October 2024 – Peeling the Onion

Oaths

Let’s reduce this to plainest terms.

A man running for president says he will use the United States military to take Americans into custody for their speech and temerity to disagree with him, also to deport millions of people who are here illegally – by his own count in his own voice that’s up to 20 million people – though perhaps more accurately about 12 million.

His threats are broad, unencumbered by knowledge and unrestrained by law. They have to be taken at face value because he is one of only two people who will be elected the 47th president.

He may not know how to do what he is threatening but he knows dozens, probably hundreds of people around him like Stephen Miller – who says “America is for Americans only” – who plan to be with him in the White House and in his administration. They are making plans for him to act on the threats.

The core question goes beyond whether he would carry through or if civilians who would be with him at the White House, in the Department of Defense and the National Secuirity Council are prepared to set such orders in motion. There is considerable evidence he will and they will.

We know too from his conduct over nine hyperactive political years, including four as president – as well as testimony from those who served him during his White House years, and from those in the media and academia who parse everything he says – that he has but one North Star.

That is first, last, always, and only personal loyalty to him.

He is the only president in living or historical memory who did not attend the inauguration of his successor.

In a democracy such attendance is not simply the polite thing to do. It is an essential statement of common nationhood and citizenship shared by the parties, and between the winners and losers of an election.

Knowing all this, the overriding question is what the American military would do if he becomes president and orders it to to suppress, arrest and detain American citizens?

If he orders it to take into custody and deport without respect for existing law and the rule of law, millions of people deemed to be illegally present in the United States? If he orders those he would deport to be held in massive camps before deportation?

Never mind to where he thinks he can send millions of people, or how he would use the military to move them, or what that would cost, or how it would divert military and other resources to do it.

He is running for president and says as president he will order it. If we take presidential candidates at their word and we should, when he orders soldiers to do these things, will they? Must they?

United States soldiers have sworn an oath to support the United States Constitution.

They do not swear an oath to this man or that man (or woman). They do not take an oath to the nation. They take an oath to support the Constitution. So we are reminded frequently.

We are told this constructs a bullwark against illegal acts outside the pledges in the oaths.

Yes, oaths, because there are two of them – and they are different.

Let’s look at how U.S. military oaths evolved.

During the Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress established oaths for the enlisted men and officers of the Continental Army

The first oath, voted on 14 June 1775 as part of the Continental Congress law that established the Continental Army, said:

“I _____ have, this day, voluntarily enlisted myself, as a soldier, in the American continental army, for one year, unless sooner discharged: And I do bind myself to conform, in all instances, to such rules and regulations, as are, or shall be, established for the government of the said Army.”

This was replaced in September 1776 by this for enlisted ranks.

“I _____ swear (or affirm as the case may be) to be true to the United States of America, and to serve them honestly and faithfully against all their enemies opposers whatsoever; and to observe and obey the orders of the Continental Congress, and the orders of the Generals and officers set over me by them.”

And by this cumbersome oath taken by Continental Army officers:

“I _____, do acknowledge the Thirteen United States of America, namely, New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, to be free, independent, and sovereign states, and declare, that the people thereof owe no allegiance or obedience to George the third, king of Great Britain; and I renounce, refuse and abjure any allegiance or obedience to him; and I do swear that I will, to the utmost of my power, support, maintain, and defend the said United States against the said king, George the third, and his heirs and successors, and his and their abettors, assistants and adherents; and will serve the said United States in the office of _____, which I now hold, and in any other office which I may hereafter hold by their appointment, or under their authority, with fidelity and honour, and according to the best of my skill and understanding. So help me God.”

Another revision followed in 1778 until in 1787 the new nation adopted and ratified the U.S. Constitution.

Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution lists among the duties of Congress “To make Rules for the government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces” of the United States.

Article II, Section 2 announces, “The President shall be Commander in Chief…”

Article VI requires all members of Congress, of state legislatures and all Unted States judicial and executive officers (including inherently all military officers) to take an oath to support the Constitution.

Thus in September 1789 the First Congress entacted by law the following oath for all serving the United States.

“I, _____ do solemnly swear or affirm (as the case may be) that I will support the Constitution of the United States.

