Mutually Assured Law Enforcement Destruction
Earlier this week, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raided at least nine restaurants in the nation’s capital, requesting proof that the establishments are not flouting the law by employing illegal aliens. Washington, D.C., presents itself as a so-called sanctuary city for illegal aliens, so the mere fact ICE agents targeted a few businesses there is hardly surprising.
What is perhaps more newsworthy is the specific names associated with those raided restaurants. One of those restaurants, Chef Geoff’s, is owned by Geoff Tracy, the husband of CBS News anchor and former vice presidential debate co-moderator Norah O’Donnell. Another of the raided restaurants is owned by former Biden White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients, and a third is owned by the left-wing activist Spanish restaurateur, Jose Andres.
Following the raids, a predictable debate has unfolded: Did the Trump administration “politicize” law enforcement by siccing ICE agents on White House critics and foes?
Maybe; maybe not. Regardless, and with all due respect to the pearl-clutchers, permit a moment of unfettered bluntness: I simply do not care. And I highly suspect tens of millions of other Americans don’t care either. After years of politicized law enforcement, many of us are now sufficiently jaded so as to be well past the point of shock at new examples.
Did the ICE raid pearl-clutchers express similar dismay when, in 2013, Obama-era IRS director Lois Lerner admitted to targeting conservative groups in an attempt to improperly strip them of their tax-exempt status? Did they care when, that same year, the elderly nuns of the Little Sisters of the Poor were forced to sue the Obama administration in order to not violate their faith and subsidize abortifacients?
Did the pearl-clutchers care when the Biden administration sued pro-life activists for praying outside abortion clinics? Did they care when the same administration threw the book at seemingly every “J6-er” defendant – even those who innocently traipsed through the open doors of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021? Did they care when that administration imprisoned Trump allies Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro for rejecting subpoenas of the bogus, made-for-TV Jan. 6 House committee? Above all, did they care when that administration crossed the ultimate Rubicon by prosecuting its preeminent political opponent, the then-former president and leading presidential hopeful?
The answer to all these rhetorical questions is simple: no. Of course they didn’t care. So you’ll have to spare me for not viewing it as a particularly big deal that a few Washington restaurants had the feds show up to request immigration papers.
In fact, I’ll go further: It would be a good thing if the Trump administration sent a message by targeting these three Washingtonian restaurants.
The well-known kindergarten teaching that “two wrongs don’t make a right” notwithstanding, it is also elementary game theory that unilateral disarmament in the face of an insatiable foe is a proven strategic failure. People on the right had their turn being targeted under former Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama, and it would be folly for conservatives to assume a faux “high road” now that they are in power.
True, a prior generation of Republicans would have been content to morally preen and rest on their laurels, content with what this column has referred to as “principled loserdom.” But those days are over.
Indeed, those days must be over – not merely for the good of the Right but for the good of the country. While resource scarcity poses real constraints and some degree of prosecutorial discretion is thus inescapable, it is also true that American law enforcement has become much more politicized in recent decades. That trend began with the Obama administration, and it reached a nadir with the Biden administration.
Patriotic Americans who care about the rule of law and our constitutional order ought to lament this sordid state of affairs – not just the latest twist in the long-running saga but the whole sad story. The key question, then, is how to undo the damage and restore Left-Right prosecutorial and law enforcement relations to the pre-Obama status quo ante.
To borrow another of this column’s favorite phrases, the only way out here is through. Both sides of America’s fraught political divide must come to accept a Cold War-era paradigm of mutually assured destruction. This mindset saved the planet from nuclear holocaust once, and now it can help us return our domestic politics to something resembling normalcy.
But for the Left to accept the threat of mutually assured destruction, they’re going to have to first see the other side bare its fangs a bit. Some noses must be (proverbially) bloodied. And frankly, given the unprecedented magnitude of the past few years’ lawfare campaign against President Donald Trump, sending ICE agents into a few restaurants barely even registers.
I want an end to the “politicized law enforcement” wars. So should you. It is ironic that we need a short-term escalation in order to have a chance of reaching a long-term stasis. But it’s the cold, hard truth.