Hi! Alexandra Chandler is running for Congress in MA-3. She is a Russian-speaking lawyer with 13 years of experiencee at the Office of Naval Intelligence. She knows more about this than anyone running. I am her deputy campaign manager and wanted to share her recent statement with all of you. Settle in, it’s a long read but worth your time!
From Alexandra Chandler:
The events of the last several days are reflections of the incredible breadth and success of Russia’s effort to undermine our institutions and our place in the world.
The reaction to the most recent indictments against Russians by Mueller, the spectacle of the conduct of Members of Congress at the Peter Strozk hearing, and the President’s behavior with our NATO allies, especially the Germans and British— they are all interconnected. And they all have something in common— they all serve the interests of Moscow.
It is a jarring moment when Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein needs to urge people to view the indictment of 12 Russian military officers who hacked into Democratic email accounts and stole information on 500,000 U.S. voters as an attack on “Americans, not as partisans.” I couldn’t agree more with that Republican appointee, confirmed by the Senate for his position by 94-6. At any other moment in history, this would be the time for a President to show leadership from the top, and to heed his own Deputy Attorney General’s advice.
And yet, at his press conference with UK Prime Minister May today, the President again described the Mueller investigation as a “witch hunt,” and he lamented that it hurts the country and hurts our relationship with Russia. The White House statement on the indictments focused on their argument that the indictments somehow exonerate or vindicate the President or the Administration from allegations of collusion with the Russians.
It is important to remember how abnormal these actions are in the sweep of U.S. history. Other Presidents and White Houses have been self-serving and focused on appearances— all of them are, to some extent. But not like this, not at the expense of any regard for the recent and ongoing attack by an adversary government.
It would be bad enough if this behavior stopped with the Administration. But based on their behavior yesterday, certain Members of Congress have more performative outrage about the 1st Amendment and Hatch Act protected speech of FBI employee Peter Strozk (when many of them have used stronger language against the President) than they have outrage or worry about Russia’s ongoing attempt to undermine our institutions.
Like several Members of Congress, I also reject Strzok’s derision of fellow Americans as “ignorant hillbillies”— I’m not a name caller. But the damage caused to this country by Stzok’s poor choices of words are nothing compared to the millions of words of leaks, lies, and disinformation spread by Russia before and during the 2016 campaign. Some Members of Congress would seem to believe one can’t be opposed to both, or that Strzok’s choice of words somehow is of equivalent national interest, or that those words by Stzrok somehow undermines the entire ever-growing case against Russia— declassified intelligence reports and 191 criminal charges against 32 people and 3 companies notwithstanding. At least that is what I took away from their very made-for-TV monologues masquerading as questions for Strzok.
One of America’s greatest treasures is our non partisan career federal workforce. In other countries (like Russia) and in our own history, jobs in the national government are filled by patronage, are bought and sold, and above all, loyalty to the leader or ruling political party is paramount.
Within our government, people (including Strzok) may have their political preferences, but they are checked at the door. This may seem impossible to believe in the climate of 2018 outside the federal government, particularly in our national security agencies— but it is so. I have former colleagues I worked with closely for over a decade, and I have no idea what their partisan political views are, if they have any. Though by happenstance I do know for a fact that most of my greatest champions during my on-the-job gender transition back in 2006 were actually politically conservative.
Too many career politicians and political operatives can’t even imagine the mindset of people who can check partisan politics at the door in the name of a higher purpose. Which explains so much about how ineffective they have become. And it is part of why I am running for Congress.
By ignoring the Inspector General report finding that there was no bias injected into the Mueller investigation by Strzok, and holding up text messages as some sort of false proof of institutional bias within the FBI— those Members of Congress like Trey Gowdy and Louie Gohmert were sending a message to the entire federal workforce.
We can subpoena your text messages, too.
We can go after your personal political views, too.
Agree with the party in power, federal employees, or be silent.
Never mind that the Hatch Act protects the ability of Strzok or other career federal employees to have private personal political views and engage in certain political activity, never mind the First Amendment.
Given that the career federal employees in our national security, law enforcement, and foreign affairs agencies are often the ones who raise questions about the President’s efforts to confront our NATO allies and echo Russia’s positions and worldview time and time again— this attack on the nonpartisan career federal workforce not only undermines our government and institutions within the U.S. (to Russia’s benefit) but furthers Russia’s interests in a fragmented Europe and an America that is fighting against the rules and values-based post-WWII order America helped to build.
