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Op-Eds

Congress Should Just Say No to Trump’s Afghanistan Surge

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SANGIN, Afghanistan - American and British sol...
SANGIN, Afghanistan – American and British soldiers take a tactical pause during a combat patrol in the Sangin District area of Helmand Province April 10 2007. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

With the US occupation of Afghanistan well into its sixteenth year and the country no closer to becoming a stable democracy than it was in late 2001, Antiwar.com reports that this isn’t an “all options are on the table” scenario.

President Donald Trump seems to have rejected the idea of withdrawing US troops and ending the war. Instead, he intends to become the third president in a row to roll the dice on a “surge” — that is, to send in more troops (the initial estimate is anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 more in addition to the current 8,400) and hope for the best.

That idea has never worked before and it’s not going to magically start working now. If Trump can’t bring himself to put an end to America’s Afghanistan misadventure, Congress should force him to do so by either repealing its “Authorization for the Use of Military Force” or using its power of the purse to cut off funding for military operations in Afghanistan.

The US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan has been nothing but epic fail from the very beginning.

First, it was quite likely unnecessary. After the 9/11 attacks — carried out by terrorists from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Lebanon — president George W. Bush demanded that Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers hand over Saudi national Osama bin Laden. The Taliban offered to remand him to a third, neutral country upon the presentation of evidence, even though they were under no obligation to do so in the absence of an extradition treaty. Rather than proffer the requested evidence, Bush chose war.

Secondly, instead of invading, finding, and capturing or killing bin Laden and coming home, the troops were set to play at the game of “nation-building.” While they toppled the Taliban regime and began setting up what they hoped would become a western-style democracy instead of immediately going after bin Laden in the caves of Tora Bora, he and his compatriots made their escape over the border into Pakistan. It was nearly another decade before bin Laden was hunted down and assassinated.

Finally, even after it became clear that the forces which denied the Soviets victory in a decade-long war from 1979-89 could and would do the same versus US forces, first Bush and then Barack Obama just kept doubling down, pouring American blood and treasure by the gallon into soil from which peace and democracy refused to sprout. Trump apparently wants to go down in history as Afghanistan failmaster number three.

The US occupation will never achieve its purported goals. If Afghanistan is going to change, it will be the Afghans who change it. They’re not interested in being told how to live by Russians, by Americans, or by anyone else. Can’t say as I blame them.

This column is dedicated to the memory of R. Lee Wrights (1958-2017)

Note: The original version of this column claimed that the Taliban offered to hand Osama bin Laden over to the US on presentation of evidence implicating him in the 9/11 attacks. In fact, the Taliban’s offer was to hand bin Laden over to a “third party” country. Thanks to Jacob Hornberger for the correction.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Op-Eds

The Scandal Isn’t Post-Presidential Speaking Fees, It’s Political Pensions

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English: President Barack Obama speaks to a jo...
English: President Barack Obama speaks to a joint session of Congress regarding his jobs plan, the American Jobs Act (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As former US president Barack Obama’s second term drew toward its close last July, he exercised his veto power for the eleventh of 12 times, shutting down “The Presidential Allowance Modernization Act of 2016.” The bill, which easily passed both houses of Congress, would have reduced former presidents’ pensions and staff allowances dollar for dollar if their other incomes exceeded $400,000 per year.

In the wake of Obama’s decision to accept a $400,00 fee for a Wall Street speaking engagement this September, the bill’s sponsors plan to reintroduce it. But neither the speaking fee nor the veto are what we should be noticing. The real scandal is how lucrative retirement has become for American politicians.

Under the aptly named Former Presidents Act, former presidents receive pensions equal to the salaries of cabinet secretaries. Right now, that’s more than $200,000 per year. They also receive $150,000 per year for staff and office space. That’s not counting the costs of Secret Service protection security for life, managing their monuments (the construction of presidential libraries is privately funded but the government pays their costs of operations to the tune of nearly 20 times those pension costs), etc.

Members of Congress are also eligible for pensions after as little as five years in office. Those pensions aren’t quite so lavish as rumor sometimes has it, but for politicians with long careers they can exceed $100,000 per year. As of 2013, the average congressional pension  was about $60,000 per year.

Why on Earth should politicians receive taxpayer funded pensions at all?

More than half the members of Congress are already millionaires when they are elected to office, and most of them can expect great job offers as lobbyists and so forth after they leave.

Whether a president is wealthy or not prior to his inauguration, he’s certainly going to be after leaving office. That $400,000 speech of Obama’s is chump change compared to the $65 million joint book deal he and former First Lady Michelle Obama signed barely a month after moving out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (Bill Clinton and George W. Bush apparently only knocked down $10 million each on their books, poor guys).

There’s good reason to treat Congress, the presidency and the vice presidency as, to steal a line from James Madison in The Federalist #62, “an assembly of men called for the most part from pursuits of a private nature, continued in appointment for a short time” — as temporary “public service,” not the kind of lifelong career from which one “retires.”

As of 2015, the median US household income was (according to the US Census Bureau) $55,775. Why are those households paying former members of Congress that much or more, and former presidents nearly four times as much? Their paychecks should end when their terms in office end.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Op-Eds

Trump is Right: “Shutdowns” Are Good for America

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English: Donald Trump speaking at CPAC 2011 in...
English: Donald Trump speaking at CPAC 2011 in Washington, D.C. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If he’s remembered for nothing else, Donald Trump will go down in history as the first president to think out his policies in public, 140 characters at a time. That may not be a bad thing. In fact, I think we should strongly consider a constitutional amendment limiting Congress to 140 characters per law. Hold that thought …

“Our country needs a good ‘shutdown’ in September to fix mess!” the Donald suggested in a tweet on May 2, in a fit of pique over the US Senate’s 60-vote cloture requirement. That requirement forced Republicans to negotiate with Democrats over a stopgap spending bill, in turn requiring Trump to give up on some of his policy goals for the short term to avoid the dreaded “shutdown.”

The president’s reasons for rattling the “shutdown” saber are wrong  — the harder it is for Congress to spend money, the better! — but his instincts are right. “Shutdowns” are much-needed opportunities for Americans to look more closely at, and hopefully re-think, the federal government’s true role.

As you may have noticed, the word “shutdown” comes with scare quotes both in Trump’s tweet and in this column. That’s because the federal government never really shuts down.

When a spending impasse in Congress brings about a “shutdown,” what happens is that “non-essential” government services cease operation and “non-essential” government employees go home home on unpaid leave (unfortunately, the impasse usually ends with them getting paid for the time off).

Let that sink in for a moment.

“Essential,” per Webster’s, means “[i]mportant in the highest degree; indispensable to the attainment of an object; indispensably necessary.”

If the services shutting down aren’t indispensably necessary, why is the federal government providing them the first place? If the employees who get sent home aren’t indispensable to the attainment of the federal government’s object(s), why are they warming office chairs in Washington?

If these things aren’t essential, why are taxes withheld from your paycheck every week to pay for them whether you want them or not?

If Trump stands firm in September and forces a “shutdown,” pay attention to what stopped happening and what didn’t. Did you really need the things that stopped to start again? And as for the things that kept on happening, did you really need them either?

You’ll likely be surprised to discover how irrelevant Washington, DC is to your life and disgusted at how much you’re paying in taxes for how little you get that you actually need.

Trump often tells us that he’s not a politician. Maybe that’s true. Politicians fear and loathe government “shutdowns” — not because of the momentary delays in their grand schemes, but because there’s always a possibility that you will suddenly realize how little you need them.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION  HISTORY