[dropcap]I[/dropcap] came to Cong. Mike Coffman intending to get the story of his Jewish forbears. He gave me that, and much more, too.

Highlights from our 90-minute conversation:

Coffman’s forbears were Jewish, originating in Baghdad, coming to the US and Israel via Shanghai, China.

Waste at the Dept. of Defense is out of control. Coffman would go further than President Obama in cutting it.

The VA hospital at Anschutz is not the only VA hospital over budget and years behind. The culprit: VA management. The solution: Strip the VA permanently of construction management.

Coffman has more military experience than any other member of Congress.

Problems with ISIS, Shias, Sunnis, Iraq and Iran have absolutely nothing to do with the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

The US insulted Israel and Saudi Arabia by not including them in the nuclear talks with Iran.

Coffman is “aggressively” studying Spanish, and attributes his outsized victory in the recent mid-term election (by nine points, compared to Hickenlooper’s three) to his outreach to minorities.

I. Coffman’s Jewish background

[dropcap]Mike[/dropcap] Coffman’s mother, 84, is Dorothy Hannah Coffman.

His mother’s father, whom Coffman never met, was an Iraqi Jew who left Baghdad in the early 1900s, “before the anti-Semitism really came about.”

He set up an export-import business in Shanghai, China. “A wave of Iraqi Jews came to China in the early 20th century,” says Coffman.

When Coffman visited China, he found his mother’s old house in the French Concession, adjacent to an old French country club. The house is now a lobby for a Japanese hotel.

To run the business, his grandfather knew Arabic, Hebrew and English and, probably, some Chinese.

His mother went to the British School in Shanghai, studying in English and Chinese.

She had four sisters and a brother.

The brother wound up in the British army in WW II and immigrated to Australia. Two of the sisters moved to America and two went to Israel for a considerable time, then to the US.

Coffman’s mother married Harold Coffman, an American soldier from Chicago, in Shanghai in 1948. He was supposed to fight in the American invasion of Japan. “That invasion didn’t happen,” says Coffman, due to the atomic bombs the US dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“My father went to China and helped repatriate the Japanese Army back to Japan. Then he stayed on to help the nationalist Chinese fight the communists until mainland China fell to the communists in 1948.”

Coffman’s mother and father came to the US, where his father remained in the US Army until 1964.

“But my grandfather stayed in China under the communists. My grandmother had been taken by the Japanese Army and died in a detention camp — of natural causes? She was educated in Japan and fluent in English, Japanese and Chinese. But she refused to translate for the Japanese and died as a POW.”

The two aunts of Coffman who eventually went to Israel stayed in China after the communist takeover. The communists allowed businesses to operate for a time. When this stopped they took a train from Shanghai to Hong Kong and made their way to Israel. After that, they lived in San Francisco.

During Harold Coffman’s 16 years in the US Army after China, 1948-1964, he traveled all over Europe and the US. His last assignment was at Fitzsimons Army Hospital in Denver.

Mike Coffman grew up in “a military family in Aurora,” now part of the congressional district he represents.

When his mother married, she converted to Christianity, but regards herself as culturally Jewish, and still wears a Star of David.

“I grew up very proud of my background,” says Mike Coffman, and soaked up stories from his two aunts about their lives in Israel.

“I joined the army at age 17, following in my father’s footsteps. In 1974, Israel didn’t have an embassy in Germany but did have a consulate in Munich. I inquired about joining the Israeli army.

“The consulate wrote back that I would need to immigrate to Israel and become a citizen. In the US, all you need [to join the American army] is to be a legal resident. So I didn’t join the Israeli army.

“My aunts told me that life in Israel was very difficult due to the weak economy. They also had a lot of funny stories, due to all of these different immigrants from all over the world, the cross-cultural misunderstandings.

“They were so proud of the Israeli military. They were there during the 1956 crisis.

“My aunts would also talk about the different Jewish families in Shanghai. By World War II, they were ‘old line,’ a very well established family in Shanghai, and would tell me about how the old line Jewish community came together to help the Jewish refugees who had come to Shanghai during WW II.

