I have a confession to make:
I voted for Gary Johnson in 2012.
For the first eight years of my voting life, I had reliably pulled the lever for Democratic presidential candidates. In 2004, I voted for John Kerry. In 2008, I hopped aboard the Obama train. Like most people my age, I was spellbound by then-Senator Obama. His speeches were nothing short of inspirational. He
spoke about race in a way that oozed nuance and empathy. Indeed, his biracial heritage enabled Obama to view the historical chasm between white and black folks from a lofty perch constructed by his lived experience.
After eight years of the Bush Administration, I was ready for hope and change. I was tired of the way in which patriotism had been co-opted and weaponized by the Republican Party after 9/11. Bush officials and their cronies in the conservative media advanced dubious counter-terror and national security policies, packaging them in the American flag. They callously exploited "the troops" as rhetorical pawns to shield from scrutiny disastrous military decisions like the Iraq invasion.
I watched Fox News fairly regularly when I was a college student. Perhaps I was a masochist, but I was fascinated by the dishonest framing of the Iraq War debate specifically and the behavior of the Bush Administration more generally. Fox News commentator Sean Hannity, for example, would routinely accuse his liberal targets of "providing aid and comfort to the enemy." For those of you unversed in the language of the Constitution, that phrase is the definition of treason as written by our Founding Fathers.
How ironic that, roughly a decade later, Hannity would emerge as the
chief shill for a Republican president who has openly bragged about his stern opposition to the Iraq War. Apparently, there is a statute of limitations on treason.
In 2004, Hannity published a book entitled
Deliver Us From Evil. Buried in the first chapter of his screed, which was presumably written from the living room of his glass house, is this gem:
"Indeed, the greatest threat to our resolve today in the War on Terror is the political liberalism- and selfish opportunism- of the Democrats. From its leaders on down, America's left-wing party is ideologically inclined toward appeasement, toward dismissing or understating the terrorist threat, and toward containing, rather than confronting, the despotic regimes that aid and abet the terrorists. Whatever momentary interest its members may show in the war is inevitably swamped by the party's unquenchable thirst for political power."
Hannity crafted this statement in the midst of a concerted national campaign to smear Senator Kerry's
war record. It was also in the aftermath of a successful effort
to call into question the courage of Senator Max Cleland, a man who lost limbs during his combat tour in Vietnam.
But enough with Hannity. Analyzing his inane political stances over the years is akin to pummeling a straw man.
In truth, he was
not alone. Fellow commentator Bill O'Reilly exhorted critics of the Iraq War to
"shut up" once the conflict commenced because nothing less than unquestioning loyalty to the mission would undermine it.
Newt Gingrich opined that Osama bin Laden was encouraged by the political unrest unfolding in the midst of the War on Terror. Cindy Sheehan, a Gold Star mother and prominent war critic, came under severe attack as her profile rose. Finally, Obama himself was raked over the coals for having the audacity
not to wear a flag pin on his lapel during his presidential campaign.
It was all part of a playbook to which the Republican Party had adhered since the Vietnam War. Liberals were not patriots. They were cowards, unwilling to support armed confrontations with evil. It was unsurprising that Fox News emerged as the locus of the smear campaign. FNC Chairman Roger Ailes had been serving conservatives the same diet of anti-Democrat invective since his days as Richard Nixon's ad man.
Honestly, I could write a book about the chicanery of the conservative political and media elites during the Bush Administration. Their behavior was an insidious attempt to undermine democracy and free expression. I had enough. I believed Obama's election would serve as an antidote to our poisoned political discourse. More importantly, I thought his presidency would steer the country in a more prudent direction with respect to our counter-terror policies.
I was wrong.
Barack Obama preserved and expanded the Bush Doctrine. He made
liberal use of drones in countries on which the United States had not declared war, like Yemen and Pakistan, relying on the AUMF (Authorization of Use of Military Force) agreement Congress passed after 9/11 to give President Bush the flexibility to attack terrorist havens. Evidence emerged that drone operators engaged in a practice known as
"double tap," which involved re-striking a target after first responders arrived on the scene.
Funerals for the terrorists who were killed in strikes were also subjected to drone attacks.
