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Javier E

Mark Esper's Duty to Speak - 0 views

newsletters.theatlantic.com/...peak-up-democracy-constitution

trump crisis history conscience responsibility dissent warning official policy politics

shared by Javier E on 13 May 22 - No Cached
  • The risks of working for Trump were elaborated upon well in 2017 by my Atlantic colleague David Frum; our colleague Eliot Cohen also went back and forth on it and even changed his mind. The danger was obvious: You will end up selling your soul and you will likely fail to do much good
  • The counterargument was also obvious: The interests of the United States of America require that this train wreck of an administration—staffed with the likes of Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, and His Faux-Britannic Excellency Sebastian Gorka—should have at least some non-stupid, non-craven, non-nutball types in the executive branch.
  • I argued at the time that there was no way to put child-safety bumpers on all the sharp edges of the White House, and that if Trump was going to drive the country into a ditch, the sooner we got on with it, the better. I am not sure now if I was wrong, but the best evidence against my position is that Esper may well have prevented a war with North Korea by averting Trump’s idiotic evacuation order for Americans in South Korea. If that’s the case, I’d have to say it was worth it to have someone in the right place.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • They had a duty to speak up sooner. And they failed in that duty.
  • These efforts allowed both Trump’s supporters and his critics to comfort themselves with the knowledge that someone, somewhere, was trying to limit the damage to the country. His fans could say, “He’s just inexperienced but he has good people around him,” while the opponents could say, “He’s an execrable moron but reasonable people are in charge, and they’ll save us from the worst.”
  • But the price for this quiet custodianship (a form of opposition to Trump described in detail by Miles Taylor, now known as the author of the famous “Anonymous” op-ed in The New York Times) is that the American people never really knew how much danger they were facing, at home and abroad, at any given moment.
  • Governments are more than just large organizations. They are a far more delicate web of norms and habits, and liberal democracies especially are built on informal agreements rather than black-letter law. Yes, we have tons of laws and administrative bumf that complicate our lives, but when it comes to the nature of our democracy, the Constitution manages to do it all in fewer than  5,000 words. Our basic rights as citizens take less than a page. The rest relies on us.
  • in the end, they have faith in the system. They see Trump as only one man, and the system as a bulwark of laws and regulations, people and committees, institutions and practices that will somehow kick in and prevent a catastrophe.
  • Esper, Mattis, Rex Tillerson, and many, many other people who crawled through the Shawshank sewer pipe that was the four years of the Trump administration needed to speak up the minute they were out. Instead, they teased their book bombshells or played coy games of slap and tickle on cable outlets.
  • And so when you know that the president is unhinged, when you know the country is in danger, when you know that plots are being hatched to subvert the Constitution, you have a duty to speak. This duty supersedes confidentiality, partisanship, or personal loyalty.
  • Think of all the people from whom we don’t have a full account of this mess, who did not speak up even as Trump was running for reelection or inciting an insurrection: Mattis, Tillerson, John Kelly, Robert O’Brien, H. R. McMaster, and many others.
  • These are experienced political figures who know that the public needs to be grabbed by the lapels and made to listen to a compelling story. The too-late book excerpts, along with all the throat clearing, the circumlocutions, the carefully phrased “but I’d still support the nominee” escape hatches don’t cut it.
  • I was in a vulnerable position as a government employee, and from the first time I spoke up, people tried to get me fired from the Naval War College. Even with tenure, I could have been dismissed if I was found to violate the Hatch Act, the law prohibiting on-the-job politicking by federal employees.
  • I called my family together nearly six years ago and said that I could lose my job if I kept writing about Trump. All of them told me to keep writing, and we’d deal with whatever comes.
  • for more than five years, the demands to fire me came so often, as one administrator later told me, that after a while they didn’t even bother to inform me about them anymore.
  • I cannot imagine what it would be like to be burdened with knowing the president was mentally unstable, that he wanted to fire missiles at Mexico, that he was planning to exit NATO, that he wanted to shoot unarmed protesters, that he wanted to invalidate a national election. That is a level of responsibility beyond anything I have ever experienced. This was Night of Camp David stuff, and I’m not sure what I’d have done.
  • But I’m reasonably certain I wouldn’t have kept it to myself until my agent told me I had a deal.
criscimagnael

