On May 5, The Netherlands, the country in which I grew up, commemorated the 72nd anniversary of liberation from the brutal occupation by Nazi Germany during World War II. If my parents were still alive today, they would almost certainly have expressed relief, but most likely have declined to celebrate that moment in history. After all, liberation from intense war-time occupation differs fundamentally from gaining independence from colonial subjugation. Too many horrible, life-changing, memories clouded the experience removing the Nazi occupation force must have generated.
The Netherlands' involvement in WWII began when Nazi Germany invaded the country on May 10, 1940. Although it had attempted to remain neutral, Hitler ordered its invasion anyway. After only four days of intense fighting between an ill-equipped Dutch military and an overwhelming German force assembled to execute its "blitz Krieg," and after the May 4 bombing of Rotterdam, the Dutch army surrendered. During this "Rotterdam blitz," 800-900 Dutch civilians were killed, and 25,000 houses were destroyed. The royal family initially evacuated to London, and subsequently moved to Canada for the duration of the war. In a country with, at the time, had a population of less than 9 million people, 198,000 civilians were killed and 7,900 military lost their lives during this war. In addition, 102,000 Jewish citizens were exterminated.
Holland's total population included 140,000 Jewish citizens, 70 percent of which lost their lives in extermination camps throughout the five-year period. This was a much higher percentage than what was experienced in comparable countries like Belgium or France. The Nazis did not begin to deport the Dutch Jews until early 1941. When they did begin this process the Dutch protested by going on strike. This response was unique in Nazi occupied Europe, but accomplished little, and all its leaders were summarily executed. The Germans and their Dutch collaborators gradually intensified anti-Semitic activity. For a price, members of the "Henneicke Column" identified as "Joden Jagers" (Jew huners) captured around 8,000 to 9,000 of the Jews that were in hiding, and delivered them to the German occupiers for deportation to the camps.
Atrocities applied to the civilian population were too numerous to detail. One significant illustration of the monstrous Nazi mindset was a series of events identified as the "Putten raid." Putten, at the time, was a small village in the center of the country. Following a resistance attack on a Wehrmacht vehicle, the Nazis, on October 1, 1944, burned 100 houses and removed 601 men, almost the entire male population of the village, and deported them to various concentration camps. Only 48 of these returned at the end of the war.
I was born four months before the end of the war, entirely unaware of what was going on around me. Before I could read, my mother was my main source of information about the horrors Dutch civilians endured during these fateful five years. My dad remained stoic, and remained less interested in discussing all that had happened, perhaps still shell shocked, or feeling guilty that he had not prevented all his family had experienced.
On one afternoon in 1942 he returned from a bad day at work to find out that his father, a butcher, had been arrested for hiding resistance fighters and feeding Jews. The Nazis picked him up without notice, sentenced him to 2.5 years of slave labor, sent him to the Gestapo prison "Ahlem" in Hannover, and subsequently imprisoned him in the re-education camp "Lahde." My family never saw him again. Upon being led away, my grandfather told his wife that he would write with ink if everything was O.K., and in pencil if it was not. All correspondence reaching Holland was in pencil. Although he completed his sentence in late 1944, and even though my family submitted a sizable ransom, the Nazis refused to release him. Every day during the last few months of the war, camp Lahde executed 10 or more prisoners on a scaffold erected for that purpose. My grandfather was killed March 11, 1945.
With exception of collaborators, nobody was ever safe. Periodically the Nazis would hold razias designed to arrest young men for work programs in Germany. On those occasions my dad would hide in between a double wall to avert detection. The Germans, to ensure they were not missing anyone, would use bayonets to puncture those walls, fortunately always missing their mark.
When in September of 1944 the allied advance was halted near Arnhem, the provinces located north of the Rhine were forced to endure continued Nazi domination and a severe winter with little or no food. Famine became especially intense in areas and cities outside of agricultural areas. People were forced to scrounge for food, which included rodents, flower bulbs, and anything ingestible found on garbage dumps. More than 20,000 people died of hunger and deprivation that winter.
So, May 5 is still commemorated with a sense of relief, but hardly celebrated. Memories are too painful. However, these anniversaries remain important, especially for generations with no direct connection, to show what can happen when fascism is allowed to proliferate, especially now that its ugly head is again rearing up all over the globe.