A second part also said:

“I, ______ do solemnly swear or affirm (as the case may be) to bear true allegiance to the United States of America, and to serve them honestly and faithfully, against all their enemies or opposers whatsoever, and to observe and obey the orders of the President of the United States of America, and the orders of the officers appointed over me.”

Note the mandate for obedience to officers and to the president.

Over time the oath changed but not fundamentally until the Civil War resulted in this cumbersome declaration:

I, ______ do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I have never borne arms against the United States since I have been a citizen thereof; that I have voluntarily given no aid, countenance, counsel, or encouragement to persons engaged in armed hostility thereto; that I have neither sought nor accepted nor attempted to exercise the functions of any office whatsoever under any authority or pretended authority in hostility to the United States; that I have not yielded voluntary support to any pretended government, authority, power, or constitution within the United States, hostile or inimical thereto. And I do further swear (or affirm) that, to the best of my knowledge and ability, I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter, so help me God.”

Eventg in that greatest moment of national peril this was not an oath to the nation or to obey orders by the president or from officers . This oath is sworn solely to the Constitution.

In 1884 the following was adopted in place of the earlier oath.

“I, —— do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

Here, no mention of the nation or the president though his position as Commander in Chief is inherent in the Constitution.

This oath remained in effect through succeeding decades. It applied during the Spanish American War, WWI, and WWII. In 1959 the present officers oath came into effect.

In 1962 the enlisted man’s oath changed. It remains the same today.

But note that there were then as today, two separate, different oaths.

For officers it is an oath of office. For enlisted men it is an oath of enlistment.

Those taking the officers oath declare:

“I, _____ , having been appointed an officer in the Army of the United States, as indicated above in the grade of _____ do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter…” optional is to end with “So help me God.”

Every time an officer is promoted to a higher rank, he or she must take this oath.

For those in the ranks there is a different oath taken upon enlistment:

I, (state your name), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.”(emphasis added). It is optional to conclude “So help me God.”

Inherent but unstated in the officers’ oath of service is loyal adherence to the office of the president in his capacity as Commander in Chief while the president is identified clearly in the lower ranks oath of enlistment as are lesser officers as persons to be obeyed, to whom obedience is sworn in the oath itself.

The oath of enlistment is to the Constitution. It is at the same time an oath to obey orders from, among others, the president. Linguistically, the pledge to obey the president is joined by the conjunction following the oath to the Constitution, but it is not made subordinate.

If every officer in the military were to disagree with a presidential order and so refuse to transmit it to the ranks, are enlisted men nontheless bound by oath to obey the highest commander, the president, no matter what? Hypothetically would his constitutional standing and prerogative as Commander in Chief mean his orders must be obeyed even if they were opposed by every other officer?

Is that definitively the morso now that the president operates under a supreme judicial finding of legal immunity for his actions as president? Does that mean if he gives an order there can be no dispute that it is presumptively lawful and must be carried out regardless? It certainly seems so, doesn’t it?

__________

Then let’s look at the evolution of another oath, the German military oath.

Why do that? Why is it at all relevant? It is relevant because the man has made it relevant, because we can hear a tape on which his former chief of staff, a four-star Marine general, tells us that his boss, the then president, said he admired the gererals who served Adolph Hitler – who obeyed Hitler.

It is relevant because the man we are talking about campaigns saying there is “poisoned blood” in America, chilling words identical to words by Hitler in “Mein Kampf.”

It is relevant because he tells followers America is betrayed by those who do not agree with them, as Hitler told Germans they had been betrayed by Jews and others he called “November criminals,” referring to the founders of the Weimar Republic.

It is relevant because he’s said if he loses, Jews will be to blame. That libel for one allegation of another is 2000 years old. It never goes away, does it?

It is relevant because he just held a campaign rally in Madison Square Garden, a location chosen not by coincidence but as a purposeful historical statement.

The Garden is a in different building at a different location now than it was on Feb. 20, 1939. But it is Madison Square Garden. In New York it is always the Garden.

On that date 85 years ago the American Nazi Party filled the Garden with 20,000 American Nazis raptourous to hear and rejoice together in a pledge to take over the U.S.A.