Although the drone program was billed as a surgical bombing campaign that limited civilian casualties, it became clear that drone operators
frequently were unsure of who would be victimized by the missiles that were dropped onto targets. More disturbingly, the Obama Administration
would count any military-age male who was killed after a bombing as an enemy until proven otherwise. The tactic was reminiscent of the Bush Administration's practice of labeling every combatant killed in the Iraq war zone a terrorist.
Moreover, President Obama's extrajudicial drone program killed American citizens. In 2011, a drone strike authorized by Obama killed Anwar al-Awlaki, an al Qaeda senior member who recruited jihadis through online videos. He is also alleged to have plotted attacks on the United States, including the
attempted bombing of an airplane bound for Detroit in 2009. Two weeks later, Awlaki's son,
Abdulrahman, became "collateral damage" in a drone strike in Yemen.
No one will cry over the corpse of al-Awlaki, an evil man who actively pursued the mass murder of innocent people. The tears should be reserved for his innocent son, and for the utter disregard for the right to due process that our constitutional law professor-in-chief exhibited during his tenure in the White House.
A teenager was killed as a result of a program whose success in preventing the spread of terrorism was, at the very least, debatable. In fact, one could make a compelling counter-argument that the murder of civilians would only cause the cancer of terrorism to metastasize.
So, where was the debate?
I knew my vote didn't matter. Barack Obama was winning Pennsylvania, with or without my support. If Mitt Romney somehow discovered a path to victory, he would simply continue the foreign policy that George Bush created and Obama expanded.
I made a choice. I chose Gary Johnson.
*****
Fast forward to 2017. Barack Obama has left the White House. In his place resides the least competent person to ever hold the office of the presidency. Nearly three months into his term, Donald Trump has validated every concern I harbored about him.
He knows nothing about policy, as evidenced by the seriously flawed healthcare bill he unsuccessfully tried to bully through Congress. He promised to appoint "only the best people," but a
large number of staff positions have gone unfilled. Michael Flynn made it one month as National Security Adviser before he was forced to resign when his contacts with the Russian government were exposed.
Meanwhile, Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has an absurdly ambitious list of responsibilities, but zero government experience. Ivanka Trump
™ has taken a position as an adviser, but remains tethered to her business empire. Like her father, she is a walking conflict of interest. Ivanka Trump's supporters hail her as a feminist champion; yet
"having it all" should not mean Ivanka gets to have it both ways when it comes to the positions her father advocates.
The reckless disregard for the truth that Candidate Trump demonstrated has carried over to President Trump. The Idiot King of the Birther Movement lies constantly. He lied about the size of his inauguration crowd. He lied about the election, claiming that illegal immigrants voted against him in California, which pushed the popular vote total in Hillary Clinton's favor. He also lied about Massachusetts residents crossing into New Hampshire to cast ballots against him. Most importantly, he lied about President Obama wiretapping Trump Tower.
Trump's apologists claim that his opponents should take Trump
seriously, not literally. If citizens cannot take President Trump at his word, how can he be taken seriously? How can he possibly hope to lead the country? In the Trump Era, truth has been rendered meaningless.
Ultimately, Donald Trump remains the thin-skinned, insecure bully that he was during the 2016 election. There is no chance that he will change or grow into the job. Our only hope is that he does not reverse the economic recovery with his shortsighted protectionist policies.
On Thursday, however, Trump found the elixir that could reverse the fortunes of his dysfunctional presidency. He discovered the power of the bomb.
After video evidence emerged of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad's forces deploying chemical weapons on a hospital, Trump decided to act. He ordered a cruise missile attack on a Syrian air base from which the chemical weapons presumably emanated.
The media, which had previously busied itself by wildly speculating about the Trump campaign's connection to Russia, jumped at the opportunity to celebrate this righteous display of American weaponry. Recovering fabulist Brian Williams could not help but be amazed by the "beauty" of our arsenal of democracy:
It was a highly revealing display, one reminiscent of the glowing coverage Operation Iraqi Freedom received at the beginning of the invasion. War makes for good television, and those who do not stick to the script are often jettisoned. Just ask Phil Donahue, a staunch Iraq War critic whose television program was cancelled by MSNBC at the height of war hysteria.
Ashleigh Banfield was marginalized within the NBC News division for rightly calling into question the sanitized images of battle that the networks were selling to the American public.