If elected to Congress, I will heed our Republican Deputy AG’s words, and serve as an American, not a partisan, first. The fewer Americans that Mueller finds were connected to Russia’s attack on our democracy in 2016, the happier I will be, as an American. However, just as federal employees check their politics at the door, I will put my happiness or sadness aside no matter what the results. Whatever comes next in the direct and indirect effects of Russia’s attack on us, I will use my expertise to educate the public, protect our federal workforce and other institutions, and to rally Congress to put aside photo-op politics and embrace its Constitutional role again. #MA3 #mapoli
Hi Lauren! Why was the Russians indictment released two days before the Trump/Putin summit? When Mueller has been sitting on them for four months? Does Alexandra think it’s the job of the intelligence community and the Special Counsel to steer American public opinion away from peace? Let us know what she says and thanks for posting!!
1. Mueller released the indictment to put a damper on Trump’s insane Russophilia and to put any insane agreements he might make in their proper context.
2. There may be other reasons directly related to the investigation such as increasing pressure on the people who dealt with the Russians.
3. There’s no law dictating when a Special Counsel should (not) announce indictments.
4. Mueller could be fulfilling his oath in defending the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, one of whom currently occupies the White House.
And…
Criticizing Mueller’s investigation in light of the happy horse@#$t the GOP morons put Strzok through this week… well, that’s rich, Seascraper.
I don’t know where you are getting four months, but the indictment itself is dated yesterday.
This information has been known for four months. A grand jury indicted them in February.
Over the last few months, Ms. Chandler’s campaign helpers have rolled out statement after statement about her bona fides on national security here on BMG and this latest one seems designed to profit from the Democrats’ new Russophobia. I will say again, at the risk of more ad hominem attacks by Chandler’s campaign people, that we do not need or want people with such resumes, for whom military and spy agency power will always be a familiar, and first, tool to be used when conducting or formulating foreign policy.
Election meddling or not, Trump’s openness to talking to Putin may be the only thing he’s right about. And when it comes to dealing with Israel and Russia Democrats have shown remarkably bad judgment over the decades. We ought to heed George Washington’s parting advice about amity and enmity with foreign nations.
“So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.”
But you seem to assume that experience in national security equals wanting to aggressively use those capabilities for the wrong ends. I say that having the expertise and actually knowing what one is talking about is just the antidote we need to someone who has no respect for that role and claims to be smarter than all of them despite no experience or training. Very often it is exactly the case that the way to beat someone who abuses their influence and expertise is to at least match that expertise, but use it for good. Here is what she actually says about national security (as opposed to what you assume she must believe based on resume alone). Please tell us what in this link you specifically object to.
There is a rational world where we judge candidates by their past actions and present viewpoints rather than make them scapegoats for entire swaths of the federal government. Using your logic, no member of the military or intelligence community could ever possibly have their hands clean and credibly run for office as a progressive.
This falls flat on its face. Using your logic, George McGovern would have been disqualified from running for the presidency as an anti-war candidate since he had served and was decorated for bravery in WWII as a pilot.
Lastly, we can be skeptical about using American power abroad and the extraordinary powers given to the intelligence community in the aftermath of 9/11 *and* be convinced by a preponderance of the evidence that Russia was interfering in our last presidential election *and* be convinced that Russia is a destabilizing and autocratic influence on Europe and the Mideast. These are not mutually exclusive things. Only in Glenn Greenwalds messed up head is this the case.
This would be a good analogy if George McGovern had run for president on the basis of his proficiency as a bomber pilot. I don’t remember his campaign that way.
There seems to be conflicting opinions among Chandler’s supporters as to whether Chandler’s experience makes her a better supporter of the intelligence agencies or a more effective adversary.
Both – a better supporter of the work of intelligence agencies and a more effective adversary to those who would use them for bad ends or dismiss their expertise.
This is one of those stupid lefty opinions that I’ll never understand. Twenty-first century Russia and Vladimir Putin are the greatest foreign threats to American democracy.
