From Nero to Trump: Evolution of Narcissists

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Although meant to convey cruelty, arrogance and a certain level of madness, the image of Nero fiddling with Rome burning (myth or not) is more pathetic than predatory. Surrounded by sycophants, this corrupt, incompetent, power-hungry Caesar ruled by whatever rose to the surface of his mind at any given moment. Congenitally delusional, Nero was the ultimate narcissist. And what’s a narcissist if not pathetic?

First forward a few thousand years.

On January 27, President Trump issued an executive order barring people from seven Muslim countries – Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen - from entering the United States.

A week later, James L. Robart, a Judge of the US District Court for the Western District of Washington, issued a temporary ban on the president’s order.

The President, easily the world’s most powerful 140-character tantrum transmitter, tweeted: “The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned!”

Intrigued by the callous, caustic use of ‘so-called judge,’ I looked up James Robart on the Web. A Republican, he was nominated for the federal bench by President George Bush in 2003 and unanimously confirmed in a 99-0 vote by the Senate in June 2004. He was a distinguished corporate lawyer prior to his appointment, regarded by those who know him as a ‘judge’s judge,’ one driven by a profound respect for law and the constitution. A colleague’s summation: “The cream rises to the top.”

Judge Robart asked a simple question about the executive order: “How many arrests have been there of foreign nationals from those seven countries since 9/11”?

The answer: “None.”

Anyone crossing the path of America’s volatile president can expect to be predictably ridiculed or demonized. That’s what happened to the judge.

What was common in Nero’s Rome is becoming increasingly common in today’s America.

Omid Kordestani, Twitter’s Executive Chairman, who came to the U.S. in 1978 as an Iranian immigrant and settled in San Jose, responded to Trump with a tweet of his own: “Our democratic institutions will prevail and they are bigger than any one person in position of power, temporarily!”

The bite is in the word “temporarily” that has an echo in history. Returning victorious from a battle, a Roman conqueror would ride in a triumphal chariot through the city while a slave would whisper in the conqueror’s ear a warning: all glory is fleeting.

People like Judge Robart are fulfilling their obligations to uphold the constitution against executive orders that violate it, the first amendment in this case. This is particularly urgent since we are currently witnessing a partisan legislative branch turning into a rubber stamp for Trump’s executive branch. It’s by anticipating this danger that the founding fathers created the judicial branch as a safeguard to presidential excesses.

We haven’t heard the last word on the immigration ban. The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco rejected a request by the Justice Department to restore Trump’s targeted travel ban. There will undoubtedly be more back and forth over the travel ban, possibly reaching the Supreme Court even, and ultimately, over the soul of America.

On the same Friday that Judge Robart issued his restraining order, I found about fifty of my fellow-Americans assembled in front of the Evergreen Islamic Center in San Jose. They had come spontaneously to support us, holding signs that read, “Immigrants are Here to Stay,” “We Are All Americans,” “Stop Separating Families,” and “Japanese Americans Say No Muslim Registry, No Deportations.” Mosque-goers were treated to a rousing rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” by San Jose resident Angela.

I asked Peter, who is of the Jewish faith, why he had braved the weather to spend time in front of an Islamic Center on a Friday afternoon. “Because I feel strongly that there is no place for bigotry in our country,” re replied. He read from a flyer he was distributing that contained excerpts from a letter President George Washington had written in 1790 to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, RI: “Government of the United States gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance … May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of other inhabitants …”

Most Americans are outraged by the president’s overreach and are taking to the streets and sounding out to their representatives their concerns about the erosion of America’s founding values. It is critical that we continue working within the law to change the disastrous direction toward which our country is heading. There is no room for complacency. History may regard Nero as a zero but let’s not forget that he ruled for 14 long and painful years before the Romans finally woke up.

Consequences of Crossing Red Lines

Bashar al-Assad has crossed the red line not once but several times since the Syrian uprising began almost three years ago. Every time it happened, America threatened to take action but did nothing, emboldening Assad to continue his genocide.

Now the “ultimate” moment of truth has arrived for both the United States and Syria. There is unmistakable evidence that Assad's forces used nerve gas in August to kill more than 1,400 Syrians, including at least 426 children, in attacks on the outskirts of Damascus.

President Obama has no choice but to take action because American credibility is at stake. It came as a surprise to many last week when, at the last moment, he delayed the attack on Syria to gain Congressional approval for his order. It was a diplomatic and tactical move but perhaps not a strategic one.

Although he faces considerable opposition in Congress, Obama will get his authorization for the attack. In spite of the setbacks he has suffered as president, at critical moments Obama has proved to be extraordinarily lucky. There is no doubt that he will be "lucky" this time as well.

For Assad, buoyed by the false assurances of Russia, there is also no turning back. He knows it’s a do or die situation for him. Either call America’s bluff or prepare to take up residence in a Russian dacha, unless, of course, the rebels get to him first and he goes the way of Libya’s Gadhafi.

The critical question is: what happens after the tomahawks fall on selected targets in Syria and the playing field between Assad's forces and the rebels is leveled?

Since America will not put boots on the ground and certainly has no stomach for a drawn-out war as in Afghanistan and Iraq, a flurry of diplomatic moves will ensue. 