“The Japanese persecuted on the basis of nationality, not religion, despite pressure from the Germans.

“As difficult as life was for the Jews in Shanghai under the Japanese, it was so much better than in Europe.

“There is no Jewish community whatever in Iraq today. My aunts left me an old map of Baghdad where my grandfather lived in the 1900s, but my grandfather didn’t share with my mother what life was like in Baghdad. It was a thriving Jewish community at that time [before WW II].

“I’ve been involved in trying to get the archives [of Baghdad’s Jewish community] back [to the descendants of the Iraqi Jewish community].”

II. Ending Gridlock

[dropcap]“I[/dropcap] hope we’ll have a better debate,” says Coffman of the upcoming Congress.

“I hope we’ll get more done. We’ll be in negotiations with the White House; we’ll be able to get things to the president’s desk.

“I am part of this group, ‘No labels,’ to bridge the partisan divide.

“It’s a very impressive group: Newt Gingrich, Alice Rivlin, who was budget director under Clinton. An exciting group. Centrist types. We come with the understanding on both sides that we’ll need to compromise to give us a voice.

“We’ll focus on what we agree on, not on what divides us.”

Coffman outlines what he would like to get done in the upcoming Congress:

National issues

“Change the trajectory of spending. Lower the level of debt. That’s the biggest single issue.”

To Coffman, this includes cutting waste in the Pentagon and the Veterans Administration.

“Every dollar wasted is a dollar not spent defending our country,” he says.

“In Congress, everyone wants to focus on adding. Nobody’s talking about subtracting. I support the president who wants another [military] Base Realignment and Closure Commission [BRAC].

“The president believes we have a surplus capacity and it’s inefficient.

“I differ with him on one point. In a new BRAC, we need to take in overseas bases also. I’m going to fight for that. Overseas dependent housing and schools and commissaries — these are relics of the past.”

Coffman speaks with authority. He says he has more military experience than any other member of Congress. He’s been in four different branches of the US military and has had five overseas deployments.

“I am not among the heroes, but I do have more experience than anyone in Congress. I am the only member of Congress to have served in both Iraq wars.

“The Department of Defense is so bloated in its bureaucracy. We need to challenge all of our weapons systems.

“I look at the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] for some of my reform ideas. They rely on reserves. In Israel, the ratio is one active soldier for five reservists. In the US, the ratio is one to one. We need to move that ratio.

“IDF has a minimum service in active duty — in the US we don’t need that, although you do need time on active duty to be an effective reserve soldier.

“I want to reform the Pentagon legislation, the National Defense Authorization Act. We need to address cyber warfare to defend the country.

“We need new, updated technology.

“The DoD is woefully lacking in reforms to make it more efficient without in any way compromising its ability.”

Veterans Administration

Coffman believes that the main reason why the VA hospital at the Anschutz medical campus is still not done, even as it is $400 million over budget (so far), is VA management.

The VA is supposed to deal with veterans. It is incompetent at construction management, Coffman says. The new VA hospital’s construction manager should be the same governmental agency that manages most of the US government’s construction: the Army Corps of Engineers.

It has the experience and the expertise, Coffman says.

“I’ve been pounding on the table a long time. We know there’s a problem. I want to get the Army Corps of Engineers to supervise the project.

“The current contractor prevailed legally against the VA. The contractor now demands that the Army Corps of Engineers, not the VA, manage the project.

“The VA has botched up the construction of many other hospitals across the US. I head the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs. In 2013, four hospitals were over budget and years behind.

“I will introduce legislation to permanently strip the VA of construction authority.

“In Denver, one-half billion dollars have been wasted. That’s a lot of money — for one hospital.”

Local issues

• Grow Colorado’s aerospace industry.
• Make sure the Buckley Air Force base has the right mission to remain viable.
• Support research and development on the Anschutz medical campus.

III. The Iraq War

[dropcap]“The[/dropcap] second Iraq war was a terrible mistake. It was a horrible turn for the country. I want to make sure we never go down that path again.

