Alexandra Chandler spent 13 years as an analyst and leader at the Office of Naval Intelligence. She is currently running for Congress in MA-3 and is the only candidate running with the insight and knowledge plus the skills to handle the current crisis that this Administration has put us in. I am her deputy campaign manager and these are her words:
As a citizen, former Intelligence Community professional, and a candidate for Congress, I share the frustration, anger, and shame for the spectacle of a US President who would not stand up for the integrity of our democratic institutions, and who would not stand up for the dedicated nonpartisan public servants in our Intelligence Community and law enforcement agencies. Instead, in his words and his omissions, the President stood with President Putin, whose hands still bear the blood of the the innocent civilians of Syria, Eastern Ukraine, Crimea, Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, and the UK.
I can offer you hope and a call to action. Even at this time of night, there are Intelligence Community analysts, FBI and DOJ agents and investigators, and State Department career diplomats who are working hard to defend America’s security, our democratic institutions, and to preserve our alliances and our role in the world. Whatever Donald Trump says, they keep working. Whatever he tweets, they keep working. However he dishonors them, however he disrespects them— even threatens them— they keep working in private dignity that he can never touch.
How fortunate we are, to live in a country which has such people who dedicate their lives to our public good. But their work is not enough. They need our help. They need your help.
Insist that Congress lead in this moment of crisis. Call your representative and either thank them for standing up for our national security professionals, their work at home and abroad, and our alliances— or insist that they start standing up now. If they are on oversight committees related to national security, ask them to proactively work to protect the nonpartisan civil servant experts and to provide whistleblowers maximum protection. Ask them to consider a motion to censure the President for this failure to honor an element of his Oath of Office— to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. Russian interference in our right to elect our own government is an attack on a core Constitutional guarantee, and it would be a useful show of bipartisan unity in advance of potential Russian attacks on our 2018 election for Congress to move beyond scattered statements of concern, however articulate some may be. Demand increases in the International Affairs budget funding the State Department and development efforts, enabling them to recruit and retain more working level diplomats— as the President makes their job more difficult nearly every day.
And in addition to working with your current representatives, elect a Congress who will do all of the above, and who will stand up to Putin and stand with our allies, and understands how to do so from Day One. The President has done a lot of damage to our national security. The more expertise Congress has to mitigate the damage and to start to rebuild, the better off we will be. If elected, I would be proud to be a part of that effort in Congress.
But whatever you do— don’t dismiss this as just words, or mistake this as normal. Nor should you despair. Today is a shameful day. With your help, and that of dedicated patriots and public servants, we will have better days again. #MA3 #mapoli
Maybe after the analysts apologize for missing 9/11, lying about Iraq’s WMDs, and getting us sucked into a Middle East quagmire, then the intelligence community can take the time to pity themselves that Trump questioned them.
Perhaps you should recall that it was the Bush administration that insisted on doctoring, “sexing up” the intelligence for Iraq WMD — that the intelligence consensus did *not* justify those claims.
Your Republicans completely own that one — not the “intelligence community”. Nice try.
Does this candidate have opinions on anything other than the veneration of national security and law enforcement, with complete amnesia about our own role in destroying the Middle East? With each of her campaign manager’s posts, I find Chandler less suitable for Congress.
Does this commentator have any opinions other than the condemnation of national security service personnel who happen to be one of ten candidates running for the CD-3? With each of their posts I find them less interesting as a commentator here. Maybe some disclosure in a separate post about whom they are supporting and why is in order?
She’s working for Alexandra Chandler’s campaign.
I think he meant if uncaffeine has anything to disclose since s/he seems to have quite the grudge against AC.
Uncaffeine prefers to remain anonymous, but these are some things gleaned from his/her professionally done blog:
Hi Uncaffeine! Yes, Alexandra Chandler has opinions on a number of issues- and knows what needs to be done to improve them and the ability to assess different our military budget and see where funds can be redistributed without negatively affecting our national security.
Her complete platform can be found here: https://www.alexandrachandler.com/issues/. I have posted recent comments of hers on these particular topics because she is an expert in that field and because they are timely. A progressive voice from the Intelligence community is a somewhat unusual thing and I believe it is important that people hear her perspective.
