Who’s really in charge here?
CAREER DIPLOMATS BELIEVE THEY ARE.
THEY ALSO THINK THEY’RE SMARTER THAN ELECTED OFFICIALS
Marie Yovanovitch, 30-year career diplomat who couldn’t imagine why the President lost confidence in her.
Sometimes you don’t want to know how the sausage is made, but you know you have to.
Some of us were undoubtedly unsettled at today’s Congressional hearing when we learned that European Union ambassador Gordon Sondland has never been a note taker. It makes perfect sense in any case that he would chafe at the refusal by the White House or State Department to provide him with his own official emails and texts to jog his memory — even if we might like to think that someone in that position would be extra conscientious.
Also unsettling: He half-smirked through the entire thing, almost like a hairless Prince Charles casually amused at his own casual approach to the job.
Sondland’s opening testimony is instructive for both sides.
Republicans will gain insight into why Democrats are so convinced of their position, and Democrats will be able to hear the nuance of separating fact from possibility, hypothesis or opinion.
Example: Sondland did not appreciate being told to work with Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York, by the President. The protest appears to be a general feeling of being slighted rather than an eager approach to the job. Sondland said there was a quid pro quo, according to Giuliani, with a White House meeting being dangled in front of President Zelensky in exchange for a public announcement of a Ukraine probe of Burisma. However, Sondland assumed military aid was also tied to an announcement, in spite of the President telling him he didn’t want anything in exchange for Zelensky getting to the bottom of the Burisma situation.
The only thing Sondland seems to have been sure of during all these recent events was that Ukraine should receive lethal aid immediately to combat “Russian aggression,” under a new Ukrainian President already being criticized by American pundits as not up to the task (see the Atlantic Council, a Soros-funded who’s who of Ukrainian and American titans). But the aid should come, no questions asked. This is the only thing of which he appears to have been certain. And it was something the Obama administration never agreed to, in spite of Russia’s annexation of Crimea!
I urge you to listen carefully to Sondland and all the others with these points in mind.
My observation of all of the impeachment testimony is that many of these career diplomats are firm in a belief that they are simply smarter than the president. They don’t like irregular protocol, and they don’t like anyone questioning the money the United States gives away. Neither do they appear to be curious about many things, including a better way to conduct foreign policy.
Which begs the question: exactly who is in charge here? We’ve heard that more than one emissary made light of the president’s orders and even told Ukraine officials to ignore them. The lack of clarity among official communications - as well as a prioritization of protocol by these stewards of our country - is the sausage recipe we need to know about.
Note: under Obama when Russia annexed Crimea, Obama did not send one lethal cent. Biden says that he wanted to.
But Trump did it in 2017 - NOT giving it - but selling Javelin anti-tank weapons to Ukraine. Perhaps there’s more to the entire situation? I personally don’t like selling killing machines to anyone who wants them. That goes for Saudi Arabia especially and their brutal regime.
- Editor
