The Washington Post - 30.08.2019

FRIDAY, AUGUST 30 , 2019. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A23

W

ith William P. Barr as

President Trump’s attor-

ney general, one must al-

ways keep in mind that

everything out of this Justice Depart-

ment will be spun, shaded or, in the

case of former special counsel Robert

S. Mueller III’s report, misrepresent-

ed to exonerate Trump of any malfea-

sance and attack his political oppo-

nents. Unfortunately, the media, as it

did with Barr’s letter and news con-

ference about the Mueller report, too

often accepts the spin without exam-

ining the underlying documents.

That seems to be what is happen-

ing with the newly released inspector

general’s report examining former

FBI director James B. Comey’s re-

lease of government memos to the

media documenting Trump’s a ttempt

in early 2017 to secure his personal

loyalty and to go easy on Trump’s

fired national security adviser, Mi-

chael Flynn.

At the time, Trump accused Comey

of breaking the law, tweeting “James

Comey leaked CLASSIFIED INFOR-

MATION to the media. That is so

illegal!” Trump’s m inions in the right-

wing media ran with it. The problem

is that it was false.

Enter now-Justice Department In-

spector General Michael Horowitz.

His new report found that Comey did

not break the law and reiterates,

“DOJ declined prosecution” — which

by Trump’s o wn standards is an exon-

eration. The president lied when he

accused Comey of violating laws pro-

tecting classified information. In a

lengthy recap of the memos Comey

wrote about his encounters with

Trump, Comey’s copying of the mem-

os and his providing memos to the

media via a friend and Comey’s testi-

mony, the inspector general repeats

several times that Justice Depart-

ment officials declined to prosecute

Comey.

That finding is buried in a larger

report that looks at whether Comey,

in attempting to document gross mis-

conduct by the president of the Unit-

ed States, did not follow department

procedure. Former federal prosecu-

tor Joyce White Vance told me, “This

debunks the myth from the right that

Comey would be prosecuted for his

actions. The conclusion of the report

questions the ethics of his conduct

but not its legality.”

Horowitz found that, in leaking

memos to the media, Comey had

violated an internal regulation that

requires a laborious approval process

for release of this type of document.

The inspector general did not, how-

ever, find that the memos contained

classified information; instead, the

memos were related to the investiga-

tion of Flynn and to Trump’s a ttempt-

ed obstruction into that investiga-

tion. In fact, the memos only lightly

touched on Flynn; they related to the

president’s illegality in handling the

Flynn matter. The inspector general

nevertheless concludes Comey violat-

ed department policy by not getting a

sign-off for release to the media.

Former Justice Department

spokesman Matthew Miller skew-

ered Horowitz for suggesting that

Comey’s actions put public pressure

on the FBI to investigate presidential

wrongdoing. “Comey did what he did

because the president was actively

trying to dismantle DOJ’s normal

way of operating,” Miller tweeted.

“The [attorney general] and the [dep-

uty attorney general] were both com-

plicit, so Comey had nowhere else to

take his concerns. It must be nice to

live in the context-free world inhabit-

ed by the IG.” Miller argues that this is

akin to faulting Comey “for speeding

on his way to tell the village that a fire

was coming. Such a narrowly-scoped

view of the world.”

The headlines will dutifully report

Horowitz’s finding that Comey didn’t

get a sign-off under Justice Depart-

ment rules. It w ould be helpful if they

pointed out that the IG reaffirmed

Trump’s lies about illegality. It would

be even better if the media, which

received the Comey documents and

wrote stories critical to educating the

public about Trump’s obstruction,

reminded readers of the context for

Comey’s actions.

Twitter: @JRubinBlogger

JENNIFER RUBIN

A buried finding in

the Comey IG report

M

uch white evangelical sup-

port for President Trump is

based on a bargain or trans-

action: political loyalty

(and political cover for the president’s

moral flaws) in return for protection

from a hostile culture. Many evangeli-

cals are fearful that courts and govern-

ment regulators will increasingly treat

their moral and religious convictions

as varieties of bigotry. And that this

will undermine the ability of religious

institutions to maintain their identi-

ties and do their work. Such alarm is

embedded within a larger anxiety

about lost social standing that makes

Trump’s promise of a return to great-

ness appealing.