How Romneyesque
Romney’s 2012 comments on Russia look prophetic now. However, not talking never solved anything and I have not been among those calling for the meeting to be cancelled.
If we recall, I consistently argued on this blog that the pre-Trump Republican nominees had the better Russia policy than the post-reset, pre-Crimea Obama White House. Obama’s naïveté on Russia and putting his faith in Putin is right up there with his naïveté on McConnell and putting his faith in bipartisanship. It’s the height of irony that the latter kept him from being more aggressive about the former toward the end of the campaign. This should be a lesson for liberals that nation states still matter and history hasn’t ended.
James, I’m reading Timothy Snyder’s The Road to Unfreedom. I highly recommend it, though it’s disturbing. Snyder examines the “philosophers” who provided the thinking that is guiding Putin’s rhetoric and the specifics of his “political technologists” who are destroying the truth by polluting it with so much propaganda that people get tired of trying to figure it out. It’s not hard to see Trump trying to carry out a similar strategy in his own stupid way.
I’m just baffled by anyone who believes this codswallop. I suppose it’s the influence of Glenn Greenwald, who is smart, but more vain than smart, which makes him not smart at all. “Election meddling or not” — other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?
The idea that the current concern about Russia’s *very effective*, anti-democratic activity within the United States, is somehow motivated by “xenophobia” or “Russo-phobia”, requires an intentional blindness and deafness almost impossible to describe. You have to bite so many rhetorical bullets, throw out any concern for one’s fellow citizens and the notion of self-determination, to make this sound OK. Saying “everyone does it” does not make it OK. Trump’s active encouragement of it makes it an even different level of crime against country and democracy. Informed and alert constructive engagement with adversaries, even with strongmen and dictators, is a completely different thing than being an outright asset, as Trump brazenly delights in.
This attitude among some on the left is motivated by implacable hostility towards the DNC and Hillary Clinton: As if anything that harms them really can’t be all bad. That’s an ugly, ugly tic, which sacrifices practically every other priority we’re supposed to care about.
No thanks.
It’s pretty simple Charlie. You negotiate with your adversaries not with your allies. I can find 40 years worth of quotes from everybody from JFK to President Obama saying the exact same thing.
Problem is, Trump views Russia as an ally and Europe as an adversary.
Gee thanks for the primer, Bob! I honestly had no idea what diplomacy was, but now I’m all straightened out.
Allowing, and possibly coordinating the hacking and disruption of an American election, and then covering up for it on that adversary’s behalf, is treason, not “diplomacy”.
I know the difference, thanks so much.
You negotiate from a position of strength. Kennedy, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, and the other Cold War presidents had different ways of dealing with the Russians. None of them thought they were sitting across from a friend or someone they could trust unconditionally. None of them could be credibly accused of having the Soviets disrupt the campaign of their opponent either. None of them made promises without extracting concessions in return.
I criticized Warren and other Democrats on this blog for preemptively dismissing engagement with North Korea. I think negotiating a settlement with them building on the model and legacy of the Iran agreement is exactly the right approach. Similar models could work with defusing tensions with the Russians. That is not what this President is doing. Diplomacy does not mean giving the other side everything and asking nothing in return. That is exactly what he did with North Korea and the danger of what he could be doing with Putin.
I also do not recall the Cold War Presidents undermining British prime ministers to their press and elevating their domestic political opponents in the process. I also do not recall any of them openly questioning the purpose of NATO, publicly berating its members, or openly dismissing their defense capabilities and funding the same way this person has.
I am seriously concerned Putin might be tempted to engage his “little green men” in false flag operations in the Baltic’s to test NATO’s resolve and I am terrified how our government or our allies will respond. Why should they have Estonia’s back if they are unsure they will be backed by America? It creates a lot of instability in what should be an ironclad partnership.
I’m in the middle of the Ken Burns doc on Vietnam. I grew up in the shadow of the Iraq War. I get the lefts knee jerk distrust of the military and intelligence communities, not to mention, Cold War era alliances that were not always benign partners upholding human rights. This time it’s truly different. Russia under Putin is frankly more dangerous as a crypto fascist state than the Soviet Union ever was as an ideologically communist one.
“. . . but let us never fear to negotiate.” JFK.
Really? Putin is more dangerous than the Soviet Union ever was? I’ll let you hash that out with they guy on this blog who referred to Putin as a Paper Tiger.
