In August of 2003 following the liberation of Baghdad, the Iraqi National Museum was looted by crowds and Iraq’s most valuable antiquities were stolen for sale on the black market.
Asked to comment on this event, Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, observed, “Freedom is untidy.”
Well, I guess we learned that lesson again this year.
In forty-eight hours, mercifully, this presidential election will be over.
It can’t come soon enough for me.
Although I am a self-confessed political junkie, who thought that I was immune to being offended by a candidate’s behavior and tactics, I found that even I was still capable of being shocked and offended.
At the end of September, I was challenged by a reader to make a case for Hillary Clinton.
I tried my best to do so, laying out their policy differences as clearly as I could. I think she is far superior to Trump as a prospective President and Commander-in-Chief in every important area. Nevertheless, I want to revisit them both again on the issues of character and they ways in which they have comported themselves during this campaign.
I am not enthused about the choices this year.
I have never been a fan of the Clintons.
Bill Clinton lost me when he flew home to Little Rock, Arkansas during the 1992 New York Democratic Presidential primary in which the death penalty was an issue, so he could preside over the execution of a brain damaged death row inmate named Ricky Ray Rector who saved the dessert from his last meal so he could eat it after the execution.
If I had been Monica Lewinsky’s father, he would have needed dental work.
I thought Hillary was a creditable First Lady and admired the way she tried to push universal health care in that role.
I thought she was an effective Senator from New York but I still don’t understand why she didn’t read the classified National Security analysis about whether Iraq actually possessed weapons of mass destruction before casting a vote to go to war with that country.
To be fair to her, apparently only a handful of the members of Congress did read it which I still find appalling.
The e-mail server is a festering wound that could have been avoided, particularly if you know that you’re going to be a candidate for President and you suffer on the issue of transparency.
When the news broke about the server in March 2015, I predicted it would haunt her campaign for the Presidency and it continued to hang over her like the Sword of Damocles as we go to the polls on Tuesday.
Only on this day at this hour has the FBI Director again affirmed that she committed no crimes in using it.
The Clinton Foundation is another self-inflicted, unforced error. If, as Secretary of State, you proclaim that you’re going to put a Chinese wall between the Department of State and the Foundation, there has to be a real wall. That would seem to be especially important if you know that you’re going to be a candidate for President.
Her penchant for secrecy is understandable, given the number of times her husband has been indiscrete, but it could still prove to be her undoing.
All of this, however, pales in comparison to Donald Trump.
Transparent is not a word that anyone would put in a sentence that starts with the words “Donald Trump.”
In 2015 he pledged to release his tax returns, the same as every candidate for President in the last half century. Since then he has refused to disclose them, hiding behind the bogus claim that he is prevented from doing so because he is being audited by the Internal Revenue Service.
Likewise he promised that his wife, Melania, would hold a press conference to address all questions that have arisen about her path to citizenship. That has not occurred.
Trump University has been exposed as a scam that dupes people, anxious to learn whatever secrets to success that Trump claims to know, out of thousands of dollars in “tuition fees.”
The Trump Foundation has been revealed to be a scheme that involves Trump seeking donations from others that he donates to charitable organizations while charging them exorbitant fees to host their charitable functions at his Florida country club.
Trump has also used the Foundation money to settle legal claims made against him and to purchase paintings of himself at “charity auctions”, which now grace the walls in his country club.
Trump has shown himself to be a racist, misogynistic, uninformed narcissist who revels in the adulation of the neo-Nazi, white supremacist, alt-right universe that have been drawn by his appeals to their darkest impulses, like moths to the flame.
There is no group that is safe from his bullying and vitriol.
Mexicans and Latinos are “rapists.”
Latina beauty queens are to be characterized as “eating machines” and called “Miss Housekeeping,” an apparent reference to the Latina accent.
Veterans who were taken prisoner during war, while fighting for this country and were tortured are not heroes, because they “were captured.”
Women are “disgusting pigs” who exist solely for his uninvited, unrequited sexual gratification.
The disabled exist to be mocked and made sport of, if they have written something that displeases him.
Immigrants are to be rounded up and deported, whether or not they were brought here as infants and have lived productive lives and contributed to this nation.
Muslims are to be banned from this country regardless of whether they or loved ones have given their lives for it in the service.
The legitimacy of first African-American President is attacked by spreading the racist lie that he was not born here.
In his opinion, Saddam Hussein and the KGB thug, Vladimir Putin are to be admired and emulated.
It is why the Cincinnati Enquirer endorsed the first Democratic candidate for President in almost a century.
It is why the Dallas Morning News has endorsed a Democrat for President after seventy-five years.
It is no wonder that no living Republican President will endorse him.
It is no wonder that any living past Republican candidate for President will defend, campaign or appear with him.
It is no wonder that former Secretary of State, the General, Colin Powell and the vast majority of Republican diplomats and national security experts condemns him.
This Tuesday, you have to make a choice.
If you vote for Donald Trump because “you don’t like her” and he wins, you have to take ownership of that.
If you vote for Gary Johnson or Jill Stein “because you don’t like her” and Donald Trump wins, you have to take ownership of that too.
During the 1920 Presidential campaign, almost a century ago, H.L. Mencken observed,
“As democracy is perfected, the office of president, represents more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
We have never come this close to fulfilling that prophecy as we are today.
Don’t do it.