I have to credit Lauren and Andrea that their responses to the trolls have been nothing but thoughtful and diplomatic. That is to their campaign’s immense credit.
The US doesn’t necessarily have allies, we have situational allies. In only a generation things can change quickly, my father shot and killed Germans and could have been shot himself. We’re supposed to help protect Germany now, but they’re buying their gas from their menacing neighbor?
We’re lucky the Russians hacked in and exposed how weak our informational infrastructure was (and continues to be) in an effort to influence a relatively unimportant event. It was a personal vendetta against Hillary (the leaks also helped Bernie). Did it elect Trump? Who knows, There is no record of Russians pulling ballot levers.
If we had been in a shooting war with any of our many adversaries and the Russians (Chinese, N Koreans) sowed discord and hacked actual infrastructure the damage would have been far worse. The intelligence community needs to concentrate on hardening US systems.
We will have elections in a few months and another presidential in a couple years. We may drift “left” , we may drift “right”. We are not in any sort of existential crisis. We need to realize our adversaries and our “allies” are going to do what benefits them and steer our own ship on our own path.
There is ample evidence that the Russians have tried, and are able to hack into election systems.
This is ongoing — it is happening right now, as DNI Coats — and many others — are at pains to point out.
We have both allies that are more or less through thick and thin and those that are more ad hoc, both of which are valuable.
I really doubt that the intelligence community wants to “provide whistleblowers maximum protection.” Genuine whistleblower protection would mean protecting even those you disagree with (such as Edward Snowden).
With regard to Russia — We deserve to know every detail of Trump’s Russia ties. Having said that, I think Russian meddling had just as much to do with Putin’s fear that Hillary would seek “regime change” against him. When there were protests against Putin, Hillary openly hinted at this. Not to mention, she had a history of supporting this sort of thing in Iraq and Libya.
Hillary reflects the “you’re either with us or against us” attitude of American foreign policy. When it comes to Russia, we need to rethink this. Because Russia will never be our friend. But that does not necessarily mean it is in our interests to fight a new cold war. It’s a bigger discussion that we should be having, because we are already ankle-deep in a cold war of our own making (How many Americans even know that we have given NATO commitments to countries like Latvia and Estonia?).
Once again the anti-anti Putin critics are falling into his trap by equating our just actions to contain his regimes expansionist agenda with our unjust actions to change the regimes of other sovereign states. One is an act of defensive realism, the other an act of offensive idealism. The latter concept has been entirely discredited by Iraq and Libya. No one is proposing that for Russia. We are in fact, asking they respect our sovereignty and the sovereignty of neighboring states.
Containment is not the same thing as rollback-John Foster Dulles and George Keenan would certainly recoil at the suggestion they believed the same thing. This is not about liberating areas under Putin’s control, this is about denying him the opportunity to extend his control to other sovereign states as well as to interfere with the sovereignty of our own nations election system.
Hillary was a big proponent of our actions in Libya and continued to defend them during the campaign. Given a similar opportunity in Russia, I am sure that she would take it (or less dramatic opportunities to destabilize the regime). This plays to one of Russia’s greatest geopolitical concerns — internal instability and revolution.
Russia’s other main geopolitical concerns have also been challenged by the US:
2- Wanting a nuclear deterrent against the US… We recently installed anti-missile systems in Eastern Europe.
3- Wanting buffer states on the North European Plain… We pushed NATO to Russia’s border.
Since the fall of the USSR, we have continued to challenge Russia’s key strategic interests. We should not be surprised, when they respond in kind.
The first point is just over the top Hillary bashing. I have been highly critical of her policy stances and campaign strategies on this blog, but this idea that she is a bloodthirsty war monger was always overblown on the left and exploited by Putin’s army of trolls to divert gullible voters in swing states to Jill Stein.
The 2nd and 3rd points depend on your perspective. Those shields were installed after Putin began modernizing and deploying land based interceptors. We also asked Russian permission at the time and they offered zero objections. (https://www.nytimes.com/1997/05/15/world/russia-agrees-to-nato-plan-pushed-by-clinton-to-admit-nations-from-eastern-bloc.html)
Integrating all of Europe in the post-Cold War world was the goal. Russia turned down offers to join the EU. Clinton mulled offering both Yeltsin and Putin NATO membership, but the talks never materialized due to Russian paranoia. This is one of the enduring myths of the anti-anti Putin left, and another commonality they share with the alt-right which admires him for his homophobia and Islamophobia. That he is somehow the victim of Western aggression.
