Tag: Ali

He who thinks himself invincible is his foe’s next conquest

Last week’s piece summarized why the Republican Trump was unfit for the presidency and why the Democratic Clinton has disqualified herself because of the serious breaches of national security committed as Secretary of State. In trying to explain the matter of her mishandled emails, I failed to disclose is that Clintonis actually the subject of two distinct but interrelated FBI criminal investigations. She is the subject of a public corruption investigation attempting to ascertain whether she used her office to solicit funds for the Clinton Foundation. This investigation is related to the email story because the initial evidence suggesting abuse of office is derived from the trove of emails on the Clinton private server.

The evidence mounts against her by the week. Clinton publicly claimed this was but a routine “security inquiry.” The FBI director retorted his agency does not perform security inquiries. This is a criminal investigation said he.

Clinton turned over 30,000 emails but thought she destroyed an equal number which she said were personal in nature. To her chagrin, the FBI was able to recoup the mass of the destroyed documentsfrom others sources and is currently vetting those documents. A portion of these have been released in several noncriminal Freedom of Information Act lawsuits. Refuting her claim, over 100 of these emails are clearly work related. Several of them were written by her and regard the vulnerabilities of her controversial private email system.Not only do these emails add to the impression that she was reckless in handling official or classified information, Clintoncould face obstruction of justice charges if deemed to have tried to conceal these messages.

The case closes around her. Already the man who set up the server has refused to answer questions under oath for fear of incriminating himself. In America, an attorney cannot advise his client to make this plea unless pursuant to a reasonable fear of being held liable for a crime. This move was prompted by more than an abundance of caution. It was sparked by a legitimate apprehension. The man has since been granted immunity in exchange for his testimony.

Rarely does the Justice Department navigate the complex process of asking a federal court to grant immunity without an indictment appearing on the other end. That the immunity has been granted and subpoenas issued for testimony and documentsalso indicates a grand jury may already have been impaneled.

Besides pleading the 5th amendment against self- incrimination, the only defense now available to Clinton is to plead imbecility. Her best defense is that she did not understand what all this meant.That the jargon was too complicated for her and that she was intellectually unable to recognize highly classified material for what it was intrinsically; it had to have been marked as such by another person. Here she puts herself in a bind.

The foundation of her campaign has been her vaunted competency. Apart from Obama risking himself by covering her, Clinton’s best hope is to claim she was too stupid to have intentionally meant any wrongdoing. She wants us to believe she was so daft that she should not be blamed for violating the minimal technical and legal constraints of her mission as secretary of state. She gladly assumed the job as the nation’s top diplomat but now claims she should be held to a level of knowledge equivalent to that of the janitors who sweeps the State Department floors.

Then she has the temerity to suggest that this deep incompetence should not only be forgiven but it should be rewarded by allowing her to ascend to the presidency. Here, Clinton executes the most sublime flip flop. An ordinary flip flop is when a person says ‘’yes’’ on Monday then ‘’no’’ Tuesday. Here, Clinton adds to it come Wednesday by saying that ‘’all is well’’ because, in her special universe, “yes” can be “no” and “no’’ can be ‘’yes.’’

That she is now musters such a defense is a jarring insult to the public’s intelligence. The worst of it is not the insult itself but the mindset that concocts such a twist. One must hold a very unhealthy disregard for the general public to stake such a claim. Of such disrespect for public wisdom, democratic good governance cannot be born. Yes, the public may be as dumb as a worn bedspring; but its collective stupidity begets a safer haven for democracy and responsive governance than the brilliance of the  genius who lacks self-restraint and who loves herself a bit too much to beartrue compassion for others.

Clinton’s acts placed sensitive aspects of American foreign policy in danger. While I do not agree with much of that policy, what she did has rendered our world more uncertain. It jeopardizes the lives of intelligence personnel, their contacts and potentially undermines operations that costs hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars. Someoneas reckless as Secretary is not someone you want promoted into the White House unless you seek America injury. But again if she does injury to her own, she is more than likely to exact pain on other nations by both accident and design.