Look:

UNITED STATES – MAY 18: Nazi salute by Friends of New Germany at Madison Square Garden. (Photo by Larry Froeber/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images)

And look again:

Those photos were taken in New York City, not Berlin.

In Germany under the Kaiser the military swore an oath to him.

From 1919 to 1933 the German military oath was that of the Weimar Republic, which in theory if not in practice survived beyond Jan. 30, 1933 when Hitler became chancellor until the death of the last Weimar President, Field Marshall Paul Von Hindenberg on Aug. 2, 1934.

Then and only then did Hitler, the chancellor (head of government), declare himself both fuhrer (leader) of Germany as well as chancellor. Discarding the Weimar Constitution, from that day forward he held all power as fuhrer of the new Third Reich. But he did not order a different military oath to that effect. Someone else did.

The Weimar oath stated:

“I swear loyalty to the Reich’s constitution and pledge, that I as a courageous soldier always want to protect the German Reich and its legal institutions,
(and) be obedient to the Reich President and to my superiors.”

During the period just before and during the Hitler chancellorship under President Von Hindenberg the oath shifted slightly and subtley, reflecting the ascendance of the political far right, Nazis included, and now said:

“I swear by God this holy oath, that I want to ever loyally and sincerely serve my people and fatherland and be prepared as a brave and obedient soldier
to risk my life for this oath at any time.”

Then came a fatal mistake. General Werner von Blomberg, the War Minister, established a new oath. Later, to get him out of their way, the Nazis made a scandal of his marriage to a younger woman and used it in 1938 to force his resignation. He spent the war in oblivion, was tried as a war criminal afterward and died of natural causes in 1946 while an allied captive.

The new oath he instituted and adopted by the Army after Hitler had abandoned all constitutional pretense and made himself fuhrer declared:

“I swear by God this holy oath that I shall render unconditional obedience to the Leader of the German Reich and people, Adolf Hitler, supreme commander of the armed forces, and that as a brave soldier I shall at all times be prepared to give my life for this oath.”

Bloomberg said later that the new oath had been intended to bind Hitler closer to the nation’s military and away from the miliary wing of the Nazi party. He made a colossal mistake as he later acknowledged. It delivered the German army personally to Hitler and made it exclusively his instrument. It elevated Hitler’s title – Fsuhrer (Leader) -by oath.

This forever since is called the Hitler oath.

It is why the men – including numerous generals and the man at the center of the plot, Col. Klaus von Staufenberg, who conspired in the July 20, 1944 attempt to kill Hitler – believed that though they were doing the right thing for Germany, nonetheless they were traitors to their oaths.

The Hitler oath became the excuse for two generations of German soldiers. Loyal to their oaths, they said, they carried out orders. Those who gave the orders were to blame, they said, not them.

________

Then what is an oath about? Does the oath to the Constitution fence off what can be done under the document’s color? Does the enlistment oath create a duality by its obligation in the end to obey the president as well as support the Constitution?

If an enlisted soldiers’s oath ultimtely requires obedience to the orders of the president – as conveyed by his officers or, if they refuse to pass on such orders still nonetheless by the president – must soldiers ordered directly by the chief commander leaning on his constitutial authority – and now with court-awarded constitutional immunity – obey? Can a soldier say no? Complex paragraph, yes, but it’s a complex question.

If these seem to us Americans to be ridiculous, even foolish questions to which we know the answer is that still so in the face of promises to arrest some of us for our opinions or take millions into custody to deport them?

If we Americans did not create the political conditions that awaken these questions, questions about facism that were long settled by the Allied victory in Europe, this man has.

As shown he has made the mostly off limits analogy to Nazism and Hitler relevant. It is a hard, firm rule never to invoke this in our politics. But it is his actions, his language and his choice of venue for an openly racist and mysogynistic rally that has put all this at the center of the campaign and opens the question of obedience within the soldier oath.

If he returns to the White House, he will be surrounded by a phalanx of aides who have been examining these matters, who surely know how the German military surrendered to a single man.

Will they provide him within the context of the American oaths the basis to establish military control over Americans, especially armed with and by the Supreme Court’s acquiescence?

