Ethereal
03-06-2017, 02:48 PM
Democrats Now Demonize the Same Russia Policies that Obama Long Championed (https://theintercept.com/2017/03/06/democrats-now-demonize-the-same-russia-policies-that-obama-long-championed/)
Glenn Greenwald (https://theintercept.com/staff/glenn-greenwald/)
March 6 2017, 7:37 a.m.
ONE OF THE most bizarre aspects of the all-consuming Russia frenzy is the Democrats’ fixation on changes to the RNC platform concerning U.S. arming of Ukraine. The controversy began in July when the Washington Post reported that “the Trump campaign worked behind the scenes last week to make sure the new Republican platform won’t call for giving weapons to Ukraine to fight Russian and rebel forces.”
Ever since then, Democrats have used this language change as evidence that Trump and his key advisers have sinister connections to Russians and corruptly do their bidding at the expense of American interests. Democratic Senator Ben Cardin, the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, spoke for many in his party when he lambasted the RNC change in a July letter to the New York Times, castigating it as “dangerous thinking” that shows Trump is controlled, or at least manipulated, by the Kremlin. Democrats resurrected this line of attack this weekend when Trump advisers acknowledged that campaign officials were behind the platform change.
This attempt to equate Trump’s opposition to arming Ukraine with some sort of treasonous allegiance to Putin masks a rather critical fact: namely, that the refusal to arm Ukraine with lethal weapons was one of Barack Obama’s most steadfastly held policies. The original Post article that reported the RNC platform change noted this explicitly:
Of course, Trump is not the only politician to oppose sending lethal weapons to Ukraine. President Obama decided not to authorize it, despite recommendations to do so from his top Europe officials in the State Department and the military.
...
Democrats, in their feverish desire to destroy Trump, have taken to demonizing the exact same policy that Obama took with regards to Russia, namely, his steadfast refusal to arm shadowy western-Ukrainian militants in the fight against nonexistent Russian aggression.
In fact, as Greenwald has pointed out before, many of the same policies (https://theintercept.com/2016/09/09/whats-behind-obamas-ongoing-accommodation-of-vladimir-putin/) Obama took with regards to Russia, Trump has continued. Comically enough, Democrats were mocking Mitt Romney in 2012 for his characterization of Russia as our number one geopolitical threat:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdVQu18OWko
So in 2012, it was a ridiculous, preposterous notion for Romney to concern himself so with Russia. And throughout all of Obama's presidency, his willingness to accommodate Russia in certain things was largely ignored by Democrat partisans. But now that Trump is president, Russia has become the greatest threat in the history of man, with Hillary Clinton even going to so far as to compare him to Adolf Hitler (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2014/03/05/hillary-clinton-says-putins-action-are-like-what-hitler-did-back-in-the-30s/?utm_term=.dbd1c2e0555b).
Obviously, this has nothing to do with principle, ideology, or any genuine national security interests. It's all about political opportunism in response to their crushing electoral defeat. That is why so many so-called "liberals" and "progressives" are aligning themselves with neocon extremists like John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio, Bill Kristol, etc. Nobody is immune to their epic temper tantrum, not even Obama.
Glenn Greenwald (https://theintercept.com/staff/glenn-greenwald/)
March 6 2017, 7:37 a.m.
ONE OF THE most bizarre aspects of the all-consuming Russia frenzy is the Democrats’ fixation on changes to the RNC platform concerning U.S. arming of Ukraine. The controversy began in July when the Washington Post reported that “the Trump campaign worked behind the scenes last week to make sure the new Republican platform won’t call for giving weapons to Ukraine to fight Russian and rebel forces.”
Ever since then, Democrats have used this language change as evidence that Trump and his key advisers have sinister connections to Russians and corruptly do their bidding at the expense of American interests. Democratic Senator Ben Cardin, the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, spoke for many in his party when he lambasted the RNC change in a July letter to the New York Times, castigating it as “dangerous thinking” that shows Trump is controlled, or at least manipulated, by the Kremlin. Democrats resurrected this line of attack this weekend when Trump advisers acknowledged that campaign officials were behind the platform change.
This attempt to equate Trump’s opposition to arming Ukraine with some sort of treasonous allegiance to Putin masks a rather critical fact: namely, that the refusal to arm Ukraine with lethal weapons was one of Barack Obama’s most steadfastly held policies. The original Post article that reported the RNC platform change noted this explicitly:
Of course, Trump is not the only politician to oppose sending lethal weapons to Ukraine. President Obama decided not to authorize it, despite recommendations to do so from his top Europe officials in the State Department and the military.
...
Democrats, in their feverish desire to destroy Trump, have taken to demonizing the exact same policy that Obama took with regards to Russia, namely, his steadfast refusal to arm shadowy western-Ukrainian militants in the fight against nonexistent Russian aggression.
In fact, as Greenwald has pointed out before, many of the same policies (https://theintercept.com/2016/09/09/whats-behind-obamas-ongoing-accommodation-of-vladimir-putin/) Obama took with regards to Russia, Trump has continued. Comically enough, Democrats were mocking Mitt Romney in 2012 for his characterization of Russia as our number one geopolitical threat:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdVQu18OWko
So in 2012, it was a ridiculous, preposterous notion for Romney to concern himself so with Russia. And throughout all of Obama's presidency, his willingness to accommodate Russia in certain things was largely ignored by Democrat partisans. But now that Trump is president, Russia has become the greatest threat in the history of man, with Hillary Clinton even going to so far as to compare him to Adolf Hitler (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2014/03/05/hillary-clinton-says-putins-action-are-like-what-hitler-did-back-in-the-30s/?utm_term=.dbd1c2e0555b).
Obviously, this has nothing to do with principle, ideology, or any genuine national security interests. It's all about political opportunism in response to their crushing electoral defeat. That is why so many so-called "liberals" and "progressives" are aligning themselves with neocon extremists like John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio, Bill Kristol, etc. Nobody is immune to their epic temper tantrum, not even Obama.