Worst, her transgressions may create a legal and constitutional vortex that will suck in the innocent, forcing them to make hard decisions they would rather not face. If the person involved were not Clinton but a senior professional diplomat, the FBI would have already recommended indictment. (The FBI cannot itself indict. It can only investigate and recommend indictments) Because of the political considerations, the certainty of what the FBI will do reduces to around 75 percent.

The agents working the file reportedly believe they have an air-tight case against her. The day before this article is published, Secretary Clinton would have been questioned by the FBI. This will be the most fateful event in her long political life. Trepidation will accompany her into the interview. She does not know what the FBI may know. A wrong answer under oath may scald her ambitions for good. At this point, she must be wondering if she is fated to come near but never grasping the presidency in her own right. That her FBI meeting falls on the July 4th weekend is symbolic. It shows that she who would consider herself royalty is still subject to the reach and the word of the law. She cannot end this process with an imperial wave of the hand. That no person stands above the law was, in part, what the founding of America was to meant to achieve. It seems that the American experiment in democracy and justice has not yet been totally corrupted by the vast concentration of power and money in a numerically small elite.

FBI Director Comey will have to decide whether to play politics by shelving the likely indictment recommendation of his subordinates or allow justice to take its course. Comey knows he will face rebellion within his agency if he plays politics. Stonewalling the recommendations would mean the rule of law only applies to lesser beings and the not the rich or powerful.

Some of this too is political. Like most law enforcement institutions, the FBI is richly peopled with conservatives with no love for Clinton. She may have given them the rope by which to hang her. They will tenaciously hold to it. Comey knows this and will likely recommend indictment. This will pass the headache to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, head of the Justice Department.

The first Black woman to hold the position, Lynch owes her career in federal government to her appointment byBill Clinton. She would like nothing better than to let this thing fall into oblivion. She does not want to be the one to end the run of the first female nominee of her own party in such an ignoble manner. Yet, she has been sworn to uphold the law.The case against Clinton may not be infallible but similar cases have been successfully prosecuted to conviction with a lesser quantum of evidence.

Moreover Bill Clinton has put Lynch in the midst of controversy. Last week, he invited himself onto her government airplane where they held a 30 minute talk. News of the private meeting created a firestorm on both left and right. Although both interlocutors claim the email investigation was not discussed, many did not believe the disavowal. Hillary is involved in two investigations and Bill in one; for Lynch to meet either was a breach of ethics for it creates the perception of impropriety. Bill likely thought that meeting Lynch would soften her. However, the public reaction to the meeting has likely hardened Lynch’s resolve to be seen as going where the law and not politics guides her. As such, she publicly stated in a subsequent interview that she would follow the recommendations of the FBI and her Justice Department career prosecutors.

If Lynch somehow stalls on the FBI recommendation, she will encounter a much bigger storm than the tempest brewed by her meeting with the former president. Comey and other senior FBI officials may resign in protest. Justice officials familiar with the case likely may mutiny against her. FBI agents and Justice lawyers working the file will begin to leak their findings, convincing themselves if Clinton can go free for what she did then no one can prosecute them for leaking what Clinton did.

Most of the intelligence community would erupt protesting that failure to prosecute Clinton for such egregious violations makes all the laws and rules meaningless. Lynch would be criticized for killing the rule of law in this area just to save one person’s ambitions. The majority Republican congress would call for Lynch’s head (excuse the pun). She would be under fire to resign or face impeachment. Themelodrama would cast a dark pall over the election and may well extinguish Clinton’s run almost as much as an actual indictment.

If the FBI recommends indictment, President Obama will have to navigate discretely. He dislikes Clinton personally; but as, establishment centrists, they are of the same political family. He owes the Clintons a favor for helping his 2012 reelection when his feet were to the fire. However, if he is seen to be exercising political influence to quash the criminal process, he is liable to obstruction of justice. Moreover, Obama would still face a firestorm from the FBI, Justice and intelligence community. He would appear to cover things up. The case would take on the coloration of Watergate.