Wednesday, May 23, 2018
Sunday, May 20, 2018
IMPEACH TRUMP? NOT SO FAST!
President Donald Trump reluctantly signed the massive $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill on March 23 while pointedly suggesting that he would never sign legislation like that one again. In response, conservative political commentator Ann Coulter, author of "In Trump We Trust," mocked the president by tweeting: "Yes, because you'll be impeached."
Whether conceptually, hypothetically, ideologically or reluctantly, impeachment has been on the lips and in the minds of many political activists, sometimes dating back to before Donald Trump's inauguration. As the political dialogue became more contentious, this discussion grew more intense, not just on the political left, but, be it for different reasons, among many Republican operatives as well. When the president appeared to be toying with the idea that he could somehow fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller or Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, representatives from both sides of the congressional aisle warned that such a move could precipitate a constitutional crisis and potentially escalate political demands to start the impeachment process. To date as many as 60 House Democrats have signed on to a request to begin debating impeachment, a step opposed by the party's leadership as premature and counterproductive. A resolution voted on in December 2017 failed by a 58-364 margin. Nevertheless, Representative Maxine Waters, Al Green and Brad Sherman continue to push the issue, while billionaire donor Tom Steyer has embarked on a national "Need to Impeach" campaign, attending 30 town hall meetings in an attempt to get his point across.
Before we read too much into this incessant banter, we ought to take a look at what we are really talking about. Cass Sunstein, a legal scholar specializing in constitutional law, in "Impeachment American Style," published in The New Yorker of Sept. 20, 2017, gives us a historical perspective. The American colonies imported the concept from England, where Edmund Burke called it the "great guardian of the purity of the Constitution." When, in the summer of 1787, the Constitutional Convention accepted the idea of a powerful president, its delegates insisted on including the impeachment mechanism. In fact, the argument was made that, without he impeachment clause, the Constitution would never be ratified. Benjamin Franklin apparently observed that, historically, the removal of "obnoxious" chief executives had been accomplished by assassination, and suggested that a procedural mechanism for legal removal - impeachment - would be preferable. (Josh Chafetz, "Impeachment and Assassination," Minnesota Law Review, June, 2011).
To be clear, impeachment refers to the process by which a legislative body formally levels charges against a high official of government. It is only a formal statement of charges, akin to an indictment in criminal law. It is NOT removal from office. To begin the process, the president has to be charged with treason, bribery, or high crimes and misdemeanors. The House of Representatives, on the recommendation of the Judiciary Committee, votes on one or more articles of impeachment. If at least one of these gets a majority vote, the president is impeached, and the proceeding moves to the Senate. Overseen by the chief justice of the Supreme Court, the Senate holds a trial. A team of lawmakers from the House play the role of prosecutors, the president has defense lawyers, and the Senate serves as the Jury. If at least two-thirds of the senators find the president guilty, he is removed, and the vice president takes over as president.
Impeachment is a political act. There are no standard rules. The party in power traditionally decides how to interpret the charges and what the rules for the trial will be. Throughout our history only Andrew Johnson (1868) and Bill Clinton (1998) were successfully impeached by the House. Both were acquitted by the Senate. However, in Johnson's case the Senate vote was 35-19 in favor of removal - one vote shy of the requisite two-thirds majority. President Nixon (1974) resigned before the impeachment resolution could be voted on by the House.
With mid-term elections coming up at he end of the year, both Republicans and Democrats grapple with the impeachment prospect. When Ann Coulter predicted that the president would be impeached, she really warned Republicans that if a Democratic "blue wave" were to materialize, Donald Trump would run the risk of being impeached. Republican leaders are reportedly discussing framing their election campaign around the threat of impeachment, as a motivational tool for voter turnout. Corey Lewandowski, former Trump campaign manager, suggested that "the threat of impeachment is something that unifies everybody in the party, even if you're not a Trump supporter." Democrats, on the other hand, fear that the focus on impeachment may be a political trap that would distract from their core message, and boomerang them in November. According to Obama's former chief strategist, David Axelrod: "If impeachment becomes a political tool instead of the end result of a credible investigation, you are as guilty as Trump, in some ways, of taking a hammer blow to institutions." (Charles Pierce, "Impeachment is the Republicans' Latest Boogeyman for the 2018 Elections," Esquire, April 9, 2018).
