This is Viewpoints for Saturday, September 3, 2016

Drug war farce

Trump promises to do away with drug cartels on day one. This is pure rhetoric. No one wants to eliminate the drug cartels that have flourished for the past 40-plus years, not even Trump. But promising to do so plus build a border fence excites the less knowledgeable. (Someone forgot to inform Trump they are diggings tunnels under the border.)

Former Mexican President Felipe Calderon and current President Enrique Peña Nieto both promised to crack down on the drug cartels. They have done little if anything. From time to time they will arrest a drug kingpin. For example, infamous Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who humiliated authorities when he tunneled out of a maximum-security prison. ( “El Chapo” did not play by the rules.)

The so-called drug war has been a joke. It was recently reported that the U.S. has spent over $1 trillion on the drug war and what has it accomplished? It would have made more sense to have invaded Mexico than Iraq. They could have put an end to the drug trade and illegals entering the country. But the rich and powerful investors and shadow men understand that the drug business is big business — and will do whatever it takes to keep turning a profit on blood and suffering.

Private prisons are making millions. (The Justice Department reported it will end the use of private prisons.) Lawyers are getting rich defending street level drug dealers. Meanwhile, hundreds/thousands are dying from drug overdoses. Hundreds/thousands of others are being murdered in gang violence.

Many cities are funding their police forces with drug money. Law enforcement confiscates money, vehicles and whatever. They sell the confiscated property. This theme build a border fence, as Trump and other Republicans are advocating, is a farce, simply meant to mislead and deceive people. The rich and powerful investors do not want to end the drug war. They are getting rich on the blood of others.

CASA volunteers

August 24th’s editorial roundup featured an editorial from The Seattle Times focusing on the plight of Washington state’s most vulnerable children. In Georgia, children who have experienced abuse and neglect are not alone in the courtroom.

Since the 2014 implementation of Georgia’s new juvenile code, all foster children have an attorney to represent their complex legal interests. About half of these children also have a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA), a deeply-committed, specially-trained everyday citizen appointed by a juvenile court judge to work within the child welfare system and advocate for the child’s best interests.

CASA volunteers are caring, consistent adults who bring time, energy and passion to a child’s case. Attorneys and social workers often juggle large caseloads; a CASA volunteer is uniquely positioned to provide individualized attention, bring urgency to a child’s needs, and promote safety and well-being in and out of the courtroom. With a CASA volunteer’s advocacy, a child is more likely to receive needed services, succeed in school, and half as likely to languish in foster care.

In Georgia, 2,300 CASA volunteers advocated for 10,200 children last year. But, our work is not done. We want every child who cannot live safely at home to have a CASA volunteer to help ensure his safe passage out of foster care and to champion, without compromise, what is in his best interests.

Consider becoming a CASA volunteer and help children come out of this period of vulnerability and thrive in a safe, loving family. Visit gacasa.org.

Gender integration

An article from The Patriot Post newsletter states that the Marine Corps will begin using gender-neutral job titles and course names in October. Barack Obama’s Navy Secretary, Ray Mabus, who recently announced that a new ship will be named for homosexual activist Harvey Milk, sent the following directive to Marine Commandant Gen. Robert Neller: “Please review the position titles throughout the Marine Corps and ensure that they are gender-integrated as well, removing ‘man’ from the titles.” Among the changes, a former “Basic Infantryman” will now be a “Basic Infantry Marine,” and a former “Tank Crewman” will now be an “Armor Marine.”

The Marine Corps is proud to call all of its members, regardless of gender, Marines. So it would seem there is no harm done calling an “Infantryman” an “Infantry Marine.” But the order is yet another waste of man person-power and taxpayer dollars to overhaul and reprint an untold number of doctrinal publications, administrative documents, signs and other such items in order to comply with Obama’s puppet-secretary’s order. The funds required for this policy directive would be much better invested in improving Marine fighting capabilities and morale. This type of waste does not go unnoticed by the Marines it affects.

Of note, the Marine Corps elected to retain the word “man” in several of its historically significant and fundamental terms, including “rifleman” and “mortarman.” But after Defense Secretary Ash Carter refused the Marine Corps’ attempts to protect its combat effectiveness by foregoing gender normalization, it’s only a matter of time until those time-honored terms also collapse under PC pressure for “non-gendered pronouns.” The Obama administration’s highly publicized agenda betrays its commander in chief’s priorities: political correctness over mission-effectiveness.

Obama, Hillary, Iraq

John Brogden takes issue (Aug. 28) with my Aug. 18 correction of his Aug. 11 letter, in which I wrote, as Frank Gadbois had pointed out earlier, that it was George W. Bush, not President Obama, who signed the agreement requiring that we withdraw completely from Iraq by the end of 2011. Confronted with the facts, Brogden apparently now concedes this, but he accuses me of “a Clintonian use of words” for saying that “Obama was obliged to agree with that agreement.” The problem here is that I never said that; I simply made a factual statement about who signed the agreement. Moreover, it was The Washington Post, not The New York Times, that researched the truthfulness of Hillary Clinton versus Donald Trump. Clearly Brogden, like too many other Telegraph letter writers, doesn’t put much store in accuracy.

In any case, it may surprise him that I actually agree with his basic premise about Obama and Iraq. I opposed Bush’s 2003 invasion and tend to agree with George Will that it was “the worst foreign policy decision in U.S. history.” But once we were there, we might as well have stayed there, just as we have stayed in Germany and Korea for many years after the wars there, as a projection of strength and, it might even be hoped, a beacon of democracy in the most dangerous and benighted area of the world. Instead, Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton compounded Bush’s error by committing the colossal blunder of pulling out completely, which made a mockery of our vast expenditure of blood and treasure in Iraq and, just as Brogden says, created a vacuum for ISIS and Iran to fill.

Yes, we had signed the 2008 agreement mandating complete withdrawal by the end of 2011, and we are bound by our agreements. But it was widely assumed in 2008 that a new plan would be negotiated. Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, said then that the agreement might be renegotiated depending on conditions on the ground, adding that “three years is a very long time.” Defense Secretary Robert Gates predicted that “perhaps several tens of thousands of American troops” would stay as a residual force after 2011.

Obama did try to persuade the Iraqis to allow a residual force, but according to Leon Panetta, Obama’s defense secretary from 2011 to 2013, he didn’t try hard enough. “To my frustration,” Panetta has written, “the White House coordinated the negotiations but never really led them. Officials there seemed content to endorse an agreement if State and Defense could reach one, but without the president’s active advocacy,” the opportunity “was allowed to slip away. The deal never materialized.” I believe that, as Brogden says, Obama simply wanted out of Iraq as part of his legacy.

Just as the invasion of Iraq will go down in history as Bush’s biggest mistake, the complete withdrawal from Iraq may well go down as Obama’s. And Clinton, as secretary of state at the time, is deeply complicit. This for me, because it relates directly to competence and judgment, is more disqualifying of her from the presidency than the persistent questions about her honesty.

David Mann, Macon

This story was originally published September 2, 2016 at 9:00 PM with the headline "This is Viewpoints for Saturday, September 3, 2016."