The Norms of War

While I am picking on Vox today, time to go after their top dog, Ezra Klein, and his editorial, "Donald Trump and the destruction of America's political norms".

Klein starts with one of Trump's most infamous utterances:

On December 7, Donald Trump strode out in front of the assembled television cameras and did something unusual: The stream-of-consciousness candidate read a prepared statement. 

It said: "I, Donald J. Trump, am calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on." 

Trump didn't break a law that day; he broke a norm. Major politicians can single out particular religious groups for discriminatory treatment in the United States. They just … don't.

Klein goes on to explain why politicians don't break that norm. This is all well and good, but sometimes things need to be done because they are the right thing to do under a circumstance.

Americans like to slam Roosevelt's internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, but ask yourself what would have happened to them if he had let them run free in a period right after Pearl Harbor, where we were at war with Japan? You would have had KKK-like lynchings of Japanese Americans, and that would have been the tip of the iceberg. Even if the public excuse was to "prevent spying", and maybe that was FDR's only reason for doing it, it still had a positive side effect of protecting Japanese Americans.

Currently, the United States is involved in extended wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, three overwhelmingly Islamic nations, in a region of predominantly Islamic nations. We have already killed over 210,000 innocent civilians in our wars over there. Remember how ticked off Americans got over the 3,000 deaths on 9/11? Now try to imagine how the Muslims in that part of the world feel about Americans.

America, this is your wake-up call.

But wait! I don't need to explain that to Americans, They already get is, as Klein points out:

To understand the danger Trump poses, though, it's important to recognize what happened next. Banning all Muslims from traveling to the United States, for any reason, went instantly from being a proposal so bigoted and outlandish that no one had even considered it to a proposal at the center of the American political debate. It was discussed. It was polled. It was normalized. 

Any politician looking to appeal to Trump's voters had to at least see his point. Ted Cruz, for instance, stood up in the next presidential debate to say, "I understand why Donald made that proposal," even though he went on to oppose it. Polls soon showed a majority of Republicans agreed with Trump.

Oops! My mistake! That is just those "racist Republicans", not all Americans.

Klein goes on to show how other Republican candidates seemed to follow Trump's lead. But those were just losers trying to jump on the bandwagon after it had already left.

But Klein keeps going:

This is the danger Trump poses to the American political system, even if he loses. He is normalizing the abnormal. He is redefining what is acceptable to do and say in American politics.

What Klein fails to realize is that there are only two possible positions about Muslims, and neither Clinton nor the "standard" Republican politicians were covering either of them. Trump covers one, while the other is covered by Libertarian Gary Johnson:

1. Trump's position: Fight ISIS and keep Muslims out of the U.S.
2. Johnson's position: Find other ways to fight ISIS besides boots on the ground and dropping bombs, while taking no extra measures against Muslims entering the U.S.

Clinton's ideal is to fight ISIS while opening the gates to Muslim immigrants, which analogizes to fighting the fox while you leave the door to the henhouse open. The phrase "dangerously stupid" comes to mind. As for the other two, while I prefer Johnson's position as more effective in the long run, at least Trump's position is ideologically consistent, albeit distasteful.

If you are going to make an omelette, you will have to break some eggs. Likewise, if you are going to make war, you will have to break some peacetime rules.

But what does Klein propose to do about ISIS? He doesn't know:

I am not going to pretend that I have the answer to how the West should respond to ISIS. 

Then Klein goes on to make a rather bold prediction considering he has no clue how to fight them:

ISIS isn't strong. It's weak. That doesn't mean it's not dangerous, or that it can't hurt us. But we shouldn't pretend these are invincible superterrorists. They're murderers fighting a war that they will lose and we will win.  

Translation: It doesn't matter what we do to ISIS. We will win. USA! USA! USA!

Further translation: Klein's position is even more boneheaded than any of the three candidates for president.

In all seriousness though, I suspect Klein would agree with Johnson's position. But will he go against Hillary Clinton and admit it? Or will he tie himself up in pretzel logic to avoid a "wasted vote" recommendation?

Don't you love it when Democrats try to pose as talking heads?