[Salon] Trump wanted to shoot missiles into Mexico, says former defense chief

We have an answer for this now: “A Republic, if you can keep it,” with Alito and his conservative co-conspirators (in my opinion) reputedly having answered that in the negative should the opinion drafted by Alito hold without modification, with his reliance on the Monarchical Absolutist Matthew Hale as a source of law, now fully imported into US jurisprudence, should it remain as leaked. With profound consequences far beyond the issue of abortion or related issues, but instead going to the issue of “treason,” and how Hale would have interpreted that, in a manner identical to what later became known as “fascism,” as the English Empire was in fact identical to in its law on "Treason."

And there are Americans who want this militarist extremist back as Commander in Chief! Though admittedly, Trumpism is a nice match-up with the Democrat’s militarist extremists these days, as these show:

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2022/01/25/bidens-china-policy-needs-to-be-more-than-just-trump-lite/

https://www.wired.com/story/biden-china-policy-looks-like-trumps/

Both good, and bad, but the “bad” driven in part by "To a large extent, Biden is penned in because he needs to avoid sparking World War III while not looking “soft” when the US public and Congress hold increasingly negative views of China.” Having no illusions of Biden’s propensity to wage war as part of the Democrat’s version of the “Conservative Movement’s” militaristic ideology, and “facts on the ground” having changed with Biden’s escalation to outright war against Russia so he no longer “penned in," as Ukraine’s co-belligerent, and their “supply train,” as it was once called by the Army.

And those same Americans who clamor for war with China (whose names we know) are the same sort of Americans who clamored for Trump to declare "martial law," on the slightest whim, like “on the border,” which extends 100 miles into the US, on all sides: https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border-zone/,

and in any city in the US which experienced “unrest,” or rioting, two years ago.

So, who in actuality advocated that the Constitution be shoved aside, as that is what martial law is. And who long advocated NATO countries be coerced into spending vastly larger sums on the US commanded NATO Military Command, as Trump and his minions incessantly did. Though they may now disagree with the war on Russia. But NATO, driven by the US, has an “out of area mission,” which would include against China and Iran, as we saw in Afghanistan, providing insight to the seeming contradiction of someone now being against war with Russia, but for war with China, and who also took a leading role in demanding more NATO funding.

Here is where martial law “on the border” would have extended to, which should cause a loss of credibility to anyone who ever advocated it:

"The federal government defines a “reasonable distance” as 100 air miles from any external boundary of the U.S. So, combining this federal regulation and the federal law regarding warrantless vehicle searches, CBP claims authority to board a bus or train without a warrant anywhere within this 100-mile zone. Two-thirds of the U.S. population, or about 200 million people, reside within this expanded border region, according to the 2010 census.”

I won’t name names of advocates of martial law under Trump, but how much worse would this be under martial law, where there would be no “rights,” not even the bare minimum that enthusiasts for the so-called “Philadelphia Constitution,” sans Bill of Rights, demand. As Willmoore Kendall most prominently demanded, and as “Originalists” interpret the Constitution today, preferring to go back to some monarchical absolutist like Matthew Hale of the English Empire, whom Justice Alito relied heavily upon in an as yet unreleased SC Opinion, with Hale being a legal theorist of English Absolutism which we had a revolution against to throw off their yoke of repression (though Alexander Hamilton obliquely called for what could have been an American Monarchy in those sections of the Federalist Papers written by him which were adopted as preferred political theory by a prominent Conservative political theorist of the 1950s-1960s.

With Hale being whom the “Conservatives" of the Supreme Court seem to be resurrecting as a source of Constitutional Law, which will bring with it all the repressive, absolutist “legal theories” of the British Monarchy and of Cromwell’s period of power, as the attached article explains quite well. Which also shows Hale’s collegiality with Thomas Hobbes’ totalitarian extremism, adopted as political/legal theory by Carl Schmitt and his friend Leo Strauss, the true sources of post-WW II conservatism (Schmitt indirectly, through Strauss), to include in the Democratic Party’s wing of military extremism, as adopted as “Scoop Jackson Democrats.” From ideas first generated by Republican Conservatives, and as an attempt to appeal to voters as being equally “militaristic” as to how the Republican Conservatives triumphed over the national security "moderation” of Eisenhower, whom conservative Republicans led by Goldwater saw themselves in open political warfare with.