Obama has to weigh all of this against the need to satisfy his political debt to the Clintons. Moreover, he has to be careful because several of his emails are part of the Clinton trove. If he allows the case to go forward, it may embarrass him as he is a potential witness if the case goes all the way to trial. If he is perceived as stifling it, he may risk his legacy by ending his presidency in a red-hot scandal that may subject him to obstruction of justice charges.

Too many eyes are watching and too many people know the depths of Clinton’s misdeeds. Obama and Lynch need to swallow hard and blind themselves of the temptation to help her. They serve their names and the nation better by allowing justice to walk unfettered. After all, if Clinton were in their position, she would not risk her neck for either of them.

In all of this, Obama may be playing a most nuanced game. He may loathe a Clinton presidency, believing the Clintons would preclude him from any meaningful role in the party leadership once he leaves the White House. Therefore, he publicly endorses Clinton to redeem his political debt to them. His videoed endorsement of Clinton fulfils the requirement but was a curiously unenthused, less than full-throated statement. However, he will do nothing to forestall what may be coming. He may even encourage it. If so, this would please to no end the two women who are most important to his private and public life. Both Michelle Obama and Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett detest the Clintons. They would love nothing more than see her escorted from center stage,replaced by Vice President Biden as the party choice.

If the FBI and Justice Department follow the rule of law, indictments will come against Clinton and her closest aides for the emails. There may be additional charges against the Clintons for corruption. This will toss the presidential race in the air. If these government agencies seek to perform an even more patriotic duty, the indictments shall come prior to the lateJuly Democratic Party convention. This will enable the party to replace the tainted queen with someone who is a truer democrat and a less selfish Democrat. This would also allow Obama to pardon her that she would not have to stand trial which would also obviate him having to serve as a witness during her case.

While the best route, this one is still tough. Obama and his centrist ilk will then have to decide whether to back the progressive Sanders who would be the only mortal standing or insert a candidate such as Biden from their moderate faction at the 13th hour. In doing so, they would be pulling a Clintonesque gambit by snatching from Sanders what otherwise should properly go to him. The party might well fragment in a manner incurable before the November election. If so, this would hand the election to Trump. That would be a disaster.

Obama and the centrists could live with indictments coming immediately after the convention. Under this scenario, the party hierarchy and not the convention delegates would select the replacement. Biden and Secretary of State Kerry would figure prominently. Senator Elizabeth Warren who recently endorsed Clinton would be receive some consideration. With her, the Democratic candidate would still be a woman. Warren also appeals to progressive wing of the part that now feels alienated by Clinton’s quasi-Republican economic positions.

The roadwas cleared for Clinton all the way to the White House. However, the deep pathologies which define her led her to construct obstructions that may prove her political demise. All of this is tragic and so unnecessary. She has engulfed her party, the Obama administration and the nation in cascades of her deceit. She has singlehandedly jeopardized national security in untold ways. Her continued run for the Presidency may bring a legal and constitutional firestorm in its way as hot as Watergate.

If a recommendation for indictment is forthcoming, it will set in motion a series of hard decisions of both political and legal complexities that will have to be made.If not recommendation comes, then she is free to run. She will likely win the White House and from there inflict more of her specialized damage to American democracy and its place in the world. Even then, she may not be free of this blemish.

Should the Republicans return majorities to both Houses of Congress after the election, they will likely move to impeach her. Her presidency will be rocked by scandal from the onset and. With her presidency substantially weakened and under constant existential stress, Clinton would likely prove to be at her most dangerous. Uncertainty clouds how far she may venture in an attempt to hold to power. No sane electorate should want to vote their nation into such a bind.

This is why character is so important in leadership. We have just reviewed how an individual’s pettiness,fueled by sleepless ambition, may have twisted the world’s most powerful government into a Gordian knot. Supreme discretion and judgment will be required to break it.

Good fruit is rare but the fruits of the poisonous tree become swiftly manifold.

