Left & Right October 9, 2019

Jim Wilfong of Stow, Maine again sits in the left chair for this show. We open with a question from our producer: "Do you support Trump's decision to pull troops out of Syria?"

Jim doesn't. He thinks it a very bad idea to abandon our allies, the Kurds, who have helped us at least since the First Iraq War under President George H.W. Bush, and in every operation in the region since. I have mixed feelings about the move.

We go on for some time discussing 100 years in the region's history back to WWI, after which the British and French carved up the former Ottoman Empire into the nation-states as they exist today, but they divided Kurdish tribal areas assigning parts of "Kurdistan" to Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, and not one of those countries is well disposed to the Kurdish minority within its borders. All see the Kurds as a troublesome, rebellious minority of which they'd prefer to rid themselves.

We go into Constitutional history in which the Founders gave Congress the power to declare war until Lyndon Johnson was given the power to conduct the Vietnam War by the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in the 1960s. Then came the War Powers Act of 1973 which limited the president to act only in emergency situations, and then for only 30-60 days until Congress decides the issue. That, however, is being mostly ignored by successive presidents and Congress has allowed them to.

Jim goes into the Petroleum Politics of the region, citing that we are no longer dependent on Persian Gulf oil, but China and Europe are. He says Turkey is strategic as a site for pipelines for getting Russian natural as to southern Europe. Iran and the Emirates are also interested in getting their natural gas out the same way.

We spend more than half the show on these complicated issues in what is collectively called "The Middle East."

Then we shift to impeachment. I read a 1788 Federalist paper quote from Alexander Hamilton on the subject. He saw impeachment as a divisive and political process more than a legal process.

We examine the House "inquiry" going on now and conducted in secret, that media reporting on much of it is by unnamed sources, a "high government official speaking anonymously," and so forth. We compare the impeachment process in the 1860s for Andrew Johnson, in the 1970s for Richard Nixon, and in the 1990s for Bill Clinton with how it's going now. There is a consistent thread for the first three but not for what the Dems are doing to Trump so far in 2019.

Time runs out before we can thoroughly explore the Supreme Court case about a transexual person fired by a funeral home.