Semper Fidelis and Nuremberg
A Marine's Duty
As a former Marine, I'm sure a lot of us breathed a sigh of relief when our unpredictable President appointed two distinguished combat Marine Generals, Jim Mattis and John Kelly to the key positions of Secretary of Defense and Secretary of Homeland Security, and kept a third, Joe Dunford, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. All three were seasoned combat commanders with a long record of looking after their troops. With H. R. McMaster instead of Michael Flynn as National Security Advisor, we could be confident that American military personnel would not be sent into combat without careful consideration.
I believe all of us sensed that if ordered to resume the torture ordered by the Administration of Donald Trump, both Mattis and Dunford would resign, having well in mind our legacy from Nuremberg in 1946, that to comply with an order to carry out a war crime was, in itself, a war crime. We hung German General Jodl on that premise.
But General John Kelly, a fine man who lost a Marine son to combat in Afghanistan, is in a far more difficult situation than Generals Mattis, Dunford and McMaster. As he has said, he does not believe that undocumented immigrants pose a security risk to this country, but indeed represent, in general, a peaceful element in our nation.
President Trump, however, has called for the hiring of 15,000 new employees for Homeland Security, with the order to be carried out by General Kelly that he locate and deport perhaps 6 million Hispanics whose only crime was coming across the border into the United States to work on our farms, factories, hotels and restaurants, doing work that many American citizens are reluctant or unwilling to do. Their fathers, uncles, brothers and sons have been some of our finest Marines and infantry soldiers.
While these people have committed the crime of unlawful entry, we have welcomed those unlawful entries at least since World War II. I can well remember the Republican farmers of California imploring their congressional representatives: "Leave the illegals alone. Our ability to compete and prosper depends on them."
Probably every lawful Hispanic citizen in California has either a parent, a child, a brother or sister, aunt or uncle who has been a law-abiding contributor to California's prosperity, but who now lives in fear, if not terror, of the knock on the door by an ICE agent who will put them in handcuffs and cart them away for deportation, breaking up their families in the process.
That they suffer this fear and terror can be laid solely at the feet of the Republicans controlling Congress, who in three months have not been willing to even consider a reasonable immigration reform bill. The Republicans who control Congress have spent their time trying and failing to repeal and replace Obamacare, but steadfastly refused to address a bill introduced by Representative Zoe Lofgren which would allow undocumented immigrants a pathway to U.S. citizenship. Like Representative Nunes of Tulare and Fresno Counties, they have preferred to side with the President.
That is reason enough to all 14 California Republican Congressfolk in 2018.
But their failure to stand up to President Trump leaves it up to General Kelly to draw the line like others before him who have resigned as a matter of principle rather than carry out an odious policy, The cases of Elliot Richardson and Bill Ruckleshaus who resigned rather than carry out Richard Nixon’s order to file Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox comes to mind.
General Kelly would be acting in the honorable manner of his predecessor, General Smedley Butler, the recipient of two Medals of Honor, who upon retirement, blew the whistle on the use of Marines in Central America to preserve the dictators who repressed their people in order to save American industrial giants like Standard Oil, Anaconda Copper and the American Fruit Company.
Blessings on you, General Kelly if you resign rather than be a party to this disgraceful program, and a pox on you California Republican Members of Congress who refuse to address the creation of a merciful and fair immigration bill.
Respectfully submitted,
Pete McCloskey, USMCR (Ret.)
Member of Congress (R. Calif, 1967-83)