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Removing Vindman
One of the benefits of being retired is that I have a lot of time to follow world events. One of the drawbacks of being retired is that I have a lot of time to follow world events. I honestly think I may have spent too much time in the last five months watching and reading about the whole Ukraine mess. I think I understand the chronology and have a pretty good understanding of the motivations of the actors involved.
Today, LTC Alexander Vindman got reassigned, his brother removed, and Amb. Sondland fired. Immediately and reflexively, LTC Vindman became a martyr to some on the left. But, as I like to do, I quote Uncle Joe Biden, “Come on, man.” Some call it a purge. But how on earth can President Trump ever rely on Vindman as a member of the National Security Council staff?
Beyond the evident truth that Vindman thinks he is a policymaker, rather than a policy advisor, how can his advice ever be devoid of suspect motives? Imagine some crisis or policy meeting in the situation room and the principals look across the table and see Vindman. Could they ever suspend their doubts about his contributions? I say this even acknowledging that whatever he says there may be appropriate and entirely correct. He went outside his chain of command to report a phone call in which his superiors saw no wrongdoing. He testified about his disagreement with the elected official’s policy. His history can’t be put aside, so he has to go.
I spent almost forty years working in the far less contentious world of television production. If I ever disagreed with a producer about a replay or a visual effect, when there was time the good producers would listen to my objection and take it into account. But the decision was theirs, not mine. If I continued to object or took it further, his job wasn’t in jeopardy, mine was. The thing about live sports production that’s exciting is that you have seconds to do it. The production crew has to mesh to get it right instantly. There’s no time for debate. There’s probably not an employee anywhere that hasn’t sometime felt he knew better than his boss. But a subordinate has to know his position in the chain of command.
I knew where I stood. Apologists for Vindman may not understand how he, rightly or wrongly, could never be trusted again.
Published in General
Again, sorry for the distraction, but sometimes, as my brothers can attest, the synapses fire in strange and unexpected ways. I find things amusing often in the most serious topics. Just can’t help it.
Interesting article. Sounds well reasoned. I’d like to hear some real time pushback, a real debate. There’s always at least another side to any story.
Also, two bits really got my hackles up and initiated my skepticism protocols:
I’m not sure what he thinks is being claimed that has been proven false, but the second part seems like exactly what Trump, Trump’s team, and those of us in the trenches have been arguing.
Then there was this “without evidence” unlikely statement:
Serious statements of wild speculation and accusation like that really get me to doubt all of the other stuff I thought sounded reasonable that was relayed to me in the same tone and manner.
Even now, of course, a big chunk of the Democrat Party is essentially Communist. How can they be worried about Russia? Russia is a nuclear power but not a land war threat to America, certainly not an economic threat, and I suspect we can match them in cyberwar. The anti-Russia stance only makes sense to me in terms related to the 2014 coup in Ukraine.
Paul Manafort had done a lot of work in Ukraine for those leaders who were ousted in the coup, so when he took over the Trump campaign, that DNC operative Chalupa got immediately with the Ukraine Ambassador to the United States to generate opposition to the Trump campaign so it is the Obama/Clinton segment of the Party that is anti-Russia (mainly related to Ukraine).
I always must contend with the kinds of reservations you have expressed. I think most of those at the linked site are left of center and more attuned to Democrat Party positions than to President Trump. Ray McGovern is one of these I have known for over forty years. I agree with him on only a few policy matters but I think he tries his best to act honestly and patriotically. But, yes, you need to assess the positions expressed in this article carefully. I think some very significant stuff has been going on in Ukraine and maybe Trump is after it.
I also remember at the time starting to hear, from “our” side, the whispers and rumors about this guy Paul Manafort who I had never heard of before. I thought it was weird then, and in hindsight it all makes so much more sense. I suspect, hope, that by the time this is all over and all investigations are complete that it will make even more sense. The Swamp might not be deep but it is certainly wide, and I suspect there are so many people in government, journalism, entertainment, and academia caught waist deep in it.
Alexander Vindman was reassigned.
Big Effing Deal.
He should be arrested and court-martialed. He attempted to remove a superior officer by releasing classified data. I’m no military guy, but I’ll bet a big amount that there are rules against conspiring to remove a superior officer and releasing classified data, and that those rules carry the potential for jail time.
I ran my own business for 25 years and can honestly say there is no way I would have kept an employee who undermined what I was trying to do within or without. If you have a genuine disagreement about something, take it to the boss and present your reasons. The boss just might agree with you and make changes, or thank you for your opinion and decide to keep things as they were. But, to openly criticize you to others and undermine what you are trying to accomplish and still expect to keep your job? No way José !
