For the Record

Keeping the Record Straight——————————-

                A commentary

                By J. F. Kelly, Jr.

In over forty years of writing opinion columns and essays, I’ve been called many things but seldom a (gasp) liberal. It happened recently though, when a non-Coronado resident who reads the Eagle&Journal implied that I was one, given my frequent criticism of President Donald Trump. Thankfully, several local readers, more accustomed to my rants, set the record straight. “Kelly is no liberal,” they said. Thanks.

 

I used to be, though. While editing my college newspaper and writing the editorials, I was actually considered something of a liberal firebrand. The maturation process and post-college exposure to the real world cured my liberalism. Still, even thereafter I was occasionally branded a liberal, notably for my advocacy of women serving in non-traditional roles at sea in warships, which was tantamount to heresy at the time, and for supporting a relaxation of rigid dress and grooming standards in the military. The fact that one identifies as a liberal or conservative shouldn’t have to mean that one always must rigidly conform to that particular ideology in taking a position on a given issue. One of the major problems in America today is that we are so polarized that compromise seems impossible and therefore nothing gets done in government.

 

While on the subject of what I really believe and what I’ve written in the past, two faithful readers chided me recently for urging citizens of both parties to rally around the new president in spite of his shortcomings, saying that I was not so charitable with regard to former president Barack Obama.  Actually, I was. (See “Rally ‘Round the Next President”, written shortly after his election. I’ve written similar pieces after the election of other new presidents because I think it’s important to our democratic process that we accept the results of elections, put aside campaign rancor and get on with the nation’s business). Another reader opined that I was a bit late in jumping on the opposition bandwagon in criticizing Mr. Trump. Actually, I was a bit early. (See “Time to Dump Trump”,4/13/16; “Survival of the Least Unfit”, 11/13/16; and “Surviving the Trump Presidency”, 5/18/17).

 

I also wrote that Republicans made an historic mistake in nominating the inexperienced, impetuous and sometimes crude Mr. Trump when there were other, more qualified and more presidential candidates. A reader, whose views, wisdom and experience I deeply respect, said that it was incorrect of me to say that his nomination was a mistake (which implies that the voters made a mistake) because the democratic process resulted fairly in his nomination.  I agree that the process worked and that he won the nomination fairly but I still feel that he was unfit by experience or temperament to run for the most powerful office in the world. Obviously, not enough voters agreed.

 

Events of his first half year in office have reinforced my view. While I abhor efforts by members of the opposition party to torpedo his presidency, I am not surprised by the frequent incompetence he has displayed and I despair in the hope that things will get much better as he tries to grow into the job. He just wasn’t cut out for it. Although Democratic leaders should be ashamed of their obstructionist tactics, Mr. Trump’s troubles are largely self-inflicted and they derive from lack of experience and qualifications. Aside from the experienced and brilliant generals he has selected to head Defense and Homeland Security and a few other key appointments he has made, he has left hundreds of critical posts unfilled, notably at the State Department. His administration is seriously understaffed.

 

Mr. Trump lacks the communications skills required of the office he holds and he demonstrates this nearly every day with his amateurish and juvenile tweets. His language skills are deficient. His tweets are ambiguous and often contradictory causing confusion and wasted time while his staff tries to interpret or correct them. He may believe that this is the modern way for world leaders to communicate but it is just not working well for him. Policy can’t be properly explained in 45-word posts. His speeches are repetitious except for the rare occasions where he sticks to the written script.

 

The startling revelation by Donald Jr. of the meeting with someone he believed to be a Russian government attorney, after repeated denials by of any such contact by the Trump campaign, is the latest fiasco but it probably won’t be the last. The Trump presidency is dysfunctional and a dysfunctional government in Washington poses a danger to us all. This president appears to be in over his head and needs help for the sake of the country. Calls for his impeachment by some liberals, however, is not the kind of help the country needs and is only making matters worse. We are in dire need of statesmanship in Washington as we muddle through Mr. Trump’s first and hopefully only term.

July 21, 2017

 

 

Resolving the North Korea Problem

Time Has Run Out On North Korea———————

                A commentary

                By J. F. Kelly, Jr.

Americans awoke on Independence Day to the news that North Korea had just fired a ballistic missile from its east coast into the Sea of Japan. Initial reports indicated that it landed within the exclusive economic zone of our ally, Japan, a country where we have tens of thousands of American service members, civilian employees and family members stationed, as well as ships, aircraft and bases.

