The Rise of "Revisionist" America

One of the numerous things that drives me to distraction is the ignorance of much of the American population when it comes to know accurate and true history, both of America's own past but perhaps even more so of the world at large. Hand in hand with this phenomenon is the inability of a startling number of Americans to identify countries in the world if given a blank map.  This ignorance sets the stage for revisionist ranging from Neo-Confederates who continue the lie that slavery was not the cause of the American Civil War to the Christofascists who push the myth that America was founded as a "Christian nation." If one is utterly ignorant of history - which too often gets short shrift in American public education -  the stage is set for a population easily duped by demagogues and liars  - a description that applies not only to Neo-Confederates, Christofacsist, and much of the Republican Party, but also to the liar-in-chief in the White House.  A piece in The Atlantic  looks at revisionist history being pushed by Trump and his enablers.  Here are highlights:

H. R. McMaster, Donald Trump’s former national-security adviser, used to warn of the dangers of “revisionist powers.” He had in mind countries like China and Russia that are newly ascendant and determined to amend to their advantage the global status quo: a decades-old, U.S.-led international system of free trade, military and diplomatic alliances, and liberal rules and institutions that govern how countries conduct themselves. But [Trump's] the U.S. president’s recent Europe trip, which whisked him from a confrontational breakfast with the secretary general of NATO to a conciliatory lunch with the president of Russia, made one thing clearer than it’s ever been before: The call is also coming from inside the house. Trump is a revisionist, even if many of his advisers may still conceive of the United States as the world’s leading status-quo power.

Trump’s revisionist streak was on display in Belgium when the president reportedly threatened to reconsider America’s involvement in NATO if the military alliance’s members don’t spend far more on their own defense. When Fox News’s Tucker Carlson questioned this week why the United States should be obligated to defend another NATO member if it came under attack—the commitment at the very heart of the alliance—[Trump] the president shook his head in disbelief and responded, “I understand what you’re saying. I’ve asked the same question … That’s the way it was set up. Don’t forget, I just got here a little more than a year and a half ago.” The implication was that he needed more time to shake things up.

The streak was on display in the United Kingdom, when Trump actively encouraged defection from the European Union by offering Britain a trade deal with the United States only on the condition that it make a clean break with the EU.

“We are cracking down right now on the European Union,” he told The Sun, in reference to the raft of tariffs he has imposed or threatened to impose on the bloc. He argued, as he has since the 1980s, that in certain ways traditional U.S. allies pose a greater threat to the country than longtime adversaries because they are essentially friendly pickpockets: exploiting America’s military protection and preferential treatment on trade to get rich at the expense of the United States. 

And it was on display in Finland, . . . At a joint press conference, [Trump] the American president refused to take Russia to task for interfering in democratic elections, or even to call out any specific instance of Russian bad behavior—be it committing and abetting atrocities in Syria or allegedly ordering the poisoning of a former Russian spy with a nerve agent in Britain. . . . Instead, Trump blamed rotten relations with Russia on “many years of U.S. foolishness. 

But whatever you call it—a reset, strategic renovation, or America First revisionism—Trump’s agenda of upending the international status quo is reorienting the United States as an actor in the world, even if [Trump's] the U.S. president’s ambitious plans have often been frustrated by resistance from his own advisers, Congress, and the inertia of a global system that the United States has invested in for decades. 

And if three of the world’s top powers—the United States, China, and Russia—are all acting like revisionists, that suggests the world is poised to change a whole lot, even as U.S. allies such as the European Union, Canada, and Japan strive to uphold the status quo. . . . At the moment, Europe “is not strong enough to uphold this system by itself,” Belin continued. It “still needs big allies like the U.S.”

Be very afraid.  America and the world is rapidly moving towards the same unstable international framework that set the stage for WWI and WWI - not that Trump and his Fox News viewing base have a clue of how dangerous this path will be.  They merely enjoy being the petulant bully that "shakes things up" with no long view of what they are potentially doing to themselves of the nation.  Ignorance is not always bliss. 