Would the military take such orders from the Commander in Chief when the former generals who worked for him and abjure such a system are not there any longer?

Are we about to find out what the oaths mean? What happens when Gen. Kelly is not there but Stephen Miller is?

If he is elected then yes – yes we are.

Running for President, Being President

In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson sent Robert Livingston to France with authority to spend up to $10 million to purchase the city and port of New Orleans.

Later in the year Jefferson doubled down. He sent James Monroe to join Livingston.

Both were stunned when the French offered not only New Orleans but the entirety of the Louisiana Purchase.

Napoleon needed money for military adventures.The French asked $15 million ($350 million in today’s money) or about 3 cents an acre for 530 million acres – 828,000 square miles — and, most importantly, the entire western bank of the vital Mississippi River. Until then, the U.S. had only the river’s east bank.

Although they lacked authority, Livingston and Monroe took the chance and spent more to buy much, much more. There was at that exact moment in late 1803 a small catch. The territory didn’t actually belong to France.

In the chaos and confusion of Europe after the French Revolution, in the early Napoleanic period, the territory actually belonged to Spain but France was in process of acquiring it and sold it on speculative promise.

It all came together swiftly. The French took ownership and within days completed the sale to the United States. That it really belonged to hundreds of Native American tribes and bands mattered to no one then any more than it matters now.

The U.S. immediately doubled in size as it took possession of land famously explored in 1804 and 1805 by William Clark and Merriwether Lewis, which ultimately included all or parts of 15 states.

The overriding point is this: The Louisiana Purchase, the most important thing that happened during Jefferson’s two terms of office, had not been imagined much less discussed in the 1800 campaign that won him the White House 30 months before the deal was conceived, much less closed.

Is that unusual? Unusual for presidencies to be remembered mostly or entirely for events and developments no one imagined or could forsee? Events that were total surprises, having little or nothing to do with the preceding campaign?

Let’s look.

Did James K. Polk know when he ran for president in 1844 that events would transpire to give the bellicose U.S. excuse to go to war with Mexico in 1846, emerging in 1847 with a treaty that made land concessions to the U.S. that now form all or part of 9 western states?

When in November 1860 Abraham Lincoln won a four-way White House contest, did he know that by March 5, 1861 one day after he became president, 11 states would have seceded? Did anyone know that over the next four years there would be a Civil War that would kill well over 600,000 men, some say over 700,000, and end slavery?

President Lincoln knew there was trouble brewing. But neither Mr. Lincoln nor the American people, knew how much death and destruction lay ahead. Did he, could he have known that on a November day in 1863 he would respond to those terrible events with the most memorable address in American history?

Did T.R. know when he became president following the assasination of President McKinley that he would be able to cause events to fulfill his determination to dig the Panama Canal? It was not part of the 1900 campaign that brought the McKinley/Roosevelt ticket to the White House. After all, T.R. wasn’t supposed to be president. McKinley was.

Did Woodrow Wilson think when he won in 1912 on a modest progressive domestic federal policy outline that his presidency would be remembered principally for American intervention in WWI and his subsequent failed campaign to convince Congress to ratify the Versailes Treaty including the League of Nations?

How could he or anyone else know that in 1912 when the war didn’t begin until July 1914? WWI quickly over-shadowed all else, subsuming his presidency as the overriding cause went from staying out of it in 1916, to winning “the war to end all wars”in 1917.

Do we know or think when FDR campaigned in 1932 for old age income protection that three years later his staff, his labor secretary, Frances Perkins, and Congress would present the Social Security Act of 1935 for his signature?

Do the voters think when FDR took the presidential oath for the second time in 1937 that by late 1939 and into spring 1940 events would transpire in Europe and Asia to convince him to do the unthinkable – seek a third term – even though he never actually said he would until he accepted that third nomination when it came in the summer of 1940?

On Jan. 20, 1937 there was not a general war in Europe. The United States was still mired in the depression notwithstanding New Deal advances and was decidedly isolationist despite the increasing bellicosity of Germany. No one then, including the president, could or would have predicted events would soon put more than 15 million American men into uniforms.

