'We kill people, too': Unconscionably, mass shootings are part of America

On a number of occasions, Donald Trump has uttered one of the few truthful statements he probably has ever made. When asked about the murderous sides of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Trump growled, "We kill people, too."

But once again, the Donald was misguided.

Last week's dramatic assassination of Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin followed a long Russian and Soviet tradition of exterminating dissidents. Ivan the Terrible, who ruled Russia in the mid-16th century, established the first secret police or oprichniki. The brutality of the political system after the Soviet Union was established in 1921 was defined by Vladimir Lenin's declaration of "who-whom," meaning who wins power does so by any means.

Pursuit of power followed that maxim after Lenin's death in 1924. Lenin's successors heavily relied on reigns of terror since, culminating with Joseph Stalin's infamous purges and the Gulag that killed and imprisoned millions in the 1930s. In a second assassination attempt, Stalin had Leon Trotsky, a co-founder of the USSR, killed by axe in 1940 in Mexico. Moscow denied the assassination.

After Stalin died in March 1953, the Politburo had secret police head Lavrenti Beria killed as a threat to all. When Nikita Khrushchev was relieved of duty in 1964; Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991; and Boris Yeltsin in 1999, each was allowed to retire peacefully. Putin has returned to Stalinist form.

Putin's list of enemies killed or poisoned is well-known. A few on it were Alexander Litvinenko, who died from Polonium-laced tea in London in 2006. Boris Nemtsov was gunned down in 2015 in front of the Kremlin. Then Prigozhin and six of his key Wagner team became the latest casualties.

Trump was referring to U.S. foreign policy actions to eliminate enemies using the CIA term of exercising "extreme prejudice," or killing. During the Vietnam War, Operation Phoenix was designed to eradicate Viet Cong operating in the Republic of Vietnam. Nearly 90,000 Vietnamese were detained. About a third were killed without due process.

After Sept. 11, the United States killed or captured many members of al-Qaida, the Islamic State and other Islamic insurgents, often extra-judicially, in the War on Terror. The death of Osama bin Laden was the most significant, probably at a cost of several trillion dollars, considering what was spent on the War on Terror.

In 2015, the United States also killed a U.S.-born citizen designated an enemy, Anwar al-Awlaki, without due process. And Trump accounted for Iranian Quds commander Gen. Mohammed Soleimani with a drone strike inside Iraq in 2020, violating international law.

While the United States uses human rights to underscore Chinese and Russian abuses and atrocities, such as the treatment of minorities and war crimes committed in Ukraine, U.S. critics have more fertile ground by citing gun violence in America. With Prigozhin and his team as exceptions, Russians and Chinese on balance are much more secure from being killed by fellow citizens than are Americans.

Of course, those who defy the authorities are not without risk.

The shootings in Jacksonville, Fla., last weekend were the latest tragic example of Americans killing Americans in mass shootings, when three or more people die. Trump should have been referring to mass shootings in his assertion that "we kill people, too." He was not.

Mass shootings are on the rise in America, along with gun deaths. So far this year, according to the BBC, nearly 500 mass shootings have occurred in America. Enemies of the state killed each year in China and Russia are far less than American gun deaths. Russian and Soviet law authorized the state to bring to justice enemies of the state, regardless of geographic location.

Trump never appreciated or even considered where "we kill people, too" was relevant. Trump was citing equivalence with autocracies in his extraordinary defense of Putin. Ironically, in the War on Terror, U.S. actions probably created more terrorists than it eliminated through the unintended consequences of killing fathers, sons, friends and husbands.

Americans killing Americans are outrages, especially in targeting minorities on ethnic, religious, gender or racial grounds. Yet, the sensible approach is not the realistic one. The United States needs gun control that ensures gun users are qualified, sane, trained and licensed and that access is limited to those who are not. Unfortunately, that will not happen.

As long as the Second Amendment resists effective limits on its application, increases in gun murders are inevitable. Americans will continue to kill Americans. That is unconscionable. But Trump is right: Mass shootings are part of America.

Harlan Ullman is UPI's Arnaud de Borchgrave Distinguished Columnist, a senior adviser at Washington's Atlantic Council, the prime author of "shock and awe" and author of "The Fifth Horseman and the New MAD: How Massive Attacks of Disruption Became the Looming Existential Danger to a Divided Nation and the World at Large." Follow him @harlankullman. The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.