Left & Right July 18, 2018

We have a guest filling in for Gino: Tony Zore, an on-air personality at WMWV, our local radio station. He's a Libertarian and well-spoken.

We start with Trump/Putin press conference and comment on John McCain's put-down of Trump's performance. Tony thinks McCain and most media reaction is overblown. I agree.

Is Trump more anti-Russian than Obama, Bush, Clinton, etc.? I think yes, Tony too. He thinks NATO's effectiveness is diminished as France's and Germany's military preparedness has gone fallow.

Tony questions the wisdom of almost any US involvement in the Middle East. Trump's intervention against ISIS was wrong-headed because we shouldn't get involved when our enemies are fighting each other.

He predicts Turkey will be the biggest problem in the region for the United States and states his reasons.

We further discuss the complicated ethnic/religious conflicts within Islam but also the geography of the Middle East.

I bring up American's deepening divisions. I'm afraid it will get beyond words and so is Tony. I invite him to speculate on why. He gets into two different views of rights: individual rights vs what's good for the group -- society. As the national government amasses more power, the danger of civil war increases. He advocates returning federal power to states.

Tony thinks rising property taxes are the biggest issue facing the Mount Washington Valley. Also, balancing development with preservation of natural resources and scenic areas.

He endorses land trusts buying up development rights rather than government passing restrictive ordinances.

Eleven Weeks In

Did President Trump have to be the one to enforce Obama’s red line? I’m not sure. No one else would act to punish Syrian President Assad for using chemical weapons. Ideally, it would be the United Nations, but nobody has taken them seriously since Korea. How about we just quit the UN, tell them to leave New York City and go somewhere else — like Brussels maybe? That city can have two useless international bureaucracies to COEXIST with the 300,000 Muslims who live there. Can you picture it? One big, multicultural city full of smiling, happy people holding hands? It’s a  fitting image for the capitol of the EU and the UN, right? Just watch out for airport bombers and careening trucks.

Trump let the world know last week that he’s not Barack Obama, and that’s worth something. He’s not a wuss and he’s not predictable. Now Kim Jong Un can worry that Trump might do to him what he’s threatening to do to us — at any time. Iran can worry too. It won’t likely capture any more US sailors in the Persian Gulf with President Trump as commander-in-chief. All that is great.

It’s not good, however that Trump has put US Marines in Syria. That is contrary to what he said during the campaign. A month ago I wrote about the danger:

[Ethnic groups like the] Sunni Kurds, for example, are a minority in the border areas of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey — all of which, along with Russia now, are fighting ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Kurds want to be a nation-state too, but none of the aforementioned countries will cede them their ancestral territory which overlaps all. The US is arming Kurds. Last week, President Trump put US Marines on the ground in Syria. US soldiers must now fight alongside all these groups — some of which are still fighting each other — against ISIS. What could possibly go wrong?

A lot could go wrong, of course, especially after last week’s missile attack. Trump got a lot of votes promising not to mess around in the Middle East without a clear US national interest. Sending in the Marines contradicts his “America First” rhetoric.

Among the sixteen Republicans running in 2016, Trump was my last choice, below John Kasich. He won the nomination and I resigned myself to vote for him, but I wrote several columns detailing my concerns last fall. I won’t go into detail again here: suffice it to say that Hillary was “the devil you know” and Trump was “the devil you don’t,” but I went against the prevailing wisdom that the devil you know is preferable. However Trump turns out, I figured, he wouldn’t be nearly as bad as Hillary would be.

People from different parts of the country who read those columns wrote me about their support for Trump. He alone, they claimed, had guts enough to kick a** in Washington. He certainly had the confidence, but my misgivings remained. Democrats and Republicans both needed serious a**-kicking, yes, but would Trump be the best one to do it? I’m still not sure.

During transition, he picked an outstanding cabinet but it also became evident early in that process that Obama was laying mines for him. Days before his term ended, Obama signed an executive order making wiretap transcripts of Trump campaign officials available to hundreds of people in sixteen different intelligence agencies. This made leaking hundreds of times more likely. If that wasn’t Obama’s intention, it’s hard to imagine what was. Democrats and Mainstream Media — please excuse the redundancy— were, and are, out to get Trump, no question. They’ve pulled out all the stops, but Trump is fighting back and they’re not used to that. They coined the term “fake news,” to use against him, for example, only to have Trump immediately turn it around on them. That was brilliant.

Trump’s inaugural speech was wonderful, echoing what he promised during his campaign. Many of his tweets, however, reflect an obsession with inaugural crowds and the number of electoral votes he got compared to other recently-elected presidents. His claims were obviously erroneous and they undercut his leadership. I found myself wishing his advisors would take his phone away or at least temper his impulsivity. It’s embarrassing. When asked my opinion of our president lately I say I still don’t like him, but I like what he’s doing — except for the tweets and the troop deployments.