Taliban Renege on Promise to Open Afghan Girls' Schools - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...tan-girls-schools-taliban.html

shared by criscimagnael on 25 Mar 22 - No Cached
  • The schools were supposed to reopen this week, and the reversal could threaten aid because international officials had made girls’ education a condition for greater assistance.
  • Under the Taliban’s first rule, from 1996 to 2001, the group barred women and girls from school and most employment.
  • The news was crushing to the over one million high school-aged girls who had been raised in an era of opportunity for women before the Taliban seized power in August last year — and who had woken up thrilled to be returning to classes on Wednesday.
  • ...21 more annotations...
  • One 12th-grade student in Kabul said the decision had stamped out her last bit of hope that she could achieve her dream of becoming a lawyer.
  • “Education was the only way to give us some hope in these times of despair, and it was the only right we hoped for, and it has been taken away,” the student, Zahra Rohani, 15, said.
  • On Monday, the Ministry of Education had announced that all schools, including girls’ high schools, would reopen on Wednesday at the start of the spring semester. The following day, a Ministry of Education spokesman released a video congratulating all students on the return to class.
  • Mehrin Ekhtiari, a 15-year-old student in 10th grade, said she and her classmates were shocked when a teacher announced the news to the classroom on Wednesday morning.
  • “My hope was revived after eight months of waiting,” she said, adding later that the announcement had “dashed all my dreams.”
  • In recent months, the Taliban had also come under mounting pressure to permit girls to attend high school from international donors, aid from which has helped keep Afghanistan from plunging further into a humanitarian catastrophe set off by the collapse of the former government and Western sanctions that crippled the country’s banking system.
  • . He attributed the decision to a lack of a religious uniform for girls and the lack of female teachers for girls, among other issues.
  • Many principals and teachers said they only received the new instructions from the ministry after students had already arrived for classes Wednesday.
  • The move came a little more than a week before a pledging conference where the United Nations had hoped donor countries would commit millions of dollars in badly needed aid, as Afghanistan grapples with an economic collapse that has left over half of the population without sufficient food to eat. It is unclear whether donors will be willing to contribute following the Taliban’s abrupt reversal on the key commitment of girl’s education.
  • The Taliban on Wednesday abruptly reversed their decision to allow girls’ high schools to reopen this week, saying that they would remain closed until officials draw up a plan for them to reopen in accordance with Islamic law.
  • When schools reopened in September for grades seven through 12, Taliban officials told only male students to report for their studies, saying that girls would be allowed to return after security improved and enough female teachers could be found to keep classes fully segregated by sex.
  • Later, Taliban officials insisted that Afghan girls and women would be able to go back to school in March, and many Western officials seized on that promise as a deadline that would have repercussions for the Taliban’s efforts to eventually secure international recognition and the lifting of at least some sanctions.
  • “I’m deeply troubled by multiple reports that the Taliban are not allowing girls above grade 6 to return to school,” tweeted Ian McCary, the chief of mission for U.S. Embassy Kabul, currently operating out of Doha, Qatar. “This is very disappointing & contradicts many Taliban assurances & statements.”
  • At one girls’ private high school in Kabul, more female students had arrived for classes Wednesday morning compared to previous years, the school’s principal said in an interview.
  • “They came to my office, crying,” said the principal,
  • The decision “doesn’t make sense at all, and it has no logic,” the principal added, noting that the new government has had over seven months to design a new uniform and address the teacher shortage.
  • Since seizing power, the Taliban have been reckoning with the need for consistent policies while struggling to tread a delicate line that satisfies their more moderate members, their hard-line base and the international community.
  • The sudden reversal on the girls’ secondary schools seemed to validate existing concerns among Western donors that, despite assurances, they are dealing with much the same Taliban as the 1990s.
  • “The Taliban have been solidifying their position and becoming hard-line on a lot of issues,” Mr. Bahiss said.
  • In recent months, the new government has issued restrictions on local media and cracked down on peaceful protests. Taliban officials have also issued new restrictions on women, including a ban on traveling farther than 45 miles in a taxi unless they are accompanied by a male chaperone.
  • “You can’t exercise your other rights if you can’t leave your house to attend your job or attend education classes,” Ms. Barr said. “It’s a really alarming sign of what may be to come, it’s likely to herald further crackdowns on women.”
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