 

The launch was believed to have been a successful test of a ballistic missile with inter-continental range. That means that North Korea’s irrational, anti-American leader Kim Jong Un is well on his way, if not already there, to having inter-continental ballistic missiles capable of carrying a nuclear warhead that could reach Alaska, Hawaii and probably cities on our West Coast. This represents a real threat to Americans that can no longer be endured or entrusted solely to the leisurely pace of diplomatic negotiations.

 

In response to the launch, our ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, called for an emergency meeting of the Security Council whose permanent members include China and Russia, either of whom could veto any action we proposed. China’s ambassador to the UN, Liu Jieyi, pushed for an end to combined U.S.-South Korea military exercises in the region in exchange for North Korea suspending its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. China has again also called for direct negotiations between the U.S. and North Korea. But we’ve been down that road before multiple times and it leads to nowhere. North Korea’s leaders never keep promises and routinely use negotiations to buy time until they develop enough capability to be able to force us to compromise or yield to their demands. Moreover, merely suspending their nuclear and ballistic missile programs is not enough. Nothing short of verifiably dismantling them will do.

 

President Donald Trump has already said that the time for negotiations is over and yet it never seems to be over. Meanwhile, the threat increases. He has reached out, apparently unsuccessfully, to North Korea’s ally, China, the one nation that can end this threat without massive bloodshed by cutting off all imports to the country with which it shares a land border while we impose a maritime quarantine on its seaports, denying any imports to a nation that relies on imports to survive. China failed to help but got thanked, nevertheless, for trying.

 

Mr. Trump also said that if China couldn’t resolve the problem, we would. But how? Washington announced a $1 billion plus arms deal with Taiwan and sent a U.S. warship on a freedom of navigation/right of innocent passage voyage, passing within 12 miles of a Chinese island base in the South China Sea, eliciting strong protests from Beijing, but that’s not nearly enough to persuade the Chinese to take action to prevent what they themselves say is the risk of events spiraling out of control with catastrophic results that neither of us want.

 

A military attack on North Korea would provoke a bloody response including an assault on Seoul, South Korea’s capitol, which lies within conventional artillery range from across the border. It would endanger our hostage military force in South Korea and possibly our bases in Japan. The only realistic hope for a relatively bloodless resolution is for the U.S. and China to act together to impose an air- sea-land quarantine on North Korea, cutting off all imports until the beloved leader is overthrown by coup or popular revolt or he agrees to a U.S.- verified permanent disarmament. We do have some bargaining chips with Beijing in this regard including a warning that we may otherwise extend diplomatic recognition to Taiwan and provide them with significantly more military aid. Or we might let the Chinese know that we might just encourage and aid the Japanese in acquiring a nuclear weapons capability as the price of failing to take effective action to defuse this threat now. Or maybe both.

 

If anyone has a better idea, I’d love to hear it unless it involves more endless negotiations, piecemeal sanctions or toothless UN resolutions. It’s too late for all that.

July 13, 2017

Witch Hunt

The Mueller Inquest——————————————-

A commentary

By J. F. Kelly, Jr.

As the Trump Resistance Movement tells it, President Donald Trump has been far too cozy with his pal Vlad Putin. You’d never know it, however, from watching U. S.–Russian relations continue to decline to levels not seen since the Cold War. The Russians are expanding their influence in the Middle East, providing support to their allies, Iran and Bashar Assad’s government in Syria and threatening to engage our aircraft if they get in the way. Their warplanes fly dangerously close to ours, risking a serious confrontation. With friends like Putin, who needs enemies?

 

Meanwhile, special counsel Robert Mueller is assembling a veritable major law firm to conduct an inquest into Russian meddling in our election and to determine whether or not the Trump campaign was complicit in it. As we know from recent history, these special investigations tend to broaden in scope and meander indefinitely. Here’s what we already know, even without a special investigation. Major nations often meddle in the elections of other nations when it suits their interest. It’s just something nations do, including ours. Russia did. Absolutely no evidence has yet been presented that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians and Mr. Trump has denied there was any but Mr. Mueller will investigate it anyway. We do, on the other hand, have plenty of proof, including the former president’s own words, that then-President Barack Obama was well aware of Russian meddling but did nothing about it. Why? You can probably guess. He, like most of us, expected Hillary Clinton to win and didn’t want to tarnish her expected victory with questions about Russian meddling. And speaking about cozying up to Putin, remember the meeting between Obama and then-Russian president Dmitri Medvedev when Obama whispered to the Russian that he (Obama) would have more flexibility after he was re-elected?