We’re eleven weeks in now. Here’s Trump’s report card from this former teacher:

Domestic policy  — A. He reversed most Obama executive orders and is enforcing immigration 

Economy — A. He’s reducing needless regulation and spurring energy development.

Foreign policy — C. He started well, telling other countries he’s putting America first, but he’s made some risky moves lately.

Deportment — D. He’s impulsive and he doesn’t play well with others.

Just Trying To Keep Up

In regard to my understanding of the world — what is going on and why — the best I can do is maintain a “working hypothesis.” The “what” is easier. The “why” to explain the “what” is more daunting because as new information emerges, I have to modify.

My biggest challenge is understanding developments in what we broadly call the Middle East. When I taught 20th century US History and current events, I’d start the school year with the essential question: “Why do radical Muslims want to kill us?” Teachers back then were required to formulate “essential questions,” then plan lessons around them. We were at war and some former students were fighting it. Others would be. I wanted them to know what they were fighting.

That involved lessons going back almost four millennia to Abraham’s time, then relating those lessons to current events. I had to teach about Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. There was so much information to take in that, without some kind of mental framework within which to arrange that information, it wouldn’t stick. So, I drilled them on regional geography as today’s national borders are drawn. I wanted them to be able to call up a Middle East map in their mind’s eye and know where Iraq was, Iran was, Syria was, Israel was, and so on. As they absorbed both historical and current events, they could mentally pin each onto their mental maps in its appropriate place. Babylon was in today’s Iraq and Persia is today’s Iran, and so on. Borders between land and sea were static, but national borders changed constantly.

Religion is only one dynamic. In my early teaching years, most students came with a basic understanding of Christianity. At the end, only a minority did and I’d have to start from scratch. I’d compare and contrast beliefs of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, then historical conflicts between them going back to 600 AD with the establishment of Islam. I’d explain that radical Muslims take Muhammed’s writings literally, especially those in the Medina Koran, which advocated converting Jews, Christians, and others at the point of a sword. Muhammed’s earlier writings in what is often called the Mecca Koran offered a reasoned approach. When some call Islam a “religion of peace,” they’re referring to the Mecca Koran.

ISIS, al Qaida, Hamas, and the Muslim Brotherhood follow teachings from the Medina Koran. Judging from his actions, so, also, did Muhammed himself. Radical Muslims today more closely follow what Muhammed actually did when he conquered the Arabian Peninsula and imposed Islam. It’s also what his followers did for the next thirteen centuries. Only after the last caliphate — the Ottoman Empire — was defeated in World War I did forced conversion end, and then only temporarily. What remained of the Empire became modern Turkey and nation-states created by the winners: France and Great Britain. Turkish leader Kemal Ataturk abolished the caliphate, separating church and state. Violent Islamic expansionism went into remission, one could say, from about 1920 to about the 1970s or so — a half century. Now ISIS calls itself the new caliphate — which carries the mantle of Islamic leadership — and Muslims from around the world are flocking to it.

Then there’s conflict between the two main branches of Islam: Sunni and Shia which have been fighting each other for centuries, not unlike the way Christian Catholics and Protestants in Europe did. Four out of five Muslims are Sunni while Islam edges Christianity as the world’s largest religion. Both sides support radical groups. Iran is the largest Shiite country with its Revolutionary Guard, its proxy armies Hezbollah and the Houthis, and sometimes Hamas. Sunni radicals include ISIS, al Qaida, Boko Haram, Al Shebaab, sometimes Hamas, and others.

Boko Haram

Then come the economics of the region — especially oil. Whatever was going on before oil was discovered in vast quantities, that all changed as petrodollars flooded the region and powered an Islamic resurgence.

Another dynamic is the reestablishment of Israel as a Jewish nation-state in 1948. It’s right in the middle of what had been almost exclusively the Muslim World for centuries. Many Muslims, Iran especially, pledge to wipe it off the map.

And there are ethnic conflicts within Islam. Sunni Kurds, for example, are a minority in the border areas of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey — all of which, along with Russia now, are fighting ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Kurds want to be a nation-state too, but none of the aforementioned countries will cede them their ancestral territory which overlaps all. The US is arming Kurds. Last week, President Trump put US Marines on the ground in Syria. US soldiers must now fight alongside all these groups — some of which are still fighting each other — against ISIS. What could possibly go wrong? Last week I also learned that erstwhile National Security Advisor Michael Flynn was being paid by Turkey while he advised President Trump.

Looks like I'll have to modify that hypothesis again pretty soon.