Tag Archives: #Elections

This US election feels like a referendum on American democracy

This op-ed was published by The National on October 16, 2024

In a mere three weeks, the American constitutional system will face its greatest test since the Civil War. The depressions of the late 19th century and 1930s, the two world wars, and the Watergate scandal never put the constitutional order on the ballot. But on November 5, American voters are being asked for what amounts to a yes or no verdict on a democratic future.

What the Republican Party is offering under Donald Trump – but hardly restricted to him – effectively pits a party that remains committed to the constitutional system versus one whose leader is on record as planning to dispense with it. America’s Grand Old Party has become so extreme it is promoting candidates far beyond what would ever have been considered remotely acceptable.

Mr. Trump is the most obvious and threatening, because he stands a good chance of being reelected president. But he is not the man he was in 2016 or even 2020. He is showing marked signs of decline, increasingly resembling US President Joe Biden in lapsing into incoherence and senior moments. He recently spent almost 40 minutes at a rally swaying silently to golden oldies instead of continuing to answer questions.

In 2016, most voters regarded Mr. Trump as a successful businessman (mainly because of his stint on the American TV show The Apprentice) given to eccentric, politically incorrect outbursts many considered refreshing. In 2024, most voters know that Mr. Trump’s presidency was a chaotic mess and that he is now promising the very kind of misrule the US Constitution was designed to prevent.

 

He has spoken of “ending” crime, which is on the decline in most areas, by unleashing the police without any restrictions or restraints for “one rough hour”.

 

He is still vilifying migrants, claiming they are killers and “animals” who are “destroying” the country and is threatening an unprecedented mass deportation of millions that he admits will be “bloody.” Mr. Trump justifies this with absurd allegations such as legal Haitian immigrants eating pet cats and dogs, and vows to therefore remove their protected status.

But, he says, these millions of migrants are hardly the biggest problem. That would be “the enemy within,” which he identifies as “crazy leftists,” which he says should be dealt with “by the National Guard or even the military.” As an example of who he is talking about, he specifies the liberal California representative Adam Schiff and has vowed to prosecute, along others, members of the House select committee that held hearings into the January 6 riot that he instigated to try to stay in power despite losing the 2020 election.

Reports reveal that on January 6, when Mr. Trump was told that his vice president, Mike Pence, was in mortal danger from a mob chanting that he should be hanged and had erected a gallows outside of Congress, the former president replied blandly: “So what?” He has repeatedly promised to pardon all those convicted of attacking Congress and police officers in that unprecedented insurrection.

His attitude towards elections is summed up in another recently revealed statement: “it doesn’t matter if you lose an election, you still have to fight like hell” presumably to stay in power. And he has been laying the groundwork to reject another election defeat.

Many Trump voters don’t take these threats seriously, and are more afraid of the “woke Democrats” than Mr. Trump’s promised violent authoritarianism. But there is no reason to think that he’s playacting. After his 2016 victory, he did his best to live up to campaign promises, including a “Muslim travel ban,” restricting entry from a series of largely Muslim-majority countries. Of course he has promised to reinstate that policy immediately.

Voters also know that he is now a convicted felon, and civilly liable for sexual abuse, defamation and serial tax fraud. None of it seems to matter.

Republican extremism is hardly restricted to Mr. Trump. Its worst example is the candidate for North Carolina governor, current Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson.

Mr. Robinson has been revealed – although he denies this – to have made numerous bizarre and incendiary postings online. He described himself as “a black Nazi,” and recommended Adolf Hitler’s memoir Mein Kampf as excellent reading material.

Mr. Trump lauded Mr. Robinson, one of the most prominent black Republicans, as “Martin Luther King Jr on steroids”. He expressed astonishment at the nauseated look on Mr. Robinson’s face. We now know that Mr. Robinson regards the civil rights icon as “a commie” and derided him using an incredibly offensive epithet for African Americans.

Mr. Robinson was already on the record with a series of staggeringly vulgar extreme positions, including musing in a church sermon that “some folks just need killing.”

The Republican Party has stopped lauding Mr. Robinson and Mr. Trump failed to mention him at a recent North Carolina rally. But the party has done nothing to repudiate him. Apparently this iteration of the Republican Party is content to field such candidates if they stand a chance of possibly winning. Democrats do not tolerate anything analogous and they replaced the visibly aging Mr. Biden.

