In the wake of her supposed “victory” in the first round of Democratic presidential debates, US Senator Kamala Harris  rose from fifth place to a tie for third place (with fellow US Senator Elizabeth Warren) in a Morning Consult poll of her party’s primary voters. Her gain came mainly at the expense of  the front-runner, former vice president Joe Biden. More interesting than Harris’s sudden ascent is how she managed it: By ripping a page out of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign playbook.

John McCain, said Trump in 2015, is “not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

That’s exactly what Harris did to Joe Biden in Miami. She picked an opponent to take down and attacked that opponent on a signature bit of his personal history (support for the civil rights movement), confident that the facts would get less attention than the chutzpah of the attack itself.

Unlike Trump, she at least picked an opponent who’s actually in the race. Also unlike Trump, she was generally lauded, rather than savaged, for taking the low road.

If the similarities between Harris and Trump ended there, Miami might seem like coincidence. But they don’t. Different as the two are — he was a businessman and “reality TV” star before running for president, she’s a Democratic Party apparatchik who’s spent decades clawing her way up the political ladder; he’s white and male; she’s black and female — they’re a lot more alike than different.

Like Trump, Harris has difficulty holding a policy position for more than a few minutes under pressure.  He favors non-interventionism, except when he’s “the most militaristic candidate” of the bunch, unless he changes his mind tonight and again next week. She favors banning private insurance as part of a single-payer health program, except no, she doesn’t, except she kind of does, except maybe she misheard the question.

Like Trump, Harris is contemptuous of a free press.  He wants to “open up” libel laws to go after political opponents who write “hit pieces.” She wants to suppress publications which accept ads for “adult services,” so much so that as attorney general of California she filed charges against Backpage.com that were dismissed because there was no applicable law involved, then in the US Senate successfully pushed through a bill to outlaw such ads.

Like Trump, Harris is a big fan of unilateral executive power whether the Constitution authorizes it or not. He declared a fake “emergency” to misappropriate money for his border wall in illegal defiance of Congress’s “no.” In Miami, she bragged that as president she would give Congress 100 days to pass a gun control bill she liked, after which she would just rule by decree if they didn’t.

The math says that Trump’s path to re-election is exceedingly narrow. In order to lose in 2020, the Democrats would probably have to nominate a candidate even more openly narcissistic and authoritarian than Trump (or Clinton). In Harris, they may have found their next loser.

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

• “Kamala Harris: Trump, But with Darker Skin and Better Hair,” by Thomas L. Knapp, River Cities’ Reader (Iowa), 06/30/19
• “Kamala Harris: Trump, But with Darker Skin and Better Hair,” by Thomas L. Knapp, OpEdNews, 06/30/19
• “Kamala Harris: Donald Trump, but with darker skin and better hair,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Claremont, New Hampshire Eagle Times, [web and print], 07/03/19
• “Kamala Harris: Trump, But with Darker Skin and Better Hair,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Ventura County, California Citizens Journal, 07/04/19
• “She’s Trump with darker skin,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Orangeburg, South Carolina Times & Democrat, 07/07/19

“The United States is running concentration camps on our southern border,” US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) pointed out in an Instagram video on June 18.

Republicans quickly ducked into phone booths and emerged wearing sackcloth, ashes, yarmulkes and Star of David armbands to wail in unison that AOC was disrespecting victims of the Holocaust by comparing the concentration camps where the US government holds immigrants to the concentration camps where Hitler killed millions of Jews.

There’s really only one place to begin analyzing this kerfuffle:  Yes, the detention facilities in which the US government forcibly holds large numbers of immigrants are concentration camps.

Yes, most Americans in this day and age associate the term with the Holocaust — and AOC certainly encouraged the comparison.

