Tag: assassination

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crime and punishment election law national politics & policies

Serious Times

Donald Trump, shooting, assassination, media

Former President Donald Trump came a half-​inch from being assassinated on Saturday. Thank goodness he’s alive. 

Let’s reflect for a moment on what would have happened to our country had Mr. Trump not turned his head slightly just before the bullet hit his right ear. 

Potentially serious violence and unrest? Even if the sorrow, despair, and anger millions would feel at having their presidential candidate murdered in cold blood were to be completely peacefully received, what is the takeaway? 

It is destructive. We are less free if political power is dictated by the barrel of a gun. And it is the government’s job to prevent that from happening. 

Political talking heads are calling for a different tone and I’m all for that, so far as it goes. But it is a vague concept that no one agrees upon. And the answer certainly isn’t less freedom of speech. 

“You know the political rhetoric in this country has gotten very heated,” President Biden told the nation last night. “It’s time to cool it down.” 

I think, instead, it is time for Mr. Biden to turn up the heat: on the Secret Service. 

This weekend’s deadly* shooting represents an epic failure. To allow a would-​be assassin to climb onto the roof of a building 140 yards away, a rifle in hand and in line of sight of a former president giving a speech, demonstrates an incredible level of incompetence. 

Heads must roll at Secret Service. (Figuratively.) A new and beefed-​up detail should be protecting Trump. And it is past time for RFK, Jr., to be granted Secret Service protection as well.

I don’t say this often but … spend the money! 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

* Corey Comperatore, a father sheltering his family with his body, was struck by a bullet and killed. Two others were seriously injured by the gunfire. Also, the shooter was killed by Secret Service snipers. 

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Accountability government transparency national politics & policies

The National Confessional

Secrecy in diplomacy and intelligence-​gathering is supposed to protect the nation. But secrecy also protects bad policy … including great crimes that undermine our security.

This week, the National Security Archive released onto the Web the first official admission that agents of the United States government brought down — by assassination and violent coup — Iran’s democratically elected president, Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, 60 years ago:

The explicit reference to the CIA’s role appears in a copy of an internal history, The Battle for Iran, dating from the mid-​1970s. The agency released a heavily excised version of the account in 1981 … but it blacked out all references to TPAJAX, the code name for the U.S.-led operation. Those references appear in the latest release.

The sunsetting of the secrecy provisions on the information finally provides sunlight, transparency, to this crucial moment in history.

Crucial, because it involved public American support for Masaddeq’s successor, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, “the Shah of Iran.” The Shah became quite brutal in his embrace of “modernism” and (this is hard to write with a straight face) “Western values,” including the suppression of religious dissidents. This led to the fundamentalist Muslim backlash, with Mid-​East Muslims widely interpreting American intervention and support for the Shah as both imperialistic and anti-​Islamic, setting up the current “clash of civilizations” … in which neither side ends up looking good.

It’s interesting to note that much of the secrecy about the event not only covered up American crimes, but British ones.

America’s foreign policy seems so un-​American. In so many ways.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.