Trump’s America: Selfish and Uncaring

Much to the dismay of some, I frequently credit the rise of evangelicals and militant far right Christians - those I call the Christofascists - with the descent of the Republican Party into something loathsome.  Having followed falsely name "family values" groups run by "professional Christians" who live very well of the monies they scam from their followers have bred division and hatred towards those they label as "other" for decades.  To call these "leaders" con-artists is too flattering. Hate merchants and deliberate liars is far more apt, especially when one scratches the surface and discovers many are white supremacists as well.  Their agenda has always been one of selfishness, including inflicting their beliefs on all of society, displaying a love for money and power, and caring nothing for the rights or even lives of others - e.g., they claim to be "pro-life" yet support the savaging of the social safety net for anyone has exited through their mother's birth canal. Now, they have faulted the biggest con-artist and hate merchant of them all to the White House.  America, which has a very ugly history if one is honest (and can see common humanity in Native Americans, blacks, Hispanics and others who were treated horrifically), and under Trumpism, we are rapidly headed towards repeating past sins.  A column in the New York Times that I bookmarked earlier in the week looks at the immorality of what is being done to immigrant families.  Another in the Washington Post looks at the damage being done on a larger scale to the international order.  All so Trumps base can vent hatred and focus on its never ending selfishness. I truly am ashamed to be American (working on my dual citizenship may be in order after all).  First this from the Times column:

It may be hard to believe that this is happening in the United States in 2018, that hundreds of children are being snatched from their parents, frequently under false pretenses, often screaming, and placed in vast warehouselike centers like the former Walmart in Brownsville, Tex., where nearly 1,500 boys now spend their days. The parents often don’t know where their children are, or when they will see them again.

In 2014 the Obama administration detained hundreds of families and unaccompanied minors crossing the border, a practice that the federal courts quickly curtailed. But separating families as a matter of unofficial policy is something new and malicious, a function of President Trump’s obsession with undocumented immigrants.

The United Nations human rights office called this new practice a serious violation of the rights of children and demanded an immediate halt. Catholic bishops denounced it as immoral. The American Psychological Association warned that the separations threatened the mental and physical health of the children. All to no avail.

The administration has come back with a mix of just-following-orders and falsehoods. The Department of Homeland Security said it had no policy for separating families; it was just catching criminals. President Trump feigned sympathy for the separations but claimed he was the victim of “bad legislation passed by the Democrats,” which nobody could find.

The heartlessness of that is mind-boggling. It seems to elude the administration and its cheerleaders that this is not about crime or security, but about the most elemental human values; that ordering armed border guards to cruelly and needlessly rip children from mothers — in one case, while she was breast-feeding the child — goes against fundamental American values and undercuts its standing in the world.

Call Congress. Find out who represents you in Washington, and let them know you want the practice of family separation to end.

Join protests. People are taking to the streets in communities across the country Thursday to register their outrage at this border policy. Join these or future actions.

Heartlessness - that is the main pillar of the Christofascists and their white supremacist first cousins.  They truly are little different than Germans who flocked to Hitler's banner.  As children suffer this morning, many Trump supporters will sit their fat asses in church pews, feign piety and show concern for their children and grandchildren without a though to the suffering they have helped unleash.  These people are the face of what Christianity has become.  They are monsters.

The Washington Post piece looks at the even broader damage being done by Der Trumpenführer and his supporters.   None of it bodes well for the safety and security of the world.  Here are excerpts:

Since the end of the Cold War, it has widely been assumed that U.S. foreign policy would follow one of two courses: Either the United States would continue as primary defender of the international order it created after World War II, or it would pull back from overseas commitments, shed global responsibilities, turn inward and begin transitioning to a post- ­American world. The second approach was where U.S. foreign policy seemed headed under President Barack Obama, and most saw the election of Donald Trump as another step toward withdrawal. It turns out there was a third option: the United States as rogue superpower, neither isolationist nor internationalist, neither withdrawing nor in decline, but active, powerful and entirely out for itself. In recent months, on trade, Iran, NATO defense spending and perhaps even North Korea, President Trump has shown that a president willing to throw off the moral, ideological and strategic constraints that limited U.S. action in the past can bend this intractable world to his will, at least for a while. Trump is not merely neglecting the liberal world order; he is milking it for narrow gain, rapidly destroying the trust and sense of common purpose that have held it together and prevented international chaos for seven decades.

At the core of that order was a grand bargain. To ensure the global peace that Americans sought after being pulled into two world wars, the United States became the main provider of security in Europe and East Asia. . . . The security bargain had an economic dimension. The allies could spend less on defense and more on strengthening their economies and social welfare systems. This, too, was in line with American goals. The United States wanted allied economies to be strong, to counter extremism on both the left and right, and to prevent the arms races and geopolitical competitions that had led to past wars. The United States would not insist on winning every economic contest or every trade deal. 

