THE TIME IS NOW

“I, Michael Joseph Watts, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.”

“So help me God.”

I uttered those words upon my initial enlistment into active duty on 6 August 2002 at 18.

I just turned 36 a couple of days ago.

As stated on my Twitter profile, I am a Veteran first before anything else much like how the oath of enlistment states supporting and defending the Constitution comes first. Our Constitution, much like our country and its people, is imperfect but we strive for to be that more perfect Union.

Right now, that Union is in perilous jeopardy in part due to who is our country’s chief executive.

The dam broke when it was revealed that Donald Trump had solicited the Ukrainian government – which is in a perilous position due to the 2014 invasion and annexation of Crimea by Russia – in investigating one of his potential 2020 opponents, Joe Biden, and in exchange, Trump would provide assistance to Ukraine to combat Russian intervention.

This is blackmail. Extortion.

It is also illegal.

And crossed a line.

It also raises other questions about the findings of the Muller Report in that if Trump – as the incumbent president – is soliciting foreign interference to aid in his re-election campaign, is it possible that he did this in 2016 as well and thought that if he got away with it then, he and his enablers decided to duplicate the scheme again. It also raises questions about what else he was traded off in his negotiations with foreign leaders.

It is established that he has property in Turkey and in an attempt to curry favor with Erdogan has surrendered our support of Kurdish allies in Syria. The rapid power vacuum due to our absence in Syria has led to Turkey to launch an offensive on the Kurds which will likely lead to further slaughter, the sudden reemergence of ISIS due to the Kurds now lack the infrastructure to hold prisoners, and the Kurds to seek aid from Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Obama had a foreign policy doctrine of “Don’t Do Stupid Shit.” Trump’s foreign policy is best summed up as the “Dumbass Doctrine.”

But back to the matter at hand at the illegal activity that was blatantly committed in plain sight.

There is one remedy for when a president has abused the powers of their office, the public trust that through our Constitution connects us and that person whether we support him or “not my president”. When that bond has been severely violated to the point where there must be a form of corrective action on the executive.

It is a remedy that has been discussed on various occasions but implemented two times in our history – Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, neither were removed from office – and certainly would have resulted in removal had Nixon not decided that the honorable option at that moment was to resign.

Impeachment

I was not exactly on the impeach Trump train. My mother, who was a teenager during Watergate and was an early Nixon impeachment supporter, wanted Trump impeached on the first day of office for violating the Constitution’s emoluments clause due to refusing to release his financial records during the 2016 campaign. Her father, my grandfather, had supported Nixon in 1960, 1968, and 1972, took a wait-and-see approach to Watergate which is what I did as well as understanding that there was no way that the then-Republican led House was going to impeach Trump and that none of the then-Republican led House committees would take up investigating a Republican president. I was in the realm of accountability and I knew that was not going to happen with Republicans in charge of at least one Congressional chamber.

The chance for some form of accountability came when the Democrats flipped the House in November 2018. While navigating the political field that comes with determining what exactly would impeachment charges on Donald Trump would look like, a whistleblower revealed that Trump had asked Ukraine to find information on Joe Biden and in exchange the country would receive assistance to combat increasing Russian incursion in said country.

My grandfather, literally a man of few words but also well read, came to the conclusion that Nixon – a man he supported in three presidential elections – was no longer fit to be president due to the evidence that was revealed over time in the Watergate hearings and battles over documents pertaining to the coverup.

Like my grandfather, I have come to that conclusion.

And if it takes impeachment to hold Trump accountable, then so be it.

Upon this revelation, seven freshmen Democratic members of the House who served in the military and intelligence agencies – among them an Army Ranger located in nearby CO-6 and a retired Navy Nuke Commander in my old stomping grounds in Hampton Roads – had this to say in a September op-ed in the Washington Post:

This flagrant disregard for the law cannot stand. To uphold and defend our Constitution, Congress must determine whether the president was indeed willing to use his power and withhold security assistance funds to persuade a foreign country to assist him in an upcoming election.

If these allegations are true, we believe these actions represent an impeachable offense. We do not arrive at this conclusion lightly, and we call on our colleagues in Congress to consider the use of all congressional authorities available to us, including the power of “inherent contempt” and impeachment hearings, to address these new allegations, find the truth and protect our national security.

In closing:

Yet everything we do harks back to our oaths to defend the country. These new allegations are a threat to all we have sworn to protect. We must preserve the checks and balances envisioned by the Founders and restore the trust of the American people in our government. And that is what we intend to do.

That oath is important to me and others who have taken it.

Yes, there is that portion that states that I will obey the orders of the president and the officers appointed over me but it comes with the caveat of according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. While I have not been under the jurisdiction of such documents in many years and regularly exercise my right to speak out in support or opposition of our elected officials, that portion states a social contract between the lowest military member through the chain-of-command up to the President.

However, I did not swear allegiance to a person when I enlisted. It was to the Constitution of the United States first and foremost, and it is to be defended against all enemies.

Foreign

And domestic

That defense of those ideas meant that it could result in the forfeit of my life. I don’t think stating my reasons for supporting presidential accountability will lead to that extreme, but when the Declaration of Independence was agreed upon the delegates mutually pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor. The proof of my sacred honor is as noted in my official discharge certificate – form DD-214 – which states that my military service was honorable and I am willing to stake that in whatever it takes to hold Trump accountable for the gross violations and misdeeds to the Constitution that he has done.

I am not naïve enough to believe that impeachment will lead to Trump’s dismissal from office either by the same manner as Nixon via resignation or removal by a conviction in the Senate. The House could discover video of Trump’s phone call, a notarized copy of Trump’s statement of “yeah, I did it”, and countless credible witness statements that corroborate that him and other officials were implicated in this scheme, and the Senate would still refuse to convict because of that chamber’s Republican majority.

This administration has been enabled by Trump’s allies in the Congress, representatives of the White House, and media to where if this was Obama or Clinton engaging in such behavior, they would be screaming from the mountaintops for impeachment and conviction. Many of the same people – such as Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell – were in Congress during Bill Clinton’s Impeachment and supported holding him accountable for lying about an affair with an intern when censure would have appropriate.

When it comes to holding Trump accountable for possible blackmailing a foreign country into getting information on a potential opponent, Republicans have done the following over the nearly three years he has been in office: repeat Trump’s Twitter tirades; shift goal posts in the whataboutism arena in order to muddy public opinion; promote bizarre conspiracy theories such as that it is unconstitutional to impeach a president (even though the impeachment process is spelled out in the Constitution); take the Jeff Flake approach of stating tepid opposition to Trump only to end up meekly supporting him to fend off the base; or do what Marco Rubio does and completely deflect from the issue altogether by quoting a Bible verse.

The time is now to say to this lawless, unrestrained executive, “let us no longer assassinate the Constitution, Mr. President. You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

Unlike Mr. Trump and his congressional allies, I plan to honor my oath.

The time is now for others to start doing the same.