Kicking the Can down the Road

The old cliché is still in play.  Republican leaders have offered to kick the can down the road by proposing a temporary increase in the debt ceiling to forestall an American credit crisis that could put the global economy in a disastrous tailspin.  The deadline would be put off for another six weeks.  At the same time, they seem disinclined to reopen the government, so we are left for the moment in a fast-changing scenario with the fiscal cliff still looming next month and the threat of a government shutdown removed only because it has actually been shut down.

Score it round one for Speaker Boehner over President Obama.  The latter had said he would not negotiate with the government shutdown and the debt ceiling crisis still on the table while Boehner was saying there could be no solution without negotiations.  Yesterday, Obama met with Republican House leaders at the White House.  The President had invited the entire Republican House caucus to the meeting, but the crafty Boehner brought only his leadership team and a few committee chairmen to the party and laid out a feint initial bargaining position.  Obama seemingly intended the session to be his lecture to the entire caucus, but it turned out to be a de facto negotiation that raised the hopes of the nation for a solution to Washington’s impasse.  The stock market, for example, went on a buying frenzy and the media breathed hope into the gloomy atmosphere surrounding a profound struggle over the redistribution of wealth.

In my opinion, hope for a quick solution is premature—as the can keeps tumbling down the road.  Boehner still needs to break loose from the hold of the Tea Party right.  It helps that Republican poll numbers relating to the crisis are slipping catastrophically nationwide (except possibly in states like Texas).  Boehner’s effort to slip the Tea Party noose was apparent yesterday in his proposal that made no mention of “Obamacare,” the President’s signature legislation enacted  in 2010 that the Tea Party has been trying to shoot down ever since.  The Speaker seemed to be taking the position that cuts in entitlements and federal programs to aid the poor and middle class will be his main priority.  The President, while standing firm on Obamacare, has expressed a willingness to give ground on the social safety net.  But if he gives too much ground, he will lose the support of his base on the left.  In the meantime, Boehner has retained his leverage from the government shutdown and the looming fiscal cliff.

 Please continue to stand firm, Mr. President.  Your legacy and our nation’s greatness hang in the balance.

Professor Obama’s Dilemma

Poor Professor Obama!  I think he would make a great professor of constitutional law all the way up to Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.  He has the intellect, the breadth of knowledge, and the sense of fairness, all of which in my mind make him supremely qualified for either post or anything in between.

But I have my doubts about his performance as President.  His charisma is sky high, but his political record is at best a mixed bag.  Just about everything has gone abysmally wrong in his handling of the Syrian crisis, starting with his unfortunate “red line” comment relating to chemical weapons.  Obama told Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, don’t cross the red line, and then Assad allegedly did so, gassing people who opposed him in the Syrian civil war not once, but at least twice.  About a third of the dead are reportedly children.  Then Obama talked tough.  He committed the United States to the launch of a “limited” missile strike to punish this violation of international norms established in the aftermath of widespread, indiscriminant gassing in World War I almost a century ago.

His decision has had negative repercussions at home and abroad.  Russia, Syria’s longtime ally, and China are sure to veto any attempt by Obama to work his will through the United Nations.  Russian Premier Vladimir Putin wants Obama to convince him beyond the shadow of a doubt that the Assad regime, and not the civil war rebels, set off the poison gas, an obvious effort to make Obama look obstinate for not revealing America’s deepest intelligence-gathering secrets.

In London, Parliament voted not to grant British support for Obama’s act of war against Syria—America’s most loyal ally has opted out.  Most European nations are also standing on the sidelines.  The only major exception is France.  Not surprisingly, Israel supports a missile strike.  The Arab League has voted against it.  Egypt is against it.  American allies like Saudi Arabia, the Arab Emirates, and other countries have privately conveyed their support to Obama, but won’t say so publicly.  Syria’s neighbor Turkey is in the same mode.

Obama is having a tough time bringing the international community around.  The United States might have to carry out the missile strike with minimal support, unless some other option emerges.  People in Iran, Syria’s neighbor and close partner on the international scene, have been turned off by the gas attacks, and the newly elected president of Iran, Hasan Rowhani, said to be a moderate, may hold the key to a peaceful solution of the Syrian crisis.  But that scenario is complicated by the fact that Iran is at odds with the U.S. over the Iranian effort to join the nuclear club.