That should be on a bumper sticker!
“If you pull out the stopper and the sink doesn’t drain, you have to use the plunger . . .” Love it
These actors were not only reviewed on Glen Beck’s program and deemed questionable in the whole “scheme of things” but also someone posted a story about someone in the military who knew Vindman and corroborated that he made some very un-American remarks in the service, demoralizing his staff and was called out.
Obama manipulated the system to get appointees Civil Service status in the DOJ. It is filled with them.
Trump was more susceptible because he probably assumed the Civil Service were loyal Americans.
I actually think China will be the defining issue although China and coronavirus might be dealing with that now.
The Pappadopolis book, which is worth reading, makes a point that he was very interested in energy policy and wanted to see the Israeli gas field connected to Europe via a pipeline that avoided Turkey and connected via Greece. When he met Alexander Downer, he noted that Downer was very hostile to his ideas of avoiding Turkey. The alleged Israeli who gave him $10,000 in cash as a “consulting fee” was also very interested in his pipeline ideas. The FBI was looking for the cash when they arrested him without warrant in Dulles airport. There is another thread to be unraveled. Turkey is involved.
What happened in 2014 was a Russian puppet, Viktor Yanukovych, was removed from office by unanimous parliamentary vote after civilian protesters seized control of the government offices in Kiev. An interim president was appointed and a scheduled presidential election held earlier than scheduled. It’s worth noting that the interim president (who was head of the Ukraine parliament when appointed) was not a candidate.
Russia called it an illegal coup, but many in the Ukraine and elsewhere thought the 2010 presidential election was the real coup, with a runoff suspected of large-scale vote rigging. Yanukovych’s pro-NATO/EU opponent was jailed a year later on “corruption” charges and held until the 2014 revolution. The move was unilaterally condemned…yes, even Russia apparently thought it was bad.
Ukraine’s recent history is just messy, and much more so than might otherwise be thanks to Russia. As for Major Sjursen, he seems to have an axe to grind with everyone, and everyone is wrong except for him. I would explore any topic he writes about on your own before weighing his opinion. Just my two cents.
Yes. It is extremely rare that twin brothers would work in the same office in the military. The twin, LTC Yevegeny Vindman, was on loan as a lawyer, had an office across the hall from his brother, and was in the loop of his brother’s insubordinate actions, according to his brother’s testimony.
He may also have been the leaker on the Bolton book, but we are not going to get that information unless the Senate or U.S. Attorney Durham chose to make it public.
The twin lieutenant colonels cannot be “fired,” as in struck from the government employment rolls. They must be accorded the same process as any other officer in the U.S. military, in accordance with the UCMJ and applicable administrative regulations.
This reminds me of a famous cartoon:
Let’s be clear here. Putin’s Russia, like Stalin’s Russia is an aggressor and falsely asserts a right to control its neighbors to a degree that makes Moscow supposedly feel safe. Russia, the United States, and Britain all signed a deal to protect the integrity of Ukraine’s borders as then defined. That deal was in return for Ukraine giving up all of its nuclear weapons, left over from the Soviet Union. We all know this.
There must be many people who think that was a bad deal besides Putin. Countries make plenty of bad deals that fail to hold up. We just went through a process here where we had a number of National Security, State Department Executives and Ambassadors, and Intelligence Operatives who consider themselves part of a group that forms an interagency consensus on foreign policy. I happen to think that has in fact been happening and I am hopeful we will see it end along with the wars it has led us into. Just because we all know the above happened doesn’t make it a good thing.
Jay Nordlinger’s interview with Nina Khrushcheva (the granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev) is worth listening to and provides an interesting perspective on Putin, Yeltsin, and democracy in Russia.
Trump also went in thinking that Comey and FBI were loyal Americans too.
It’s well established that after the USSR fell the US pledged that NATO would not be expanded to the east. This may well have been the outgrowth of the US believing in its own propaganda. The myth was that Yeltsin was somehow a proto-democrat or pro-democrat who would turn Russia into a liberal democracy which would sit still while its formerly state owned assets were looted and the money sent out of Russia. The Clinton campaign operation openly interfered with the Russian election to help ensure of Yeltsin’s election.
The facts that when Putin took power he turned out to not be a Western style liberal democrat and that he brought the looting under some degree of control became an excuse for the US to renege on this pledge.
Fast forward to today. A former field grade KGB officer runs Russia (with high but possibly crumbling popular approval) and has for many years; meanwhile in the USA, the heads of the CIA and FBI seem to have colluded in a disinformation campaign run out of the Obama White House to affect the course of the presidential election which then became a slow motion coup involving the US secret police agencies and (at least) the State and Justice Departments, which collaborated to remove the elected president from office.