But the attached article shows the legal doctrines now irrevocably imported into US jurisprudence, if Alito’s opinion is fully adopted with his importation of Matthew Hale as a source of legal interpretation:

"Hobbes and Hale on Law, Legislation and the Sovereign” (may be at bottom of email)

What does that have to do with the Committee for the Republic, or criticism of our wars? Everything, as it imports into our jurisprudence the very legal theory providing for military detention of “traitors,” like Chris Hedges, Noam Chomsky, Dan Ellsberg, who were told by the DOJ that they could potentially be imprisoned under Sec. 1021 of the NDAA for their “expressive activities.” As could Chas Freeman, Bruce Fein, John Henry, under the same Hobbesian/Hale theory, or at least younger, potential war critics could or will.

But here is Matthew Hale whom Alito likes to channel:

Quote: "All these propositions Hale advanced to determine the legal results of a usurpation where one king superseded another. He did not proceed to consider the effect of a change in " the nature of government," a republic superseding a monarchy or the like. His treatise was concerned with the powers of monarchy and it was enough for him to consider de facto power in that context. And he believed that allegiance was owed to a de facto king.

"It is at this point that Hobbes and Hale may be said to join hands. As widely separated as they were on the theory of sovereignty, and the issue of its illimitability, it is quite clear that within the framework of the monarchical government of England Hale asserted the duty of present obligation to obey the present and plenary power of a de facto king whatever the hereditary or other defects in his title.”

That was the “legal theory” of the Trump administration while doing all it could to resist a "change in government,” which if he’d have had the “firepower,” he might still be King, I mean, “Commander in Chief,” and incidentally, still hold the civilian position of President, a hierarchy introduced by Dick Cheney.

Furthermore,

In regard to the 1495 Treason Act, "Even if it be allowed that Henry and his Parliament had no thought of pardoning adherence to his enemies in the slightest degree, it is impossible to deny that such has been the general interpretation of lawyers who in later ages could not or did not place themselves imaginatively in the exigencies of 1495 and who instead construed it as a mere text. They generally treated the question as one of law, not of history, and arrived at the conclusion that the de facto monarch was entitled to allegiance and to obedience. And this was certainly Hale's view.

"But apart from the problems of the statute, the last question to be answered was whether sovereignty could survive a successful and plenary usurpation. On Hobbes's definition of sovereignty, his answer was a clear negative, for his sovereignty was not ultimately a right or a rule, but the very political fact of effective power to command obedience. Hale likewise returned a negative answer, on very different grounds, for in his eyes sovereignty was a title to rule and govern and only recognisable in this country within the system of monarchical government, and that title had to be based on principles of public law, on the principles which themselves determined the framework of the system.” End Quote

So, logically, it would seem that Republican appointed “Conservatives” on the Supreme Court would hold principles of “monarchical government” are relevant to our so-called “Republic,” as Alito and his conservative collaborators are currently asserting, in keeping with what “Conservatives” have long argued, especially Thomas, as evident to anyone who has read their opinions over the last 20+ years will know, as I found out in Guantanamo litigation.

https://taskandpurpose.com/news/trump-patriot-missiles-mexico-cartels-esper/?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mil-ebb

Trump wanted to ‘shoot missiles into Mexico’ to target drug labs, says former defense secretary

Max HauptmanPublished May 6, 2022 2:00 PM

Among the anecdotes coming out ahead of the May 10 release of “A Sacred Oath,” as reported yesterday in The New York Times, is a story that then-President Donald Trump asked about the possibility of launching missile strikes into Mexico to target drug labs and other cartel activity.

According to the New York Times, Esper recounts on at least two occasions in 2020 in the book when the president asked if the military could “shoot missiles into Mexico to destroy the drug labs.”

The former defense secretary also recounted the president as saying, over his objections, that “we could just shoot some Patriot missiles and take out the labs, quietly,” adding that, “no one would know it was us,” the Times reported.

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Esper served as defense secretary from July, 2019 until he was fired on Nov. November 9, 2020. He was Trump’s last Senate-confirmed secretary of defense.

The efficacy of launching a surface-to-air missile at what were presumably ground-based targets aside, excerpts from the book also recount the president saying he would simply deny that the strikes had been launched by the United States if pressed on the matter.

“They don’t have control of their own country,” Esper recounted Trump saying.

Patriot missiles are, of course, designed to shoot down short range ballistic missiles, aircraft and cruise missiles. How they would fare when used to attack targets on the ground is unclear.

[Salon] Trump wanted to shoot missiles into Mexico, says former defense chief

Trump wanted to ‘shoot missiles into Mexico’ to target drug labs, says former defense secretary

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