While both the left and the right appear poised to use impeachment as a wedge issue or a rallying cry, history tells us that the actual political process is thorough, slow, and tends to protect the incumbent. It rarely comes close to its intended conclusion.
Whether conceptually, hypothetically, ideologically or reluctantly, impeachment has been on the lips and in the minds of many political activists, sometimes dating back to before Donald Trump's inauguration. As the political dialogue became more contentious, this discussion grew more intense, not just on the political left, but, be it for different reasons, among many Republican operatives as well. When the president appeared to be toying with the idea that he could somehow fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller or Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, representatives from both sides of the congressional aisle warned that such a move could precipitate a constitutional crisis and potentially escalate political demands to start the impeachment process. To date as many as 60 House Democrats have signed on to a request to begin debating impeachment, a step opposed by the party's leadership as premature and counterproductive. A resolution voted on in December 2017 failed by a 58-364 margin. Nevertheless, Representative Maxine Waters, Al Green and Brad Sherman continue to push the issue, while billionaire donor Tom Steyer has embarked on a national "Need to Impeach" campaign, attending 30 town hall meetings in an attempt to get his point across.
Before we read too much into this incessant banter, we ought to take a look at what we are really talking about. Cass Sunstein, a legal scholar specializing in constitutional law, in "Impeachment American Style," published in The New Yorker of Sept. 20, 2017, gives us a historical perspective. The American colonies imported the concept from England, where Edmund Burke called it the "great guardian of the purity of the Constitution." When, in the summer of 1787, the Constitutional Convention accepted the idea of a powerful president, its delegates insisted on including the impeachment mechanism. In fact, the argument was made that, without he impeachment clause, the Constitution would never be ratified. Benjamin Franklin apparently observed that, historically, the removal of "obnoxious" chief executives had been accomplished by assassination, and suggested that a procedural mechanism for legal removal - impeachment - would be preferable. (Josh Chafetz, "Impeachment and Assassination," Minnesota Law Review, June, 2011).
To be clear, impeachment refers to the process by which a legislative body formally levels charges against a high official of government. It is only a formal statement of charges, akin to an indictment in criminal law. It is NOT removal from office. To begin the process, the president has to be charged with treason, bribery, or high crimes and misdemeanors. The House of Representatives, on the recommendation of the Judiciary Committee, votes on one or more articles of impeachment. If at least one of these gets a majority vote, the president is impeached, and the proceeding moves to the Senate. Overseen by the chief justice of the Supreme Court, the Senate holds a trial. A team of lawmakers from the House play the role of prosecutors, the president has defense lawyers, and the Senate serves as the Jury. If at least two-thirds of the senators find the president guilty, he is removed, and the vice president takes over as president.
Impeachment is a political act. There are no standard rules. The party in power traditionally decides how to interpret the charges and what the rules for the trial will be. Throughout our history only Andrew Johnson (1868) and Bill Clinton (1998) were successfully impeached by the House. Both were acquitted by the Senate. However, in Johnson's case the Senate vote was 35-19 in favor of removal - one vote shy of the requisite two-thirds majority. President Nixon (1974) resigned before the impeachment resolution could be voted on by the House.
With mid-term elections coming up at he end of the year, both Republicans and Democrats grapple with the impeachment prospect. When Ann Coulter predicted that the president would be impeached, she really warned Republicans that if a Democratic "blue wave" were to materialize, Donald Trump would run the risk of being impeached. Republican leaders are reportedly discussing framing their election campaign around the threat of impeachment, as a motivational tool for voter turnout. Corey Lewandowski, former Trump campaign manager, suggested that "the threat of impeachment is something that unifies everybody in the party, even if you're not a Trump supporter." Democrats, on the other hand, fear that the focus on impeachment may be a political trap that would distract from their core message, and boomerang them in November. According to Obama's former chief strategist, David Axelrod: "If impeachment becomes a political tool instead of the end result of a credible investigation, you are as guilty as Trump, in some ways, of taking a hammer blow to institutions." (Charles Pierce, "Impeachment is the Republicans' Latest Boogeyman for the 2018 Elections," Esquire, April 9, 2018).
While both the left and the right appear poised to use impeachment as a wedge issue or a rallying cry, history tells us that the actual political process is thorough, slow, and tends to protect the incumbent. It rarely comes close to its intended conclusion.
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