He who leads by impulse feasts his people on calamity

There is something terribly wrong when the two remaining candidates for the American presidency, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, are the moral inadequacies now before the electorate. Neither one of them seeks anything beyond self-aggrandizement. They would rather expend the greatness of an entire nation in order to satiate their appetites.  Searching for noble principle in either of them is as futile as hunting for a snowflake in an active blast furnace. Basic goodness has melted from them long ago.

That either of them is poised to become president jeopardizes America more than any threat from ISIL or other foreign enemy. Their media hirelings will proclaim the coming election is a battle for America’s soul, its very future. That is a lie. Should these two be the only choice on the menu, then America has no choice. The battle has been waged and it has been lost. If either Trump or Clinton come to reside in the White House, America would be reduced and the world made a more dangerous place because of it. Decay of the national purpose and institutions of governance would be the order of the day. The place they would take America is not the place those who fought and died for America had in mind when they made their sacrifices.

Trump would send the nation cascading to Hell, boasting all would be fine because he had enough money to make a deal with the devil to sell ice to all the inhabitants below and build a golf course/water resort for the wealthiest among them. Clinton would whisper all would be fine because an old friend was assigned to tending Hell’s backdoor. That friend owed her a favor and would allow her to secret in air conditioners. Distinct styles and different routes leading to the destination: calamity then ruination.

The most obvious deficiency is Mr. Trump’s although both contenders are equally dangerous but in different ways and means. This flailing man is a walking sarcophagus of prejudices and biases that refuse to die. His campaign thrives on the fears and hatreds that till the souls of the mean and petty. He has said evil things about almost every minority, all faiths but the one he claims, and about women. If the mouth speaks from the abundance of the heart, then hatred perhaps is one thing Trump loves more than money.

The man has shown himself to be grossly ignorant of the most basic tenets of both foreign and domestic policy. He claims that his expertise as a businessman well suits him to rebuild the economy. This is his most solid claim to office; yet, if it is anything, it is but spittle and mud. Just because a man is expert at fashioning hubcaps does not mean he knows how to design an engine or even drive the car. Trump’s prowess as a real estate dealmaker does not automatically make him adept in macroeconomic policy. Thus far, much of what he has proffered as economic policy has been effluent.

Trump is an untalented hurdy-gurdy man too much in love with the ramshackle noises he makes. He hears a symphony. Most reasonable ears hear the sound of falling rocks. He is the public affirmation of the caution that vast wealth can be as much a debilitation as an attribute. If America wants to be great again, an essential task must be the construction of an insuperable wall between Trump and the White House.

Clinton’s situation is more nuanced but also parlous. Superficially, she appears to be the right answer for the moment. Yet, the only real difference between her and Trump is one of veneer.

While he is brash and abrasive, she has a polished appearance and speaks with a professional restraint. Yet, her deeds reveal an impetuous streak and a heart as disdainful of democratic practice as Trump’s.

The danger Trump poses is clear and bulbous. He relishes showing us he is an epic collision in the making. Both believe themselves more than us mere mortals. As such, both would undermine American democracy more than perfect it. Both might bring the world to the cliff’s edge, to leave it hanging on a razor-thin balance.

Clinton’s words profess compassion. Her long resume pretends competence. Her deeds are the problem. Her accomplishments are more hollow than she would rather they be. This relegates her to argue the mere holding of office is sufficient accomplishment regardless of what occurred while there.

Because she has been around so long and has held many posts, we have been induced to believe her and believe in her. Yet, to believe in her is to believe she is what she is not. Secretary of State was the last major office she held. She turned the State Department into a place of erroneous policy as in Libya, Syrian and Ukraine. She treated the august department as her personal fiefdom. She proved to be a sly manager who mishandled sensitive public resources as if they were her own and treated the public trust as if nonexistent.

While Trump is a daylight assault with an axe, Clinton is a nocturnal bacillus whose attack comes subtly from within while our defenses are down and slumbering.