Back home, Obama’s political enemies are licking their chops.  Never before—after wading through the phony birther issue, the threat to ruin America’s credit rating and shut down the government, sequestration, and the vacuous effort to repeal “Obamacare—have the Tea Party conservatives seized upon an issue so potentially damaging to Obama’s Presidency.  In the aftermath of the shocker in the British Parliament, the American President, having announced that he would launch the attack on Syria, then decided to get the approval of Congress before carrying it out.  That’s putting the cart before the horse (please excuse the cliché).  He should have reversed the order by appealing to Congress first.

His chances now of achieving Congressional approval seem dim.  The Tea Partiers are dead set against him, not based on the merits or demerits of the issue, but because they have always hated him and want him to fail for any reason.  It has always been Obama’s chief drawback as President that he wants to reason with the Tea Partiers.  They are unreasonable people, uncompromising, reckless, and dangerous.  He should be fighting them tooth and nail.  FDR, you may recall, was proud of having such enemies and happy to go to the mat with them.

The hawks that include people like Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham and the war-mongering neocons are trying to kidnap the President’s agenda.  Obama wants to limit the American action to a punitive, one-time missile attack without taking sides in the civil war.  McCain has inserted language in the proposed Senatorial resolution drafted by the White House that would direct Obama to do more to help the motley rebels in the Syrian civil war.  The resolution passed in committee with McCain’s incendiary language in it.

To those hardliners who want a deeper American involvement on the rebel side, Obama appears weak.  They say he doesn’t go far enough.  To those who want no American involvement in the civil war, in particular the liberals who comprise the base of the Democratic Party, he goes too far.  They find themselves in a no win position.  For the most part, they abhor Syria’s use of chemical weapons against innocent people, yet are opposed ideologically to the missile strike as an act of war, which could escalate beyond the intended limits.  But they also want to support their President.  It’s as if the President has dug his hole deep enough to accommodate the entire Democratic Party.

Professor Obama will take his case to the American people in a speech Tuesday, September 10.  He is a great speechmaker.  This one will have to be his greatest, and, even then, it remains doubtful that he can persuade a war-weary nation to go along with his plan.  If, ultimately, Congress shoots it down, he would then face a decision whether to go through with it on his own or table it.  Obama has not let on what his choice would be.  Either way, we are left to wonder about its impact on our lives.

The Red Line and Assad’s War Crimes

Those three little words, “the red line,” are wafting mischievously through the corridors of power.  Secretary of State John Kerry has made a forceful statement about the high degree of certainty that the Syrian regime gassed its own people and the need for the United States to respond.  But the closer America gets to zero hour for launching missiles on Syria, the more it seems like a foolhardy step.

Kerry reported 1,429 deaths from the Syrian regime’s gas attacks, including 426 children.  Gas poisoning is a horrible way to die, but so is a bullet or sword through a vital organ or the blast effects from a shell or another explosive device.  So far, the unofficial death toll from all causes in the Syrian civil war is in the range of 100,000.  That larger figure seems a more compelling reason to do something to stop the senseless slaughter.  But do what?

The Obama Administration has chosen a “limited” missile strike on the narrow issue of chemical warfare, not for the purpose of bringing about regime change, but to let the regime of Bashar al-Assad know that it has exceeded international norms.  But where will that lead?  We don’t seem to know.  What if Assad responds by using more chemical weapons to kill more of his people?  Will America ratchet up the punishment?  How deeply will America become engaged?  How and when will the cycle end?  Is another mission creep like the disaster in Somalia in our future?

It is hard to believe that all this is coming about over President Obama’s careless remark that the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons is a red line that Assad cannot cross with impunity.  Having said that, Obama will lose diplomatic credibility among nations if he does not back up his “red line” threat.  Obama has drawn the line and Assad has called his bluff.

Now Obama is contemplating an act of war against the Syrian government with only one major ally, France, at our side.  He seems intent on making America the arbiter of internal conflict, the judge of international morality, and the enforcer of national civility.   But the international community already has such a facility with these lofty abstract powers, the world court in The Hague, which brought Serbian political criminals to justice after Special Forces from America and other countries carried out kidnapping operations and delivered some of the perpetrators to the court.

