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Who is Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman?
To ask this question is forbidden. As I was told by one of my Ricochet colleagues the other day, “you do not publicly convict a decorated soldier for espionage either. Especially to save your own rear end. Stop telling me how much you love the troops, Donald. You are full of it.”
I’ve seen a lot of that sentiment. No one respects the uniform more than me but I also know that the uniform is not a cloak of holiness. Like the rest of the society it draws from, the US armed forces has its share of people whose actions do not represent the uniform in a good light. The Disciplinary Barracks at Ft. Leavenworth is full of them.
So who is Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman? Let’s ask someone who knows. This was posted on Twitter by Lt. Col. James Hickman, US Army (ret.):
I know LTC Alex Vindman from a Combined US-Russian exercise called Atlas Vision 13 in Grafenwoher, Germany. He worked with the Russian Embassy and I was assigned to the JMTC (Joint Multinational Training Command), within USAREUR (US Army Europe). He worked coordination with the Russian 15th Peacekeeping Brigade, and I was in charge of all Simulations planning, as well as assisting the USAREUR Lead Planner as the Senior Military Planner.
The following account of LTC Vindman’s words and actions are completely accurate to the best of my recollection and have been corroborated by others. We interacted on several different occasions throughout the planning cycle, but it was during the actual execution of the exercise, that we had an issue relevant to his recent testimony. As stated earlier, Atlas Vision 13 was conducted at JMTC in the VBS2 (Virtual Battle Simulations 2) Classrooms for Simulation. Vindman, who was a Major at the time, was sitting in one of the classrooms talking to the US and Russian soldiers, as well as the young officers and GS employees about America, Russia, and (President) Obama. He was apologetic of American culture, laughed about Americans not being educated or worldly, and really talked up Obama and globalism to the point of uncomfortable.
He would speak with the Russian Soldiers and laugh as if at the expense of the US personnel. It was so uncomfortable and unprofessional, one of the GS employees came and told me everything above. I walked over and sat within earshot of Vindman, and sure enough, all was confirmed. One comment truly struck me as odd, and it was with respect to Americans’ falsely thinking they’re exceptional, when he said, ‘He [Obama] is working on that now.’ And he said it with a snide ‘I know a secret’ look on his face. I honestly don’t know what it meant, it just sounded like an odd thing to say. Regardless, after hearing him bash America a few times in front of subordinates, Russians, and GS employees, as well as, hearing an earful about globalization, Obama’s plan, etc…I’d had enough. I tapped him on the shoulder and asked him to step outside.
At that point I verbally reprimanded him for his actions and I’ll leave it at that, so as not to be unprofessional myself. The bottom-line is LTC Vindman was a partisan Democrat at least as far back as 2012. So much so, junior officers and soldiers felt uncomfortable around him. This is not your professional, field-grade officer, who has the character and integrity to do the right thing. Do not let the uniform fool you…he is a political activist in uniform. I pray our nation will drop this hate, vitriol and division, and unite as our founding fathers intended!
Note: The above was written over the course of 11 Tweets and has been edited for readability.
Published in Military
LTC is too low to catch the notice of a sitting President, frankly. And as Bob said: these people are everywhere.
I was in the Regular Army as an enlisted man from 87 to 91, and ran in to more than a few America haters.
And not just politically motivated. Vindman was born in Ukraine and is now testifying about Trump threatening to hold up aid to … Ukraine.
The cigar is very convincing, but is he basically just throwing shade about V’s tone?
Double trouble in this case: two Lieutenant Colonels. Or should that more properly be two Lieutenants Colonel? The mind boggles.
I worry that the military academies have been taken over by the left and the social justice types.
Have you seen this letter ? https://americanmilitarynews.com/2017/10/exclusive-former-west-point-professors-letter-exposes-corruption-cheating-and-failing-standards-full-letter/
He wrote the letter in light of recent media coverage of 2nd Lt. Spenser Rapone, a West Point graduate and infantry officer who recently came under fire for his public advocacy and support of socialism and communism, and being an “official socialist organizer” of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
The broader conversation that has been taking place in the military community now is what exactly went on – and goes on – at West Point that a graduate such as Rapone would feel so strongly empowered to apparently be a socialist and/or communist and spread these doctrines.
