CRIME STORY

 “If it bleeds, it leads,” is the oft-quoted reasoning given for television news or a local newspaper to begin with or headline a story involving human tragedy- auto wreck, police shooting, suicide, murder, and the like. But why highlight a relatively minor murder- however tragic- into a national media sensation when there are even worst tragedies which are under reported and that have major implications for our own lives.

Take for example the national sensualized murder saga involving the murdered Gabby Petito and her missing boyfriend Brain Laundrie. A couple who lived with Brian’s parents who took a cross-country trip in a white utility van. In August, We have a recorded 911 call from a concerned person in Moab, Utah reporting Brian hitting and slapping Gabby and then video from the Moab Police Department showing police questioning the couple and then separating them for the night for a cool-off period. Brian drives back to their home in Florida without Gabby.

Then in September, people begin to realize Gabby is missing. Her lifeless body is found in Wyoming, and he disappears, perhaps in a gator and snake infested swamp. Brian’s parents get lawyered-up and go silent. Media pundits and their consultants pore over the 911 call and police questioning with such intensity that one would think they were searching for a hidden code from the beyond.

So far, it appears to be a great script for a Lifetime movie (I would watch it). But something like a national emergency? Why? There is a certain national political pundit with whom I very rarely agree who makes some sense with her assessment- a case of “missing white woman syndrome.” So, are 21^st century Americans caught up in the old “damsel in distress” myth? Perhaps. Consider maybe this crime story is a distraction from more far-reaching stories-

·       Our southern border is being overwhelmed by would-be immigrants to our country

·       We were shamed by terrorists as we fled Afghanistan without a plan and left hundreds of Americans and friends of America behind

·       The stock market is unstable, and inflation is creeping up

Maybe our national addiction to this crime story is the only we can grapple with some major unpleasant truths on crime in our country-

·       Hundreds of Native American women are missing from tribal lands- in 2020, 5600 women and girls were reported missing

·       Hundreds of inner-city African American children are missing (or killed in gang cross-fires)- nearly 800,000 children are reported missing each year and about one third are Black

·       The FBI just reported that major crimes- including murders- are trending up in our country

I do hope we find out what really happened to Gabby and Brian on that trip, and their families will receive a sense of peace. In the meantime, let’s not forget other parents who are also grieving the loss of their children.

 

BEYOND SEVEN DAYS IN MAY: PARTISAN GENERALS FROM SCOTT TO MILLEY

When I was growing up, I developed my love for reading. My reading was much in evidence during the summers. While I enjoyed playing outdoors with my brothers and friends, I read when I was indoors, day or night. Especially enjoyable for me was the monthly Readers Digest with its plethora of stories and humor. I always enjoyed its condensed novel at the end of each issue. The one condensed novel that caught my attention was Seven Days in May, which was made into a movie.

Seven Days in May featured General James Scott, a charismatic and highly decorated Air Force officer, serving as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who opposes the foreign policies of President Jordan Lyman. After President Lyman successfully negotiated an arms reduction treaty with the Soviet Union, General Scott organized a plot of generals and admirals to stage a military coup to oust the President. A week before the coup is scheduled to occur, Marine Colonel Martin Casey, Director of the Joint Staff, discovers Scott’s intent and works with President Lyman to foil the plot and save our constitutional government.  

The problem with the fictional General Scott was not that he was political. Quite the contrary as politics come with the rank of general or admiral as politics is about power- in their case, the power to allocate resources- human, financial, and materials- for war. Scott’s fault was that he crossed into partisan politics to oppose civilian control of the military and to enter formal political alliances to favor one political party over another. While a Seven Days in May scenario probably will not happen in the United States, there is ample evidence for history and current events that we must be vigilant to even let a whimper of such a conspiracy to exist.

Americans have elected six generals to the presidency- Washington, Jackson, Harrison, Taylor, Grant, and Eisenhower. They did not pose a problem to our constitutional order as they were former generals who were duly elected by the voters. But few Americans know that in two elections active-duty generals ran for president (apparently legal at the time) but lost-

·       1852- General Winfield Scott, commanding general of the US Army and hero of the Mexican American War of 1846-48, ran as the Whig candidate losing to Franklin Pierce. After the election Scott stayed at his post and maintained cordial relations with President Pierce but clashed repeatedly with Secretary of War Jefferson Davis. At the beginning of the Civil War Scott assisted President Lincoln with initial war strategy but retired in November 1861 due to age and health.

