Browsing: Opinions

    She remembers standing in line for bread as a child in Armenia in the early 1990s, during the collapse of the Soviet Union and the war with Azerbaijan. Winters were bitterly cold. Electricity was scarce. Families cut wood in nearby parks just to heat their homes. Each person received only a small ration of bread. The uncertainty of those years etched itself into her childhood in ways she would only later understand.

    In a tough and complex world, people tending to the left side of the political spectrum are often accused of starry-eyed naïveté when they push for the prevention of war and the building of peace through law, diplomacy and budgetary control over military forces—replacing the law of force with the force of law. The operating paradigm of the hawkish, by contrast, is peace through strength: no amount of weapons is ever enough and the glove of diplomacy only thinly covers the iron fist of force. These are caricatures, simplified to make a point.

   There exists within the foundation of American democracy a sacred promise—one that transcends politics, personalities, and power. It is a promise sworn not to a king, not to a president, not to a party, but to an enduring framework of law and liberty: the U.S. Constitution. Every general who rises to command within the United States military swears an oath to support and defend this Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. This oath is not ceremonial. It is not symbolic. It is a binding moral contract that demands courage not only in battle—but in judgment.

Is No Kings Becoming A Movement And Will You Be A Part Of It?

    The first face-to-face high-level talks between the US and Iran since 1979 have ended without agreement. Hardly surprising; both sides put forward positions not subject to actual bargaining. On the US side, according to JD Vance:

    Should the United States be bound by international law? Donald Trump doesn’t think so nor does his defense secretary. Last January President Trump told the New York Times, “I don’t need international law.” According to Pete Hegseth, “We will keep pushing, keep advancing, no quarter, no mercy for our enemies.” Not only has “no quarter” been considered a war crime since the 1899 Hague Convention; it violates the United State War Crimes statute which has a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. Hegseth has dismissed such concerns as “stupid rules of engagement.”  Nor is it likely that the Trump administration would prosecute him for following the orders of the President.

    In the wake of President Trump’s monstrous nuclear threat to obliterate Iran’s civilization, calls for his removal from office are rising, understandably. Doing so via the 25th Amendment, which would require Vice President J.D. Vance and the spineless supine sycophants in the Cabinet to certify Trump unfit for office, is the longest of long shots, though U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), a former Constitutional law professor and ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, notes the amendment mentions the ability for Congress to establish its own mechanism to remove an incompetent chief executive.

    We are living in an Upside Down moment, and the danger is no longer metaphorical. You don’t need to have watched Stranger Things to recognize that the threat is real, not lurking in another dimension. It’s prowling in the White House, and no blinking lights are spelling out SOS.

    Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, speaking within a worship context tied to military life, drew from the Psalms: “I pursued my enemies and overtook them, and did not turn back till they were consumed.” In that setting, the words do not remain safely in the past. They are re-entered as invocation, carried from ancient text into the present tense of state power.

    Let’s be clear: Every President since World War II has tried to stretch his authority to act abroad. Whether we’re talking about Truman in Korea, Kennedy and Johnson in Vietnam, Nixon in Cambodia, George W. Bush in Iraq, or now Donald Trump in Iran, all abused presidential power. The President’s role as commander in chief has for a long time meant the power to deploy US forces wherever he judges “national security” to be in danger—and then challenge critics to reverse his decision.