Heffington says the Military Academy turned a blind eye to Rapone’s behavior and his “very public hatred” of West Point. While this doesn’t mean leaders at West Point defend Rapone’s views, it means that West Point’s senior leaders “are infected with apathy: they simply do not want to deal with any problem, regardless of how grievous a violation of standards and/or discipline it may be,” Heffington writes.
Rapone was recently discovered to be a communist propagandist and “official socialist organizer” of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) after he posted a photo to Twitter of himself in support of professional football player Colin Kaepernick, where he is seen in his West Point uniform at graduation holding his cap that contains a piece of paper that says “Communism will win.”
The Honor Code is in trouble.
I offer this as another example of warfighters who turned into bad political animals. https://twitter.com/mccaffreyr3/status/1190838191244201985?s=21
The WaPo article that Brit Hume retweeted referring to a comment Vindman made that was then retweeted by Twitchy, is about as partisan as an article can get. It should be used by all to teach people how the media has become propaganda. https://twitchy.com/brettt-3136/2019/11/02/brit-hume-spot-the-huge-fallacy-in-the-washington-posts-profile-of-lt-col-alexander-vindman/
I will reiterate here my position is that the coming 2020 election campaign should have a strong focus by Republicans on the fact that many Democrats, including some vying for POTUS are essentially communists, even if they are not Communist Party members. Part of the campaign needs to be an education on this issue since many , if not most, voters know little about it. The danger of progressive Communism, one step beyond our ever present political establishment failures, is why we have President Trump. MAGA
That’s because he’s outside of the “club.” And the club is pretty darn small. Read any obituary of these presidential advisors: “Joseph B. Bureaucrat, long-time (Party Name Here) activist and advisor to X President’s, has died aged 95…” They cycle in, cycle out, go work at a think tank and have a book ghost-written for them, and then cycle back in again.
And they do this almost seamlessly because they’re stuck in the theme song to the old “Patty Duke Show” – They laugh alike, they walk alike, at times they even talk alike – you can lose your mind… They’re like the aforementioned Sir Humphrey, in that they come to believe consensus and groupthink equals wisdom. Then Trump comes along and he sees thing differently and it’s Katie-bar-the-door. He thinks he can govern the country! Just who in the hell does he think he is?!?
The “Tell” which gives away Vindman as a bit actor in this well orchestrated (D)/Lawfare political hit job is:
If Vindman is so adamant Trump is guilty of something untoward in his ostensible “bad” quid pro quo with Ukraine, then why in God’s name would Vindman have absolutely nothing to say regarding the blatant, well documented, self admitted “really bad” quid pro quo between then VP Joe Biden and Ukraine … and how does Vindman never mention the bribe the Ukraine paid VP Joe Biden through payments to Hunter Biden.
Vindman was used because of his military war vet Purple Heart credentials. In the (D)/Lawfare production the real whistle blower, Eric Ciaramella, is too politically tainted as a (D) operative to be used as a witness for public consumption.
https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2019/10/30/whistleblower_exposed_close_to_biden_brennan_dnc_oppo_researcher_120996.html
Is it only worth blowing whistles if the alleged malfeasance involves Trump as the malfeasor?
Again this can only makes sense if it is just one more in a series of (D)/Lawfare political hits.
We are not obligated to change our mind every time Trump changes his mind.
He says he always hires the best people. He hires people and then he complains that the people he hired were a bunch of failures. Jeff Sessions, John Bolton, Michael Cohen, James Mattis, John Kelly.
Are we to believe that Trump continually hires “losers” to fill his administration and then when they get in arguments with him he tells us that they were “losers” all along? He just kept it from us prior to that?
At some point we have to consider the possibility that Trump wasn’t being straight with us when he said that he always hires the best people.
Trump hired Omarosa Newman from reality TV. Omarosa quit and called Trump a racist. Great. So, you still think Trump always hires the best people?
Did someone here say that Trump always hires the best people?
Did someone here say they believe Trump when he says he only hires the best people?
