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About Me
- John Craig
- Virtually everyone who knows John finds him completely tactless and insufferably opinionated. He sees himself as refreshingly honest. That said, this blog is still an excellent way to kill time while putting off work. If you're a newcomer, you might find browsing through the older posts an amusing waste of time as well. John is the author of "Holy Bible Part II: Heaven" under the pseudonym John Morgan.
11 comments:
And I'm seeing articles comparing this to Watergate. I'm just not seeing the parallel(s).
As for all the leakers - is there nobody in these organizations willing to come forward? I would think the Trump administration would be looking for people to fire (drain the swamp) and could reward those who provide factual, irrefutable evidence of wrongdoing within organizations.
- Ed
Ed --
Yeah, I saw that too, wasn't it Dan Rather who said that? What a moronic stuffed shirt that guy was.
The problem with large organizations like the CIA is there are lots and lots of people who are just entrenched there, and have been there for years, and who have their own little personal fiefdoms, and all of whom have dirt on each other. So the minute one person starts throwing dirt at others, he knows he can expect to get hit with the same. So people just hunker down and protect their jobs and it's a hard if not impossible culture to change. I'd love to see that swamp drained too, but it's hard to imagine that Trump will be able to do it.
Obama appointed Flynn Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, which he headed for two years. Then, according to Wikipedia, he set up his own consulting firm and started whoring for foreign governments, including Turkey's. It sounds like Flynn's only loyalty is to himself and his bank account.
Mark --
That could well be, though it would hardly make him unique in DC. And what else do guys like him do after their service? He spent most of his career in Army intelligence, and deployed to both Grenada and Afghanistan; generally, guys who are interested in money first don't go into the military.
Also according to Wiki:
"According to former DIA official W. Patrick Lang: "Flynn incurred the wrath of the White House by insisting on telling the truth about Syria ... they shoved him out. He wouldn't shut up."[33] In an interview with Al Jazeera, Flynn criticized the Obama administration for its delay in supporting the opposition in Syria, thereby allowing for the growth of Al Nusra and other extremist forces: "when you don't get in and help somebody, they're gonna find other means to achieve their goals" and that "we should have done more earlier on in this effort, you know, than we did.""
He may or may not have been right in his analysis of the situation over there, but I have a hard time faulting a guy for being outspoken, and for being critical of entrenched bureaucracy, which is one theory (espouse din the article linked above) as to the real reason all that stuff was leaked.
It's puzzling why the Obama administration thought overthrowing Assad of Syria would result in anything other than calamity. They had the prior recent examples of Iraq, Libya, and Egypt where Saddam, Qaddafi, and Mubarak were overthrown, yet they persisted in trying to bring down Assad, for some reason expecting a different outcome. It doesn't say much for Flynn that he too believed in the mythical moderate, democracy-loving Muslim eager to Westernize this country.
Mark --
True. Obama seemed to be very enthusiastic about the Arab Spring back in 2011, and helped the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, as you point out. In retrospect it should have been called the Arab Nightfall, since it's basically brought the Dark Ages back to what had previously been stable countries. Muslims as a rule don't seem to be capable of -- or even want -- a stable, human rights-respecting democracy. The only country in that region which has a large, educated middle class capable of that is Iran, and they had their last election stolen from them, or at least it appeared that way.
Which brings us back to one of the US's biggest miscalculations (fueled by the neo-cons; I remember reading the articles so scholarly and convincing, at the time): starting with W Bush we ran with the idea that if democracy were instilled in Arab countries previously ruled by strong men (many of them somewhat bellicose) then moderate, peace loving regimes would emerge, and we'd all sing kumbaya......
The Palestinians elected Hamas.
The Egyptians elected the Muslim Brotherhood.
The other countries where the US toppled the strongman leader are currently failed states.
The US has the blood of hundreds of thousands of Arabs on their hands. Though cultural and religious differences with the West also fuel hatred - can anything fuel that fire more than the US destroying country after country in the Middle East, with associated death, destruction, massive economic loss, disruption, and mass migration?
The US did accomplish one thing: we've weakened the military capability of almost every Arab country hostile to Israel.
And the way Trump is now talking (despite his campaign rhetoric against US led Middle East wars, and AMERICA FIRST), we could be well on the way to knocking over the final domino: Iran.
- Ed
USA Today reported in 2014 that a 3-star Army general with 35 years of experience gets a pension of $169,200 a year. Time spent at a military academy count toward the years of experience. Based on the dates given in Wikipedia, Mike Flynn logged 33 years in the military. He retired at age 56.
Ed --
I don't even remember the articles to which you refer; I guess that's what the neocons count on, people like me with short memories.
Agreed about what we've accomplished over there: nothing good. And as soon as we leave Afghanistan, it will fall to the Taliban, which already controls large parts of the country.
I sure hope we ally with Russia to save the Assad regime in Syria. They're one of the last stable Muslim governments over there, no thanks to the Obama administration, which seems to have been playing both sides at once (funding al Qaeda-connected fighter to fight Assad while nominally battling ISIS).
Mark --
Good point. And, a West Point education is free. That's a handsome living, to be sure. But it's not quite Clinton-level cashing in, and becoming a "consultant" (read: lobbyist) for countries like Turkey or even Russia is not illegal, in fact is often standard practice for retired military brass. The alternative seems to be to go to work for a defense company. Supposedly one of the reasons that the guy Trump selected to replace Flynn said no yesterday is because he didn't want to give up his lucrative defense job. But I'm not disagreeing with your larger point that Flynn didn't NEED to do these things, and that becoming a lobbyist for a foreign country is not exactly patriotic. THAT said, I'm instinctively more inclined to cut someone more of a break when he's served in the military for 33 years.
Mark --
PS -- Just re-read what I wrote; how's that for wishy washy?
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