Mr. Robinson is the most extreme example, and Mr. Trump is the most threatening, but around the country the Republican Party is being represented by candidates fully in tune with both of them. Meanwhile, traditional conservatives like former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney find themselves politically exiled by Mr. Trump, while stalwarts like Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz have endorsed the democratic candidate, Kamala Harris.

Americans are being offered a chance to either reaffirm or repudiate the fundamental political ethos of the country. It is terrifying that so many of them are either supportive of Mr Trump’s overt promises of an experiment in American fascism or are so naively confident that he doesn’t mean what he says, or won’t be allowed by others to exercise his authority if he wins, that they will probably either return him to the White House or deliver him a narrow defeat.

Either way, the American system is facing its most severe threat since the Civil War. The Republican Party may never regain its constitutional or even fundamentally rational character. Win or lose in November, its shocking decline into extremism, with litmus tests of ritual dishonesty and the willingness to embrace the likes of a self-described “black Nazi,” could well mean the venerable Republican Party is in its final stages, at least as a respectable or even viable, American political institution.

US Democrats will regard an Israeli invasion of Lebanon as election interference

This op-ed was published by The National on September 26, 2024

Just six weeks before a highly consequential election, Washington is scrambling to avoid a full-scale war in the Middle East that could be triggered by an Israeli invasion of Lebanon. US President Joe Biden’s domestic policy and legislative achievements have been remarkable, but his handling of the Gaza war has been woeful. Now US policy faces a meltdown, not at the hands of adversaries like Hezbollah and Iran, but Israel.

The Biden administration adopted a focused policy of conflict containment of the war to Gaza, hoping to manage the strategic fallout from anything deemed plausible inside Gaza. This reflected deep anxiety about the war spreading, particularly into Lebanon, which might spiral into a regional conflict potentially drawing in the US and Iran, and even setting them directly against each other.

Some in the Biden administration have long harbored suspicions that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu might hope to manoeuvre tensions over Lebanon to eventually, and at long last, secure the direct US strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities that he has been demanding, without success, for almost two decades.

The Biden administration’s de facto carte blanche for Israel, particularly in the first few months of that savage war of vengeance against the entire Palestinian society in Gaza, was developed for numerous reasons. But an important factor was the belief that by supporting Israel strongly in Gaza, the Biden administration effectively positioned itself to block any Israeli impulse to unnecessarily spread the war into Lebanon.

That calculation appeared to play out precisely on several key occasions.

As early as October 12, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and other hawks began pressing for an immediate and massive strike against Hezbollah. One of the key factors thwarting this effort was a forceful intervention by Mr. Biden telling Mr. Netanyahu and others that such an attack was unnecessary, unwise and would not be supported by Washington. Similar scenarios played out on at least two other occasions in the subsequent months in which Mr. Biden was able to restrain Israel.

However, if things pan out over the subsequent days and weeks, an invasion of Lebanon could expand the Gaza war not just to Israel’s north but also potentially into an uncontrolled regional conflagration. Yet, at the time of writing, neither Israel nor Hezbollah had indicated any interest – at least in public – in a three-week pause in cross-border attacks that was being proposed by Washington and other regional and international governments.

The current standoff goes back to the immediate aftermath of the October 7 attacks, when Hamas demanded that Hezbollah and other militias in the Iranian-managed “axis of resistance” intervene with full force against Israel. Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, disappeared into virtual hiding, and when he emerged after two weeks, he clarified that while the organization would be intensifying its military activities, they would be directed at the Lebanon-Israel border area and, supposedly, in the interests of liberating two Lebanese towns still occupied by Israel.

The answer to Hamas was no, but Hezbollah did feel the need to ramp up cross-border attacks so as not to appear completely docile. But since that opening salvo, Israel has been able to establish escalation dominance, because even cautious Israeli leaders can see potential benefits from taking on Hezbollah under current circumstances.

In particular, they hope to inflict significant costs to Iran and its Arab regional militia network, which they believe have benefited virtually cost-free from the aftermath of the October 7 attacks. They would also be hoping to restore the domestic credibility and legitimacy of Israel’s national security institutions that were badly tarnished by the military meltdown on October 7.

Neither Iran nor Hezbollah see any point in a major war with Israel under current circumstances. Hezbollah’s main regional role has been to protect Iran from Israeli or American attacks on its homeland, and particularly its nuclear facilities. Tehran and Hezbollah have had no interest in a war over a place, Gaza, which has little strategic, historical or religious significance to them, or to rescue an organization, Hamas, which has proven to be an unreliable ally of the “axis of resistance” in the past (Hamas broke it over the Syrian war between 2012-2019).