·       1864- General George McClellan, former general-in-chief of the Federal army and commander of the Army of the Potomac, ran as the Democratic candidate against the incumbent President Lincoln while still on active duty but with no assignment since he had been fired by Lincoln in 1862. McClellan only resigned his commission on election day. Later in 1878-81 he served as Governor of New Jersey and wrote extensively to defend his record on the battlefield.

We also have had active-duty generals who publicly disagreed with presidential policies and had to be fired-

·       1951- General Douglas MacArthur, commander of US forces in the Far East and UN commander in Korea, was relieved of command by President Truman because he publicly criticized Truman’s war policy and vied with the President over control of nuclear weapons in the conflict.

·       1977- General John Singlaub, Chief of Staff of US Forces in Korea, was relieved of his post by President Carter for publicly criticizing the President’s proposal to withdraw some US forces from South Korea. In 1978, Singlaub was forced to retire from the military after he once again questioned the President’s policy

·       2010- General Stanley McChrystal, commander of all international and US forces in Afghanistan, resigned his commands and retired from the military after negative comments of US officials including Vice President Biden spoken by McChrystal and his staff were publicized in a magazine. Subsequently, McChrystal was called to the White House by President Obama where his resignations were offered and accepted by the President.

In addition, we have retired officers like General Colin Powell and Admiral William McRaven who routinely endorse candidates for the presidency. Gone are the days when our military officers desired to be so apolitical that they rarely voted if at all. General Eisenhower, for example, was so apolitical that both Democrats and Republicans courted him to be their presidential candidate.

Now we come to the curious case of General Mark Milley, the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (as of this writing), with his two phone calls to the commander of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (among other criticisms). Two questions emerge from these calls-

1.     Were these calls authorized by each Secretary of Defense in office at the time of each phone call and by President Trump or his designated staffer (ex- National Security Advisor)?

2.     What were the contents of these phone calls?

Regarding the first question, the Acting Secretary of Defense during the second call denies he had knowledge of the call and would not have authorized it if it had come to his attention. As for the second question, did General Milley tell his Chinese counterpart that he (Milley) would give the Chinese advance notice if the US was preparing an attack on China? As for the first question, if Milley placed an unauthorized call, he is guilty of insubordination. As for question two, if he did, he is perhaps guilty of treason.

 

Given that General Milley was a part of the blotched Afghanistan withdrawal as well as the mistaken drone strike that killed ten innocent people without even harming one terrorist, many critics and pundits have called for the general’s resignation, firing, and/or court martial. Whether his career is finished is up to President Biden probably with the idea that the general will become a political liability, he is finished. If not, he perhaps stays. And whether he stays or not, General Milley has caused the line into partisanship

A model for correct political behavior for generals is General of the Army George Marshall. After graduating from Virginia Military Institute Marshall was commissioned as an officer and served until 1945. As Army Chief of Staff during World War II, he served President Roosevelt, a Democrat and served President Truman, another Democrat, as Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense. Marshall did not get personally or socially close to either man so he could them his unhindered counsel. Although Marshall was attacked viciously after the war, he did not response in kind. Marshall did not endorse political candidates, not even General Eisenhower, a man he head mentored for success, for the presidency. And Marshall did not write his memoirs because he was concerned that he would embarrass someone.

Call me “old school” because I believe all generals (and admirals) have been given a sacred trust to defend our nation and as such, whether they are on active duty or retired, they must resist the siren calls for partisanship as did General Marshall.

 

 

 

 

 

THE HISTORICAL IMAGINATION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

 

I promised in an earlier essay on Lincoln being our last Revolutionary Founder that I would write about his historical imagination.]