Russia, as always, will try to save face by “convincing” Assad that he must give up power and leave the country. Once that happens, America and Russia will use the United Nations to call for a truce between the rebels and Assad’s forces. Inevitably, power will flow to the rebels but since there is no unity among rebel factions, chaos, bordering on catastrophe, may follow. The nihilistic Al-Qaida faction will try to sabotage any peaceful negotiations. The Sunni-Alawite clash may degenerate into an all-out and unending civil war.

From any perspective, the possibility of a stable Syria, at least in the near future, is dim. Yet America must act because the price of inaction is incalculable. America alone has the power and the moral obligation to punish a regime that used Sarin nerve gas on its own people. Everyone in the Syrian government involved in the decision to use chemical weapons must face the music before the International Criminal Court in Hague.

“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;/Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,/The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere/The ceremony of innocence is drowned;/The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity.

Who would like to live in a world like that?

Yes, America has acted on its imperialistic impulses and brought untold sorrow to millions. It has committed atrocities at home and abroad. But in the case of Syria, America cannot afford to wallow in its mistakes and misbegotten wars. No dictator, tinhorn or otherwise, can be allowed to get away with crimes like the ones that Assad has committed. America alone can right this wrong.

Syria will eventually find its way. Syrians will learn to live with one another in spite of their differences. And one day perhaps they will break free of their tortured past when 'hope and history rhyme.'

Doing the Right Thing in Syria

U.N. observers have confirmed the horrific massacre that took place in Mazraat al-Qubair, a farming village of about 160 people in central Hama province. Nearly 80 men, women and children were shot, hacked and burned to death by Assad’s bloodthirsty death squad known as ‘Shabiha.’ The observers could smell the stench of burned corpses and see body parts scattered about the village.

The massacre follows one in which 108 people were slain in the Syrian town of Houla on May 25. Reports have surfaced, particularly in Germany, that Syrian rebels were actually responsible for the Houla massacre but most sources close to the ground, including a UN Human Rights Council group, said evidence pointed towards militia loyal to Assad in the region.

Bashar Assad has been exploiting Kofi Annan’s peace plan to continue his genocidal suppression. In the 15 months of bloodshed, he has been instigating fear among the country’s 2.1 million Alawites – 12 per cent of the population – that they will be massacred by the Sunni majority – 75 per cent - if he were to fall.

As the moment of truth nears in Syria, the opposition has been at pains to assure the Alawites that they will not be targeted in a post-Assad Syria. “We are all in this together,” has become the opposition’s motto as they implore ordinary Alawites to defect.

For many pundits and policymakers in America, however, the situation in Syria can only be understood in the context of a geopolitical chess game.

Writing in the Washington Post, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger summarized his analysis of the Syrian situation this way: “Military intervention, humanitarian or strategic, has two prerequisites: First, a consensus on governance after the overthrow of the status quo is critical. If the objective is confined to deposing a specific ruler, a new civil war could follow in the resulting vacuum, as armed groups contest the succession, and outside countries choose different sides. Second, the political objective must be explicit and achievable in a domestically sustainable time period. I doubt that the Syrian issue meets these tests.”

In other words, let the killings continue because we are not sure who will inherit power and whether or not they will push America’s interests. A well-known columnist, writing in the Los Angeles Times, raises the same concern: “The situation in Syria is further complicated by the familiar question of who's the good guy. The bad guy is clearly Bashar Assad. But his opposition is a mixture of unattractive clerics and their followers, liberal reformers and left-wing radicals.”

The question of what is just and what is right do not figure in the equations of these analysts.

One consistent voice in the wilderness has been that of New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof who wrote in a recent column that “when a government devours its own people, as in Syria or Sudan, there are never easy solutions. That helps explain President Obama’s dithering … Yet the president is taking prudence to the point of paralysis … In Syria, we should make clear that unless the security forces depose Assad in the next 30 days, our Middle Eastern allies will arm the Syrian opposition. We should work with these allies, as well as with major powers like Russia and China, to encourage a coup, or a“retirement” for Assad … Stopping a government from killing its own is an uncertain business. But our existing policies in Syria and Sudan alike are failing to stop the bloodshed, and they also are putting us on the wrong side of history.”

Muslims are aware of the serious problems that can follow the fall of Assad. The path to openness and responsible governance after decades of tyranny and dictatorship is not achieved in weeks or months. Just look at Egypt and Libya. The peoples’ revolution is far from complete. It will take time for a new era to dawn. So it will be in Syria.

Besides, Western fear that intolerant religious zealots (always a minority but exaggerated by Western media) will find a way to turn the Arab Spring into a Winter of Despair is unfounded. Using a statistically sound sampling technique called “controlled snowball,” 186 opposition activists were asked about their preferences for a post-Assad Syrian government. 73% said it was important for the new Syrian government to protect the rights of Christians. While many respondents voiced support for religion in the public square, only a small fraction favored clerical influence in government. As to which country they would like to see Syria emulate after Assad, 82% chose Turkey. Perhaps the biggest surprise was that the U.S. earned 69% favorable rating as a political model, followed closely by France, Germany and Britain.

Bashar Assad may soon be forced to flee to Moscow as opposition forces overcome their differences and mount a united assault against the government. There will, of course, be chaos and turmoil. Some Syrians will be tempted to settle old scores. Sectarian conflict may raise its ugly head. UN observers may have to be deployed to ensure a peaceful transition so that one tyranny is not replaced by another.

But there is also reason to believe that Syrians will come out stronger through their trial-by-fire and forge a government of consensus, justice and accountability, with “malice toward none and charity for all.”