Kelly's Dilemma

Not only is he ignorant, incompetent, arrogant and stupid, he's certifiable.

   John Kelly, the four-star Marine general who now serves as chief of staff at the White House, soon must decide whether to stay and try to rescue a failing presidency, or to walk away from a building government crisis.
   If he stays, he faces the problem of corralling his boss, the president of the United States, and reining in his more dangerous impulses without being fired.
   If he leaves, he may well be replaced by someone completely devoted to this president's beliefs and strategies.
   Neither choice is easy. But Marines have always faced difficult choices and rarely lose.
   Likewise, other Cabinet officers and White House staffers will also have to decide whether to stay and try to maintain order in a chaotic government, or to resign and be replaced by others more willing to follow this president's wishes.
   
   Meanwhile, there is talk of privatizing the war in Afghanistan, contracting American military involvement to what is called the Blackwater Option. That is, giving the job to Eric Prince, the founder of the quasi-military force known as Blackwater.
   Prince is the brother of Betsy DeVos, who now serves as education secretary in the president's cabinet of advisors, and who has been criticized as having no experience in public education. Rather, she is an advocate of privatized education systems.
   Could the appointment of Prince be the first step toward a private army in America, mentioned in this blog earlier this week, that could be used to support a rogue president facing censure, impeachment and forced removal from office?
   Rather than send this private army to Afghanistan on the pretense of saving the lives of traditional American soldiers in a war that has dragged on for 17 years, the Prince army could be kept in America to support this beleaguered president and prevent his removal from office.
   Impossible, you say? It can't happen here, you insist. But it can, and very nearly did. Twice. The book titled "It Can't Happen Here" is fiction, but it was based on real events of the 1930s.
   The safety barrier today, however, is based on comments by the five chiefs who head the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force and National Guard, who have repudiated the president's comments endorsing the activities of the radical fringe responsible for the violence in Charlottesville, VA, and other incidents.
   Military commanders generally avoid politics, and they are obligated to follow orders issued by the president as commander in chief. Not, however, if an order is illegal.
   This president has effectively been warned that any illegal or unconstitutional order he comes up with will not be followed by America's military.
   The problem, however, will be if the president raises his own private army and attempts to suspend the Constitution.
   The first hint of a step in that direction would be the naming of the Prince army, made up of the same extremists who fomented the riots in Charlottesville.
   There lies Kelly's dilemma. Will he follow orders as the president's chief of staff, or will he stand on principle and side with the military joint chiefs and resist?