 

Abraham Lincoln, as I wrote about him earlier, was indeed our last Revolutionary Founder. Of the 15 presidents before him, 13 were either slave owners or tolerable of slavery. Only two- John Adams and John Quincy Adams- outright opposed slavery but they lacked the power to eliminate it. The strategy of the Founders to “kick the can down road” on the slavery issue stopped with Lincoln. Lincoln’s power to fight slavery coupled with the “poisoned pills” the Confederation Congress and the Constitutional Convention, both in 1787, gave him the resources to do so. Yet even these resources were inadequate. Lincoln also mobilized his historical imagination to provide meaning and purpose to the campaign.

We must first understand imagination to arrive at the definition of historical imagination for the purposes of this essay. Imagination can be defined as the action of forming new ideas and concepts, the ability of the mind to be creative and resourceful, and the ability to produce novel ideas in the mind. Imagination is a key to making knowledge available in solving problems and is foundational to integrate personal experience with new learning. The term is rooted in the Latin verb meaning “to picture oneself.” 

Historical imagination is therefore the ability to examine history in its original context and draw out lessons for contemporary generalized applications and specific life actions. And remembering that history does not necessarily repeat itself, but history does have rhythm, flow, and patterns.

So, how did Lincoln develop such a sense of historical imagination? One thing we know is that he did not spend many months in a schoolhouse, much less a college setting. We do know that Lincoln was a reader and storyteller. He read the Bible, Shakespeare, and many other works that many contemporary high school graduates (with years in the schoolhouse) have not read and could not be able to identify if quizzed. One book Lincoln read that stands out for me is Euclid’s Geometry which he credited with helping him to think logically and systemically.

Another advantage that Lincoln possessed was his robust and positive civil religion. Civil religion is a blending of patriotism and piety, which should be avoided on most occasions. When our presidents conclude their speeches with “May God bless the United States,” that is a mild and innocuous form of civil religion. But when Americans believe that God will only bless us, that form of civil religion must be shunned. Lincoln’s civil religion was not innocuous, and it was not dangerous. His religious faith leads him to a belief in God but without commitment to any denominational sect. Lincoln skillfully combined his form of piety to the promise of America for freedom and personal advancement.

Lincoln was, in addition, was a seasoned and pragmatic politician, first for the Whig Party and then to the newly formed Republican Party. He could wed vision with action and get things done. In 1858 he lost his Senate race to Stephen Douglas and then used this event to gain notice for himself to go on to defeat Douglas and two other major candidates for the presidency in 1860.

I will now briefly describe four major speeches and addresses Lincoln gave that illustrate his own brand of historical imagination. In sequential order, they are-

·       The House Divided Speech on June 16, 1858, in Springfield, Illinois after he accepted his state party’s nomination for US Senator. Lincoln’s speech began with, “A house divided against itself, cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved- I do not expect the house to fall- but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.” While many point to Mark 3:25 in the Christian New Testament as Lincoln’s inspiration, the term “a house divided” had also been used in one form or another by Saint Augustine, Thomas Hobbes (1651), Thomas Paine (1776), Abigail Adams (ca. 1812), and Felix Walker (ca. 1850). But it was Lincoln who reimagined the term as a direct attack on slavery.

·       The Cooper Union Speech on February 27, 1860, in New York City. While Lincoln was eyeing the Republican presidential nomination later that year, he traditionally could not do so in his time, so he did not announce his candidacy. Nevertheless, many historians credit this speech as pivotal to his electoral victory in the fall. Lincoln firmly opposed the expansion of slavery into the territories, “The sum of the whole is, that of our thirty-nine fathers who framed the Constitution, twenty-one…certainly understood that…any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control slavery in the federal territories…” Here Lincoln was reimaging what was accomplished against slavery in both the

·       The Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863, at the dedication of the national cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. This short speech is Lincoln’s best known and most memorized address. In it he drew inspiration from before the Constitution, from the Declaration of Independence (“four score and seven years ago) with this resolve,” …that these dead shall not have died in vain- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

·       Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address on March 4, 1865, at the US Capitol was most haunting words on the cause of the Civil War- “Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.” The entire address is a bold and positive imaginative blending of the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian New Testament into a call for judgment, humility, charity, and peace that has ever been spoken by an American political leader.

The expanse of Lincoln’s historical imagination was deep and wide. He was indeed our last Revolutionary Founder.