When Army Capt. Dwight Eisenhower concluded the U.S. needed much better roads and more of them while observing the slow progress of an Army truck convoy that crossed the country in 1920 on primitive, rutted, often unpaved roads did he even conceive three decades later he’d be president?

As president, Ike signed his National Defense Highway Act to put in place the giant, indispensable interstate highway system on which we move ourselves and our commerce every day -a national highway network on no one’s map in 1952 when he ran for president. But the issue in that campaign was not roads, it was Korea.

Did Jimmy Carter know the hostage taking in Tehran in 1979 would doom his presidency the next year? In 1976, no one expected religious fanatics to overthrow the Shah or use a Persian flying carpet to pull the rug out from under an American president.

Could Ronald Reagan know that he would barely survive an attempted assassination in his first year in office even though presidential assassinations were not unknown?

He could not have known anymore than anyone could have warned Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy they’d be assassinated or how each of their deaths would change history.

Did Bill Clinton know that his personal wrecklessness would reintroduce presidential impeachment to American politics for the first time since 1868?

When George W. Bush became president Jan. 20, 2021 did anyone know nine months later the events of 9/11 and the wars he would order in response would take over his White House? Most Americans could not then find Afghanistan or Iraq on a map. Most still can’t.

When President Bush took office for his second term in 2005 did he or anyone else know it would end in panic with the housing/financial crash of 2008?

Do we think when President Obama said we needed to provide affordable health coverage for all Americans that he and his White House staff and Congress would come up with the Affordable Care Act – Obama Care – or that today it would cover the health care of 45 million Americans?

When Trump won in 2016 could anyone know the decisive event in his presidency would be a worlwide pandemic starting at the end of 2019? No one had heard of Covid and more than one million Americans who would die from it were alive.

When Joe Biden won election in 2020 talking about Covid and recovery, no one imagined or would have predicted Oct.7 and the subsequent wars across the Middle East. None of that was imagined much less forecast -least of all by the Israelis, who should have known.

When Russia invaded Ukraine a second time early in 2023 (the first was in 2014) whether U.S. intelligence saw it coming or not, massive military assistance to Ukraine with all that entails for the U.S. and NATO had not been a significant 2020 campaign issue.

Similarly despite all the commotion now in the press/media with demands for “policy specifics” most Americas cannot even name the three branches of government, and seem convinced the only thing anyone needs to know about the national economy is the price of a carton of eggs.

Do presidents even know how their broad policy statements and promises will be accomplished if at all? Of course they don’t and neither do we and – pointedly – neither does the media.

Harris says her administration will build three million new housing units (a foolish promise by the way). How? How, she is asked by reporters. It is a promise. It is not the legislation to do it. Trump says he’ll make overtime pay tax exempt. How, in what legislation, taking back what to pay for it? No one knows, least of all Trump.

How should anyone know if or how those things can or will happen? How can they begin to know unless and until the White House sits down with key members of the House and Senate; fends off or finds compomises with hundreds of lobbyists; engages a broad array of federal agencies, and measures public response? Doing all of that is how presidents turns ideas into laws.

The president we elect Nov. 5 does not know and cannot know what lies ahead. Neither of them knows beyond the general subject what will be in the new laws enacted during the next administration except for the broad campaign topics they say those bills should address – housing, taxes, immigration.

Is that what the next administration will be remembered for? Maybe. But most likely the next presidency will be most rembered for how it responds to something we do not imagine at all much less see coming.

The great likelihood is that the presidency that results from the 2024 presidential campaign will be about unknown and unforseen matters to come and not what we hear day in and day out from the candidates.

As Thomas Jefferson could attest, presidencies are almost never about the campaigns that precede them but are shaped by events and what those events beget.

Presidencies and the history they make are usually and mostly about unforseen events and how presidents respond. How they respond shapes how we respond as a nation.

The campaign does not foretell the future. It tells us who is more fit to be president and most particularly in this campaign, who is fit at all.

This campaign is about choosing a competent, able, intelligent, grounded, coherent leader to meet new events and challenges when they come – and they will come.

Knowing this, we have but one choice. She – she is the only choice to be in the White House when the next unknowable-until-it-happens happens.

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