The main American point to Israel all along has been that this war is unnecessary and avoidable because the other side does not want to fight one.

Israeli ambivalence appeared to decisively dissipate after the pager and walkie-talkie sabotage detonations last week. Reports suggest that Israel wanted to use those explosions in the earliest stages of a potential ground attack on Lebanon, but growing suspicions about the malfunctioning or badly performing devices prompted a “use it or lose it” analysis in Israel. Therefore, if these reports are true, the explosives were detonated independent of a specific policy goal or broader strategy.

Yet predictably enough, a cycle of escalation immediately followed.

What Israel seeks from a ground invasion is not clear, but it potentially ranges from the establishment of a new occupied “security barrier” in southern Lebanon to an all-out effort to smash the infrastructure of Hezbollah similar to that conducted in Gaza against Hamas. Either way, Lebanon has once again been dragged into a conflict that has absolutely no connection to any Lebanese national interest. Yet Israel’s escalations may help obscure that, instead restoring Hezbollah’s popularity and the perceived legitimacy of its resistance.

For the Biden administration, an Israeli ground operation in Lebanon constitutes the ultimate failure of its Gaza war policy. The conflict will have spread despite Washington’s best efforts and because of Israel’s bellicosity rather than that of Hezbollah or Iran.

Mere weeks before a US election is hardly the time any administration is going to get tough on Israel. The Israelis know this, and they are taking full and cynical advantage of the Biden administration’s priority of securing the victory of Vice President Kamala Harris over former president Donald Trump.

Indeed, a ground offensive, if it were to happen, with no urgent need and just six weeks before the US presidential election, will be regarded by many Democrats as shocking and intolerable election interference on behalf of Mr. Trump. Relations between Mr. Netanyahu and Democrats may never recover.

It could also accelerate the advent of a deeper schism between the US, or at least Democrats, and Israel in general. That’s been a long time in the making, and Mr Netanyahu appears determined to make such a bitter reckoning inevitable, and perhaps imminent.

Meanwhile, his policies could leave Israel fighting ongoing insurgencies against renewed or intensified occupations to the south in Gaza, to the north in Lebanon, and quite possibly to the east in the West Bank. Israel’s only calm border would be the Mediterranean Sea. If that’s a formula for security, it’s hard to imagine what dangerous insecurity might look like.

Arab Americans angry with Biden should note Trump’s use of ‘Palestinian’ as a slur

This op-ed was published by The National on June 30, 2024

Since the Gaza conflict, critics of US President Joe Biden, particularly Arab and Muslim Americans, insist that he can no longer be viewed as a “lesser of two evils” because of his support for Israel’s savage war of vengeance. But this stinging case against Mr. Biden doesn’t actually render him indistinguishable from his predecessor, Donald Trump.

Mr. Trump’s words ought to remind everyone that he advocates policies and spews much more repugnant hateful rhetoric. It’s reasonable to be angry with the President, but not to refuse to see the clear difference with Mr. Trump.

In particular, Mr. Trump’s use of the word “Palestinian” as an insult, aiming to render its target unacceptable and disreputable, cannot be ignored. It is new and especially repugnant since innocent Palestinians are being killed in unprecedented numbers by Israeli occupation forces. Innocent Palestinians – although not, of course, Hamas – deserve sympathy, support and protection from a terrible onslaught. Using their identity as a schoolyard taunt displays crassness and inhumanity.

There’s been limited pushback from Arab and Muslim Americans about this outrageous and disgraceful conduct, aimed squarely at our very identity, because of an ongoing effort to convince community members that Mr. Biden is unworthy of support, and to at least stay home. But, what would the reaction have been if Mr. Biden, particularly given his Gaza policies, began using “Palestinian” as a free-floating and transferable insult in American political schoolyard bullying?

In the most embarrassingly terrible presidential debate in US history last Thursday, Mr. Trump scolded Mr. Biden that he should “let them [Israel] finish the job” in Gaza. But, he argued, Mr Biden “doesn’t want to do that” because “he’s become like a Palestinian, but they don’t like him because he’s a very bad Palestinian, a very weak one”.