If our elections and our democracy are really in jeopardy because of cyberhacking, , whether we talk to Putin or not really makes no difference, because there are literally scores of countries, not to mention non-state actors, capable of similar things.
There are lots of things worth talking about with Russia. Meeting with an adversary is never a bad idea.
Are we going to war for Crimea? Obviously not. It was a bluff and Putin called it. That’s the danger of habitually making loudmouth speeches.
Democrats’ negotiating is now so infected by Oprah-level moralism that Obama tied himself in knots. We’re giving him the silent treatment. So passive-aggressive. Are Democrats so naturally afraid of confrontation?
Trump just isn’t that style. He likes to fight and then sees anybody who will stand up as his equal. It’s really about matching power and I would think Democrats would understand that since you have all that Marxism in your beliefs.
Obama ignored Russia because he could. This year Russia has a $47B defense budget.
If not quite go to war we should have done something more strongly about Crimea. For one country to blatantly invade and conquer part of another should be universally considered beyond the pale. Not responding just encourages more of it. I don’t think Dems would understand it because of your Marxism strawman, but it does sound like your logic is Voldemort-esque: “There is no good or evil, only power, and those to weak to seek it.”
Trump has read the situation more clearly than any of his opponents at home.
We overstretched trying to get all the way up to Russia’s borders. Now we pay. Sanctions mean you won’t fight, everybody understands that by now. It’s a sign of your lack of resolve.
The rest of it is big talk and trying to get the Rs to fight among nest themselves. Fine w me. But John McCain is not president for a reason, and Trump did best in the counties that lost the most men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan.
” For one country to blatantly invade and conquer part of another should be universally considered beyond the pale.”
The Gazans will be happy to hear that, Christopher.
NIGYSOB
What does this point prove again? Every country kills people? Your moral equivalency argument is the exact same one Trump and his defenders make today to exonerate Putin’s many crimes against human rights. Quit with the what about ism and focus on the question at hand.
Did he or did he not interfere with our elections? If so, how? If how, how can we stop it from happening again? Should a President under active federal investigation and possible indictment for working with that leader really be the best person at the bargaining table? I have yet to hear a good answer from you on those questions that does not simply deflect the conversation to another false equivalency.
Russia, through a treaty agreement with Ukraine, had 2000 troops stationed in Crimea. Physical war wasn’t a possibility there.
Part of Russia’s genius was knowing that we couldn’t retaliate militarily. While we have been focused on a fruitless war on terrorism, Russia has been busy refining “hybrid war.”
We are experiencing a sort of Pearl Harbor with Russia, but one political party finds the attack to its advantage and doesn’t want to fight back.
Six 6’s Mark. The old assumption was that great power politics has ended and we only had to worry about non state actors getting the bomb. Even Obama repeated this fallacy repeatedly during the 2012 debate and his advisors believed it in the Final Year. He said as much in today’s speech.
Yet nationalism is coming back with a vengeance at a time when we have gone from being a bipolar world to a unipolar one squandered by Bush to a multipolar one again. The US is no longer a global hegemony, this make the Chomsky wing of the left happy, but not with Russia and China coming into the forefront instead. Not to mention regional hegemony like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran and North Korea. We are looking at global instability while our stabilizing institutional safe being allowed out by voters (Brexit) or Americans Presidents (NATO, NAFTA. WTO).
We better be willing to go to war for Estonia or NATO and the entire post-WWII order is kaput. Putin better understand we are willing to go to war for Estonia. Obama flew there and gave a speech assuring them he had their back, after this weeks performance, who knows what Trump is really going to do in that situation?
It is when the person meeting with that adversary is Donald Trump. That should be plainly obvious to you.
He’s a paper tiger from both a conventional and nuclear standpoint, far weaker than the Soviets were at the height of their strength. He is far more likely to miscalculate and go to war with us than they were since he is far more aggressive and uses assymetric means unavailable to them. I really think you are downplaying the capabilities his election tampering have shown.
Anyone else on this thread think that Putin is “far more aggressive” than the Soviet Union was? And Putin has no monopoly on the technology required to tamper with our elections As I just said, there are literally scores of nations with the same capability. I agree that Trump’s performance today was disgraceful, but pushing back at Putin won’t protect our election process.
