Trump “war crime” policy heard around the world

Andrew McCarthy at NRO penned an excellent, must-read piece:

“Culture Rot: Donald Trump Is the Effect, Not the Cause”

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/432380/donald-trump-culture-rot

McCarthy writes:

Before our very eyes, the corruption of cultural standards begets the corruption of law and politics. The coarsest part of the debate was Trump’s boorish boast (for which I’m willing to take him at his word, lest the next debate sink to a new low). The most egregious part, though, was Trump’s vow that, as commander-in-chief, he would compel the finest, best-trained armed forces in the history of the planet to commit war crimes — because there are evil people doing unspeakable things, as if that never happened before.

For a number of years in the mid-aughts, we debated the merits vel non of waterboarding. I defended the legality of this interrogation method — in the restrained practice of the CIA, not as cruelly administered historically — mostly based on a strict interpretation of the federal torture statute. It was not an endorsement of the tactic in any particular case. The opposition’s point was well taken that the existence of a legal justification (which they did not concede) would not necessarily make the use of waterboarding good policy. We volleyed ticking-bomb scenarios and slippery slopes back and forth.

As a lawyer, I instinctively believed we should be able to write rules clarifying the extremely rare circumstances in which aggressive tactics could be used. Critics forcefully countered that the very writing of rules was an authorization that would be stretched to cover non-dire circumstances. Jonah Goldberg reminded us about the “hidden law,” which as applied here, counsels forbidding across the board that which should be forbidden in almost all situations, in the belief that if a dire emergency did arise, good people would act outside the law, do what had to be done, and hope that others would understand and forgive.

Since I have already vented in the comments on Mr. McCarthy’s piece, let me just paste it here and be done for today:

susanholly Lamprey Wrangler • 27 minutes ago

Please, if the choices are Hillary or Trump – America is doomed, PERIOD! Trump is not some lifesaver of the Republic, he’s an insurgent intent on burning the system down! You reap what you sow when you enable sociopaths and those two are extreme sociopaths, who don’t believe rules apply to them.

I am keeping a list, for future reference, of every Republican mouthpiece, who uses the phrase, “that’s just Donald Trump being Donald Trump,” to excuse his excesses. Duncan Hunter, yesterday morning, a vet, no less was interviewed on FOX news in the morning about Trump’s Thursday night doubling done on his killing ISIS family members policy. Hunter said he hadn’t seen the debate, deflected, then tried to excuse Trump by asserting Trump was “just a little bit inarticulate”. I am disgusted that a former Marine Corps officer could excuse Trump’s assertion that he would ORDER U.S. troops to commit war crimes. There’s another Trump mouthpiece, a former Navy seal, who was on FOX doing the same thing. They are a disgrace to the US Armed Service and have dishonored themselves and are unfit spokespeople for we, the heirs of General George Washington’s Continental Army!

All this to promote an obvious sociopath, out of venal political motives. Rudy Guiliani, a man I respected, did the same “that’s Donald Trump being Donald Trump” excuse last weekend on FOX News and I lost all respect for him. He has been an “unofficial” Trump adviser for months and was well aware of Trump’s war crimes spiel, because Trump has repeated it several times. NRO should do a heading at the top of their page, to click on, and chronicle, names, dates and statements of all these Trump enablers – they deserve to be remembered for this.

As a vet myself, and the spouse of a Grenada and Desert Storm vet, I am disgusted that these people are excusing Trump and the murmurs of he’s trying to be tough – well, here’s the rub – the strategic challenges to defeat Islamic terror, which Mr. McCarthy has written very informatively about in his books, are complicated and very challenging, as it is, but for some fool like Trump uttering those words, he just added to the problem exponentially and he is UNFIT to ever command the US Armed Forces. It’s not just that Trump’s “strategy” is a war crime, it’s also that anyone with a brain knows that a military strategy based on killing innocent civilians in hopes it hurts the morale of enemy combatants is IDIOTIC and unhinged. YUGE blowback, in kind, would be the result of Trump’s policy.

His words were heard by every world leader and our enemies.

Trump walking that back should not be forgotten – remember it and remind all Trump enablers, because his foolish and idiotic utterance put US Armed Forces, operating in an already dangerous area of the world, in more danger! Anyone aspiring to be commander in chief, who would say he will order our military to commit war crimes, is a threat to The Constitution and to the troops he aspires to command!!! Wake up, this is no longer just the Trump reality TV show -Mr. Draft Deferment, just put US troops in danger with his careless and idiotic blustering – all to “sound” tough.