Hillary Clinton’s run for office has now become a moral dilemma for her allies. One cannot back her yet support good governance and the rule of law at the same time. In clinching the Democratic Party nomination, Clinton has achieved two firsts. She is the first woman to clinch the nomination of one of the two major parties. That a woman has done so is long overdue. That it is Clinton will be recorded as one of America’s bittersweet occurrences. It is to bestow a true honor on one of the most counterfeit personalities of this or any era.

She is also the first presidential candidate of any major party to enter the election race under criminal investigation for serious breaches of national security. As to which ‘’first’’ will history lay her greater remembrance looms as an open question.

For those unversed in diplomacy and national security matters, the storm about her use of a private email account and server seems unintelligible or petty. For those knowledgeable about American national security matters, what she did is of utmost seriousness; it was criminal in nature and should disqualify her for office. It reveals a frightening disdain for the rule of law and the intelligence of the people, both warning signs that democratic good governance may not be Clinton’s strong suit. I consider myself in this latter group.

This is important to all. If she can be so callous regarding the nation and the constitution she professes to love, grave dangers lurk for those nations that win her ire. Remember Clinton publicly joked about how Qaddafi was tortured and killed as if sodomizing then illegally executing an opposing leader is the stuff of jokes instead of the crime that it was. Such dark levity is unbefitting a world leader. In Libya, she pushed the Obama Administration to work in concert with regional terrorists to upend a secular leader who had long ago ceased being a threat to any measurable American interests. She championed this avenue more as a function of pique than of sage policy. After witnessing and joking about the destruction she, Clinton turned her back and left that nation to rot and ruin. If indicative of her purported competence, then we are in palpable trouble for the Libyan caper is a picture book example of foreign policy by guttural impulse.

Clinton has never encountered a war she did not like yet she has proven to be a truant housekeeper after the damage has been wrought. She has thirsted for every American war in the past twenty years. If she had her way, what happened in Libya would have repeated itself in Syria. Judging by her published emails, she pines for an excuse to war against Iran. Russian and American military might would be in nose-to-nose proximity on the steppes of the Ukraine due to her lack of geopolitical prudence and blind arrogance. A Clinton presidency is like to cart the world closer to a major war of untold consequence.

Because of the leadership and personality flaws the scandal reveals, perhaps a bit of explanation about the national security and legal implications underlying her email scandal may help the reader understand the gravity of Clinton’s derelictions. For this is not an artificial fuzz over the sloppy handling of inconsequential emails such as what friends exchange between themselves. This concerns the wanton and perhaps willful misuse of emails that contained some the nation’s most closely guarded national security considerations.

As Secretary of State, her official communications belong to the people and to the United States government, not to her. They were meant to be restricted to encrypted official channels for archival purposes and, more importantly, to safeguard information from foreign snooping. The use of a private server trashed both goals.

Clinton acted as if her want to control access to her official communications was of greater weight than the true ownership rights and national security concerns of the government that employed her. She acted as if the government was her agent and servant instead of the other way around. In treating sensitive government documents and work product as belonging exclusively to her, she behaved imperiously, like spoiled royalty doing the nation a favor rather than a citizen grateful for the privilege to serve her country.  The lack of character which she has exhibited in the matter is revealed in a quick examination of the claims she has made to dance around her culpability.

Claim 1: The State Department approved the private setup. This claim has proven bogus. In an official report, the Department claimed it never was asked to approve the private server and if so would not have done so. Clinton lied.

Claim 2: Her private arrangement was consistent with those of her predecessors. The only other Secretary to use a private email account was Colin Powell. However, he never contemplated a private server and did not exclusively use the private email account for official business. He also had the imprimatur of the Department for his limited use of private email. His rather limited official use of that account came during a completely different era regarding the use of emails for government business. At that time, the Department did not have an unclassified email system as during Clinton’s tenure. Again, she lied.

Claim 3: The private server and account were done merely for convenience purposes.She did not want to have to constantly flip between a government and a private system. This does not wash.  If she did not want to operate two systems, the wisest route would have been to opt for the government device solely.

