It would be challenging to identify the single act which most exposes President Trump's moral corruption, but if I had to choose one today it would be the decision to pull our approximately thousand troops out of Syria.
I cannot recall a decision made by a President that is at once so diabolical in abandoning an ally, doing something so counter to our own Nation's interest (i.e. fighting ISIS) and forcing an ally to join up with an adversary. All of this being done by a President not consulting with the State Department of military or his most important supporters.
And then, witnessing the killing of thousands and displacement of many more people, the President cruelly dismisses our former allies, the Kurds, thousands of whom died in the fight ISIS, as not being "angels"
This horrific turn of events reminded me of a passage in Marilynne Robinsons book of essays, "The Givenness of Things."
" I had always thought that the one thing I could assume about my country was that it was generous. Instinctively and reflexively generous. In our history, we have demonstrated fallibilities that are highly recognizable as human sin and error, sometimes colossal in scale, magnified by our relative size and strength. But our saving grace was always generosity, material and, often, intellectual and spiritual. To the extent that we have realized or even aspire to democracy, we have made a generous estimate of the integrity and good will of people in general and a generous reckoning of their just deserts. I do believe we stand at a threshold that obliges me to speak about the gravity of our historical moment as I see it, in the knowledge that no society is at any time immune to moral catastrophe".
At this late stage of my life, I hope and pray the American people will have the wisdom to pull our Nation away from the moral catastrophe which Trump's presidency represents in the election of 2020 if not before.
No comments:
Post a Comment