Possibly, and in a civilian setting, that would be a reasonable interpretation. But I think an officer at a fairly senior level in the armed forces of a country has an obligation to deploy a “tone” that isn’t derogatory or unsupportive towards the country that he’s a fairly senior level officer in the armed forces of. (That may even be in the job description; I’m not sure.)
If we accept the testimony of yet another Lieutenant Colonel (of course, I always pronounce that in the British way, willy-nilly) that that is what Vindman did, then I think his reprimand, whether official or not, and from wherever it came, was deserved.
Regarding the LtCol status: I’ve had it explained to me that it’s the highest officer grade level at which one should expect the occupants to perform in a strictly non-political fashion; and that if one is interested in further promotion, one better learn how to play the game.
Not sure there is much else to say.
Sir Humphrey convincingly tells us of the dangers when the wrong type of people get power (no not George Will, the deplorable).
I think John Yoo had it right. Lt. Col Vindman simply confirmed what we already knew: The appropriated aid to Ukraine was held up (but only for a little while) and Trump wanted Ukraine to look into some of the Biden buzz.
Sure. We can decide which Lt. Col we want to believe. But it doesn’t matter. Vindman’s testimony seems to be right in line with what we already knew.
The facts are basically out. The line we will hear over and over again from Republicans is:
Most Republicans aren’t going to say, “Yep. It was a perfect phone call.”
I don’t have any problem with it.
I think Trump should have left the Biden name out of the conversation and limited it to a suggestion to look into any involvement from Ukraine players mixing with American players to affect the 2016 election campaign. Use of Biden’s name, since he is a 2020 candidate, provided a premise whether valid or not.
In a way they are failures, insofar that if you seek to subvert the President’s policy desires and substitute your own then you’ve failed at the job requirements. In the words of Bush 43 there is only one “decider.”
You go back to the days of the transition in November/December 2016 and you’ll read a lot of opinion pieces on how people should join the government in hopes of “managing Trump.” Sorry. You’re not there to “manage” the President. You’re there to manage and implement the President’s policy decisions. Anything else is a failure. If you can’t do that you move on.
The point of the previous exchange was to point out how much of America’ foreign policy has become almost mindless in its creation and execution in the post-WWII era. From Truman to Carter it was “containment” of the Soviet state. Then came Reagan and his “we win, they lose” strategy. That, too, was fought tooth-and-nail. “Realpolitik” demanded that we accept the bipolar world of Communism vs the West.
Now we’re right back at. They don’t use the word “containment,” but that’s what it is. “The Global War on Terror” and “we’ll fight them over there instead of in our streets” is just another endless strategy of containment. There’s absolutely no indication that’s even realistic. If it was TSA wouldn’t exist.
This is the one I like. Nothing really prevents those who join us from becoming winners as well.
In the interest of fairness, do we know that he didn’t have bone spurs? Maybe I missed it, but has a doctor come forward to verify that the military people didn’t believe it? The boys I knew who tried to get out of Viet Nam for medical reasons were not taken at their word.
It would help the (D)/Lawfare impeachment case if, the supposed “bad” quid pro quo was a completed transaction.
An example of a completed “bad” quid pro quo would be when Joe Biden held out the quid, fire the prosecutor investigating Burisma or the $1 Billion of US loan guarantees goes away, and then the Ukrainian government providing the quo by firing the prosecutor.
In the most current iteration of the (D)/Lawfare impeach Trump schemes Trump actually gave the Ukrainian government the quid $400 million in aid, while never receiving any quo, an investigation of the Biden’s, from the Ukies.
Not unlike the Weissmann Report throwing out obstruction of justice hypotheticals for justice which was never obstructed, the latest (D)/Lawfare impeachment gambit offers an ostensible “bad” quid pro quo which only lacks a completed transaction where the two parties both accept the quid and the quo.
Jeff Sessions never said that he wanted to be Trump’s Attorney General in order to manage Donald Trump. Jeff Sessions endorsed Trump before Super Tuesday, during the primaries.
During the Obama administration, Jeff Sessions made several impassioned speeches on the Senate floor criticizing the way Obama would sign unconstitutional executive orders on immigration.