For instance, she was prohibited from using her private device in her office because that office was considered highly classified space. Whenever she wanted to deal with emails during office hours, she had to leave her office suite. Thus, we are left with the incongruous sight of the Secretary walking about the building, followed by security and other officers, as she went to another room or floor to treat emails. This might have happened several times a day. This does not seem convenient. It does not even make sense. A government devise usable in the comfort of her office and at home would have been inherently easier and wiser.

Her staff even refused Department attempts to give her a government-issued secured device because they wanted to maintain Clinton’s privacy. The position is as indefensible as it is corrupt. She has no privacy right to hide official communications from the very government that employed her to handle those communications.

Even if she opted for the private route, convenience would have pointed to only the creation of a private account. Setting up a private server in her residence is actually significant extra work. There is only one plausible reason to resort to a private server: to control access to the material, in effect obscuring from government what belonged only to it. On this point, either she lied or her judgment is so obtuse that she should not be trusted again with high public office.

Claim 4: The server was secure because armed Secret Service men guarded the residence. Having an armed guard standing on the porch might prevent a physical assault against the location. Yet, it is beyond explanation how a gun at the front door deters a computer hacker who can accomplish his theft from the other side of the planet. A gun at the porch was no more a defense to hacking the infernal machine than putting an oar in the car helps a person drive cross a bridge over a wide river.

Sadly, her personal server was extremely vulnerable. Her network lacked encryption. For a brief period, it lacked even the firewall and other lower-level security features employed by medium and small private businesses that do not handle sensitive documents. Establishing her server in order to avoid government retention of her records seemed to be her sole concern. Her obligation to safeguard important information was treated as a damnable nuisance. Again, she has lied or exposed herself as a supreme dunce.

Claim 5: No wrong was committed because no document was marked classified. This is as disingenuous as an argument can get. When she became Secretary she underwent training about classified information. She signed a formal oath that classified information could be marked or unmarked and that the mishandling of such is a criminal violation. She went into the job with eyes open. She cannot now profess a dumb blindness.

What makes information classified are not the markings but the content. Documents are not classified just because they are marked so. They are marked so because they are classified. The classification arises from their substance. The markers just acknowledge what already exists.

Over 1000 emails she returned have been found to be classified. Refuting her claim that the documents were “retroactively classified,” there is no reasonable explanation that can be offered how such documents would be classified now but were not when initially transmitted. Sensitivity of a message generally moves in inverse relationship to the passage of time. The older the message, the less sensitive. For her to argue the emails were not then classified but now are lacks credence. She knows better than to make this argument but she makes it anyway.

Claim 6: She is innocent because she bore no criminal intent. Neither fact nor law gives her succor. Under the several applicable criminal statutes, she can be held feloniously liable for the wrongful and willful transmission of classified material or for being grossly negligent in the handling and storage of the same. There is ample intent of willful violations.  Roughly 20 emails have a classification of top secret or higher and over 60 as secret. Unless all of these 20 documents fit into a mitigating narrow exception that grave emergency dictated the use of the unclassified system, then at least two people committed a crime, the sender and serial receiver thereof, the latter being Clinton.

The sender would have to deliberately transfer information from a secured device to put on Clinton’s unsecured private network. Such a deliberate trespass has almost no defense and is clearly punishable. Clinton would have known this criminal process was being done for her benefit if not at her explicit behest. She condoned the misdeed over the course of her tenure. This is an intentional breach of national security, a felony. The penalty for this is a fine or up to 10 years imprisonment for each violation.

She also kept these emails on her unsecure private server for several years. By any objective legal measure, this would have to constitute the grossly negligent storage of classified material. To compound this, she placed the material on an unsecure thumb drive which is another violation.  She then gave the server and thumb drive to her attorney who lacked any security clearance. This comprises another set of violations. Worse, it seems that she also used two companies to monitor her server. These companies had no clearance, another set of violations.  One of the companies made back-up copies of the emails and stored them in an unsecured location, two more sets of violations. Keep in mind that every email, ranging from the 20 top secret to the over 1000 classified, is a distinct violation that carries a potential prison term of 10 years. You can figure the potential maximum time behind bars. My calculator does not count that high.