But words mean things and inflammatory comparisons from either side don’t change the meaning of the term “concentration camp.” It dates from 1897 (for camps operated by the British during the Boer War in South Africa), and the practice it describes is far older than that. In America, concentration camps date to at least as early as the 1830s, when US troops rounded up Cherokee natives and confined them in such camps before forcing them west along the Trail of Tears.

If you’re rounding up large numbers of people and concentrating them in camps, you’re operating concentration camps. Period.

They’re concentration camps whether the involuntary residents are Cherokee, Boers, Jews, or immigrants.

They’re concentration camps whether the policy leading to their use is good policy, or bad policy, or even wholly wicked policy.

They’re concentration camps if you support their use, and they’re concentration camps if you oppose their use.

“If that makes you uncomfortable,” AOC suggests, “fight the camps — not the nomenclature.”

To which I must add: If accurate nomenclature makes you so uncomfortable that you feel compelled to protest its use, there’s probably a reason.

I wasn’t surprised to see US Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) leading the  “using an accurate term is an insult”  pack. After all, it was her father, former vice-president Dick Cheney, who insisted that accurately referring to torture practices which the US hanged Japanese generals for authorizing during World War as what they are — torture techniques — rather than as “enhanced interrogation” when Americans use them “is to libel the professionals who have saved American lives.” There’s one apple who didn’t fall far from the tree.

Is it really too much to ask of those who support the use of torture and concentration camps that they own their positions and openly argue their side instead of expecting the rest of us to use softer, more cuddly words, so they can avoid the discussion? In modern American politics, the answer seems to be a resounding “yes.”

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/CITATION HISTORY

• “Yes, they’re concentration camps,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Richmond, North Carolina Observer, 06/26/19
• “Yes, They’re Concentration Camps,” by Thomas L. Knapp, OpEdNews, 06/26/19
• “Yes, They’re Concentration Camps,” by Thomas L. Knapp, River Cities’ Reader (Iowa), 06/27/19
• “Yes, they’re concentration camps,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Duluth, Minnesota Pine Journal,[web and print], 06/27/19
• “Yes, they’re concentration camps,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Duluth, Minnesota Superior Telegram [web and print], 06/27/19
• “Yes, They’re Concentration Camps,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Nuestra Comunidad, 06/27/19
• “Yes, those are concentration camps,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Wilson, North Carolina Times, 06/28/19
• “Yes, They’re Concentration Camps,” by Thomas L. Knapp, CounterPunch, 06/28/19
• “Yes, they’re concentration camps,” by Thomas L. Knapp, St. George, Utah Daily Spectrum, 06/28/19
• “Yes, they’re concentration camps,” by Thomas L. Knapp, USA Today, 06/28/19
• “Yes, they’re concentration camps,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Indianapolis, Indiana Star, 06/28/19
• “Yes, they’re concentration camps,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Fort Collins, Colorado Coloradoan, 06/28/19
• “Yes, they’re concentration camps,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Nashville, Tennessee Tennessean, 06/28/19
• “Yes, they’re concentration camps,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Reno, Nevada Gazette Journal, 06/28/19
• “Yes, they’re concentration camps,” by Thomas L. Knapp, El Paso, Texas Times, 06/28/19
• “Yes, they’re concentration camps,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Arizona Republic, 06/28/19
• “Yes, they’re concentration camps,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Detroit, Michigan Free Press, 06/28/19
• “Yes, they’re concentration camps,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Fon du Lac, Wisconsin Reporter, 06/28/19
• “Yes, they’re concentration camps,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Milwaukee, Wisconsin Journal Sentinel, 06/28/19
• “Yes, they’re concentration camps,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Cincinnati, Ohio Enquirer, 06/28/19
• “Yes, they’re concentration camps,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Rochester, New York Democrat & Chronicle, 06/28/19
• “Yes, they are concentration camps,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Sanford, North Carolina Herald, 06/28/19
• “‘Concentration camp’ comparison insulting, absurd,” by Mark Levin, Wilson, North Carolina Times, 07/01/19
• “They’re concentration camps,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Orangeburg, South Carolina Times & Democrat, 07/02/19
• “Yes, They’re Concentration Camps,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Ventura County, California Citizens Journal, 07/04/19
• “Yes, they’re concentration camps,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Fayette, West Virginia Tribune, 07/18/19
• “Yes, they’re concentration camps,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Montgomery, West Virginia Herald, 07/18/19

