Take it from this Iraq Veteran, Trump is dismantling our democracy
Tags: Veterans, Elections, Usps, Post Office, Trump

By Jon Soltz

Photo by Tareq Ismail on Unsplash

The images flooded the news. Iraqi after Iraqi leaving their polling place, with an ink stained finger. The purple dye marking them as a citizen who cast their vote, that day, so they couldn’t vote again. After decades of brutal rule under the Saddam regime, the people were finally getting a say in how their government would run.

The war in Iraq should have never been waged, and to this day, I feel immense anger at all those who pushed the lies that were used to justify war. But, as Colin Powell once noted, once we broke it, we owned it. It was up to us to help show Iraqis how to set up a functional democracy. And we did just that.

We helped set up the infrastructure that a democracy is built upon. If an election is the “software,” we set up the “hardware” to run it and protect it. A just legal system. A representative legislative body. And yes, a system of free and fair voting.

I think about that as I watch the unfolding crisis at USPS, caused by Donald Trump and his crony, Louis DeJoy, who he named Postmaster General. There is no doubt that the dismantling of USPS is aimed at causing chaos and confusion to undermine our democratic process, and erect a barrier to voting. Trump openly admitted it.

Let’s be clear about one thing. Mail-in voting, whether it is through a regular ballot of absentee ballot is safe and secure, and at extremely little risk of fraud. The USPS has always ensured that. That’s why states like Oregon felt comfortable to moving to a complete system of mail-in voting, and why other states have begun to follow. The USPS helped deliver ballots of our troops serving overseas, and of Americans living abroad.

Simply put, USPS is one of those pieces of infrastructure on which our democratic system is built.

But it is not the only one.

Our democratic system relies on a Department of Justice that is dispassionate, uncorrupted, and willing to act in defense of our system, even when the threat is coming from the administration in which it serves. A working DOJ does not try to undermine and replace its attorneys, whether it is the US Attorneys working to prosecute corruption and crime perpetrated by those who are allies of the president, or lawyers in the middle of a case. It does, however, prosecute those who are actively seeking to undermine the constitutional right of all Americans to exercise their right to vote, even when those people are members of the administration.

Our democratic process relies on a State Department that upholds our ideals, and uses all diplomatic means to keep foreign powers from attacking our elections, not a Secretary of State who withers while the president tries to strong-arm foreign powers into attacking the election for his own benefit. It relies on an intelligence apparatus that is prepared to expose the severity of foreign plots, and a security apparatus with the marching orders, and the means, to keep our vote safe and secure, not a team of lackeys.

It depends on a military that serves not the head of the government, but the people and the Constitution. A military that is used to defend rights, not intimidate those who are peacefully exercising them.

In each and every way, Donald Trump is dismantling the hardware we need in place to have a functional democratic system. Without that hardware, the software of people voting doesn’t work. Having watched what we helped build for Iraq, I feel like I’m watching it all in reverse, here.

President Obama touched on a lot of this in his speech at the Democratic National Convention, last week. I heard the emotion and urgency dripping from his voice, and related to it, because it is exactly how I feel, right now.

Thankfully, we still have some infrastructure, or hardware, left. If we all work hard, keep fighting against its dismantling, and turn out in record numbers to vote, we can elect a president who will save and rehabilitate our democracy. We have no other choice.