If America seeks to continue to portray itself before the world as the land of the rule of law, then it must apply the law fairly and equally even against its most favored and privileged citizens. The Clinton national security scandal will test the legal system in an open and blatant way. If she is allowed to walk, penalty free from her misconduct, then you should realize that the American legal system is an object of barter and that justice is considered a rare but not a valuable commodity. Already the major media outlets have been found out. They downplay the scandal because they work for the same big money, vast military establishment that brings us the Clintons. If Clinton is called to answer for what she has done, perhaps just perhaps the United States would have taken an important step in reasserting the destiny its noble documents and republican doctrines claim for the nation. Next week, we explore how all of this may undermine President Obama’s legacy if he fails to exercise judgment.

 

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Through haughtiness of leadership is a great nation first subdued. Decay is followed by defeat.

Events celebrating the life of Muhammad Ali are much deserved; but no matter how grand the tributes, they speak only half. When all is said and done, Ali, born poor yet grew to be great, will be revered. Meanwhile, the two presumptive contestants for the American presidency whose names also share the title of this piece will do well just to be remembered.

I grew up watching Ali. His boxing prowess was singular. He managed to transform the coarse sport into a work of art. But the most important blow he ever struck was done outside the ring. At the height of his athletic prowess and had everything within his grasp, he was drafted into the army during the Vietnam War.

The war was not going well for it had been going on too long with no victorious end in sight. The country was growing uneasy; incipient grumbling would soon erupt into widespread protest. Already, the national establishment had been shaken by the Civil Rights Movement. For those guardians of the old order, change was approaching too fast and from directions that until then had not even existed. They wanted to stave any more fluidity. They wanted to quell Black radicalism and also build public support for the war.

Having Muhammad Ali in army uniform and in their corner would serve both purposes. The establishment wanted to exploit Ali just as they did Joe Louis, the excellent Black heavyweight of a prior era. During WW II, Louis was put in uniform; but the only fighting he did was in the ring, performing insipid exhibitions to encourage support for the war effort and bolster troop morale. I dare not be too hard on Louis. It would be unfair.

His era was one where Black Americans were fighting to overcome every racial barrier imaginable. We were even fighting to be allowed to join the armed forces that we might fight on behalf of the nation that did not want us except as servants. Thus, Louis saw his efforts as assisting America against fascism abroad while also helping Blacks against American fascist racism at home. In hindsight, it appears he was made to play the fool. At that time, playing that particular fool was the only reasonable play he could make.

In the quarter century between Louis and Ali, much had altered. America, its role in the world, and the role of Blacks in America all had been revised by forces which no one fully understood, much less controlled. Ali would ensure that change would continue.

When he was drafted, he could have accepted his fate as had Louis. He too would not have seen the frontlines nor held a firearm save as a publicity stunt. The only fighting would have been within the familiar confines of a boxing ring. After that, he would have been allowed to resume his boxing career as the darling pet of the governmental establishment. He would have retained all he had and profited materially even more so had only he obeyed.

He did not. His conscious would not allow it. Where Louis helped defend America from fascist aggression, Ali could not see where America was defending anything worth defending in the Vietnam War. To Ali, America was aggressing against people who had done neither him nor Black America any harm. The American establishment pressuring him to don the army outfit was the culprit causing Black people more harm than anything the Vietnamese could ever muster. He saw no reason to fight people whose only transgression was that they were fighting for their freedom and dignity. If anything, he should support rather than oppose them. As a Black American, he was fighting for the same thing. He would be in moral dereliction should he fight to keep another man from that which he desired for himself.