One of the allegations used to justify this is that Trump was collaborating with Putin who malevolently wanted to cast doubt on the integrity of the US election process so that in defense, the US’s secret police agencies had to promulgate the defeated candidate’s disinformation in order to discredit the results of the election.
The real target of this attempted “regicide” is not the President but the sovereign power in the US: We the People of the United States.
Disagree. No twin brothers in the Department of the Air Force you say?
I served with both of them, most of my career (the B-52 community is relatively small) awesome dudes.
Now if you mean the same office, I might could go there.
“Department” might be too strong, given the size of federal departments. But definitely not when their boss or grandboss is the same, or where one might supervise the other. It was a bad idea with JFK and RFK, and it hasn’t gotten better.
The only speculation I heard was that he was responsible for leaking John Bolton’s book excerpt to the NY Times. If that’s the case, then yes, he was a security risk. If.
That may be coming. https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/02/08/too-big-to-jail/
As a person who has researched this three year fiasco; including the ridiculously false 2016 Russian hacking/interference narrative: “17 intelligence agencies”, Joint Analysis Report (JAR) needed for Obama’s anti-Russia narrative in December ’16; and then a month later the ridiculously political Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) in January ’17; this timing against Assange is too coincidental.
It doesn’t take a deep researcher to see the aligned Deep State motive to control Julian Assange because the Mueller report was dependent on Russia cybercrimes, and that narrative is contingent on the Russia DNC hack story which Julian Assange disputes.
This is critical. The Weissmann/Mueller report contains claims that Russia hacked the DNC servers as the central element to the Russia interference narrative in the U.S. election. This claim is directly disputed by WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, as outlined during the Dana Rohrabacher interview, and by Julian Assange on-the-record statements.
Long post but worth reading. The Russians did NOT hack the DNC server,
Andrew McCarthy’s dawning realization that the DOJ he gave years of loyal service to, and the FBI he respected, were engaged in a coup based on lies was painful to read.
Can they be assigned to a combat patrol in Afghanistan?
It wasn’t easy to follow all of Obama’s foreign policy moves. Are you sure Obama knew what you have expressed above? I agree with what you have said above. I also can see that Russia and the residents of Crimea and the Donbass area have common interests. I suspect there are many underlying aspects as well, some related to the looting by the Russian oligarchs that seems to yet be having its effects in Ukraine. It looks as if some of that is spilling over into America.
The US, Britain, and Russia were the parties to the agreement for the Ukraine getting rid of the nuclear weapons. Were any other European nations there to help Ukraine? When questions are raised about VP Biden insisting on the firing of Ukrainian Prosecutor Shokin, those supporting Biden’s action refer to an established consensus of other countries supporting, maybe even pushing, for Shokin’s ouster as part of the plan to combat corruption. I have heard this claim over and over but never any background that establishes it as fact. President Trump used as part of the basis for his phone call with President Zelensky that other European countries needed to provide help to Ukraine in addition to America. There is so much bad behavior by Obama Administration officials and Democrat politicians, including setting up Manafort for investigation and prosecution by the Mueller/Weissmann probe that might have been established to avert attention from Ukraine and direct it toward Putin. There’s lots to look at. The people of eastern Ukraine are the losers here.
Thanks for the comments on the post.
A couple of observations:
Figuring out motive isn’t always easy. Some comments do seem to make a case that there are geopolitical or ideological undercurrents driving the events of the recent past. I, however, think we should start by realizing that a lot of this turmoil is driven by people seeking money or power. A number of the actors, Hunter, Manafort, any oligarch, rather transparently are in it for the money, the dosh, the lolly. Others, Putin especially, people like the Clintons less directly, are in in it for the power, knowing that the money will follow.
The only true ideologues in this story just might be people like the Vindmans, beavering away behind the scenes, and the House Dems, convinced they are the ones to save us all from ourselves. The problem with ideologues is that they will always go too far. History and graves teach us that.
On a lighter note, our dad and his identical twin brother both worked for the same companies twice in their aerospace/defense careers, both finishing as top execs at Lockheed Shipbuilding, Seattle. Dad was vice president of marketing, Uncle Jack chief project manager/engineer. Dad sold the ships, Jack built them. These were big ships from icebreakers to submarine tenders to landing ship, docks (LSD). So I guess I have to come down on the side that twins can work together, but they were building ships, not trying to drive foreign policy. BTW, the twins married sisters, but that’s another story.
Your Dad and Uncle had very important jobs and responsibilities. They were not working for the Intelligence Community of the USA government. I see a distinct difference.