Across the cable news landscape, the tomahawk missile deployment was treated like an elaborate fireworks display. It was entertainment. Retired generals were brought into studios to shower praise on Trump's decisive action. Here's hoping, unlike in the midst of the Iraq War, they were not parroting talking points prepared by the Pentagon.
Pundits joined the cheerleading session. Fareed Zakaria proclaimed that Trump
"became President of the United States" by initiating the attack, a statement whose grandiosity is only eclipsed by its emptiness. Zakaria had
plenty of company in the media world as the task of propping up Trump's presidency commenced in earnest.
Despite reports of extensive damage to the targeted air field, the runway was not affected. The
base was operational by the next day. So what was the point? To flex our muscles? To show that we do not tolerate chemical weapons attacks?
For the sake of the Syrian civilians trapped in the middle of a civil war, I hope that the bombing dissuades Assad from further use of chemical weapons. However, the civil war in Syria will abide. People will continue to perish. A selective display of outrage will not fundamentally change Assad's brutality, which he clearly views as an existential necessity.
It will also not absolve our country of its own misdeeds and miscalculations in the region. For two years, the United States has actively supported Saudi Arabia's incessant bombing of Yemen,
which has resulted in scores of civilian casualties. The failure of the Iraq War created the conditions which fueled the rise of ISIS, a fighting force composed in part of disaffected Ba'athists who were purged from the Iraqi Army and shut out from the government in Baghdad.
The ill-conceived raid in Yemen that Trump authorized in January, which resulted in the death of Navy Seal William "Ryan" Owens, also led to the deaths of
10 women and children. Among the deceased was 8-year old
Nawar al-Awlaki, the daugher of Anwar al-Awlaki.
Compare the picture of Nawar with
this image of a Syrian boy, which caused much consternation around the world. As we address the depravity of Assad, how about we confront our own malfeasance?
The more disingenuous among us would label such an exercise a false equivalence. This rhetorical tactic is a close relative of "what about"-ism and ad hominem artistry; they all function as defense mechanisms. Rather than accept even a moment of discomfort or contemplation, practitioners of these forms of sophistry place the onus of critical thought back onto the questioner. They believe that, by attacking the integrity of the questioner, they are bolstering their ideological beliefs. In fact, they only expose the weakness of their position.
No rational person would equate Assad with the Bush-Obama-Trump triumvirate. Assad is a brutal dictator who has clung to power by indiscriminately slaughtering his citizens. The American presidents in the post-9/11 era, by contrast, have been required to face a series of geopolitical challenges that do not lend themselves to easy solutions. Barack Obama did not deploy drones to kill civilian noncombatants. He sincerely wanted to address national security threats without putting soldiers in harm's way. In an era when enemies do not wear uniforms, are not bound by traditional borders, and thrive in countries with ineffectual governments, drone activity may well be a necessary evil. Moreover, the Special Forces mission in Yemen that killed civilians was not designed with that goal in mind, obviously. It was a tragic consequence of a mission that did not go according to plan.
Notwithstanding our good intentions, innocent people have lost their lives. And, rather than cower behind euphemisms like "collateral damage," we need to reckon with that reality at some point in this post-9/11 era. We need to stop viewing the Constitution as an inconvenience and make it the compass we use to guide us through the various moral quandaries we face in the Middle East.
When war is unavoidable and necessary, we should go. But we shouldn't be celebrating exercises of military power; nor should we be speculating how a bombing might boost the president's popularity.
Furthermore, when we refuse to confront our own mistakes, we perpetuate them. And we exacerbate our problems when we insist on using the troops as a collective shield to repel criticism of military action:
We owe it to the soldiers who have borne the burden of our 15 years (and counting) of endless war to start asking questions and demanding answers. When bombs begin raining down on sovereign countries in our collective name, critics should not be shamed into silence and battered with red-white-and-blue cudgels. Instead, the tone of the questions should only get louder and sharper. Such is the responsibility of a citizen in a representative democracy.
When will the narrative drivers in the media internalize their mistakes during the Iraq War? When will Congress reclaim its power to declare war? Where are all of the Constitutional originalists who cheered for the appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court? When will we stop conflating obedience to the government with respect for the troops? Who benefits from this environment?
When will we learn? When will our war fever break?
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