 

So Mr. Mueller will devote a huge amount of time and resources, mostly discovering what we already know plus trying to find someone to indict on a collusion charge to justify the effort. But since he’s well into building a staff and gearing up for a wide-ranging investigation, here are some “matters”, to use Loretta Lynch’s term for the Hillary Clinton investigation, that he might consider pursuing for which, actual evidence does exist.

 

First, how about examining the role that his pal James Comey played in influencing the election and in usurping the authority of the Attorney-General by saying Hillary Clinton should not be prosecuted for improper handling of highly-classified material after laying out a convincing case for why she should. Did Comey improperly influence the election again by his disclosure of new evidence against her on the eve of the election? And if he did so because he truly believed that then-Attorney-General Loretta Lynch would never indict Mrs. Clinton for any reason, shouldn’t that be the subject of an obstruction of justice investigation, especially in view of her private meeting with Bill Clinton while Hillary was under investigation?

 

Then there is the matter of who violated federal law by revealing the identity of Lt. Gen. James Flynn, a U.S. citizen, in connection with a wiretap of foreign nationals? And how about investigating the flood of leaks from the FBI and other government departments and agencies? Prominent among those leakers appears to be Mr. Comey himself who admitted that he leaked material to a friend that would likely result in the appointment of a special prosecutor who turns out to be none other than his good friend Robert Mueller. And doesn’t that compromise confidence in Mr. Mueller’s impartiality?

 

There is no evidence that the Russian meddling had any effect on the outcome of the election. Rather, it is likely that the Russian objective was to create suspicion and doubt about the integrity of our elections and our politicians. In this they appear to have succeeded.

July 10. 2017

The Twilight of American Preeminence

The Twilight of American Preeminence———————-

                A commentary

                By J. F. Kelly, Jr.

Throughout history, great nations have risen and then fallen into decline, each enjoying a period, sometimes brief, as the world’s preeminent power. Historian Paul Kennedy described the rise and fall of the great powers in his book of that title which explains how economic change and military conflict contributed to the decline, starting with Ming China up to the present-day United States. Harvard’s professor Graham Allison, in his equally-compelling “Thucydides Trap” describes the likelihood of conflict when a rising power, like China, challenges an established one, like the United States, for preeminence, noting that war has resulted in a dozen of the sixteen examples he cites.

 

Is it America’s turn to yield its position of preeminence to a rising China? If so, will we go quietly or will conflict accompany the process? Will history repeat itself? The conditions are surely there. Professor Kennedy noted that decline was always preceded by military and economic over-extension. The decline of the mighty British Empire was accompanied by the decline of the Royal Navy that once ruled the waves and the growing expense of maintaining it. Today, our national debt is a staggering $20 trillion and our navy, tasked with projecting power and presence around the globe in defense of our vital interests, is the smallest since the Great Depression. Moreover, sequestration has taken a serious toll on readiness and material condition and on all the services.

 

Meanwhile, Washington fiddles, consumed by disgraceful partisan political warfare that should deeply disturb citizens who care about the future of their country more than just preserving and expanding government benefits. That political warfare is distracting us from dealing with urgent threats to our security. Terrorist attacks are escalating in Europe and it is likely that they will here as well. We have tens of thousands of troops and civilians as well as bases, ships and aircraft within range of Kim Jong Un’s missiles which he has threatened to use against them and perhaps our cities. These are real threats to our security and we are running out of time to deal with them without incurring unacceptable risks. Security has a higher priority than domestic issues.

 

Both the president and the opposition party, so intent on undermining his presidency, have got to change their behavior now. The preoccupation with conspiracy theories like Trump collusion with Russia to influence the election, regarding which not one shred of credible evidence has been produced, must end. Nor must it be allowed to evolve into a never-ending obstruction of justice inquest under a non-elected special investigator, responsible to no one, who will spend millions until he finds someone to indict in order to justify the effort.

 

The president, for his part, must start acting like a president. Enough with the tweets. They are whiney, poorly thought out, clumsily worded and counter-productive. Staff is consuming far too much time explaining and resolving the ambiguities and contradictions. They are more than un-presidential. They are just plain juvenile. Devote that mental energy and time wasted in tweeting to actually trying to solve problems rather than complaining about them.