“But our abrupt withdrawal from Iraq was a mistake. There were not yet enough government roots.

“[Former Iraq Prime Minister] Malaki pushed Sunnis out of the government. I worked with the Sunni population. Now, some of their areas have fallen to ISIS.

“The way back is more of a political solution. If Sunnis feel they have a place in the government, they will rebel against ISIS, just like they were against the Iraqi government.

“The average Sunni Arab is not a radical. Their boys and girls go to school together. They have strong families. They could care less about an Islamic caliphate.

“Al Qaida was ruthless to the Sunnis — that created an opening for us, and I think that could occur again.”

IV. Israel, Iran, Palestinians

[dropcap]“Israel[/dropcap] is our closest ally. Saudi Arabia is our closest Arab ally. It was a slap in the face to Israel and Saudi Arabia not to have them at the table for the nuclear negotiations with Iran. A terrible decision.

“They’re the countries most affected.

“I’ve been to Israel twice. In 2009, I met with the IDF chief of staff and others. I was told that the only way to stop Iran from getting a nuclear bomb is economic sanctions so tough on them that their leaders will have to make a decision: give up nuclear, or remain in control of the country.

“I was told: Go for the sanctions, and don’t let up.

“Obama threw the Iranians a lifeline to get them to the table. Terrible mistake.

“P5+1 — how ridiculous [to put the negotiations in their hands and] not to have the most impacted countries there [Israel and Saudi Arabia] — an insult.

“My worry is that if the negotiations fail, it will be hard to put back the sanctions system.

“Iran has anticipated a military strike to such a degree that a conventional strike would be very difficult. Only a nuclear strike would work. It would take Israel and the US together to develop a conventional strike.”

Coffman dismisses the idea that the solution to the larger issues in the Middle East depends on a solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

“In all my discussions in Iraq, formal and informal, never once did a single Iraqi bring up the Palestinian issue,” he says.

Coffman sees the US conduct of negotiations with Israel and the Palestinians as shamefully balanced. The US has raised the status of terrorists by having Israel negotiate with the Palestinians as if the two parties were equal.

One side is a state, says Coffman; the other side has sponsored intifadas and countless murders of innocents. Negotiations between these two parties should not be cast as negotiations between equals.

V. Election ‘14: ‘Aggressive’ Spanish

[dropcap]As[/dropcap] I entered Coffman’s spacious congressional office, he was “wondering why we won by nine points. Obama won this district by five points. Hickenlooper by three. Us, nine points? Why?”

Coffman attributes his recent, resounding victory, whose margin surprised even him and his staff, to consistently strong outreach to minorities.

His redrawn district is “extremely diverse,” he says: African American, Asian, Hispanic.

He illustrates by characterizing its newspapers:

• Aurora Sentinel, an English-language weekly.
• Two Korean newspapers
• The Intermountain Jewish News
• Five Spanish language newspapers

“I met with Koreans one day. They said they think the Republican Party is anti-immigrant. I spent the last two years reaching out to break that narrative.

“I attend as many African American events as I can.

“Hispanics — that’s a little different. The don’t come together as a community as much. There is no identifiable single Hispanic leader.

“I’ve been aggressive in learning Spanish. I was supposed to be in Mexico City this week for a Spanish tutorial that I paid for personally.

“But I couldn’t go due to the troubles with the VA hospital.

“I have a Spanish tutor two hours each week. I watch Spanish TV. I read a Spanish grammar book.

“I was in the first Spanish language political debate in the state, sponsored by Univision.

“I am so proud of doing that debate [with opponent Andrew Romanoff].

“It had a tremendous impact. After the election I was eating out and all the Hispanic wait staff was excited and wanted to have their picture taken with me.

“‘I voted for you. All my family voted for you!’ they said.

“The fact that I held a debate in Spanish — and am learning Spanish — was seen as a big sign of respect.

“My goal in the next election, in the next Spanish-language debate, is to be as good as Andrew Romanoff was the last debate.”

Copyright © 2015 by the Intermountain Jewish News