Evangelical concerns may be exag-

gerated, but they are not imaginary.

There is a certain type of political

progressive who would grant institu-

tional religious liberty only to church-

es, synagogues and mosques, not to

religious schools, religious hospitals

and religious charities. Such a

cramped view of pluralism amounts to

the establishment of secularism,

which would undermine the long-

standing cooperation of government

and religious institutions in tasks such

as treating addiction, placing children

in adoptive homes, caring for the sick

and educating the young.

But this is not, by any reasonable

measure, the largest problem evangeli-

cals face. It is, instead, the massive

sell-off of evangelicalism among the

young. About 26 percent of Americans

65 and older identify as white evangeli-

cal Protestants. Among those ages 18 to

29, the figure is 8 percent. Why this

demographic abyss does not cause

greater panic — panic concerning the

existence of evangelicalism as a major

force in the United States — is a

mystery and a scandal. With their

focus on repeal of the Johnson Amend-

ment and the right to say “Merry

Christmas,” some evangelical leaders

are tidying up the kitchen while the

house burns down around them.

There is a generational cycle of

religious identification that favors reli-

gion. Adolescents and young adults

have always challenged the affiliations

of their parents and been less likely to

attend a house of worship. This tends

to change when people have children

and rediscover the importance of faith

in the cultivation of values and charac-

ter. So there is likely to be some recov-

ery upward from 8 percent as this

cohort ages.

But this recovery will come from a

very low baseline of belief. Evangelical

identification could triple without

reaching the level found among senior

citizens today. In an interview in No-

vember, David Campbell of the Univer-

sity of Notre Dame said: “It’s unlikely

that [young people are] going to be

able to climb back to the same level of

religious involvement as their parents’

or grandparents’ generation did. Just

because they’re starting at a much,

much lower point.”

Why is that point so low? There are a

number of reasons, but one of them,

Campbell argued, is “an allergic reac-

tion to the religious right.” This sets up

an irony. “One of the main rationales

for the very existence of this move-

ment was to assert the role of religion

in the public square in America. And,

instead, what’s happening in that very

movement has actually driven an in-

creasing share of Americans out of

religion.” This alienation preceded the

current president, but it has intensi-

fied during the Trump era.

Since 2000, according to Gallup, the

percentage of Americans with no reli-

gious affiliation has more than dou-

bled, from 8 percent to 19 percent. The

percentage of millennials with no reli-

gion has averaged 33 percent in recent

surveys.

As Campbell described it, some of

those alienated from religion merely

drop out of the faith marketplace. They

are what he calls “passive secularists.”

But there is also an increasing number

who are “active secularists” — people

who have chosen secularism as an

identity. And this is creating a secular

left within the Democratic Party to

counter the religious right in the Re-

publican Party. In their hands, the

culture war will be fought to the last

man or woman.

If evangelicals were to consult their

past, they would find that their times

of greatest positive influence —

in late-18th-century and early-

19th-century Britain, or mid-

19th-century America — came when

they were truest to their religious

calling. It w as not when they acted like

another political interest group. The

advocates of abolition, prison reform,

humane treatment of the mentally

disabled and women’s rights were

known as malcontents in the cause of

human dignity.

To day, f ar too many evangelicals are

seen as angry and culturally defensive,

and have tied their cause to a leader

who is morally corrupt and dehuman-

izes others. Older evangelicals — the

very people who should be maintain-

ing and modeling moral standards —

have ignored and compromised those

standards for political reasons in plain

view of their own children. And disillu-

sionment is the natural result.

[email protected]

MICHAEL GERSON

Why white

evangelicals

should panic

BY DENNIS ROSS AND DANA STROUL

T

he Trump administration says its

maximum-pressure campaign on

Iran is working. If only that were

true.

The administration has consistently

made the argument that economic sanc-

tions would deprive t he Iranian regime of

money and that less money would mean

less bad behavior a nd m ore concessions at

the n egotiating table.