Sessions said that Obama’s own people should have stood up to the president and said, “No, you can’t do that. This is unconstitutional.”
But Trump hired Sessions anyway, despite being warned that Sessions did not think that an Attorney General should simply be, as Eric Holder was, “The President’s Wingman.”
Trump wanted his AG to be his wingman. Sessions recused himself and Trump has continually bashed Sessions.
Sessions is just one example. There are others. You’ve got John Bolton. You’ve got Jim Mattis.
If you are in the Trump White House and you see Trump behaving and talking stupidly as is the norm with him, of course you are going to try to manage him.
When Trump tells the public that we are getting out of Syria and says, “The Kurds weren’t with us at Normandy,” that’s just idiotic. On that basis we should bail on just about everyone except the Brits and the Canadians.
When you have an idiot as President, of course the people around him are going to try to manage him. What the heck else are they going to do, besides resign (as Jim Mattis eventually did).
When you do this you probably reduce the number here who want to continue the conversation with you because the statement makes an implication about us as voters who support Trump in the same way Clinton’s use of deplorables did. What is your intent?
So many NeverTrumpers go one about this. He is alone in DC filled with Deep State types. Who do you think advised his hiring ? Reince Priebus and the other members of the GOPe. Trump knows real estate and New York City. Voters supported him because he WAS an outsider. He thought, like many Americans that the federal government was largely honest. It isn’t. It is a criminal enterprise devoted to rewarding insiders and making politicians rich.
But it did fit perfectly with Bill Clinton’s 1998 treaty with Ukraine.
The Treaty is one of a series of modern mutual legal assistance treaties being negotiated by the United States in order to counter criminal activities more effectively. The Treaty should be an effective tool to assist in the prosecution of a wide variety of crimes, including drug trafficking offenses. The Treaty is self-executing. It provides for a broad range of cooperation in criminal matters. Mutual assistance available under the Treaty includes: taking of testimony or statements of persons; providing documents, records, and articles of evidence; serving documents; locating or identifying persons; transferring persons in custody for testimony or other purposes; executing requests for searches and seizures; assisting in proceedings related to restraint, confiscation, forfeiture of assets, restitution, and collection of fines; and any other form of assistance not prohibited by the laws of the requested state.
Signed, President Bill Clinton
One can call Trump an idiot and still vote for him. Heck, what was one to do? Vote for Hillary? Let’s be realistic.
I spent years examining military recruits. Bone spurs are specifically tested for with heel walking. Since most recruits these days are trying to GET IN to the military, we disqualify them on the basis of that test. In Vietnam era exams, I expect that lateral foot x-rays were used.
Heavy TDS there. I will keep that in mind next time I see a post of yours.
Had Sessions done what Barr has done, we would have saved three years and $40 million.
I am always amused by this line of argumentation. If the President is an idiot, why is he where he is and you are where you are?
Jeff Sessions folded like a cheap lawn chair almost immediately. There was obviously a large cabal inside of the Justice Department out to undermine the President and it took less than a week to get Sessions to self-emasculate through recusal. Compare that to William Barr today.
As for Sessions on the unconstitutionality of Obama EOs, there is no equivalence here. There has been nothing to suggest that these people have resigned over unlawful orders. There were policy differences. Again, if you see yourself as being there to make policy as opposed to influencing and carrying out policy then run for the damn office yourself.
Jim Mattis, God knows I would let that man lead my son into battle in a heartbeat, but when faced with reversing social engineering in the military he slow walked the President’s order (and campaign promise) and spent his own political capital foolishly. Bolton is part of the recycling club, a man determined to protect the policy he helped initiate in the Bush 43 Administration instead of helping the current President change course.
This is not difficult stuff. They are of the Executive Branch but they are not the Executive.
Did you ever consider that Trump might have benefitted from loans from his wealthy father and later benefitted from inheriting money from his wealthy father?
Do you think Trump could pass a first semester calculus exam?
I give you this: He read that column that the Kurds weren’t with us at Normandy and he thought it sounded good. So he repeated it to the public.
You don’t need to think that Trump is smart in order to prefer him over a Democrat.
I’d vote for a pair of old sneakers over a Democrat.