Tell that to the people of Georgia, Crimea, and Eastern Ukraine. Tell that to the Chechens. Tell that to the Poles. Tell that to Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians paranoid about his intentions. They asked to join, the US offered to help.
You don’t need to consider Hillary a “bloodthirsty war monger” (your words) to consider her support for military intervention ill-advised.
And if Hillary had the opportunity to “Gaddafi” Putin, don’t you think she would take it? Or at least take some more limited steps, to unseat him? Look, we’d all cheer it… but we shouldn’t expect Russia to feel the same way about it.
With respect to Eastern Europe, Russia sees us as interfering with its vital security interests, going back hundreds of years, whereas we have none at stake. We can have a limited role, but Russia is always going to be 10x more interested in the outcome. We need to be smart about this, especially if our chief interest is peace.
No, and you continue to draw false equivalency between protecting sovereign democratic states America is treaty bound to defend with regime change.
Americans thought that in 1939 when Poland was invaded and annexed by the Germans, sad to see that selfishness come back today. We remain the leader of the free world and are obligated to protect democracies from authoritarian governments trying to illegally annex them.
Not everything is Poland in 1939. And there is nothing “selfish” about wanting to limit the use of military force.
Not everything the US does is a rush to use military force either. I am talking solely about soft power and a defensive campaign to shore up our treaty allies. I am not arguing that military force should be directly used against Russia.
I am arguing they have already indirectly used force against the US, our allies, and our interests in the region. Not to mention our election systems.
Two wrongs do not make a right. American hubris and hypocrisy in Chile, Iran, Guatemala, Vietnam, and Iraq do not justify Russian hubris and hypocrisy today. Failed American interventions in the past do not discredit present American efforts to block Russian interventions today.
I cannot be clearer about this. We are talking about a prevent defense here, any comparisons to regime change or Cold War era quagmires and coups are apples to oranges. This is about continuing the most successful and enduring multilateral alliance in modern history. This is about honoring our alliances. Liberals used to agree on this. Now some are apparently content to put America First.
It’s nice to disagree with someone who is actually thoughtful and informed, Couves.
When it comes to foreign policy, and sometimes domestic policy, there’s a knee jerk assumption by liberals and the Left that we are to blame for what other people and countries do. It’s true our actions have consequences, some of which are bad, others of which are unintended, but this assumption is faulty:
The oligarchs chose Putin to succeed Yeltsin, as described in Timothy Snyder’s The Road to Unfreedom, and to legitimate his power, a series of bombings in 1999 killed hundreds of Russian (probably carried out by the KGB\GRU) was blamed on the Chechens who likely had nothing to do with them. Along with a propaganda campaign, vote fixing, etc,, Putin came to power.
The assumption that Russia’s foreign policy is a result of NATO expansion shortchanges Russia’s agency and casts the country as a victim. Snyder points out that the Russians have studied fascist philosophers to justify their foreign policy, particularly their incursions into Ukraine. Russia’s foreign policy is first and foremost domestic policy.
Russia has had some form of police state since czarist times. It shouldn’t come as a surprise. The KGB\GRU and Russian mafia were the only two institutions that were well-organized and funded. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that they are running the country now.
Mark put it into better words than I have. I do think Bob Gardner has a point that the threat is different from the Soviet Union, and it is an apples to oranges comparison. I think the reason that Putin poses an arguably greater threat to the US at the present than the Soviet Union did for much (though not all) of the Cold War is because his foreign policy is an extension of domestic politics.
The domestic support for Putin is very high. I do not doubt he would win a free and fair election against credible opponents (who he always jails or fines in real life). The Kremlin is obsessed with polls and the majority of Russians seem willing to endure economic privation for a return to national greatness (something we may be seeing when the Trump tariffs start hurting Middle America the most).
Fascist regimes thrive on a state of permanent war to keep their citizenry docile and activated to fight. The state of permanent war with the West, with domestic enemies, and with the former satellite states are used to drum up the ratings so to speak for his regime.