Bargaining with Iran is not the same as

a closing a real estate deal, however, and

Iran-sponsored terrorism is not easily re-

duced to counting dollars and cents. Less

of one does not necessarily correlate to

less of the other.

The inescapable conclusion, after sur-

veying the region’s conflicts, is that a

U.S. s trategy based e xclusively on starving

Te hran of money cannot by itself compel

changes in Iran’s r egional behavior.

In Syria, Iran-backed Shiite militia

groups may be suffering from salary cuts,

but less take-home pay has not led to a

reduction in violence, a reversal in battle-

field gains by the regime of Bashar al-

Assad, or a willingness by these foreign

groups or Iranian forces to leave Syria.

Militia fighters willing to travel to Syria

from Afghanistan, Pakistan or Iraq will

continue to answer Te hran’s call because

of ideology or the abysmal economic con-

ditions in their own countries.

Despite an announcement in March by

Lebanese Hezbollah leader Hasan

Nasrallah, which called for donations from

supporters to replace revenue lost to sanc-

tions, Hezbollah has not called home its

fighters from Syria. Nor has the group

diverted funding from its missile arsenal

threatening Israel in southern Lebanon or

from digging terror tunnels. Israeli strikes

in Lebanon over the weekend targeting the

fabrication of missile components rein-

force the point that economic pressure

alone is not preventing Te hran from trying

to put precision targeting capabilities on

tens of thousands of Hezbollah rockets.

In Yemen, I ran-supported Houthi fight-

ers a re i ntensifying t he pace and s ophisti-

cation of attacks against Saudi Arabia.

Houthi ballistic-missile a nd d rone a ttacks

against civilian airports, oil pipelines and

pumping stations in Saudi Arabia contin-

ue, with attacks now even in the eastern

part of the kingdom. The evidence sug-

gests that Iran is transforming its rela-

tionship with the Houthis from one of

limited support in a local dispute to a

regional partnership.

Sanctions pressure does not always

equate to less I ranian cash for terrorism. In

Gaza, Iran is reportedly increasing fund-

ing to Hamas from $70 million each year to

$30 million each month, which is separate

from the money it is giving Islamic Jihad.

Te stifying to Congress in June, Brian

Hook, the U.S. special representative for

Iran, argued that U.S. sanctions have led

to cuts in Iran’s military budget in 2018

and again in 2019. But these purported

budget reductions did not translate into

reduced threats in the Strait of Hormuz

earlier this year, when Iran attacked with

mines, attempted to seize commercial ves-

sels and shot down a U.S. drone. The

Pentagon is not counting on the

maximum-pressure campaign to reduce

Iran’s military aggression; this month, it

issued a year-long warning of Iranian

“aggressive actions” in the gulf region.

Hook also noted that the Iranian Revo-

lutionary Guard Corps’ c yber command i s

low on cash. Ye t a pair of cybersecurity

firms p ointed to Iran this year as the n exus

in a wave of cyberattacks targeting gov-

ernment, telecommunications and Inter-

net infrastructure e ntities.

Ta ken together, the fact pattern does

not back up the Trump line that the

maximum-pressure campaign is working.

Well before the 2015 nuclear deal, Te hran

had a dopted a low-cost, asymmetric s trat-

egy because it cannot compete with the

large defense budgets and conventional

military capabilities of the United States,

or of regional rivals such as Saudi Arabia

and the United Arab Emirates. Sanctions

alone will not be effective when Iran

intentionally executes its regional terror-

ism c ampaign on t he cheap.

A successful strategy toward Iran must

be based on more than U. S.-imposed s anc-

tions. Political isolation is also necessary,

along with the credible threat of military

force and r eadiness to offer Iran a way out

of the economic pain and way in from the

political cold.

Unfortunately, President Trump has

been far better at isolating the United

States than he has Iran. His administra-

tion has signaled in both statements and

actions its unwillingness to use military

force except in the narrowest of circum-

stances, c reating a rift between the United

States and its partners in the gulf region.

Maximum pressure alienated European

allies who have been integral to every

other successful pressure approach im-

posed a gainst Iran.

Ta ken together, these strategic mis-

steps have emboldened Iran’s leaders.

