Who Are we?

Trump has ordered the military to blow up boats in international waters based on a claim that they are part of a drug “war” against the U.S. He has presented no evidence for this claim.

A debate began after a September 2 attack when the U.S. military destroyed a boat and then killed the survivors. The U.S. Law of War Manual states, “… orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal.”

This all worried me because the bigger issue is that killing people without being in an actual war is simply “murder.”

Abraham Lincoln famously said: “How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg? Four. Saying that a tail is a leg doesn’t make it a leg.” This is not a war. The Coast Guard can search boats suspected of carrying drugs. But they can’t just blow up the boat and kill people.

If it were a war, Trump has violated the War Powers Act by exceeding its 60-day limit without Congressional approval.

And if Trump cares about drugs, why did he pardon the convicted major drug runner Juan Orlando Hernández?

Again, all of this is irrelevant: Killing civilians is murder, even if it is war.

But Marine Corps veteran Phil Klay raised a bigger issue in the New York Times: Trump isn’t just murdering people. He is showcasing his murders. Just as he showcased the horrific Salvadoran prison he lawlessly sent people to. And ICE abducting grandmothers. Klay’s point: Trump is deliberately trying to change our American narrative of who we are.

During the W. Bush war on Iraq there was much hand wringing about the torture at Abu Ghraib. Much ink was spilled claiming “This is not who we are.” I grew up watching the horrors of the U.S. war in Vietnam. And the widespread revelations of torture by the CIA and by the dictators they propped up.

But deniability – the notion that this is not really who we are – was somehow still possible. These things were done in secret and/or far away.

But Trump is forcing us to watch. To fundamentally change who we are.

Klay told a story from St. Augustine of a good young Roman named Alypius who abhorred the violence of gladiator games. But he was dragged to a match by fellow students. Alypius kept his eyes closed. Until the crowd roared at a gladiator being brutally wounded. Alypius took a peek. Alypius was horrified…until he was transformed by having “imbibed madness” and found himself enjoying the mayhem

Trump isn’t just ordering murder and torture. He wants to transform us in the way Alypius was transformed. Not only to tolerate it, but to seek it out. “Cruelty Is the Point” is a frequent anti-Trump protest sign now.

Megyn Kelly said of our targets in the Caribbean, “I’d really like to see them suffer. I would like Trump and Hegseth to make it last a long time, so they lose a limb and bleed out.”

As a child I was with my father in the beautiful Hains Point park in D.C. (where we lived). Nearby, a family was having a barbecue. The father squirted lighter fluid on the already lit coals. The lighter fluid can exploded and I watched in horror as the father was burned all over. When we got home I told my mother what I saw. She warned me that it is easy for humans to go from being horrified to being attracted to such things. I took it to heart that I would never allow that to happen.

Trump has been on a mission to destroy the most valued institutions of our country. From science and technology to international relations. I worry how difficult it will be to repair that damage. But now I wonder: How can we resist changing who we are?

Conservative NY Times columnist David French added his concern: What is this doing to the military? “The laws of war aren’t woke.” The military depends on our allies and enemies knowing the bounds of our actions. It is why Germans rushed to surrender to Americans at the end of WWII rather than be captured
by Soviets.

Can we remember who we are?