Why not indict Assad for his war crimes?  Rounding up the suspects would be a risky business, much more dangerous than the raid that ended the life of Osama bin Laden, and also an act of war as long as Assad remains in power.   But even if the accuser nations make no serious attempt to capture the accused war criminals, the paper used in drawing up the indictment would be cheaper, more peaceful, less bombastic, and no more ineffective than missile strikes.  We live in a world where political fiction often trumps reality.  Better to pretend that Assad could be called to account for his war crimes in the court of international law than to pretend that missile strikes would have a deterrent effect on him.  In other words, the legal fiction offers Obama a way out of his bellicose dilemma.

Obama on the Brink

As President Obama weighs his negative options in Syria, he needs to make sure he has all his facts lined up before he acts.  The President has put American warships in position for a missile strike to knock out Syria’s stores of chemical weapons.  To order or not to order an attack on Iraq is a hard choice.  He’s damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t.  It’s the stuff that makes or breaks a President.  It will go far to determine his place in history.

            An unnamed senior White House official said Sunday “there is very little doubt” that the Syrian regime headed by President Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons to kill his own people in a suburb of Damascus controlled by rebels in that nation’s ongoing civil war.  Syrian government forces have been shelling the area, and videotape showing people dead or dying reportedly from the effects of chemical poisoning has been running on American television.  Doctors without Borders reported that 3,600 people have been treated for symptoms of gas poising, and 355 have died.

            The United States and other western countries do not have a good track record when it comes to intelligence on Middle East dictatorships.  Iraq comes to mind.  In 2002 the Bush Administration cited intelligence that claimed the Saddam Hussein regime was pressing ahead with programs for weapons of mass destruction that allegedly threatened his neighbors and even far-off America to justify the American aggression against Iraq.  After overrunning Iraq, the American occupiers found no such programs, and the Bush Administration was left with egg on its face.

            Not to defend Syrian President Assad, but to save face for America, I ask whether it is possible that the government shells lobbed into rebel territory did not contain poison gas, but that the poison was planted in the ruins by rebels, many of whom are Islamists.  That is what Assad claims, and he is backed by Iran and Russia.  I ask because for Assad to gas his people in defiance of America’s warning not to do so would be very stupid of him.  I believe Assad might be evil, but he is not stupid.  On the other hand, for rebels to plant the chemicals and make it appear to be Assad’s treachery would be very smart.  And for the Obama Administration to fall for such a ruse would put it in a class of chumps comparable to the neocons in the Bush Administration.

            Obama, who dug himself into a hole when he spoke of Assad’s use of chemical weapons as a “red line,” and that for Assad to cross it could trigger American retaliation, seems aware of the danger.  He is being very cautious about taking his next step, which the White House promises would not involve American troops on the ground.  Now his Republican critics are calling him a weak President for going back on his word.  Among them are the same neocons who sold America on going to war in Iraq.  We should not forget, either, when we hear that any American action would be limited, that the Vietnam War started with one small step—implanting American advisors—and gradually snowballed under successive Presidents into full-scale war.

Telling It Like It Isn’t

As a journalist, I find it very satisfying to defy conventional wisdom or received opinion to “tell it like it is.”  But people in high public office don’t always have that luxury.

Egypt offers a case in point.  We all know that the government led by the Muslim Brotherhood was ousted in a military coup.  To think otherwise is to dabble in pure fiction.  But President Obama is reluctant to utter that term.  If he did, it would trigger a provision in the American law authorizing foreign military aid that would automatically cut off about $1.3 billion in aid that flows annually to the Egyptian military.

To that, I know, many people would say, “Good.  We should not be propping up military dictatorships anyway.  Military dictatorships are the bane of democracy.”  I believe Obama might say that, too, if he had the liberty to speak his own mind.  But the President is in a real bind and the stakes could not be higher.

The Egyptian army appears to be about the only thing standing in the way of a Muslim Brotherhood takeover in Egypt, the most important nation in the Arab world, the center of Muslim culture embraced by more than a billion people on a global scale with tons of moral and political influential beyond its borders.

Ironically, the emergence of the Muslim Brotherhood coincides with the Arab spring, that whiff of democracy that wafted across the Arab deserts beginning in December 2010—ironically because the Islamist ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, the rule of God, is the opposite of democracy, the rule of the people.

 The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood is eighty-five years old, founded in 1928 by Hasan al-Banna and modeled after the rigid doctrine of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab that grew out of the Arabian waste in the eighteenth century.  The Wahhabi were fierce warriors and they comprised the backbone of the Saud family’s rise to power in Arabia by military conquest.  To the consternation of the ruling monarchy, Wahhabism remains alive and well today in Saudi Arabia, land of the world’s largest oil deposits that fuel modern economies.