This bargain was the foundation of a liberal world order that benefited all participants, including the United States. But it left the United States’ allies vulnerable, and they remain vulnerable today. . . . In the past, U.S. presidents were unwilling to exploit this leverage. They believed the United States had a stake in upholding the liberal world order, even if it meant abiding by or paying lip service to international rules and institutions to provide reassurance. The alternative was a return to the great-power clashes of the past from which the United States could never hope to remain uninvolved. . . . . even President George W. Bush’s America cared about them, if only because Americans had learned through painful experience that they had no choice but to care.

The United States’ allies are about to find out what real unilateralism looks like and what the real exercise of U.S. hegemony feels like, because Trump’s America does not care. It is unencumbered by historical memory. It recognizes no moral, political or strategic commitments. It feels free to pursue objectives without regard to the effect on allies or, for that matter, the world. It has no sense of responsibility to anything beyond itself.

Trump’s world is a struggle of all-against-all. There are no relationships based on common values. There are merely transactions determined by power. It is the world that a century ago brought us two world wars.

What Trump is doing - not to mention his personality resemblance to Kaiser Wilhelm II - in some ways seems to be a case of deja vue.  A century ago the word suffered horribly from the actions of malignant narcissists.  Trump and his supporters seem determined to repeat the horrors of the past. 

Remembering the HMS Hood and Her Gallant Crew

HMS Hood at flank speed

HMS Hood

One of the last photos of Hood from May 23, 1941, as she steamed to meet
Bismark and destiny, taken from the Battleship Prince of Wales 

Perhaps I am a bit of a history nerd (growing up gay and deeply in the closet, books were one of my means of escape), but one of the things that has always fascinated me since I was a child is ships and the ocean.  There are certain ships that achieve iconic status due to their magnificence or their tragic ends or a combination of the two.  Ships such as the French super liner Normandie, perhaps the most beautiful liner ever built, the super liner S.S, United States built just miles from where I sit at the moment, the Lusitania, the Titanic, and in the military realm, the U.S.S Arizona, the Bismark, Houston, Lexington, and for me, the HMS Hood.  To paraphrase an eloquent member of a Facebook page who wrote:

On this day 77 years ago at around 6:00 am Britain and the Royal Navy suffered their most terrible loss.  HMS Hood, British battle cruiser, the largest warship in the world (she was larger than the German battleship Bismark), a 21 year veteran and pride of the Fleet and indeed the entire British Empire, was lost in combat against the Germans in the Battle of Denmark Strait. She went down , fighting for our survival against tyranny and evil, and of her ships company of 1418 galant men and boys, only 3 survived the tragedy. A freak, one in a million hit, from Bismark caused a fire on Hood which caused it to explode and sink in mere minutes.

So many of her crew were so young, some as young as 17 who had enlisted as Britain stood alone against Hitler's Nazi Germany.  The HMS Hood Association is compiling a pictorial roster of the crew that went down with Hood in the battle of the Denmark Straits.  The roster can be found here.

My reverence for HMS Hood in no way diminishes my respect for for other ships that fought valiantly or their gallant crews who strove to do their best for their countries.  May all of them rest in peace. 

A photo of but one of the 1,415 men lost:

The lesson, at least to me, is that war is Hell and should be avoid.  At the time of Hood's loss, few comprehended the horrors of the next 4 years - e.g., Pearl Harbor, the fall of British and French Indochina, D Day, etc.) - much less the full nightmare of the Holocaust. A pox on politicians who recklessly send members of the military to war without just cause or to satiate their meglomanical and/or narsarcist egos.  WWII was perhaps one of the last wars were the causes of good and evil were starkly drawn. 

Democracy in Decline - Do Republicans Even Care?

Before both World War I and World War II, America pursued an isolationist policy and tried to ignore events happening in Europe and around.  Such shortsightedness ended up costing America and the world dearly.  Now, American foreign policy seems headed toward making the same mistake as Der Trumpenführer seeks to back out of international treaties and agreements and panders to the uglier and more extremist elements of American society who seemingly embrace authoritarianism, ignorance, and a contempt - if not open hatred - of others.  The long term ramifications could prove dangerous both at home and abroad.  Yet Congressional Republicans for the most part appear only to happy to abandon long term policies and objectives as they mimic Trump's disdain for foreigners and the defense of democratic values around the world.  The world is watching and coming to realize that the values of red America are toxic.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the disturbing trends.  Here are excerpts: 

It’s no surprise that when President Trump shot back at Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) last week, he failed to engage the substance of McCain’s argument.

