Category Archives: politics

The Syria Strike

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One point regarding President Donald Trump’s missile strike against Syria’s Shayrat airbase, from which the barbarian chieftain Bashar al-Assad launched his gas attacks against his own citizenry—including children and babies—is often missed, but Richard Fernandez did not.

[T]he Navy’s missiles very carefully avoided the tanks of sarin gas to avoid collateral damage. This could only be possible if the US knew the location of all the poison the previous administration had already destroyed.

While a single incident doesn’t create a trend (as a stat professor I once had put it, “If your hypothesis calls for a linear trend, collect two data points”), the absence of an administration willing to do more against barbarism than tut-tutting and finger-shaking seems to be getting filled in.

But wait—there’s more.  The Navy very carefully avoided targeting the air base barracks housing Russian soldiers, also.  Which means this administration also knew another thing that the prior administration must have known as well: there were Russian soldiers present on that base that housed the chemical weapons and which facilities armed and launched the aircraft that used those chemical weapons against those children and babies.

The Russians knew of and were complicit in the continued presence of Syria’s chemical weapons and al-Assad’s use of them.  As our UN Ambassador Nikki Haley mentioned.

The Gulag

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…is back and in full force in Russian-occupied Crimea.  Russian dissidents—Tatars, this time—are being “diagnosed” as insane and locked away in “psychiatric” hospitals.

Since the annexation of the region three years ago many ethnic Tatar activists who oppose the occupation have been arrested and subjected to abuse and imprisonment in outdated mental institutions, said Robert van Voren, a Dutch human rights activist and political scientist.

“The number of cases has increased considerably over the past few years, in particular against Crimean Tatars and Ukrainian activists who oppose Russia’s annexation,” he added.

Just as in the Soviet Russian gulag, conditions are appalling and along with Russian treatment of the “inmates” are intended to retrain them to ways of which Russia approves.  Emil Kurbedinov, a Crimean civil rights lawyer focusing on Tatar civil rights and himself locked up for 10 days, had this:

Some are placed in isolation and are denied their basic needs, such as access to a toilet. Others are housed with multiple people suffering from severe mental health conditions.

The activists are interrogated about their alleged involvement in “extremism” and their views of the government. They are also deprived of the right to speak with their family, or meet their lawyer on a one-to-one basis without a guard being present.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Chuck Schumer Agrees

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Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) has expressed his agreement with and appreciation of the missile strikes against the Syrian air base from which Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad launched his barbaric gas attack against innocent men, women, children, and babies—his own citizens—strikes which were ordered by President Donald Trump.

Making sure Assad knows that when he commits such despicable atrocities he will pay a price is the right thing to do.  I salute the professionalism and skill of our Armed Forces who took action today.

Unfortunately, this is just political posturing by the Progressive-Democrat as he tries to recover from the effects of his distortions and obstructionism of all things Trump, which recently culminated in his cynical crocodile tears over the loss of the filibuster against Supreme Court Justices.

Japanese Active Defense

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With the growing threat to the Japanese homeland represented by northern Korea’s nuclear weapons development, Japan is considering another major change to its defense posture: acquisition of a “counter-attack” capability to allow Japan to more actively respond to an attack by northern Korea.

There are a couple of misconceptions, though, in the government’s considerations or in The Diplomat‘s presentation of those considerations.

As long as Japan acquires the capabilities recommended by the study group with close consultation with the United States, so that whatever the new capability Japan acquires will benefit overall deterrence of the US-Japan alliance, it will ultimately work to counter urgent security challenges presented by North Korea.

Japan’s acquisition of counter-attack capabilities may well benefit from consultation with us.  However, Japan’s acquisition need not be limited by, or to, such consultations; Japanese acquisitions done on their own recognizance also will work to counter urgent security challenges presented by northern Korea.

The larger misconceptions, though, are these:

On the one hand, Japan has to accelerate its investment in the capabilities to counter the North Korean threat, which is a conventional military threat. On the other hand, Japan will also have to continue the investment it began to develop capabilities to counter China’s assertive actions in the East China Sea.

The northern Korean threat is only minimally a conventional one.  While northern Korea can lob a number of conventionally armed ballistic missiles at Japan, the serious threat, the one that can severely damage the Japanese homeland and butcher millions of Japanese, the serious threat posed by northern Korea is its growing nuclear weapons capability, especially coupled with Baby Kim’s constant threats to use those weapons when he’s achieved the ability to lob them at anyone.

Furthermore, I’m not convinced the two problems presented by northern Korea and the People’s Republic of China’s aggressions in the East China Sea are unrelated.  Nor am I convinced the two problems’ causes are unrelated.

Japan would do well to acquire an active defense capability, one capable of responding more completely than merely parrying an attack (which parrying can only be imperfect, and with nuclear weapons any leakage can have devastating consequences), but in addition to the parry being capable of serious counterstrokes.  Especially since such capabilities would do well against both problems.

Confusion

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There is some concerning Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ moves at DoJ concerning local police forces and local policing.  An example is provided in the lede to a recent Wall Street Journal article:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ decision this week to review concessions by local police departments accused of misconduct is part of a seismic shift at the Justice Department, which has quickly changed its emphasis under the Trump administration from protecting civil rights to promoting law and order.

Of course, there is no dichotomy between protecting civil rights and promoting law and order.  Indeed, the two are inseparable: it isn’t possible to protect civil rights without promoting law and order: it’s those laws and the order they engender that are at the foundation of civil rights—which themselves are matters of those laws and that order.

The confusion extends to the Federal government’s role in overseeing local police institutions, including particularly “consent” decrees concluded or in progress involving Federal demands for police department reforms satisfactory to the Federal government.  Sessions has ordered a review of these and has taken steps to begin rescission of some.  However,

Officials in Baltimore and Chicago say they remain committed to overhauling police forces….

These officials say they’ll proceed within the parameters of existing consent decrees, but the illustration remains: local officials are fully capable both legally and morally to overhaul, to reform, without Federal involvement, and that’s as it should be.  Each locale is different, and each local police force will need its unique and locally oriented reform.  Federal involvement might be needed to clear away impediments to reform, but it is not needed to mandate the nature or structure of reform.

In the end, reasonable men can debate the methods of law and order, and reasonable men can argue whether current law is sufficient for civil rights (beyond that, the question of current law’s adequacy in implementing inalienable rights has been debated since the Federalist Papers, the Anti-Federalist Papers, and before).  The immutable fact remains, though, that there are no civil rights, no matter what laws might assert, without laws being enforced—law and order.  And that is, of necessity, a local matter.