The
Dangerous Precedence Of The Hunt Against Flynn
... And Trump
By Moon Of
Alabama
Kicking
Flynn out of his office has hurt Trump. His
standing is diminished. The efforts against
Flynn, mainly by the "deep state" in the
intelligence agencies, were designed
to change Trump's declared foreign policy aims.
They worked. Yesterday the White House
spokesperson
said:
President Trump has made it very clear that
he expects the Russian government to
deescalate violence in the Ukraine and
return Crimea.
Today
Trump
tweeted:
Donald
J. Trump Verified account @realDonaldTrump
Crimea was TAKEN by Russia during the Obama
Administration. Was Obama too soft on
Russia?
4:42 AM - 15 Feb 2017
That is
a position Trump had not preciously taken.
"Return Crimea" is a no-no to any current and
future Russian government. If Trump insists on
this the prospective détente is already dead.
Several
writers along the political spectrum point out
that this show of raw power by the "intelligence
community" is a great danger.
Damon
Linker
in The Week:
The
whole episode is evidence of the precipitous
and ongoing collapse of America's democratic
institutions — not a sign of their
resiliency. Flynn's ouster was a soft coup
(or political assassination) engineered by
anonymous intelligence community
bureaucrats. The results might be salutary,
but this isn't the way a liberal democracy
is supposed to function.
...
In a liberal democracy, how things
happen is often as important as what
happens. Procedures matter. So do rules and
public accountability. The chaotic,
dysfunctional Trump White House is placing
the entire system under enormous strain.
That's bad. But the answer isn't to counter
it with equally irregular acts of sabotage —
or with a disinformation campaign
waged by nameless civil servants toiling
away in the surveillance state.
Robert
Perry
at Consortium News:
Flynn’s real “offense” appears to be that he
favors détente with Russia rather than
escalation of a new and dangerous Cold War.
Trump’s idea of a rapprochement with Moscow
– and a search for areas of cooperation and
compromise – has been driving Official
Washington’s foreign policy establishment
crazy for months and the neocons, in
particular, have been determined to block
it.
...
The neocons and liberal hawks also hated
Flynn because – as director of the Defense
Intelligence Agency – he oversaw a prescient
2012 analysis that foresaw that their
support for the Syrian insurgency would give
rise to “a declared or undeclared Salafist
principality in eastern Syria.”
...
Flynn’s resignation and its acceptance by
Trump also prove that these tactics work and
that “tough-guy” Trump is not immune to
them.
...
The so-called permanent government of
Washington and its complicit mainstream
media – what some call the Deep State – have
taught Trump a lesson and have learned a
lesson, too.
They now can be expected to redouble their
march toward war and more war, ironically
with progressives and leftists in tow.
Justin
Raimondo
at Antiwar:
Flynn
was in the crosshairs of the War Party
because he’s the most prominent of those
around Trump who advocated for détente with
Russia. Also, his somewhat loopy belief that
Islam, per se, is a pernicious political
ideology rather than a religion, made him a
natural enemy of the pro-Saudi faction
within the intelligence community, which had
long worked with Riyadh to, among other
things, overthrow the government of Syrian
strongman Bashar al-Assad.
...
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The Flynn resignation is just the beginning.
As one Politico writer put it, it won’t stop
there. They’ll move on to new targets, and
they won’t rest until they’ve bagged their
real target: the President of the United
States
Eli
Lake
for Bloomberg:
[F]or
a White House that has such a casual and
opportunistic relationship with the truth,
it's strange that Flynn's "lie" to Pence
would get him fired. It doesn't add up.
...
A better explanation here is that Flynn was
just thrown under the bus.
...
Normally intercepts of U.S. officials and
citizens are some of the most tightly held
government secrets. This is for good reason.
Selectively disclosing details of
private conversations monitored by the FBI
or NSA gives the permanent state the power
to destroy reputations from the cloak of
anonymity. This is what police
states do.
...
In the end, it was Trump's decision to cut
Flynn loose. In doing this he caved in to
his political and bureaucratic opposition.
Nunes told me Monday night that this will
not end well. "First it's Flynn, next it
will be Kellyanne Conway, then it will be
Steve Bannon, then it will be Reince Priebus,"
he said. Put another way, Flynn is only the
appetizer. Trump is the entree.
Trump
will now cave in on foreign policy: on Russia,
on Syria and everywhere else the borg
demands it. He has been put "on notice" and will
either do as he is told to do or he will be the
prey in an even bigger hunt.
It is
alarming that the so-called left part
of the U.S. policy is lauding the "deep state"
for this open attack on the elected government.
They are now justifying the methods that will
one day be turned against themselves. Why do
they fail to see this?
The views expressed in this article are solely
those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect the opinions of Information Clearing
House.