But make no mistake: The challenge that McCain threw down a week ago, and that former president George W. Bush joined Thursday, is very much about an idea. It is about whether democracy, on the defensive around the world, can recover its confidence. That in turn depends in large part on whether the United States will honor what McCain called “the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain ‘the last best hope of earth.’ ”

[T]he world is experiencing a “deepening democratic recession” characterized by fewer nations living freely, as measured annually by Freedom House; by increasing power projection from Russia and China; by the breakdown of democracy from Turkey to Thailand to Hungary; and by a “wave of illiberal populism” and a “decay of democratic values and self-confidence in the U.S. and Europe.”

You can debate the causes of this democratic decay, which obviously did not begin with Trump. Blame Bush’s invasion and bungled occupation of Iraq; President Barack Obama’s abandoning Syria to its grisly fate; or deeper, underlying trends of wage stagnation, economic inequality, fracturing social media.

But Trump’s admiration for strongmen and contempt for democratic values has accelerated the trend and shocked much of the world. Kori Schake, a Republican defense expert and Hoover fellow, said at the same seminar that the global anxiety today reminds her of what she was hearing from allies after the 9/11 attacks: People “are a little bit scared that America is becoming a different place than they thought they knew.”

Many Americans are worried about that, too. When I repeated Schake’s comment to Michael McFaul, a Hoover and Stanford scholar who served as Obama’s ambassador to Russia, he said he is “optimistic about our ability for renewal as a democratic society.”

But when it comes to global leadership, McFaul was less of an optimist. “The retrenchment period began under Obama, let’s be clear,” he said. “Trump is a more extreme version. That I fear may be permanent.”

The good news is the United States has hardly tried to counter the authoritarian offensive — which means that, if we stirred ourselves to act, we might yet shift the momentum. That is clearly what the old lions of the Republican Party are hoping for.

“For more than 70 years, the presidents of both parties believed that American security and prosperity were directly tied to the success of freedom in the world,” said Bush. “And they knew that the success depended, in large part, on U.S. leadership.”

The sad news is how few Republican leaders can bring themselves to defend traditional American ideals in the same way. Unless they do, the democratic recession will be increasingly likely to shift from cyclical phenomenon to the onset of something much scarier.

Is Vladimir Putin Right on Syria?

As regular readers know, I am no fan of Vladamir Putin dictator president of Russia.  As noted many times, Putin has used arguments and tactics that look right out of Adolph Hitler's playbook.  Now, he seems to be reverting to tactics of Josef Stalin during World War II when Stalin pleaded for joint efforts between the Allied forces to fight Hitler who posed a huge menace to Russia, or the Soviet Union as it was called at the time.  In his address to the United Nations, Putin even made specific references to the WWII alliances that defeated the Nazi juggernaut in his call for an alliance of Russia, Iran and America to defeat ISIS and restore some semblance of stability to the Middle East.  In doing so, he also called on America to admit it's responsibility in creating the political vacuum in which ISIS came into being and took shots at the idiotic myth of American exceptionalism.  Can Putin be trusted?  No more than Stalin could be trusted.   Moreover, I despise Putin - and was nauseated by his claims that gays are fine in Russia - but as an op-ed in The Guardian notes, perhaps Putin may be right.  Here are column highlights:

Putin is right. Everyone knows Putin is right, that the only way forward in Syria, if not to eternal slaughter, is via the established government of Bashar al-Assad and his Lebanese and Iranian allies.

That is the realpolitik. That is what pragmatism dictates. In the secure west, foreign policy has long been a branch of domestic politics, with added sermonising. “What to do”, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, even Ukraine, has been dictated not by what might work but what looks good. The megaphone is mightier than the brain.

The result of American and British grandstanding at the UN this week – seeing who can be ruder about Assad – is that Vladimir Putin has gathered ever more cards to his pack. Putin has already performed the two primary duties of a Russian leader, bringing stability and pride. He now faces turbulent Russian minorities across his European frontier and a serious menace from Muslim states to his south. He is perforce becoming a player on a wider stage. He has read Iran, India and Syria correctly. He is no fool.