On June 21, President Donald Trump informed the world (via tweet) that after getting US forces “cocked and loaded” to carry out strikes on Iranian targets the night before, he had canceled those strikes at the last minute rather than prospectively kill 150 people. “Not proportionate,” he wrote, “to [Iranian forces] shooting down an unmanned drone” earlier that week.

Anti-interventionists (including me) cheered the move. US hawks moaned that Trump had suddenly and inexplicably gone soft by avoiding the war they want so badly. Pretty much everyone thinks the “proportionality” claim isn’t the true explanation, given Trump’s over the top predisposition on most things.

But hey, I’ll take it, and I’ll thank Trump for it. Every time he avoids escalation toward outright war with the Iranians or anyone else, he’s doing the right thing and should get credit for it.

As to the bigger picture, the question now is whether Trump will undo his earlier errors on US policy toward Iran instead of compounding them.

He doesn’t seem inclined to. On June 24, he signed an executive order imposing new sanctions on Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, also in retaliation for the downing of a US drone — possibly over Iranian airspace, certainly  more than 5,000 miles from airspace it had any business in.

Unfortunately, Trump considers his warlike attitude toward Iran a campaign promise and seems to have every intention of keeping that promise. He was elected president on, among other things, his stated intention of undoing former President Barack Obama’s most significant foreign policy accomplishment, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, (the “Iran nuclear deal”).

That JCPOA began winding down four decades of mutual belligerence  that began when Iranians had the gall and temerity to overthrow a dictator installed by the US , replacing him with a government more to their own liking. In exchange for partial lifting of sanctions and return of some money stolen by the US government after their revolution, the Iranians gave up a nuclear weapons program they don’t appear to have actually had, going above and beyond their already existing (and apparently kept) obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Trump violated the deal, pretending that he was “withdrawing” the US from it (the deal is codified as a UN Security resolution; the only way to withdraw from it is to withdraw from the UN itself). He’s reimposed US sanctions and pressured US allies to do likewise.

In violating the agreement and returning to a belligerent footing, he confirmed something the Iranians, like the Sioux, have long had good reason to believe:  That the US government can’t be trusted to keep its word.

That’s a lot of toothpaste to get back in the tube, and it’s not clear that Trump intends to even try.  Canceling the strike may have just been a message to Iran and to recalcitrant US allies: “We could have gone to war but CHOSE not to.”

We should be glad he chose not to, and hope he keeps choosing not to.

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/CITATION HISTORY

• “One Cheer for Trump on Iran,” by Thomas L. Knapp, River Cities’ Reader (Iowa), 06/25/19
• “One Cheer for Trump on Iran,” by Thomas L. Knapp, OpEdNews, 06/25/19
• “One Cheer for Trump on Iran,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Antiwar.com, 06/26/19
• “One Cheer for Trump on Iran,” by Thomas L. Knapp, CounterPunch, 06/27/19
• “One cheer for Trump on Iran; now will he fix his earlier errors?” by Thomas L. Knapp, Claremont, New Hampshire Eagle Times,[web and print], 06/27/19
• “One Cheer for Trump on Iran,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Ventura County, California Citizens Journal, 06/27/19
• “One Cheer for Trump on Iran,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Goa, India O Heraldo, 06/29/19
• “Mutual Belligerence: US Diplomacy Towards Iran Fuels Tensions,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Dhaka, Bangladesh New Nation,[web and print], 07/04/19
• “One Cheer for Trump on Iran,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Cordell, Oklahoma Beacon, 07/08/19