Banna, on the other hand—a most brilliant, pious, and energetic man, was non-violent.  He believed in the power of education (or propaganda, if you like) and preached that once the people understood his message of divine sovereignty, they would vote for it, and secular government would crumble from its own weakness.  In his vision, Islam was more than a religion and (as I wrote in “Obama’s War,” published in 2011) “it is a total system, the final arbiter of life, all things to all people, for all time in every place, based on the revealed word of God….”  In other words, divine sovereignty equals divine dictatorship.

The Muslim Brotherhood, democratically elected to power in Egypt and recently deposed by the Egyptian military, kept faith with Banna’s non-violent ideals.  The violent side of the Brotherhood grew out of the writings of Sayyid Qutb, which led in the 1980s to vicious attacks on tourism to undermine the Egyptian economy and the assassination of Anwar el-Sadat who negotiated peace with Israel.  Ayman al-Zawahiri, one of the leading figures in that violent outburst, now leads al-Qaida, whose goal is also divine sovereignty, but whose current business it is to plot terrorist acts like 9/11 against the United States and other Western countries.  The Egyptian military’s crackdown on the non-violent Muslim Brotherhood might open the way for the Brotherhood to manifest its more violent instincts.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    So that leaves the United States with no good options on Egyptian policy.  We are faced with an anti-democratic Egyptian military trying to eliminate the anti-democratic Muslim Brotherhood that gained power through the ballot box but whose ultimate goal is a divine dictatorship.  There appears to be no middle ground—only muddled politics.  How is America’s interest best served?  I frankly don’t know, and I suspect that Obama and his foreign policy brain trust don’t know either.  But by leaving aid to Egypt in place, refusing to call a spade a spade, i.e., a military coup a military coup, they are buying time to think about it as events on the ground unfold.  The latest rumor is that the United States has secretly suspended aid to the Egyptian military, to which the White House has yet to respond.

Give ’em Hell, Barack

It was good to see President Obama tear into Republicans over their fixation on repealing “Obamacare.”  He sounded like a Harvard version of Harry Truman.

 

“Why [is it] that [Republicans] have made the idea of preventing [30 million uninsured] people from getting health care their holy grail, their number-one priority?” he asked at his latest news conference.  “The notion is simply that those 30 million people, or the 150 million people who are benefitting from other aspects of Affordable Care, will be better off without it.  That’s their assertion, not backed by facts, not backed by any evidence.  It’s just become an ideological fixation.  Well, I tell you what, they’re wrong about that.”

 

House Republicans, the majority party in that body, have voted forty times to repeal the Affordable Care Act—and that’s as far as the bill goes.  The Senate, controlled by Democrats, does not take it up, and in any case, President Obama would veto it.  Now the House Republicans are threatening to defund Obamacare, and shut down the government if they must to get their way.

 

Republicans argue that that the Affordable Care Act is “government centered” and will add to health care costs.  Former Republican Senator Jim DeMint, now president of the Heritage Foundation, said the House should defund Obamacare even if it leads to a government shutdown.

 

In the 1948 presidential campaign, Truman secured a four-year extension on his occupancy of the White House by blasting the “do nothing” Congress.  This Congress is more radical than the one Truman faced down.  It goes beyond “doing nothing”; it talks of shutting down the government, a form of self-flagellation that would reinforce the decline in American preeminence.

 

Personally, I don’t take either side.  I believe that health care is an inalienable right that is best manifested in the least costly and most efficient way, a single-payer system financed by taxpayers.  That way, the onerous inflation in health care costs could be stopped in its tracks.  But given the only two alternatives on the table, I favor the President’s new law.

 

So fire away, Mr. President.  Even though you cannot benefit politically, as Truman did, you are raising the level of public discourse by exposing the absurdity of the Republican argument.

Drones, the First Line of Defense

Drones have been active in Yemen in recent days, as well they should be in the aftermath of a conversation between al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Pakistan and the leader in Yemen, Nasir al-Wuhayshi.  Zawahiri told Wuhayshi to “do something,” which has been interpreted as something big like 9/11, and prompting the United States to go on high alert for possible al-Qaida attacks on American assets at home and abroad.  In this cockeyed war against terrorists, drones have become America’s first line of defense.