The problem is that a lot of the people who are so horrified that Trump and Putin even met–those people loved Trump when he launched dangerous and ineffective missile strikes in Syria. There are people close to power in this country who want a shooting war, with Russia or with Iran. I don’t want a war, and I think that war is less likely the more we talk to our rivals and adversaries.
Anyone really care to crucify James for a few words in a comment? Instead, why not consider this classic: ” Meeting with an adversary is never a bad idea.”
“Crucify”? Because I question James’s outlandish assertion that Putin is “far more aggressive” than Stalin, Khruschev, or Brezhnev (who all met with US Presidents) ?
Mark, I think you’re projecting your own martyr complex on to James. I give him more credit than that and invite him to clarify.
James wrote
James may have overstated his claim by not specifying what “danger” he was talking about.
Domestically, he is absolutely correct in imputing the danger to our system of government and our nation by 21st century Russia, which has already made huge inroads into influencing and capturing our political system, The Soviet Union never came close to accomplishing the capture of a president or a political party.
There’s a debate to be had about the danger of nuclear proliferation, but why bother? So you can play NIGYSOB?
Particularly when you do the same thing in the same thread and then ignore it?
You said this yesterday:
After yesterday, you, of course, stand by your words. You’re playing word games with no legitimate purpose.
“Would you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?”
“I would,” Obama said. “And the reason is this, that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them — which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration — is ridiculous.”
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2008/may/21/next-defining-campaign-issue/
I’m with Obama on this one. “Ridiculous” is the right word.
Um, so..?
Obama said this in a campaign. He didn’t do it. It wasn’t an actual policy. Would he have gone in completely unprepared and left the United States worse off than he was before? Not Obama. His one major diplomatic accomplishment was Iran. It took years of planning and back channeling.
Give it up, man. Your intellectual dishonesty is evident. Your commentary existence is almost always a NIGYSOB Game : a subconscious game that individuals play between themselves in order to gain justification for acting out various negative feelings.
Obama was a cool and competent leader. For all your talk of having claims backed up by evidence, where on earth is your evidence Trump is capable of holding these conversations and bringing the peace?
Did any of them attack an American election or try to prevent the election of a particular candidate? Did any of them invade and annex a sovereign European state part of the Western alliance? Not since Stalin backed the Henry Wallace campaign have we seen actions similar to this by Russian intelligence. These agents are far more sophisticated.
Those Soviet leaders were constrained by an ideological prism that forced them to overcommit resources to foolhardy efforts like Angola and Afghanistan, the same way we got sucked into Vietnam. They were also winning ideological converts when they used Western double agents. Khrushchev ultimately backed down and gave up on arming Cuba. Brezhnev signed SALT I. Gorbachev ended the entire system. When has Putin backed down? What other global leader has been as consistently anti-American and has the global playing field tilt to his advantage the last decade? He is playing a long game.
Putin has no ideology other than pursuing power. That is far more dangerous than a communist who at has ideals about converting the planet to his cause. Putin does not seek converts, only subjects. Such a man is dangerous when left unchecked.
This is just bad history. During the entire cold war, many, if not most, Americans believed that there were communists subverting the country from the inside. No doubt a lot of this was cold war paranoia, but there may have been a germ of truth to it.
To ignore this just because you want to make Putin into some kind of unprecedented threat doesn’t advance your argument.
You could argue (using the “stupid lefty” argument ), that the threat of communist subversion was all paranoia. In that case we should guard against being paranoid again.
Again I think we can examine things on a case by case basis rather than indulging in your sweeping generalizations. I certainly will not lecture anyone who lived through bomb drills or the Vietnam draft that the Cold War was a more peaceful time than the present. I am not arguing that.
I am saying the danger was predictable. MAD ultimately stabilized the rivalry and worked to avoid war. It was a predictable bipolar world in two camps, and predictability leads to stability. There were plenty of miscalculations, paranoia, and poor decisions on both sides. They crushed Prague and Hungary, we crushed Chile and Iran. The latter resenting us to this day, with our modern talk of democracy and human rights ringing hollow to their long memory despite the unpopularity of the Imams.
