to roll Homeland Security issues into the national security adviser’s team, kick in a few billion bucks that are now being squandered at DHS and then charge the NSA with protecting the nation against the criminals hiding as undocumented immigrants.

national news, national security

Axe to fall on Cabinet?

Donald Trump reportedly is sharpening the axe he will use to chop possibly as many as three Cabinet members off his team … or so some media are reporting.

One of them is FBI Director Kash Patel, who shouldn’t be in office in the first place. Dude has zero FBI field experience. Another might be Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who’s fallen out of disfavor with Trump policy chieftain Stephen Miller for failing to implement money appropriated from the Big Ugly Bill approved by Congress. Then we have Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, another Cabinet pick far and away out of his league who’s been fingered in a growing scandal over whether he committed war crimes in ordering the deaths of survivors of a missile strike on alleged drug boats off the Venezuela coast.

Trump is standing with all of ’em. But you know that goes … right? He’ll say he’s with them until he isn’t.

As for whether he could replace any of them with seasoned professionals who know what they’re doing, that’s another matter altogether. I am not hopeful any of this is going to end well for the nation Trump was elected to lead.

Donald Trump, medical news, military news, national security

Why surround yourself with morons?

It’s a fair question, so I am going to ask it: Why does Donald J. Trump insist on surrounding himself with imbeciles and then put them in charge of vital organizations designed to protect our health and everyone from foreign and domestic enemies?

Two examples stand out. You know who they are, but I’ll spell it out anyway: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Pete Hegseth.

RFK Jr., scion of one of the nation’s great political families — and namesake of my first political hero! — continues to astound me with his lack of knowledge of vaccines, of the value in investing in scientific research and his insistence that vaccinations do as much harm as good.

RFK Jr. needs to be shown the door. Rapidly. Without hesitation. Before more people die on his watch as secretary of health and human services. It won’t happen because RFK Jr. embodies the one thing that Trump demands: total loyalty to the notions that fly out of his mouth.

What about Hegseth, the former “Fox and Friends Sunday” co-host whom Trump plucked to become defense secretary? Spoiler alert: I categorically refuse to call him “war secretary” and head of the “war department,” per his and Trump’s name-change effort.

Hegseth summoned every flag officer in uniform to the nation’s capital, where they gathered in a room to listen to Hegseth and Trump talk to them about the need to eliminate “fat generals and admirals,” how women should have to meet the same physical training standards as men and how Trump’s deployment of troops to our nation’s cities should serve as practice for when they go into actual combat.

What is unintentionally hilarious is how Hegseth’s applause lines were greeted with stone-cold silence by the command staff … many of whom have served multiple combat deployments. These men and women are seasoned, highly skilled and effective warriors who need no lecture from a tinhorn soldier such as Hegseth about physical fitness.

And yet … Hegseth continues to disgrace our military — the most lethal and skilled organization of its kind in human history — simply by serving in a capacity for which he has earned zero qualification.

God help us!