Ali refused to go into the army in 1967. He refused to do what the government demanded of him. We would not bend and take the easy way. He stood by his conscience. The establishment responded harshly. They stripped him of his title. He was suspended from boxing. Sentenced to a 5 year prison term, he managed to stay out of jail through his persistence to appeal his case to the Supreme Court. During this legal trek, he lived with the threat of prison, ever present and ever near.

In 1971, reversing the lower court decision, the Supreme Court found that Ali’s stance as a conscientious objector to the war and his refusal to join the army were justified. He was exonerated.

This was the thing I most remember about Ali. He could have taken the easy way by placing his beliefs in the closet that he could continue being champion and making money. He had grown up poor and put upon because of his poverty and color. To gain so much yet to give it all up just for a thought, is a high and noble price to pay. He risked imprisonment, poverty and his popularity because he dared not depart from his convictions. His beliefs defined him more than his possessions. The sum total of the man was much more than what could be seen or touched by physical hand.

In the end, he was exonerated as he should have been. However, that outcome was far from certain.  That a Supreme Court of eight elderly White men would overturn his conviction says something redemptive about America and the rule of law (Justice Marshall, the lone Black on the court, had recused himself from the decision.) However, that Ali would be willing to forfeit so much because of a simple belief says much more about the character and courage of this Black man.

As a youth, what I studied from Ali was how to throw a left jab and duck a punch. The skills came in handy growing up.  However, what he and others taught me was that a Black man can and should take a heroic stand when his conscience so dictates. (Around the same time, my father made the hard decision to move his family into a White neighborhood in central Florida. He was not a boxer by any stretch of the imagination, but he too had grown up poor and felt the sting of racism throughout his life. He had joined the fight so that his children could stand as he couldn’t when he was young and that they would not feel the racist sting as bitterly as he had.)

As Black Americans, we have as much dignity and as much a right to stake a claim to political and religious freedom as any other American. We should not think that we are so inferior that we should be happy with merely getting by or going along with what others dictate. We have the right to be as independent-minded as the constitution of America says we can be. I never meant the man but this lesson was so intimate and close that I felt as if he were a member of my family. In a profound way, he was.

Ali ceased being a negro. He became one of the first personifications of the post-Civil Right Movement Black man. He risked everything because of his beliefs. He put moral conviction before material fame and public accolade. In doing so, he made the nation better because he forced it to recognize the variance between its egalitarian principles and racist practice and to take steps to narrow the gulf between ideal and reality.

I raise this observation not to deify the man after his departure. He was imperfect and his mistakes many. But he tried to do what is right even when it would dearly cost him. This made him more than a boxing champion. He remained a man of conviction and human fortitude throughout. He loved his fellow man. This was his greatest victory.

While Ali was a man of character, the best that can be said about the two others named in the title of this piece are that they are characters.

One must lament how low America has fallen in the nearly fifty years since Ali stood his courageous stand. That a young athlete less than 30 years old would show more fortitude and leadership courage than these two people over sixty years old who now vie to be America’s next president.

For a moment imagine either Clinton or Trump in a situation where they must decide between holding to a principle or to their worldly fame and fortunes. We know how they would decide. They would toss conviction to the gutter, quickly taking the expedient route Ali declined. As such, this Black man with the Arabic name has honored the American creed than Clinton and Trump can ever do. He is more a true American than they will ever be. He is more an American leader and hero than they; what he did was the epitome of American heroism and respect for individual freedom of expression and belief. Neither trump nor Clinton would ever attempt such a thing.

It would be inaccurate to claim that every American president has been a great or outstanding person. Most were mediocrities who benefited from political compromises best left unearthed. However, when America most needed leadership, it seemed that Fate smiled upon the nation. Presidents like Washington, Lincoln and Roosevelt came to the fore. However, excellent leadership is not inbred. It is cultivated. With the rise of Clinton and Trump, Fate seems to have turned its back on America. Neither is anywhere nearly as august or great as the office they seek. They are both like unruly children who have absconded with their father’s shoes in hopes that somehow the boot might fit. Next week we shall see why this description is truer than those who believe that America still has the ability to promote good in this world would want the description to be.

 

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