Pondering the Pundits

“Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from> around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

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Katrina vanden Heuvel: Where is the Elizabeth Warren of foreign policy?

When a prominent Washington peace activist was asked recently to name the leading anti-interventionists in the Senate, he responded, “Rand Paul and Mike Lee,” both Republicans. Democrats are in the midst of a furious struggle over what they stand for and who is included in their coalition, yet on foreign policy questions, their silence is deafening. When President Trump decided to drop 59 cruise missiles on Syria in response to purported use of chemical weapons, there was more debate about the attack among Republicans than among Democrats.

The Democratic establishment’s record on foreign policy has been disastrous. Most Democratic leaders supported the war of choice in Iraq, the largest foreign policy debacle since Vietnam. They cheered the “humanitarian intervention” in Libya that has ended in the humanitarian horror of a ruined country, racked by violent conflicts, where the Islamic State is consolidating a backup caliphate. They applauded President Barack Obama’s surge in Afghanistan even as that war dragged on year after year. They touted the United States as the “indispensable nation,” demonstrating a predilection for military intervention and regime change that rivals that of Republican neoconservatives. Many considered Obama too weak and too wary of intervention, despite the fact that he left office bombing seven nations, dispatching Special Operations forces to more than 120 countries and calling for increased spending on a military that already consumes nearly 40 percent of the world’s military budget.

Robert Reich: The First 100 Days: Trump and the Degradation of the Presidency

Donald Trump’s failure to accomplish little or any of his agenda during his first 100 days is striking. But we should not forget the vast harm he has done in this comparatively short time – especially his degradation of the presidency.

From early in the Republic, we have looked at the office of the president as a focal point for the nation’s values. Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and his Teddy’s fifth cousin, Franklin, are studied by school children as both exemplars of what it means to be president and of the moral authority of the office. It is not merely what these men accomplished, but how they did it; not just their policies but their positive effects on the institutions of democratic governance.

True, many of our presidents have fallen short of those ideals. But our disappointments in them largely reflect the high expectations we have of those who hold that office.

But not until Trump has the moral authority of the office disappeared.

Eugene Robinson: Trump’s border-wall fantasy is crumbling

In the annals of pathetic climb-downs, this Sunday-morning tweet from President Trump deserves a special place of honor, or perhaps dishonor:

“Eventually, but at a later date so we can get started early, Mexico will be paying, in some form, for the badly needed border wall.”

To put those weasel words in context, let me ask a question of all you small-business owners out there. If a customer brings some merchandise to the cash register and promises that one of his neighbors will pay you for it “eventually . . . at a later date . . . in some form,” what are your odds of ever seeing that money? How likely is it that “in some form” means cash? Do you let him walk out with the goods, or do you remind him you weren’t born yesterday?

Trump apparently believes we are all hopelessly naive. With his presidency nearing the 100-day mark, he is desperate not to have to acknowledge that his outrageous, ridiculous, impossible campaign promises were, in fact, outrageous, ridiculous and impossible.

Bill Blum: Why Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III Is Unfit to Be Attorney General

Don’t let his languid Southern drawl or physical resemblance to the kindly Keebler elves fool you. Ever.

Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, the nation’s 84th attorney general, is neither laid back nor kind. To the contrary, he’s the most dangerous member of the Trump Cabinet. What’s more, he’s entirely unfit for the high position he holds.

Further evidence that Sessions has no business serving as our top law enforcement official emerged last week, when he took an intemperate swipe at Hawaii-based U.S. District Court Judge Derrick Kahala Watson during an interview with ultraconservative radio talk show host Mark Levin. Sessions was livid with Watson—who is one of only two active federal judges of indigenous heritage—for issuing a nationwide injunction blocking enforcement of President Trump’s second Muslim travel ban.

Steven W. Thrasher: Confederate memorials have no place in American society. Good riddance

Under the cover of darkness early on Monday morning, workers in Louisiana took down the first of four Confederate memorials in New Orleans, which city officials had decided to remove in 2015, shortly after the Charleston shootings. Good riddance.

It was fitting that the workers wore black, bulletproof clothing, donned masks which hid their identities, and were protected by police snipers. Their outfits speak to the history of racial violence these monuments evoke and idealize, a history propagated by Ku Klux Klan members who wore white clothing and masks to hide their identities (often in collusion with the police).

The Confederacy was an attempt to hold on to a way of life made possible by chattel slavery – and that violent way of life was soaked in the blood from the enslavement, murder and rape of African Americans.