Trump's Surrender

 

I supported our war with Iran. I knew it was risky to go to war with an unfit and unreliable commander in chief, but I believed the goals of freeing the people of Iran from tyranny, fully eliminating Iran’s capability to resume working on building nuclear weapons, destroying its stockpiles of and production facilities for making ballistic missiles, and having Israeli forces finish the job with Hezbollah were good ones that justified taking a chance. I was right about the goals. I was wrong about taking the chance.

I have read the memorandum of understanding between Trump and the rulers of Iran. It is a strange document. It is common for people to surrender and accept an enemy’s terms after being defeated in a war. This is the only instance I can think of of a commander in chief surrendered after his armed forces won.

There are several possibilities as to which of Trump’s flaws led to this disaster. The simplest explanation is insanity, that if his behavior seems like madness, it is. Besides, there is plenty of evidence for the idea of him having some level of serious mental incapacity in his rants, unhinged Truth Social posts, and general erratic and unstable behavior. Apart from the present disaster, there is enough for officials to consider invoking the 25^th Amendment.

Another possibility is cowardice. For the man is surely a coward - a comic, stereotypical example of the blustering bully who likes to act tough, but is not convincing with it, and cannot back it up. The TACO (Trump always chickens out) criticism has been shown to be accurate over and over well before the present war. Now we are getting another and a disastrous example of it.

A third possibility is that Trump did it because he had decided that it would be the best result for Donald Trump – not Israel, not the people of Iran, not world civilization, not the United States of America, just Trump. He may have worried that if the Iranians shot down planes, captured their crews, and used them as hostages, it would make him look like Jimmy Carter. He might have been convinced by someone (maybe Vance and his faction) that if gas prices did not come down, Republicans would lose the midterms, and he would be tormented by congressional investigations for the next two years. He may have been offered personal incentives by the rulers of some of the oil states in the Middle East. He may have just wanted to feel like a master deal maker again. Or he could have had some other imagined gain in mind.

The explanations are not mutually exclusive. My guess is that it was some of all three that led us here.

Sorsby and Texas Tech Football

 

I am a Texas Tech football fan. I would like having Brendan Sorsby playing quarterack for TTU next season. I also would like having Patrick Mahomes playing quarterback for TTU next season, but Mahomes could not do it even if he wanted to, because he is not eligible to play college football, having long since moved on to the NFL. Sorsby should not be eligible either.

The NCAA was right to ban Sorsby from the game after he was caught betting not only on college football but on a game or games the team he was on played. His guilt is not in question, and his defense is risible. Excessive gambling is not an addiction. It is a character flaw. But even if one accepts the dubious notion of the existence of an addiction to gambling, there is no way being so addicted would force someone to bet on his own team’s games, given that there are thousands of other things on which to bet. So the claim of addiction is irrelevant to the thing Sorsby did which caused him to be banned.

Texas Tech should do the right thing and announce that it will follow the NCAA’s decision and not play Sorsby during the coming football season. The ethical reason for this is clear. Sorsby is guilty according to the rules of the NCAA (and according to ordinary fairness and fair play), and TTU as a member of the NCAA is obligated to follow its rules (and should practice ordinary fairness and fair play). For those who do not worry about that, there also is a strong pragmatic reason for benching Sorsby permanently or kicking him off the team. If this is not done, TTU athletic programs will be treated as pariahs by other programs in the Big 12 and around the country, and will be subject to whatever revenge and punishment the people at the NCAA can come up with for years to come. The short term benefit of having Sorsby is not worth the long term cost, particularly since Hammond may be ready before TTU has a tough game next season.