It was one of dozens of moments in which the former president provided Mr. Biden an obvious opening for counterattack, virtually all of which the sitting President inexplicably failed to take. But the scandalous insult largely faded into the background amid widespread incredulity about the ineffectiveness of Mr. Biden’s bumbling and confused performance, which seemed to reinforce the most damaging characterizations of him.

Mr Trump quickly moved to dispel any doubts or arguments that he was using “Palestinian” as a bigoted political epithet, when he immediately repeated the intended insult against another of his favourite targets, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer.

The day after the debate, last Friday, Mr Trump hurled “Palestinian” as an insult against Mr Schumer, telling a rally audience: “I know Schumer. He’s become a Palestinian. He’s a Palestinian now. Congratulations … He’s Jewish. But he’s become a Palestinian because they have a couple of more votes or something.” Obviously, though, we don’t.

Mr. Trump was presumably referring to Mr. Schumer’s speech in March, in which he accurately described Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “an obstacle to peace”, and urged immediate new Israeli elections to replace him.

The implications are clear: Mr Trump wants everyone to know that he’s more anti-Palestinian than any Democrat, including Mr Biden and Schumer; wants a more brutal Israeli war in Gaza; views Mr Biden’s policies as unduly constraining of Israel; and that any blunt criticism of Mr Netanyahu renders even a lifelong Jewish-American supporter of Israel a “Palestinian”.

Moreover, according to Mr Trump’s racist worldview, being a Palestinian is plainly inherently a bad thing. It’s particularly objectionable to be a “weak Palestinian”, making one a “bad Palestinian”, but his rhetoric plainly identifies “Palestinian” a particularly bad thing to both be and to be called.

Meanwhile, it’s finally become clear, after weeks of typical incoherence on the Gaza war, that Mr Trump considers Mr Biden indefensibly “weak” in support of Israel and holding it back from attacking Gaza even more intensely.

Palestinians have now joined migrants as a particularly stigmatised identity group, to be targeted by Mr Trump’s shocking hate-filled rhetoric during this phase of his second effort for a second term.

The two issues effectively dovetail in Mr Trump’s rhetorical landscape because one of his earliest positions in this campaign was a promise to bring back the “Muslim ban” prohibitions on entry into the US by nationals of more than a dozen countries, almost all Muslim-majority. This bigoted policy was a key feature of the incompetent and chaotic first months of his presidency, but it was eventually imposed after some adjustments, including the removal of Iraqis.

The bottom line is obvious. Many Arab and Muslim Americans, their friends and family, and supporters around the world are justifiably outraged by Mr. Biden’s policies towards Gaza, which for months emphasized conflict containment over conflict mitigation or resolution.

This misguided approach indirectly implicated Washington in numerous Israeli outrages and alleged war crimes, which damaged American regional interests and global reputation. That has changed over time, because of growing administration concern that Israel was going too far for US interests.

Such outrage is justifiable. The Biden administration adopted a rational but amoral policy that essentially accepted unacceptable levels of civilian death and suffering in Gaza in order to achieve the strategic goal of preventing conflict from spreading, particularly into Lebanon, thereby possibly dragging the US and Iran into a widespread regional war.

This op-ed was published by The National on June 30, 2024

Since the Gaza conflict, critics of US President Joe Biden, particularly Arab and Muslim Americans, insist that he can no longer be viewed as a “lesser of two evils” because of his support for Israel’s savage war of vengeance. But this stinging case against Mr. Biden doesn’t actually render him indistinguishable from his predecessor, Donald Trump.

Mr. Trump’s words ought to remind everyone that he advocates policies and spews much more repugnant hateful rhetoric. It’s reasonable to be angry with the President, but not to refuse to see the clear difference with Mr. Trump.

In particular, Mr. Trump’s use of the word “Palestinian” as an insult, aiming to render its target unacceptable and disreputable, cannot be ignored. It is new and especially repugnant since innocent Palestinians are being killed in unprecedented numbers by Israeli occupation forces. Innocent Palestinians – although not, of course, Hamas – deserve sympathy, support and protection from a terrible onslaught. Using their identity as a schoolyard taunt displays crassness and inhumanity.

There’s been limited pushback from Arab and Muslim Americans about this outrageous and disgraceful conduct, aimed squarely at our very identity, because of an ongoing effort to convince community members that Mr. Biden is unworthy of support, and to at least stay home. But, what would the reaction have been if Mr. Biden, particularly given his Gaza policies, began using “Palestinian” as a free-floating and transferable insult in American political schoolyard bullying?