They clearly don’t feel the need to talk to

the a dministration, having t urned d own a

meeting at the White House for their

foreign minister and conditioning any

talks on the administration lifting sanc-

tions. And their attempt to use drones to

carry out a terrorist attack against Israel

shows their willingness to t ake risks.

History tells us that Iran will not be

sanctioned into changing its behavior. A

successful policy of leverage comes from

collective international pressure, the pros-

pect that negotiations can offer credible

economic gains and the threat of mean-

ingful consequences for malign actions.

Dennis Ross, a former special assistant to

President Barack Obama, is the counselor and

William Davidson distinguished fellow at the

Washington Institute. Dana Stroul is a senior

fellow at the Washington Institute and

previously a senior staff member on the

Senate Foreign Relations Committee covering

the Middle East.

A flaw in Tr ump’s Iran plan

P

resident Trump is conducting his

trade war with China as though it

were a zero-sum game, but it’s n ot.

It’s a negative-sum game. Both

sides lose.

Sad! And self-defeating.

It’s clear at this point that Trump’s

ill-advised gambit of tariffs and bombast

is hurting both economies. The question

is who can more stoically withstand the

pain — an autocrat w ith a mandate to rule

indefinitely over a tightly controlled one-

party state, or a democratically elected

president with dismal approval numbers

who must face voters in 14 m onths.

I think I know the answer. I think most

people do, except Trump. The president

seems to have drunk his own Kool-Aid

about being some sort of genius dealmak-

er. Asked Monday about his erratic and

disruptive method, if you can call it that,

Trump told reporters with a shrug, “Sor-

ry, it’s the way I negotiate.” I ’m sorry, too.

The whole world should be.

Revised figures released Thursday

show that the economy grew by 2 percent

in the second quarter of this year — not

bad, but sharply down from the 3.1 per-

cent growth we saw in the first quarter.

Trump claims on Twitter and at h is rallies

that the economy is not slowing. His own

administration’s statistics prove that’s

not true.

In fact, the economy is growing at

about the same rate as during the last

quarter of the Obama administration —

the difference being that now economists

are worried that we’re sliding toward a

recession.

For the financial markets, this has

been essentially a lost 12 months. The

pattern is that investors get comfortable,

stock indexes make some gains, and then

there’s another heated clash in the trade

war and the markets give the gains back.

As many experts predicted, the “sugar

high” f rom Trump’s upper-class and cor-

porate tax cuts has faded without mean-

ingfully benefiting most Americans.

Middle-class families that did get a mod-

est tax cut are seeing much of the windfall

snatched away by price hikes for mer-

chandise covered by Trump’s t ariffs.

“I think our tariffs are very good for us.

We’re taking in tens of billions of dollars.

China is paying for it,” Trump lied last

week. In fact, China is not paying a cent.

As Trump well knows, the tariffs are taxes

paid by U.S. companies that import Chi-

nese goods, and the cost is ultimately

passed along to the U.S. consumer.

What unsettles the markets more than

the tariffs themselves is uncertainty

about where this unnecessary trade war

is headed. Trump’s d eclaration last Friday

that U.S. companies were “hereby or-

dered” to stop doing business in China

was ridiculous on its face, but it had to

make even his most loyal supporters ner-

vous. And his tweet asking whether Chi-

nese leader Xi J inping or Federal Reserve

Chair Jerome H. Powell was “our bigger

enemy” c an be described only as nuts.

With all his tariffs and all his tirades,

Trump has managed to do just one thing:

give Xi t he upper hand.

It is true that the trade war is hurting

the Chinese economy, w hich this year will

probably see its slowest growth in dec-

ades. But Xi can afford to play the long

game. And he surely knows that he holds

Trump’s p olitical future in his hands.

The U.S. election polls that Trump calls

“fake news” are being read not just in

Washington but also in Beijing. Xi c an see

that Trump’s reelection bid is in trouble.

He c an’t p ossibly miss the fact that Trump

is claiming economic revival as the main

reason he deserves a second term. And Xi

must grasp how the trade war is contra-

dicting Trump’s c ampaign narrative.