I’m largely with your criticisms of our foreign policy past and present and the failures of our intelligence community. I also firmly believe from the evidence that they have not got this one wrong. I’ve seen with my own eyes the damage Russian cyber attacks caused to Georgian civil society when I served on the Regional Security Desk at State when that war went down without any warning. A war Condi Rice personally assured me would not happen since Russia was part of the global economy now. Underestimating Putin remains a bipartisan problem.
We squandered our unipolar moment under Bush and now live in a multipolar world. Modern Russia under Putin is far more likely to fall into war with the US since it is a power on the decline, not unlike Imperial Russia in a similar multipolar environment in WWI.
Putin knows he would lose a conventional or nuclear war to the US, which was not the case during the Cold War when the Russians always had the advantage in conventional forces in the European theater while their nuclear tech was better maintained allowing for a true second strike capability and MAD. Russia lacks those things now. So it will instead peel off Eastern Ukraine, install a puppet government in Georgia, and manipulate Western elections. Not just in the US but Germany, Poland, and France saw substantial interference in their last election too.
NATO allies deep in the heartland of Europe have fallen to elected authoritarian governments in the Putin mold. Austria, Hungary, Poland, possibly Italy. Nationalism is replacing pan-European values on the left and the right. So this milieu benefits Putin. Helping elect a similar ideologue in his greatest power rival is a bold power play already paying dividends. I am interested to see your evidence proving that this hypothesis is wrong, rather than exonerating Putin with past American wrongs.
James, thanks for avoiding the tourette-like insults of Mark Bail, but I think your technique for avoiding sweeping over-generalizations could use some work..
My evidence against your hypothesis is simply that I don’t see any huge change in our relationship to Russia. The Trump administration tried to get Russia’s help before the inauguration at the UN. Russia refused. Russia and the US continued to be more or less on different sides in Syria, and there were missile strikes and fighting (with considerable loss of life among Russian “mercenaries”. As Andrew Bacevitch pointed out in today’s Globe, the G7 and NATO are both still there despite Trump’s idiotic rants. (At any rate Trump is not the first American politician to attack NATO). Putin wanted the Iran agreement left in place and the US torpedoed it. US defense spending is way up and we are calling on Europe to vastly increase their defense spending.. Russia and the US were even on different sides in the breast milk versus formula dispute.
If a foreign country really did subvert our democracy and install it’s own Manchurian candidate, I would expect that person to slavishly follow whatever orders the foreign country gave. Do you see that situation today?
And as for disrespecting the intelligence “community”, I don’t care about Gina Haspel’s feelings.
Conflating capability with intention is intellectually lazy. You’ve consistently cherry picked and resorted to false equivalences to make your points in this argument. France has the capability to inflict nuclear destruction on the US, yet there is a reason we are not fearful of them the way we are about North Korea, which arguably has a weaker capability. This is because the regime is isolated and prone to making unpredictable moves in the past.
Plenty of hostile regimes have the capability to inflict cyber offenses against our electoral system, only one of them actually has and it’s Russia. Only one of them is being actively investigated for colluding with the incumbent President. If this were any other era in our political history we would already see the impeachment papers drafted. Unfortunately we are living in a hyper polar world and divided country.
Putin in his rhetoric and his actions has banked on the anti-imperialist legacy of the New Left and the Islamophobia and homophobia of the Alt Right to divide and conquer. For Pat Buchanan and Steve Bannon he’s the last vanguard of white Christendom left standing. For you and Glenn Greenwald, he’s the victim of an expansionist American foreign policy and a scapegoat for a lousy Democratic candidate. For me, since 2008, he has been one of the most consistent thorn in the side to creating a liberal world order willing to move past nationalism and embrace globalism.
You keep drifting away from the point, James. I don’t, and haven’t, made any claim for Putin. And I don’t make any claim about Trump’s competence. Clearly, he’s not competent. All I’m saying is that we are better off talking to other countries than not. the idea that we have to show our toughness by “holding them accountable” with missile strikes is crazy–literally crazy.
This Putin-Trump summit was about the worst possible meeting imaginable, but I will take it over our glorious missile strike in Syria last year.
Please quit arguing with straw men and relating unrelated things. I opposed the Syria strike, but I also do not see how it is related to Putin. If anything, it seemed to be choreographed with the Russians to avoid injuring their personnel or damaging their equipment. So I am quite sure Trump would not have done it without the green light from the Kremlin. It was useless kabuki theatre, that did nothing to save lives on the ground, and I said as much at the time.