 

You actually thanked China for attempting, unsuccessfully, to help defuse the North Korea threat? Are you kidding us, Mr. President? Thanks for what? You know that China can bring North Korea to its knees by cutting off all its imports, 90% of which come from China. Tell them to do it now or we might just extend diplomatic recognition to Taiwan and perhaps build a few island bases of our own in the South China Sea. If you are such a great deal maker, get this one done.

 

Meanwhile, the Republican-controlled congress needs to get working on restoring military readiness as the number one priority. This will involve an end to sequestration, as much new ship and aircraft procurement as our industrial capacity can manage and additional funds for maintenance and training, all at the same time, not sequentially. It’s too late for gradual rebuilding that takes decades. Yes, it will take a lot of money but that’s going to be the price of rebuilding American military power and it includes the cost of eight years of neglect by the previous administration. Security can only be ensured when it is backed by sufficient power and without security, nothing else will really matter much.

 

Is America doomed to repeat history and follow the other great nations into decline? Only if we allow it to happen.

July 8, 2017

The Trump Resistance Movement

National Paralysis————————————-

                A commentary

                By J. F. Kelly, Jr.

Animosity toward President Donald Trump on the part of liberal Democrats and the mainstream media has reached a point where it is affecting the ability of the government to function effectively. It is turning into a relentless search for reasons why he should be impeached. First came the efforts to delegitimize his election victory.  His opponents paraded the tired argument that, because Hillary Clinton won the nationwide popular vote only to lose in the electoral college, Mr. Trump stole the election. But the electoral college system is how we elect presidents in this country. We are a union of states, not of individuals. The original states that formed that union and those that later joined had reasonable expectations that they would retain certain rights and powers not otherwise assigned to the federal government by the constitution. As disbelief in his election upset victory gave way to anger and resentment, but still not acceptance, the search was on for ways to destroy his presidency, if not by removing him from office, then by impeding his ability to govern.

 

In my lifetime, fifteen presidents have served this nation. Our two-party system has produced many hard-fought, sometime bitter election campaigns but never have I witnessed one so ugly and devious as the one just concluded. In truth, it seems as though it never really ended. In the past, most Americans, once the winner was determined, made an effort to rally around each new president. The smooth transition of power has been an American tradition. Even if we still had negative feelings about the person, we respected the office. The losing party became the loyal opposition.

 

Things seem far different today. People are so polarized that they just talk past each other and refuse to even listen to opposing views. The talk too often turns into shouting which sometimes incites violence. Civil discourse in America is drowned out by shouting and slogans. Political town hall meetings quickly descend into protest meetings. Instead of information being exchanged, insults are traded. How did this state of affairs come about? What has become of good manners? What is happening to our country?

 

There is plenty of blame to share but I place much of it on the news media which, with rare exceptions, is failing in its duty to provide the public with objective news reporting. Instead, today’s journalists seem to believe their mission is to provoke responses, preferably emotional and controversial ones, in order to extend the life of a story, revisions of which are then regurgitated endlessly and repetitiously in subsequent editions. Newspaper, news magazine and TV reporting, masquerading as news, is often saturated with opinion. Too often, the unsophisticated readers accept it as truth, rather than opinion, simply because they read it in the paper or heard it on TV or radio.

 

Also with rare exception, universities have been turned into sanctuaries for young adults whose minds are closed to any views that do not comport with theirs and who need to be protected from even hearing them, lest they be offended or traumatized. These are our future leaders and they are emerging from college at the threshold of their careers, without any real experience in the world beyond their campus sanctuaries, with their minds already shut tight to viewpoints different from theirs.

 

Finally, we are in what seems like a perpetual campaign mode in this country. However, the time and effort that politicians are putting into retaining or running for elected office and the time that we are investing into following election campaigns is neither productive nor is it producing better leaders. On the contrary; what it seems to be producing more of is anger, polarization and paralysis in Washington. Our enemies could not wish for a better outcome if their wish is to diminish America’s status and prestige in the world. I doubt that the Russians or Chinese actually succeeded in influencing the outcome of our election, but I have no doubt that they are enjoying our frantic efforts to determine whether or not they did and if they were aided in the effort by the Trump campaign.

 

For the sake of national unity, liberals and conservatives have got to stop demonizing each other and start working together to end the paralysis. While I still believe that Mr. Trump lacked many of the qualifications crucial in one that occupies the world’s most powerful office, he was fairly nominated and elected and he is president of all of us. He is owed our support, even if not necessarily our wholehearted admiration.

July 4, 2017