If I were Xi, I’d be thinking that these

are my c hoices:

I could look at Trump’s unhinged per-

formance at last weekend’s Group of Sev-

en meeting and decide that, on balance, it

is good for China for the world’s big

industrialized democracies to be without

effective U.S. leadership. By that reason-

ing, I might come back to the table and

make a trade agreement — one that

would surely be favorable to China, given

Trump’s desperation — and boost

Trump’s c hances of reelection.

Or I could sit back, take only modest

countermeasures against the U.S. tariffs,

play the role of reasonable adult against

Trump’s p etulant child, ride out whatever

pain the trade war brings in the knowl-

edge that Trump is hurting more and thus

increase the likelihood of his defeat. My

guess is that this is the option Xi has

settled on. The Chinese leadership

doesn’t like unpredictability any more

than the financial markets do.

If Trump is “the chosen one” to con-

front China, it was an awful choice.

[email protected]

EUGENE ROBINSON

Tr ump’s trade war

may be his downfall

MATT MCCLAIN/THE WASHINGTON POST

Former FBI director James B. Comey appears before the Senate

Intelligence Committee in June 20 17 in Washington.

BY RYAN CROCKER

A

s the United States pursues a

peace deal with the Ta liban and

plans to withdraw forces from

Afghanistan, one important con-

sideration is notably missing from the

deliberations: What will happen to our

Afghan partners who served the U.S. mis-

sion after we leave?

When I was the U.S. ambassador to

Afghanistan, our embassy in Kabul relied

on hundreds of Afghan staffers working in

myriad roles. They risked their lives every

day to work for the betterment of their

country and ours. Likewise, U.S. forces and

humanitarian workers relied on local staff

who served as linguists, cultural advisers,

security guards and maintenance staff.

Because of their service to the U.S. mis-

sion, these trusted allies regularly faced

and continue to face threats from anti-

American forces, particularly by the Ta li-

ban, who have hunted and executed many

Afghan partners and their families.

These Afghan partners have the oppor-

tunity to apply for special immigrant visas

(SIVs), which were specifically designed to

protect our allies on the ground. Most w ho

do so wait for the processing of their visas

from within Afghanistan, remaining in

dangerous conditions, while others have

fled for their lives to neighboring coun-

tries and are waiting in exile.

The proposed U.S. troop withdrawals

would mean that some Afghan partners

awaiting visa processing would lose their

jobs and therefore lose the right to live on a

protected U.S. base. The Ta liban cannot be

trusted to protect civilians, let alone the

Afghan interpreters whom they have tar-

geted as traitors.

As part of any planning for a reduction

in forces, the U.S. government has a re-

sponsibility to protect those who served

the United States and who worked tireless-

ly at g reat personal risk to protect U.S. per-

sonnel and advance the U.S. mission.

Further, as the United States draws

down its presence, the expected reduction

in staffing at the U.S. Embassy will likely

diminish the embassy’s ability to process

visas — a process that already can take

four years for many applicants. Congress

has mandated that government process-

ing of applications must be processed

within nine months. The State Depart-

ment must comply with this requirement.

Let us not repeat the mistakes of the

U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam. T he United

States, eager to end a prolonged conflict,

signed the Paris Peace Accords, an ineffec-

tual document gesture that did not result

in peace. U.S. officials who had served

shoulder to shoulder with Vietnamese

partners watched i n horror as their associ-

ates fled the country by sea or were

executed or jailed for their service to the

United States. Who can forget the horrify-

ing image of desperate Vietnamese allies

reaching for a helicopter leaving Saigon?

The State Department and vetting agen-

cies must ensure that our Afghan partners

can reach safety before the already poor

security situation deteriorates further.

The Defense Department, too, must

demand this of the State Department in

light of the mission-critical services that

tens of thousands of Afghans have provid-

ed to U.S. troops since 2001.

Our Afghan partners have risked — and

sometimes lost — their lives and those of

their families to support the U.S. mission.

As the United States is contemplating its

exit strategy, the least we can do is ensure

that our closest allies are part of the plan.

Th e writer was the U.S. ambassador to

Afghanistan in 2011-2012. He is a diplomat in

residence at Princeton University.

Protecting our Afghan partners