 

It has been said that drones kill innocent people.  That’s undoubtedly true, and regrettable, but they kill far fewer innocents than carpet bombing did in wars past.  I argue that America should go to war reluctantly and only as a last resort, but once committed, it should use the best weapons available.

The drone is a superb weapon, first for intelligence-gathering, and second for precision bombing, remotely controlled far from the field of action and subject to restrictions from higher military and presidential authority.  I don’t say it’s perfect, but it would be foolish not to use it against savages sworn to kill Americans and destroy their property.

The Democratic Clown Show

Twenty-eleven was the year of the Republican clown show starring the likes of Rick Perry, governor of Texas, Michele Bachmann, Congresswoman from Minnesota, and Herman Cain, a political nobody from out of nowhere, in a series of Republican primary debates.  They became the laughing stock of the nation through the jokes of late night comedians.  This year the clown show stars oversexed Democrats.

 

    First and foremost is Anthony Weiner who is running for mayor of New York City.  Weiner offended American sensitivities by exhibiting his bare body to a selection of women on the internet.  That led to his resignation as a member of Congress from New York.  When he announced his candidacy for mayor he said that experience was behind him.  He had cleaned up his act.

 

But recently he admitted that he had continued his exhibitionism even after leaving Congress, even after announcing for mayor.  This means he lied to the people of New York City.  Can he be trusted to serve them as mayor?  That, of course, is for the people of New York to decide.

 

In my opinion, his worst offense was to his wife, Huma Abedin, former aide to Hillary Clinton, and by all accounts an extremely competent and honorable public servant.  Weiner prevailed on her to speak publicly of her continuing support of him.  Maybe she is truly sincere in her forgiveness.  She has a family to think about.  But shame on him for allowing her to speak up at his side while he asked New Yorkers on live television to ignore his lies about his continued “sexting” on the internet.  I don’t blame her for standing by her man; I blame him for letting her tarnish her image to support him.

 

Ex- Congressman Bob Filner, mayor of San Diego, is another flawed character.  Several women (nine, all told) have accused him of making improper sexual advances, such as a slobbery kiss on the cheek of one woman (leading with his tongue), a soft finger run down the cheek of another,  a hand on the “derriere” of still another, etc., etc.  He has admitted to his sexual deviancy with women and committed himself to a two-week psychological rehab.  In the meantime a petition is circulating for a recall election, and if it succeeds San Diego voters will have the chance to express their opinion about his conduct.  He is under pressure from Democrats to resign and avoid disaster at the polls.

 

The third is Eliot Spitzer, former attorney general and governor of New York State, now running for city comptroller.  With a bright future ahead of him, he stepped down as governor after the disclosure that he patronized prostitutes.  Apparently he has repaired his family life.  Now he is trying to reclaim his political career at a lower level.  There is no question about his political talent.  When he served as attorney general he successfully brought several lawsuits against Wall Street firms.  Now Wall Street is giving his leading opponent in the comptroller’s race, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, a fistful of campaign money.  Spitzer is waging a low key campaign while admitting his past sexual mistakes.

 

It happens that these three men are all Democrats trying to emulate the political rejuvenation of Republican Mark Sanford of South Carolina who won a seat in Congress by overcoming his use of taxpayers’ money while governor to visit his mistress in Argentina and leaving behind the fib that he was hiking on the Appalachian Trail.  But while the 2013 Democrats are providing fodder for the comedians, it appears that they do not quite measure up to the 2011 Republicans when it comes to clown acting.

Kerry to the Rescue in the Middle East

 

Secretary of State John Kerry announced today (July 30, 2013) that peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine will begin within two weeks aimed at settling the long standing differences between these two close enemies.  That Kerry was able even to bring them to the bargaining table was an outstanding accomplishment.  Getting them to agree on a peace settlement is in the category of mission impossible.

 

            The issues have stood out like festering sores since Israel wrested the West Bank from Jordan in 1967.  Essentially, the Palestinians have complained of Israeli occupation and exploitation of land that they had lived on for centuries usually as the doormat for invading armies passing through who enforced political power from far-off capitals.  Before Israel declared nationhood over most of the land in 1948, Britain controlled Palestine after driving out the Ottoman Turks during World War I.  It had been part of the Ottoman Empire for four centuries.