Our response should be to give every aid requested of our NATO allies, arm the Ukranian military to ward off the Russian backed insurgency, and continue to push for sanctions. Hillary may have (wisely in my view) been more aggressive than Obama on these fronts, but it is doubtful she would have pushed for regime change against a nuclear power Her instincts were wrong in other theaters, but she deserves more credit than that
Ukraine is a good example of how doing the arguably “just” thing (selling arms to the Ukrainians) would not accomplish anything, and perhaps even add to the death toll, because no amount of arms will allow them to stop the Russian-backed insurgency. (And all Putin needs is an insurgency, to keep Ukraine from joining the EU or NATO.) If we understand that Russia considers this a vital national interest (keeping Ukraine as a buffer), and is willing to expend a lot of lives and treasure for it, then it is easy to predict the consequences of US arms sales. Miscalculations and misunderstandings, with regards to a country’s vital interests, are what can lead to dissipated American power, or worse.
And again, there are no vital US interests at stake here, not even close… unless and until we launch an “Operation Ukranian Freedom,” at which point, anyone who questions it is considered selfish and/or un-American.
We in the US are pretty lucky having a historically easily defended land mass from sea to shining sea. We’re also fairly young as a country and any atrocities by one Indian tribe wiping out another were not recorded. Russia has been around a lot longer.
They have been invaded over the years by the Germans, French, Poles, even the Swedes took a turn. The arbitrary geographical lines that denote countries have always been fuzzy and particularly in that area. A book was written shortly after WWII. “Why they behave like Russians” by John Fischer gives some accounts of the atrocities suffered by the Russians. Stalingrad will always be remembered, like our 9/11 on steroids.
I don’t think the attack on the school in Beslan was staged by the KGB to give the Kremlin an excuse to project more power in the region. When the Soviet Union fell apart Russia was still standing. In the blink of an eye (historically speaking) the west was at the real Russian borders promising to fight to the death for these “new” countries.
We don’t need a modern day Archduke Franz Ferdinand dragging us into WW3. Let the fuzzy lines get a little clearer, exert a little economic pressure (again I wonder about Germany and the gas pipe), and prepare our military for the worst.
Yes, a lot is explained by Russia’s geographic challenges: https://youtu.be/HE6rSljTwdU
We have the luxury of having secured our vital strategic interests. We’ve been widely successful in securing our financial interests as well, introducing “Washington Consensus” economics in one country after another. As empires go, we’re pretty much as benign as it gets. But it’s easy to forget, that our actions often look self-serving and threatening, to those who are not Americans or liberal democrats (which of course applies to Russia, among others).
There is no vital interest at stake for the US to preserve the EU and NATO? To keep Ukraine intact? I think there is. I would be genuinely interested to hear why there is not.
The EU can’t even keep their own members happy unless you think the Brexit vote was rigged. The Ukraine, there have been scores of different rulers since Catherine the Great sent some farmers there. The people in part of that area even voted to re-join Russia, that vote may have been rigged, but I don’t want US soldiers fighting for that area which has historically fluid borders and rulers.
Ukraine is a mess. If they were to join NATO, we would own that. It’s obviously not in our interest, unless you think we have a vital interest in fixing every country’s problems.
We responded to the Crimean situation appropriately — with sanctions. But it’s not worth military conflict and certainly not with Russia.
It seems like we agree — Russia’s interests, and their often brutal methods of pursuing them, have not changed much.
I will echo Marks comments that this has been a thoughtful and productive disagreement. One of the major reasons not to invade Iraq was that it completely squandered American leverage, credibility, and enthusiasm to intervene in places that were far more relevant to our national security.
So I am not even angry or disappointed in couves or Bob’s skepticism. We have been down similar dead ends before. This time it truly is different and the Munich comparisons are analogous and not hyperbole.
Saddam never attacked the US or its allies after the first Gulf War, Vladimir Putin has repeatedly. Presidents who cared about the country failed to deter him, it is incredibly dangerous to think what Presidents in bed with him are thinking and doing.
But did you notice that “sources ” now claim that Iran is preparing for cyber war with the US. Where does it stop?
If true, it is one of the many reasons unwinding the Iran Deal was a mistake.