On a visit to London last June, the veteran diplomat Henry Kissinger pleaded with his audience to see Russia as an ally, not an enemy, against Muslim fundamentalism. Russia and the west shared a civilisation and long-term interests, he said. They had to work as one. It is easy for western democracies, centuries in the making, to sneer at Russia’s imperfections and at Putin’s cynical antics in Ukraine. But the idea that economic sanctions were going to change Moscow’s mind or weaken its kleptocracy was idiotic.

Syria is experiencing the most ghastly anarchy anywhere on earth. If ever there were a case for humanitarian “troops on the ground” it must be here. Those who seek this end cannot pick and choose their merchants of atrocity.  

The true nature of the west’s commitment in Syria was revealed in Barack Obama’s remark to the UN that “because alternatives are surely worse” is no reason to support tyrants. In other words, American feelgood is more important than Syrian lives. That cosy maxim has guided western policy in the region for over a decade. It has been a disaster. If we have nothing more intelligent to say on Syria, we should listen to Putin.

One thing that Putin did get right is that America's incredibly stupid invasion of Iraq (with no plan for after toppling the Saddam Hussein regime - set the stage for much of what  has unfolded since.  And sadly, Putin is 100% on the mark with his derisive comment about a “single center of domination” that believes “if we are so strong and exceptional then we know better than anyone what to do.”  That remark describes the foreign policy of Bush/Cheney to a tee.  It also accurately describes the opponents of the Ian nuclear arms agreement who always see war as the first and only solution.

The End of Russia’s Fairy Tale

2014 aggression

1930's aggression

Following up on the last post, the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight 17 has hopefully exposed the lie of Russia's fairy tale that it is ethnic Russians in Ukraine who are driving the separatist effort in the eastern portion of the country.  Without Russia's active support, training and supply of weaponry, the movement would not exist.  And the chess master behind it is Vladimir Putin (I loved the description of him as "rat faced" in the Times column).  A column in the Washington Post continues to focus on the lies and dangerous agenda of Putin and his efforts to sow hate and discord which cost 298 individuals their lives, including 100 some top AIDS researchers and humanitarians..  Here are highlights:

Before there is any further discussion of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, it’s important that one point be made absolutely clear: This plane crash is a result of the Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine, an operation deliberately designed to create legal, political and military chaos. Without this chaos, a surface-to-air missile would not have been fired at a passenger plane. 

From the beginning, the Russian government did not send regular soldiers to Ukraine. Instead, it sent Russian mercenaries and security service operatives such as Igor Strelkov — the commander in chief in Donetsk and a Russian secret police colonel who fought in both Chechen wars — and Vladimir Antyufeyev, the Donetsk “deputy prime minister” who led the Latvian KGB’s attempt to overthrow the independent Latvian government in 1991.

With the help of local thugs, these Russian security men besieged police stations, government offices and other symbols of political authority to delegitimize the Ukrainian state. In this task, they were assisted by the Russian government and by Russia’s state-controlled mass media, both of which still constantly denigrate Ukraine and its “Nazi” government. Just in the past week, Russian reporting on Ukraine reached a new pitch of hysteria, with fake stories about the supposed crucifixion of a child and an extraordinary documentary comparing the Ukrainian army’s defense of its own country with the Rwandan genocide. 

In recent days, the separatist forces were openly using man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS) and boasting of having taken down large Ukrainian transport planes, clearly with Russian specialist assistance. Indeed, Strelkov on Thursday afternoon reportedly boasted online of having taken down another military plane before realizing that the plane in question was MH17. The blog post was removed.

This is the context within which a surface-to-air missile was aimed at a passenger plane: a lawless environment; irregular soldiers who might not be so good at reading radar; a nihilistic disregard for human life; scorn for international norms, rules or standards. Just for the record: There weren’t any Ukrainian government-controlled anti-aircraft missiles in eastern Ukraine because the separatists were not flying airplanes.

Until now, these unorthodox methods have worked well for the Russians. They unnerved and distracted the Ukrainian government while allowing foreign governments, and European governments in particular, to turn a blind eye. Because the war was not a “real” war, it could be described as “local,” as “containable,” it could remain a low priority for European foreign policy or indeed for anybody’s foreign policy.

If it has done nothing else, the crash of Flight 17 has just put an end to the “it’s not a real war” fairy tale, both for the Russians and for the West. Tragically, this unconventional non-war war just killed 298 people, mostly Europeans. We can’t pretend it isn’t happening any longer or that it doesn’t affect anyone outside of Donetsk. The Russians can’t pretend either.