In the most embarrassingly terrible presidential debate in US history last Thursday, Mr. Trump scolded Mr. Biden that he should “let them [Israel] finish the job” in Gaza. But, he argued, Mr Biden “doesn’t want to do that” because “he’s become like a Palestinian, but they don’t like him because he’s a very bad Palestinian, a very weak one”.

It was one of dozens of moments in which the former president provided Mr. Biden an obvious opening for counterattack, virtually all of which the sitting President inexplicably failed to take. But the scandalous insult largely faded into the background amid widespread incredulity about the ineffectiveness of Mr. Biden’s bumbling and confused performance, which seemed to reinforce the most damaging characterizations of him.

Mr Trump quickly moved to dispel any doubts or arguments that he was using “Palestinian” as a bigoted political epithet, when he immediately repeated the intended insult against another of his favourite targets, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer.

The day after the debate, last Friday, Mr Trump hurled “Palestinian” as an insult against Mr Schumer, telling a rally audience: “I know Schumer. He’s become a Palestinian. He’s a Palestinian now. Congratulations … He’s Jewish. But he’s become a Palestinian because they have a couple of more votes or something.” Obviously, though, we don’t.

Mr. Trump was presumably referring to Mr. Schumer’s speech in March, in which he accurately described Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “an obstacle to peace”, and urged immediate new Israeli elections to replace him.

The implications are clear: Mr Trump wants everyone to know that he’s more anti-Palestinian than any Democrat, including Mr Biden and Schumer; wants a more brutal Israeli war in Gaza; views Mr Biden’s policies as unduly constraining of Israel; and that any blunt criticism of Mr Netanyahu renders even a lifelong Jewish-American supporter of Israel a “Palestinian”.

Moreover, according to Mr Trump’s racist worldview, being a Palestinian is plainly inherently a bad thing. It’s particularly objectionable to be a “weak Palestinian”, making one a “bad Palestinian”, but his rhetoric plainly identifies “Palestinian” a particularly bad thing to both be and to be called.

Meanwhile, it’s finally become clear, after weeks of typical incoherence on the Gaza war, that Mr Trump considers Mr Biden indefensibly “weak” in support of Israel and holding it back from attacking Gaza even more intensely.

Palestinians have now joined migrants as a particularly stigmatised identity group, to be targeted by Mr Trump’s shocking hate-filled rhetoric during this phase of his second effort for a second term.

The two issues effectively dovetail in Mr Trump’s rhetorical landscape because one of his earliest positions in this campaign was a promise to bring back the “Muslim ban” prohibitions on entry into the US by nationals of more than a dozen countries, almost all Muslim-majority. This bigoted policy was a key feature of the incompetent and chaotic first months of his presidency, but it was eventually imposed after some adjustments, including the removal of Iraqis.

The bottom line is obvious. Many Arab and Muslim Americans, their friends and family, and supporters around the world are justifiably outraged by Mr. Biden’s policies towards Gaza, which for months emphasized conflict containment over conflict mitigation or resolution.

This misguided approach indirectly implicated Washington in numerous Israeli outrages and alleged war crimes, which damaged American regional interests and global reputation. That has changed over time, because of growing administration concern that Israel was going too far for US interests.

Such outrage is justifiable. The Biden administration adopted a rational but amoral policy that essentially accepted unacceptable levels of civilian death and suffering in Gaza in order to achieve the strategic goal of preventing conflict from spreading, particularly into Lebanon, thereby possibly dragging the US and Iran into a widespread regional war.

But Mr. Trump has made it clear that he would go further in supporting Israeli attacks in Gaza; he has demonstrated that he views the very term “Palestinian” as a potent slur to smear adversaries; and that he still intends to prevent as many nationals of Muslim-majority countries as possible from entering the US.

Mr. Biden’s Gaza policy was misguided and remains certainly objectionable. His wretched performance at the “debate” raises significant doubts about his acuity. But Arab and Muslim Americans can only help Mr. Trump by voting for him or a third-party candidate, or just staying home in November, because of the mistaken conclusion that Mr. Biden is not preferable in any meaningful way.

Given their obvious, well-founded and near-consensus perspectives, Arab and Muslim Americans, in fact, have no rational choice but to do their best to prevent a second term for a man who thinks calling someone “Palestinian” is one of the worst insults he can muster these days.