Professionalism and Integrity Prevailed with Seal Team Six

"You know we're just going to make this guy look good," one Seal Team Six soldier said to another on the mission to capture or if necessary, kill Osama bin Laden. But he still successfully carried out his mission.

So what if the best of all the Seal Team Six teams, the best snipers, the best helicopter pilots, and the best assault team leaders, were Republicans? They were also professionals, and they did their job whether it made their Democratic president, Barack Obama, look good or not. They surprised and killed Osama bin Laden in his compound within a mile of the Pakistani equivalent of West Point in Abbottabad, Pakistan. They had hysterical bin Laden's wives, children, and armed guards in their way. The scene was chaotic. Still, the Seals accomplished their mission.

A woman CIA officer identified the Pacer, the very tall man pacing the top of his compound, sometimes accompanied by a woman and a child, as bin Laden. The Daily Mail remarks on the feisty CIA officer's resemblance to Carrie in the TV show "Homeland," but "Homeland" is actually based on an Israeli TV show called "Prisoners of War." I suppose Carrie could still be based on our female CIA officer who identified bin Laden and found him in Pakistan.

The U.S. couldn't tell the Pakistani government that Seal Team Six was coming to Abbottabad to capture or kill bin Laden because Pakistan would have tipped him off. Think of that. If there's one thing Trump has done that I like, it's to cut off aid, or at least some of it, to our phony "ally," Pakistan. It makes sense to me that the United States would cut off $1.1 billion to defray the costs of counter-terrorism in Pakistan when Pakistan continues to harbor terrorists like the Taliban, just as they harbored bin Laden. Why pay over a billion dollars for counter-terrorism that isn't happening?

When Pakistani leaders complained to then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about how the U.S. government treated them, the illustrious leaders who vacationed in Europe while their citizens dealt with the misery and deaths caused by a catastrophic earthquake, Hillary simply said, "Then don't take our money."

In 2011 at a townhall meeting in Islamabad, Hillary also said, "You know, it's like the old story, you can't keep snakes in your backyard and expect them only to bite your neighbors."

The point is, Republicans with integrity and professionalism can work for Democrats, and Democrats with integrity and professionalism should be able to work for Republicans. Both sides are capable of professionalism.

However, Pres. Trump doesn't seem to realize what integrity and professionalism independent of party affiliation look like since he has no integrity or professionalism of his own and is loyal only to his own interests. Or does he act in his own best interests? Does he know what his best interests are? According to the National Review, "Donald Trump runs a Twitter account; President John Kelly is running the administration."

Pres. Trump had no right to ask Andrew McCabe, 49, who until yesterday (1/29/18) was deputy director of the FBI, "who did you vote for in 2016?"

It's none of Trump's business who McCabe voted for in 2016. According to McCabe, he told Trump that he didn't vote in 2016. However, in 2015 Jill McCabe, Andrew McCabe's wife, ran as a Democrat for the Virginia state senate and received $675,288 from two entities associated with former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe. Trump didn't like it and said the "$700,000" was originally from Hillary Clinton. Terry McAuliffe is a strong ally of Hillary Clinton.

Trump demands total loyalty from "his" generals and "his" FBI like an autocrat, but he doesn't return the loyalty he demands from others. Nor is the president's demand for loyalty appropriate or acceptable in a republic like ours, or like ours used to be. We seem to becoming an oligarchy thanks to unprincipled Republican control of all three branches of federal government: the executive branch, the legislative branch, and the judicial branch.

Trump is overtly constructing a strong case for obstruction of justice with a pattern of behavior that he continues to reinforce by continuing to fire FBI agents, like FBI director James Comey, who demurred when Trump asked for his loyalty, who are involved in investigating him and staff associated with him. According to the New York Times, Trump ordered the Justice Department to fire special counsel Robert Mueller, who is leading the Russia investigation, in June 2017, and only his attorney Donald McGahn's threat to quit convinced Trump to withdraw his order.

What's most surprising about this NYT story is not that Trump ordered attorneys to fire Bob Mueller, but that Don McGahn or anyone was able to stop Trump from doing that or anything else he chose to do.

We're heading toward a constitutional crisis. The question is, will the rule of law prevail, or will Trump be allowed to remain above the rule of law? Congress needs to move quickly toward protecting special counsel Robert Mueller's job. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham (SC) is for protecting Mueller; Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy (CA) doesn't feel any urgency in the need to protect Mueller. There most definitely is a need to protect the special counsel if there's any chance that the rule of law will prevail.