Nobody is saying we should not talk to Putin. What we are saying is, until Mueller clears Trump, there is just no way we can trust that he has America’s interest at heart in these discussions. There are too many coincidences to list here about how he and Putin have mutually benefited from one another’s actions.
I want someone to negotiate from a position of strength instead of giving up major American priorities and historic commitments in exchange for platitudes about a new direction. Been there done that. Under Bush, under Obama, and even under Hillary. Trump is too compromised and incompetent to make a better deal than the more capable predecessors who got fleeced.
Don’t you think Trump is “negotiating” out of fear? More than a little bit?
Better that than launching missiles out of fear.
Which Trump already did. What’s your point here?
If anything, President Obama resisted great political pressure and paid a political price to stay out of Syria. That indicates his competence and restraint in foreign policy. Trumps impulsive Syria strike is exactly the kind of thing that proves he cannot be trusted to negotiate with Putin directly. If the Singapore Summit did not put the final nail in the coffin of Trump the outside disruptive genius, nothing will. He is winging it at best, actively colluding at worst.
Presuming “negotiating” is what Trump is doing. And presuming Putin is willing to negotiate rather than just play our president for propaganda advantage.
Things have gone Russia’s way in Ukraine, Georgia, Hungary, England, and the United States. We didn’t even know what was going on. Poland is having problems.
Russia can’t beat the West on our terms. Their economy is drained by the kleptocracy, but they may be able to bring the West down to its level of corruption. They certainly have our puppet president spouting the Kremlin line and doing a lot of damage to our relationships with Western Europe.
The (evil) genius of Russia is that sowing confusion and dissension can be ends in themselves. They are not necessarily looking to takeover countries like Georgia and Ukraine. Taking part of their countries is enough to keep them out of the European Union.
I do not disagree Charley, but the Democratic establishment made two categorical errors when dealing with this issue. The first was refusing to acknowledge Russia was a bad actor for the duration of the Obama presidency until he became the first European leader since Hitler to annex another European state. The second was how quickly Democrats, particularly those closely associated with the failed Clinton campaign, used Russia as a crutch to excuse their own failures. This makes it too easy for the anti-Hillary majority hobbled together from the left, the right, and independents to latch onto the idea that this is a nothing burger rather than the severe threat to American sovereignty that it is.
No, this does not excuse McConnell for his October surprise nor current Congressional Republicans for abandoning their party’s recently unshakable resolve to contain Russia out of partisan loyalty to their impish leader. That said, I do think had the Democrats focused exclusively on cybersecurity rather than sour grapes and scapegoats, they wouldn’t have made it so easy for Fox and friends to discredit the entire thing. A majority of voters, including some who oppose President Trump, now believe this investigation is purely political and that is deeply troubling and certainly a categorical error the Democrats did not have to make.
Kudos to Mark Warner and Richard Burr for running a non-partisan investigational and quietly keeping their eye on the real target: Putin. I wish they did more to publicize their efforts. What we have is partisans on one side screaming “collusion” while the other screams “fake news” and voters in the middle tuning out of the affair. A serious 9/11 Commission style investigation into the failures that lead to the breach that proposed solutions to safeguard future elections would’ve been the way to go. Let Mueller handle the criminal probe, Congress should focus on making our government secure for the future.
I think the Hillary campaign was the victim of a massive, history-altering crime, and I can’t blame them for complaining about it. Those folks aren’t perfect, but let’s not deflect from the gravity what happened.
I’m not, I am arguing they are deflecting from the bigger issue by making it about her. Which plays right into the rights narrative about this investigation, which frankly, is the worst attack on our country by a sovereign state in quite sometime.
I would be interested in Chandler’s observations on the danger to national security when American legislators are paid by groups with links to foreign governments to travel overseas.
That’s a good question. One all the candidates should answer.
In general I find myself stunned and disappointed by those on the left who pretend not to know the difference between real negotiation, and the kind of treasonous lickspittling that Trump is engaging in. There are professionals in the field who absolutely do know the difference:
NATO survived Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev. Will it survive this presidency? Open question. That’s not a good look for us.