August 1, 2020: August begins the way July ended, with a dire
warning from one who worked inside the White House.
 |
Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, left, and his brother Lt. Col. Yevgeny Vindman. (Both were forced out of the U.S. Army in retaliation.) |
In an op-ed piece in the Washington Post, now-retired Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman speaks out against the president. After 21 years, six months, and ten days, Vindman has left the U.S. Army. Vindman is a patriot and was scheduled for promotion to colonel. The Army review board said his service had been meritorious.
He deserved to be advanced.
President Trump had other plans. A campaign of retaliation commenced. The promotion was blocked.
In what
way had Vindman sinned?
____________________
“At no point in my career or life have I felt our nation’s values under greater threat and in more peril than at this moment.”
Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman
____________________
He had testified under oath, something the president would never dare. He told lawmakers in Congress that he had heard Trump’s call to the President of Ukraine. It was, he said, a craven attempt to force the Ukrainians to help him win re-election in 2020. Lt. Col. Vindman, a national security expert, warned that by holding up military aid to Ukraine, until the Ukrainians agreed to “play ball,” the president had put U.S. national security at risk.
This was what Dr. Fiona Hill and other White House security experts also said in their testimony.
Vindman promised
that in retirement he would not flinch. He would speak out against any “attacks
on our national security,” as he saw them.
He would do all he could to “keep our nation safe and strong against internal and external threats.”
External threats are a given with every nation on earth, across the recorded history of all the centuries.
It was those “internal threats” that moved Lt. Col. Vindman to warn:
At no
point in my career or life have I felt our nation’s values under greater threat
and in more peril than at this moment. Our national government during the past
few years has been more reminiscent of the authoritarian regime [emphasis
added] my family fled more than 40 years ago than the country I have devoted my
life to serving.
An immigrant from the old Soviet Union, along with the rest of his family, Vindman’s career had been destroyed by “a mendacious president and his enablers.” He did not despair. He had bled for this country, something no member of the Trump clan has dared during 145 years on American soil.
He continued:
During
my testimony in the House impeachment inquiry, I reassured my father, who
experienced Soviet authoritarianism firsthand, saying, “Do not worry, I will be
fine for telling the truth.” Despite Trump’s retaliation, I stand by that
conviction. Even as I experience the low of ending my military career, I have
also experienced the loving support of tens of thousands of Americans. Theirs
is a chorus of hope that drowns out the spurious attacks of a
disreputable man and his sycophants.
When a member of the congressional committee asked how he had the confidence to reassure his father that way, Vindman was clear. “Congressman, he replied, “because this is America. This is the country I have served and defended, that all my brothers have served, and here, right matters.”
He
remained hopeful despite his own fate. He had earned a promotion. It had been
denied. “To this day, despite everything that has happened, I continue to
believe in the American Dream. I believe that in America, right matters.
I want to help ensure that right matters for all Americans.”
*
AS FOR PROOF that Republican lawmakers have their priorities straight, Oklahoma State Rep. Sean Roberts threatened this week to revoke tax privileges for the N.B.A.’s Oklahoma Thunder.
Roberts was in a tizzy because N.B.A. players were taking a knee during the National Anthem. He wanted to ensure Thunder players didn’t get any commie ideas. As he explained, “By kneeling ... the NBA and its players are showing disrespect to the American flag and all it stands for.” This “anti-patriotic act makes clear the NBA’s support of the Black Lives Matter group ... its ties to Marxism and its efforts to destroy nuclear families.”
And you thought the BLM protesters just didn’t want police to kneel on the necks of unarmed blacks until they expired, or shoot them dead while they were trying to sleep in their own apartments!
Saturday, the entire Thunder team donned “Black Lives Matter” t-shirts and took a knee at the start of its game.
The Utah Jazz team joined them in protest.
*
New cases of COVID-19, for August 1:
58,947.
POSTSCRIPT: It should concern all Americans to learn that the Department of Homeland Security was compiling reports on both protesters in Portland, and journalists who covered those protests.
Because what you really need in any authoritarian system is police who possess knowledge of “unfriendly” reporters.
See: Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, Muammar al-Gaddafi and Vladimir Putin, to name just a few.
Brian Murphy, head of the intelligence branch at DHS, was reassigned after it was revealed he had disseminated such reports to law enforcement agencies.
(He should have been fired.)
Benjamin Wittes, author of the blog Lawfare, was one
target for retribution. He had stirred Murphy’s wrath after releasing an email Murphy
wrote to all federal agents, ordering them to refer to all Portland protesters
as “VIOLENT ANTIFA ANARCHISTS.” You could even hear an echo of the president’s rage
in that memo, complete with Murphy’s use of all capital letters.
BLOGGER’S NOTE (4/5/22), while proofreading older posts: The claims of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and Dr. Fiona Hill were eventually bolstered by Trump’s former National Security Advisor, the less-than-courageous John Bolton. Bolton saved his “testimony” and put it in a book for sale. He, too, insisted Trump put U.S. national security at risk, in service to his own selfish interests.
Lt. Col. Yevgeny
Vindman’s promotion to colonel was restored and Col. Vindman continues to
serve this country proudly in uniform.
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