Jim posted a long response to the April 5 blog on Iran.  Here is his entire point of view:

“You asked for response…!  Here goes.  As usual, I suspect neither you or many (any?) of your other friends is going to agree with much of this.

 

Forgive the digression, but I want to start “Big Picture”.

 

In many ways, on many fronts, Trump has had his finger on the “nobody-will-touch-this” side of “settled” issues.  His big two have been immigration and trade.

 

On immigration, he has been on the side of “less” and on the side of “by strictly-enforced rules, only”, two things that Dems/Libs and GOPers/Conservatives had been able to come to agreement AGAINST, for decades, much to my astonishment.  It’s been a “Devil’s Deal”.  I’ve never had trouble understanding the GOP stance.  It has always been an immoral, beyond-“pro business” stance that feels that the abuse of low skilled foreign labor (and the laborers themselves) is OK if it’s “good for business”. And, as we are reminded pretty constantly these days, exploiting low skilled foreign labor is not only pro-business (which is how the GOP still puts it) but “necessary for our economy to operate as we have come to expect” (which is how the Dems choose to express the exact same point, alas).  The Dem stance – the Progressive stance – in my youth and yours, was always that exploiting foreign labor was immoral, and hurt not only the immigrants themselves, but also the entirety of American Labor, via the very, very obvious trickle-up effect it has on the availability of jobs and the wages jobs pay.  Academic economists have learned how to “lie with statistics” to deny this point, and much to my dismay, Progressive Dems are happy to take those lies and run with them.  It has been, and remains, shameful.

 

Add in the negative cultural effects.  No nation on earth save Belgium has ever performed “well” as a bi- or multi-cultural “nation” (really, “multi-cultural nation” is a contradiction in terms), and it took Belgium CENTURIES (not a few years or decades) to get to where it is.  Canada still is not, as evidenced by the Air Canada exec who had to resign after the recent crash, not because of the crash, but because his condolence message exposed that his French is weak-to-nonexistent.  Sacre Bleu!  In the US, we are on our historical third wave of immigration “downward adjustment” – All three arose from there being a historical local “high” on the curve of % Immigrants in the population vs. year.  We never seem to learn that, from the standpoint of social harmony – YES, you CAN have too many un- or under-assimilated immigrants.  We are still a “nation of immigrants”, but it works best when it does not degrade national culture or any local or regional cultures.  There is ALWAYS backlash when that starts to happen, and the phenomenon in relatively well-understood – but ignored by almost all in politics, anyway, because it is one of those “inconvenient truths”

 

On trade, Trump seems to have realized a number of things that run counter to Dem-GOP consensus, the most important of which being that in times of crisis, conflict, war, etc., a country has to either HAVE its own sources of critical materials and goods, OR it has to have ways of quickly ramping up capacity on a scale and at a pace that is dictated by the times.  We were ALMOST caught out in the lead-up and opening years of WWII, but we scaled up needed capacities faster and better than any earlier country had ever done.  The dominating US victory in WWII remains the only time in history that a country entered a war under-armed and momentarily unable even to produce more/better arms, and so thoroughly overcame those problems by force of national will.  Trump seems to have recognized that, with regard to China, we are literally “there again”, and that it is unlikely any country will ever succeed from such a starting point again, because pace of war has increased, while pace of industrialization has slowed.

 

So, on to foreign policy, war, and Iran.

 

Here, the irony is that Trump, this man of apparently no personal ethics or morals, has stumbled onto the moral high ground on an issue that AGAIN, both parties agreed long ago to take the other side:  The defects in the conceptual frameworks of International Law, and “The Rules of War”.

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Like you, I was raised Roman Catholic.  Super-Catholic in fact.  Catholic school, two cousins who are priests, as well as several second cousins and great-uncles.  Altar boy.  (No.  Never abused or anything like it.  You probably wouldn’t ask – non-Catholics ALWAYS do…)  Was doing the Readings at Mass at 14 years old.  Was a Eucharistic Minister at 17.  Left it all behind at 20. Took my doubts to a campus parish Jesuit (who I would much later learn was semi-famous) and he allowed me, through Socratic Discussion, once a week for half a year, to talk myself out of Catholicism and organized church Christianity in total.  In retrospect, I’m sure a part of him must have been crushed.  He never let on.  But a “whole lot o’ Catholic” still runs in my veins.

 

What does that have to do with Trump and war?  Well, I have never been able to come to a satisfactory understanding of how the Church’s stances on war can be seen to mesh with the realities of war, and the teachings of the Judeo-Christian tradition.  For me, once one country has decided that it is OK to “litigate” its issues with some other country via the organized killing of numerous children of God, it is the very HEIGHT of immorality to “gamify” it with rules.  So “War Crimes” is another oxymoron that I do not understand, and apparently, Trump does not either.  War IS a crime in itself, and all emphasis should be on not doing it, or at least not doing it often, and GETTING IT OVER WITH if one determines one must do it.  There is evil in the world, and just as individual crime must be met with law and enforcement, evil on national scales can sometimes only be dealt with via war.  But in my Moral Universe, once that threshold has been crossed, the IMPERATIVE becomes to get it over with as fast and conclusively as possible.  What we did NOT do in Korea.  In Viet Nam.  In Iraq.  In Afghanistan.  His critics can rail all they want, but for all his faults, he really HAS governed, in both terms of his Presidency, from a stance of not starting wars that one cannot see the end of, helping others end their wars, and, most importantly, clearly expressing that if he STARTS a war, do not assume that he will NOT do WHATEVER it takes to end it expeditiously so we can get back to not killing each other again.  I don’t pretend to understand whether he really is in possession of a moral insight, or just a sense of expediency, or WHAT.  But the way in which he conducts foreign policy comports with my moral stance toward warfare (though not always with my sense of what’s in US interest, or any of a number of other factors).  Trump seems to understand just how awful war is, and just how “not-that-much-MORE-awful” are so-called “war crimes”.  I respect that about him.  It’s got to be extremely difficult to stand up and ACT this way on the international stage.  Courage, not cowardice.