Pride

 

Posting this again:

In the summer of 1939 much of the world was either at war or about to be. Nazi Germany had broken its promises of the year before and occupied more of Czechoslovakia. Franco’s nationalists had won the Spanish civil war. Japan’s invading forces had seized much of the coastal and some of the interior areas of China. The three most powerful armies in the world were the German, Soviet, and French, with the French army along with the British navy considered to be the bulwark against Hitler’s Germany. The United States at that time had a powerful navy (though not one ready for a two ocean war) and an army smaller than the one Belgium would field in 1940. In August Hitler and Stalin made an agreement of partnership, splitting up east central Europe between them. In September Germany and Russia invaded and partitioned Poland, starting World War II in Europe. In May of 1940 Germany attacked and defeated France, destroying the French army. By the end of that awful summer, Hitler was master of continental Europe with almost every continental nation allied with, occupied by, or friendly toward Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union as a de facto ally in the east, Asia’s greatest power Japan an ally in the Pacific, and only the British Empire as an active enemy. That was a crisis of civilization.

The United States responded by aiding and supplying Britain and later the Soviet Union after Hitler the broke the pact and invaded Russia and by strengthening its own defenses while remaining officially neutral in the war. Neutrality ended on December 7^th 1941 when Japan attacked the American navy base at Pearl Harbor, sinking or damaging the battleships of the Pacific fleet. In the next few days Germany declared war on the United States leaving America at war with great powers in both Europe and the Pacific. In less than four years after Pearl Harbor and despite early defeats, American forces accepted the unconditional surrenders of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, ending history’s greatest war in complete victory.

Over twelve million men served in the U.S. armed forces in the war, and millions of American women and older men worked on the home front to produce the arms and equipment for both America and its allies and co-belligerents. My father and most of my uncles served in the war. My mother and several of my aunts worked on the home front in various jobs. I am proud of them and grateful to them for it. Americans today should remember and be proud of all the Americans who helped win that war. Early June is an especially appropriate time to express that pride. Between June 4^th and 6^th in 1942 an outnumbered and outgunned U.S. naval force decisively defeated the Japanese navy at Midway in the most historically important naval battle since Trafalgar, ending Japan’s offensive in the Pacific. On June 6^th 1944, American forces landed in Normandy, securing their beachhead and beginning the great campaign leading to the destruction of Nazi Germany.

It’s a free country, and people can select what they want to be proud of and when they want to show their pride. For me each June, it will be the men and women of World War II. They deserve it along with our gratitude and remembrance. They made the world we enjoy. Very few of them are still alive. Soon all will be gone.

American Muslims and the Sharia Scare

 

Lately in my state some politicians and others have been trying to stir up hostility toward and fear of American Muslims, often by warning about a non-existent threat of Muslims imposing sharia law somewhere in the state.

Given that, it may be useful to mention things American Muslims (and everyone else) should be able to expect from their fellow Americans. They should expect that their right to practice their religion freely will be respected. They should expect their fellow Americans not to blame or condemn all of them for the crimes committed by some of them. They should expect governments to place no more restrictions on or barriers to the construction of their places of worship than are applied generally. They should expect that local, state, and federal officials, including those in public schools, will not discriminate against their religion, nor evangelize for another in any official activities. They should expect that other Americans will not question their loyalty to the United States without reason for doing so.

Of course there also are things that other Americans should require of American Muslims (as well as of everyone else). I think most American Muslims know these things well, but it would not hurt to publish  some of them for the benefit of some who may not, particularly some who have arrived from places with far different laws and customs. A list would include the following:

1) You must not rape anyone, not even your wife or a woman you believe is behaving immodestly.

2) You must not rob, steal from, or defraud anyone.

3) You must not marry or have sexual relations with any girl younger than the legal age in the state where you live.

4) You must not sexually mutilate any girl.

5) You must not behave cruelly to animals, including dogs.

6) You must not beat or otherwise physically harm any women or girls, not even in your own family.

7) You must not offer material support to any terrorist organization or foreign power hostile to the United States.

8) You must not physically attack another person.

9) You must respect the right of others to criticize, ridicule, and insult your religion and other beliefs.

America is a free country. It also is a very diverse country – religiously, philosophically, ideologically, ethnically, and culturally. We do not have to like or agree with each other. We do have to respect each others rights.