Without the fairy-tale pretense, some things are about to become clear. For one, we are about to learn whether the West in 2014 is as united and as determined to stop terrorism as it was 26 years ago.

It is insufficient to state, as President Obama now has , that there must be a “cease-fire” in Ukraine. What is needed is a withdrawal of Russian mercenaries, weapons and support. The West — and the world — must push for Ukrainian state sovereignty to be re-established in eastern Ukraine, not for the perpetuation of another frozen conflict.

The echoes of Hitler's tactics in the 1930's must be opposed and stopped.  Appeasement and willful denial will only lead to more tragedies and needless deaths.   Putin needs to become an international pariah and Russians need to understand that the wisest thing they can do is overthrow his corrupt and brutal regime.

Remembering and Honoring Our Veterans

Today is Veterans Day and it is timely to remember those who have served and sacrificed.  The image above is my late father who served in WWII.  He served in the Army Corps of Engineers and landed in France the day after D-Day.  Before returning to America and continuing his college education, he served in various parts of France, spending time in Paris and ended the war as Fire Marshall for the city of Marseilles.   The image below is of my daughter and her husband who did three deployments in Afghanistan in the Stryker Brigade Engineer Company before being serious wounded just less than a year ago.  Thankfully, he has recovered well and is back in Washington State.  

I thank them for their dedicated service.

The Dangers of Waiving Constitutional Rights Due to Prejudice

In general, George Will has increasingly become one of the angry old white men of the Republican Party.  But on occasion he still nails it and comes across with a logical and common sense op-ed that counters some of the ugliest inclinations of the GOP and is fellow conservatives.  One such column appears in the Washington Post in which Will argues against the waiving of constitutional rights favored by many of the anti-Muslim, foaming at the mouth members of the GOP and its racist and religious extremist base.  In doing so, he looks at one of America's less shining moments of the past: the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II which ultimately was fueled by plain racial prejudice.  Here are highlights which should be read by those seeking to waive constitutional rights in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings:

Two of the three most infamous Supreme Court decisions were erased by events. The Civil War and postwar constitutional amendments effectively overturned Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), which held that blacks could never have rights that whites must respect. Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which upheld legally enforced segregation, was undone by court decisions and legislation.

The third, Korematsu v. United States (1944), which affirmed the president’s wartime power to sweep Americans of disfavored racial groups into concentration camps, elicited a 1988 congressional apology. Now Peter Irons, founder of the Earl Warren Bill of Rights Project at the University of California at San Diego, is campaigning for a Supreme Court “repudiation” of the Korematsu decision and other Japanese internment rulings. Such repudiation, if it occurred, would be unprecedented.

On Feb. 19, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt authorized the military to “prescribe military areas . . . from which any or all persons may be excluded.” So some 110,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry, two-thirds of them born here, were sent to camps in desolate Western locations. Supposedly, this was a precaution against espionage and sabotage. Actually, it rested entirely on the racial animus of Gen. John DeWitt, head of the Western Defense Command.

Using government records, Irons has demonstrated that because senior officials, including Solicitor General Charles Fahy, committed “numerous and knowing acts of governmental misconduct,” the Supreme Court based its decision on “records and arguments that were fabricated and fraudulent.” Officials altered and destroyed evidence that would have revealed the racist motives for the internments.  

Also kept from the court was a report, prepared for the Chief of Naval Operations and made available to DeWitt, estimating potentially disloyal Japanese as just 3 percent of the Japanese American population and declaring that these were “already fairly well known to naval intelligence” and could be quickly apprehended, if necessary. The suppressed report’s conclusion: “The entire Japanese problem has been magnified out of its true proportion, largely because of the physical characteristics of the people (and) should be handled on the basis of the individual. . . and not on a racial basis.”

The Korematsu decision reflected perennial dangers: panic and excessive deference, judicial and other, to presidents or others who would suspend constitutional protections in the name of wartime exigencies.

It is less important that the decision be repudiated than that it be remembered. Especially by those currently clamoring, since Boston, for a U.S. citizen — arrested in America and concerning whom there is no evidence of a connection with al-Qaeda, the Taliban or other terror network — to be detained by the military as an “enemy combatant.” The Korematsu case is a reminder that waiving constitutional rights is rarely necessary and rarely ends well.

Very well said.  Not that logic and reason or even past mistakes mean anything to the Christofascist/Tea Party elements of the GOP.