 

So, Finally, the Paul Krugman piece.  <sigh>  It is really HARD not to go “ad hominem” on Paul Krugman, because the man proves almost every time he sits down to write on any topic that he is an utter, total, idiot.  He writes columns the way all too many Social Media denizens write “posts”.  He says outrageous things just to be outrageous and attract attention to himself – and almost always, the things he is saying have been said by others already, said better, and certainly supported better with some kind of evidence.  Paul Krugman is literally the worst kind of columnist.

 

But let me give him the credit he is in no way due, and take on what passes for his “substance” in this piece… well… substantively.  “Yet Iran won.”  Seriously?  In what universe?  Neither he nor anyone else can point to ANYTHING about the situation of the Iranian regime in which they are better off now than they were before last year’s US/Israeli short war and this year’s longer one. And there are myriad ways in which they are worse off.

 

“The Iranian regime has emerged far stronger than it was before, controlling the Strait of Hormuz and having demonstrated its ability to inflict damage on both its neighbors and the world economy.”  Is Krugman really UNAWARE that Iran controlled the Straits of Hormuz BEFORE the war, and has for ages, and that Israel has been fighting with Iran and its proxies for decades precisely because they have ALREADY demonstrated their ability to inflict damage on their neighbors and the world economy?  NONE of this is new, and, in fact, all of this is one REASON for the US and Israel to be fighting this war.  For crying out loud, the Oil Crisis of the ’70s was largely due to the fact that Iran controls the Straits of Hormuz.  Saying what Krugman said here is a perfect example of why I can’t get past “idiot” when assessing him.

 

“The U.S. has emerged far weaker, having demonstrated the limitations of its military technology, its strategic ineptitude and, when push comes to shove, its cowardice.”  OK, so at this point, I’m just kind of done, here.  We know of no new limitations on US military technology as a result of this war – at least, not as of today.  And Krugman doesn’t list any, because… as usual, Krugman “ain’t got nothin'”, so he can’t list any.   Then, since, again, it’s Krugman, I don’t really know whether when he says “strategic ineptitude”, he really means strategic, or tactical (he frequently gets them confused), but that’s OK, because at this early juncture, neither has been demonstrated in any way that will ever be discussed as a Case Study in the War College.  There may have been some poor or even inept choices.  WAY too early for experts to tell.  EONS too early for the likes of Krugman to tell.  “Cowardice”?  It’s be nice if Krugman could even tell us what, specifically, he is alluding to.  But, he likely doesn’t know.

 

I love the “TACO” thing from Trump’s critics.  99% of the time “TACO” is invoked, it is done so by someone who does not understand the first thing about negotiation and leverage.  Which, sadly, is true of most academic economists (“TACO” was first coined by them relating to Tariffs… and they were, and are, wrong – regardless of whether Tariffs are a good idea or bad.  What is actually TRUE is that Trump ALWAYS gets something on his wish list in exchange for “TACO’ing”.  He is REALLY good at it – “Evil Genius” level good, for better AND for worse, alas…)

 

“God help us.”   Well, God already has.  God has provided, up to the present moment, that Paul Krugman is not in charge of ANYTHING that truly matters in any way, and decision makers in both parties largely ignore him.  So God is good, here.”

 

Jim Klein

COMMENT from Dick:  Jim and I are good friends, who met working in behalf of a local Democrat candidate for office and I’ll basically leave it at that.

Re the political situation, U.S. president 47 properly read the room and we, the people, made the decision to elect him twice, and we are solely responsible and ultimately will regret the decision.  Like all humans, he will die (I’m six years his senior, so I know a bit about that!).

Re the Catholic Church, I see the church as three constituencies: the hierarchy, in this case the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops leadership; and the “rank and file”, divided into the progressive social justice branch (my branch) and the ideologue conservatives united by the rules, particularly “pro-life” bunch.

Before Jim’s comment, I had sent a 5 page letter to the local Archbishop and my Parish Pastor.

Here is a 1993 official American Catholic position on Just War, which was still in effect in 2003. Catholic on Just War 1993

Re Paul Krugman, I totally disagree with Jim.  No problem.

I have another good friend, an ideologic Democrat of my generation who, for whatever reason, doesn’t like Somali’s and specifically our Congressperson who is Somali.  That’s how he feels, and don’t and won’t try to change his mind.  He knows where I stand.  His issue is some corruption by a group of Somali’s during and after Covid-19 which resulted in, I recall, 63 convictions so far of Somali’s, which amounted to roughly 1 criminal per 1,000 Minnesota Somali’s.  This ethnic group is hardly overrun with crime, I’d say.

Finally, I actually know fewer than six who would call themselves “Iranian”.  I don’t have much agency in indicting an entire country.