I'm feeling his pain

It may be highly presumptuous and a bit egotistical, but in a very small way I am feeling Trump’s pain over the inability to move the warring parties in Ukraine to make peace. The pain arises when you think you have the power and ability to do someone some good and for whatever reason, you do not succeed.

Few emotions are as welcome and intoxicating as success. Now in my seventh decade, along the way, I’ve had success and failure in shaping the outcome of events.

One success came when I was a young Marine Corps Officer and Judge Advocate stationed at MCRD San Diego. This is one of two Marine Corps boot camps, the other one at Parris Island, South Carolina is more notorious. In both places young men become Marines or they fail and go home.

Today, young women train with the men to become Marines, too. I was not in favor of that change when it was proposed, but after thinking about it, I see the value in training women to as we used to say, locate, close with and destroy the enemy. Somebody has to be prepared to do it as the world remains a dangerous and threatening place. And I can think of no better or effective way to train young men to respect and work with the women they will encounter in life.

One of my assignments at MCRD was the defense of a Staff Sergeant brought up on charges of abusing recruits under his charge. These were often minor offenses, but prosecuted in a court martial, which is a federal court. I don’t recall the charge in this case, but he and his wife came to see me one day. They explained that they were unable to have children and were in the process of seeking approval to adopt a baby. They were concerned that a federal court conviction might create an obstacle to their plans for adoption. I had tried several cases successfully so far and was confident that I could achieve an acquittal if we tried the case. But my interest in the glory of another win paled in comparison to the risk this young couple wanted to minimize or eliminate.

So, the next day, I walked across the parade deck to visit with the Convening Authority, Colonel Hank Stackpole. He was a man’s man, tall with striking features, steel blue eyes and in command of every room he entered. I didn’t need an appointment to see him. We had a saying I liked to repeat, I’ll be in the area all day, don’t be afraid of my rank.

I explained the purpose of my visit and when I asked him to dismiss the charges, he said, “you’re on a mission of mercy” and called for the First Sergeant in the other room to withdraw the charges.

I walked back to my office that morning, full of pride over my newfound power to will something to happen. Success will do that to you.

I had a few more successes along the way, including some in civil cases I handled in private practice after I got out of the Marines. One notable success was a four-month jury trial of an asbestos case with two months of daily pre-trial motions and two months of trial. I was the lead counsel of six defendants, and it fell to me to corral this herd of cats to avoid stepping on each other while unpacking a very complicated medical case. This was the first jury trial in an asbestos case to go all the way to verdict in my state and, coincidentally, my first civil jury trial. The jury took about 15 minutes to rule in our favor. On the way home after we received the verdict, I recall thinking, man, I can do anything.

Silly me.

I ran headlong into the brick wall of reality several years later.

A city in the Northwest corner of my state set about to build a new sewage treatment facility and the consultants they hired recommended they put the new facility in a spot that was a 4,000-year-old Native village site. Burial practices in their pre-historic culture were very different than ours and the ground at the site of the new facility was full of very old human skeletal remains.

All of this was well known to the city, state and federal agencies who issued permits and funding for the work, and to mitigate the potential desecration of the site, the city contracted with an archeologist to monitor the work. That gentleman and his employer became my client after the local Indian tribe raised a great hue and cry over the handling of the remains found at the construction site.

The work was shut down and never restarted. The tribe commenced a class action suit in federal court, the city sued for its own alleged damages, and a landowner who asked the contractors to deliver to his property 10,000 yards of excavation from the site sued when the tribe said that soil was full of human remains that should be recovered. As if that was not enough to keep a guy busy, state and federal criminal investigations were underway.

My ‘I can do anything’ confidence began to crack when the Chief of the First Nations band just across the US and Canadian border, who were coincidentally the people with the closest cultural and physical connection to the remains found at the site, told me the Old Ones there were not angry with what had happened. She said, if they were unhappy about it, they would have killed the archeologist long ago.

So, I’ve come to accept the fact that some things are not within our control, no matter how well intentioned we may be or how much energy we bring to bear. The Indian remains claim was resolved superficially with large sums of money, not clever pleading by one lawyer. And if truth be known, eventually I learned that no amount of money or pleading will undo the sordid history of the relationship of the newcomers and those who lived in North America first.

Which brings me to Ukraine, Russia and Donald Trump. During his campaign for office, Trump promised he would arrange peace within 24 hours of taking office. While that may have been the typical bravado of a New York City developer who is used to getting what he wants, when Tulsi Gabbard and Bobby Kennedy joined his team many of us hopped against hope that we might elect a peace maker who wanted to solve this big problem. Trump’s success with the Abraham Accords in his first term gave us reason for optimism. His ability to keep fighting with unstoppable energy in the face of two impeachments, criminal charges in three courts, civil suits, and the efforts of several states to keep him off the ballots showed us there is no quit in that man’s body.

But it appears that Trump has run headlong into a brick wall of reality. The origin of the Ukraine/Russia dispute is hundreds of years old, the currents run deep, and it could be that no amount of deal making or money will solve the problem. My optimism for peace in Ukraine fell when I saw Trump’s hunched over shoulders as he sat alone inches away face to face with Zelensky at the Vatican where they attended Pope Francis’ funeral service. They weren’t yelling at each other this time.

He has taken on a heavy burden. All people of good will pray for his success.