 

Israelis have demanded security from the depredations of radical Arabs determined to send the Jews back to whence they came, starting with Yasser Arafat’s secular Palestine Liberation Organization and carrying through with Islamist terrorists in Hamas (Islamic Resistance Movement) and Islamic Jihad.  The Israelis suffered through two intifadas, the first mostly non-lethal outbreak from 1987 to 1991, and the second, bloodier onslaught marked by savage terrorist bombings from 2000 to 2004.

 

Many issues need to be hammered out: land, borders, censorship, the right of return for Palestinian families rooted out of their homes in 1948, etc.  But Israeli settlements in the occupied territories have long been the main sticking point, beginning in 1968 with the establishment of Kiryat Arba outside Hebron led by a religious extremist, Rabbi Moshe Levinger.  After the Yom Kippur War in 1973, which diminished the image of the governing Labor Party, settlement activity picked up dramatically.  When the Likud Party came to power in 1977, the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza became government policy.

 

In succeeding years it became a bipartisan policy.  While the late Labor Premier Yitzhak Rabin was talking peace with the Palestinians in the early 1990s as a participant in the Oslo negotiations, he was laying down roads that connected Israel with the settlements on which Palestinian-owned cars were prohibited.  Later Israel constructed a wall sealing off Israel proper from the West Bank and Gaza, and ignored the pre-1967 border to bring Israeli settlements on Palestinian land within the wall.  Late in 2003 Premier Ariel Sharon announced plans for a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, a step in the right direction that has still not led to peace.

 

The United States has made numerous attempts to mediate the dispute, and every time American peacemakers flew to the Middle East, Israel would announce an expansion of settlements.  Whether or not Israel intended to scuttle the talks, all peace efforts have ended in failure.  The proposal for the Oslo Accords in the 1990s initiated serious negotiating for an agreement in stages, but never nailed down the final stage.  In a previous stint at the seat of Israeli power, the current premier, Benyamin Netanyahu, made concessions at the Wye River talks in Maryland in the late 1990s, but they amounted to a reshuffling of the deck without Israel giving up control.  President Bill Clinton believed he was on the verge of success in the final days of his Administration in January 2001 when Arafat backed down over the issue of rights to Jerusalem.

 

Later that year, President George W. Bush sent retired Marine General Anthony Zinni into the fire.  In my 2008 book, “Military Occupations in the Age of Self-Determination,” I wrote, “Zinni doggedly pursued his efforts to forge a cease-fire.  In March [2002], he called Israeli and Palestinian negotiators to a meeting.  To his surprise, they greeted each other like old friends, shaking hands, embracing, back slapping, and chatting amiably.  But when they got down to business at the bargaining table, positions hardened and they began screaming back and forth.”  Needless to say, Zinni’s effort tanked.

 

In 2009 the redoubtable George Mitchell, former Senate Democratic majority leader and the man who brought peace to Northern Ireland, became the latest to fail in Palestine.  To Secretary Kerry who is making another noble try, I say, good luck, you’ll need it.

 

Another Failure of Justice

The predicted outcome of the George Zimmerman trial has arrived.  The miscarriage of justice has come to pass.  The white Hispanic vigilante who shot and killed Trayvon Martin, an unarmed 17-year-old black boy, walks away a free man.  It may be true that the jury was hamstrung by the technicalities of Florida law, but the verdict fell short of justice.

Congratulation to the prosecution for a spirited rebuttal to the defense’s closing argument.  John Guy made the jury’s decision more difficult, but couldn’t close the deal.  He said, “George Zimmerman did not shoot and kill Trayvon Martin because he had to.  He shot and killed Trayvon Martin because he wanted to.”  That was very much on target.  But he should have added, “Zimmerman put the gun two to four inches from the left side of Trayvon Martin’s chest.  From that distance he couldn’t miss the heart.  He intended beyond reasonable doubt to kill Martin.”  The innocent man was Trayvon Martin, not George Zimmerman.

This is a victory for the culture of gun legalization that allows an untrained neighborhood watchman to carry a concealed weapon, profile and murder an unarmed youth walking to his father’s house, and claim self-defense.  It is one of the great issues of our time.  It is another example of freedom gone wild, not nearly as powerful as the mass murder of 20 first-grade children and six adult educators in Newtown, Connecticut.  As it stands now the gun lobby, spearheaded by the National Rifle Association and relying on a flawed interpretation of the Second Amendment, has the upper hand.  Our legislators, whether at the state or federal level, must address the issue with laws that require background checks for the purchase of weapons, the regulation of gun manufacture, and tight strictures on the function of neighborhood watchmen.