Unafraid, Bi-partisan, Uphold U.S. and Freedom

                                 

            

Your Achilles heel is Russia. So do let Gates and the world know you won’t be Putin’s poodle. Simply state you are not naive or taken in by Putin’s flattery and you’re not praising his morality or his autocracy, but his competence at putting Russia back on the map after the 1991 fall of the USSR. He’s also been good at making friends of his Middle East enemies instead of enemies of our friends like President Obama.  

 

 

Moreover, Putin is not just a KGB,“stone cold killer” of the dangerous critiques of his regime, as Bob sees him. He is also a devout Christian autocrat wearing his mother’s cross. He is viewed as a friend of Middle East Christians and Israel’s Jews. He is as concerned as we are about Islamic terrorism. One has to understand his complexity. But what’s wrong with simply meeting him and seeing if you can do business as did FDR and Winston Churchill  with Josef Stalin, while fighting Hitler.

 

 

While attacking you on your “bromance” with Putin, Hillary forgets the one that existed between George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin at the turn of this century. It began as a very warm relationship between two new leaders.  In June 2001, Putin even warned Bush that Osama bin Laden planned to attack the U/S/ homeland. After 9/11, Russia assisted our war  against  al Quaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

 

 

Before the Bush-Putin bromance, Ronald Reagan bucked his  nay-saying hawks and responded to Mikhail Gorbachev’s outreach for new leadership. And didn’t Leonid Brezhnev prior to Watergate, develop close relations with Richard Nixon? Do we really want endless Cold War? 

 

 

The fraying of the relationship with Russia  since 2001 is decidedly not all our fault, but Gates is refreshingly honest about our part. As he explains in his book, Duty, “… The United States had badly underestimated the magnitude of Russia’s humiliation in losing the Cold War…” and, “When Russia was weak in the 1990’s ...we did not take Russian interests seriously. We did a poor job of seeing the world from their point of view.” 

 

 

He accuses our leaders, academicians and businessmen of “arrogance” towards Russia.and he also viewed as a mistake George "W” Bush's extension of the NATO membership to countries of the Balkans at Russia’s periphery. Moreover, “Trying to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO was truly overreaching.”  Understand Donald, that in huge and partially landlocked Russia with its legacy of authoritarianism, a traditional fear of encirclement is in the DNA of her leaders.  

 

 

No, Ukraine and Georgia must not be in NATO. Both should enjoy being sovereign, independent nations, buttressed by armed neutrality. Also, German chancellor Angela Merkel’s leadership position in Europe and at home has been weakened, owing to her opening Germany to a large number of Syrian migrants as Hillary wants to do if elected President. Thus, as President it is you not her, who should manage negotiations with Russia on Ukraine. Leading from in front, you must demonstrate to the Kremlin, that your deal will assure the political and cultural autonomy of the eastern Ukraine with its Russian speakers.

 

 

Be aware that the House just this week hugely approved defensive arms for Ukraine over Obama’s continuing objections --something we were first to advocate in 2014 in the Kyiv Post.  In his own recent interview with that paper, Bob agrees:  “I think there could have been more in the way of defensive weapons. I think we were even slow to providing military training.”  Donald, if the bill passes it would strengthen your art of deal making. If Vlad recalls his troopers from eastern Ukraine, the West can give up our sanctions while preserving Ukraine’s armed neutrality.

 

 

 But back to our relationship with Russia. It started to go bad as Putin observed our catastrophic war in Iraq, while extending NATO to Russia’s borders. Then came a series of flagrant misjudgments by Hillary,beginning with her misguided attempt in 2009 of a “reset” with Russia shortly after invasion of Georgia. The mise en scene included Hillary and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov pressing both big red "reset" button. Quipped Gates, “This reaffirmed my strong view that gimmicks in foreign policy generally backfire.” 

 

 

He was right! It especially didn’t work coming several months after Putin’s 2008 military intervention in Georgia. The Obama-Hillary duo showed forgiveness when it should have shown intense displeasure and introduced some  sanctions. Not to do so only invited a new invasion of the Crimea. 

 

 

Gates also noted that the “reset” button really translated in Russian as “overcharge.” That was quite apropos for something Gates likely didn’t know about. In 2009 and thereafter, Bill Clinton was helping an old friend with the sale of a Canadian uranium mining company to Russia with vast stakes in the American west. The deal had to be okay-ed at the highest level of U.S. government, however, and Madame Secretary, obliged. 

 

 

Of course State wasn’t the only agency that signed off under Obama, who relishes leading from behind. But in return for her high okay, she got millions in donations to the Clinton Foundation and Bubba got a half million dollar speaker’s fee in Moscow. 

 

 

Earlier, Hillary had already proved her credentials as an unvarnished hawk. As a senator she was gung ho in support of the war in Iraq. Then. while we were quagmired in Iraq, and still fighting in Afghanistan, she pushed for a new NATO war in Libya. Question: Do you get this country involved with three conflicts at the same time unless your judgment is absolutely “beyond repair?” Did she even think of the cost of those simultaneous wars not just in dollars but in blood as Gates did?  

 

 

To war on Libya it was necessary to get the cooperation of Russia at the Security Council of U.N. Hillary got it by having U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice prevaricate to the Russians as well as to the American people that the mission was a humanitarian effort to save civilians from being massacred by dictator Gaddafi. We bet Hillary is going to prevaricate this patent lie again when asked in next three debates. There was ongoing civil war in Libya but no massacre. Gates knows that. Hillary’s real purpose was to arm the rebels, to kill secular dictator and bring about regime change, something it did not work in Iraq.

 

 

In this gruesome venture, Hillary was again counseled by her unofficial adviser, Sidney Blumenthal, Hillary’s “Rasputin.” A former president assistant, also known as “Sid Vicious,”he sees himself as the Clintons’ “first knight.” The master of lies and changing narratives, he was pictured hissing like a poisonous snake by the Weekly Standard, for depicting  Monica Lewinsky, as a “stalker.” 

 

With Blumenthal’s advice, Hillary dealt with a wide swath of arms dealers and armed the rebels who murdered Gaddafi. “We came, we saw and we killed him,” she crowed. All despite the fact that Gaddafi had given up his WMD and was actually working with the U.S, and fighting al Qaida.

 

 

 Declassified e-mails between Sid and Hillary on the NATO intervention is .., “conspicuously absent ..[of any ]mention of humanitarian concerns. The objectives are money, power and oil.” They are also very telling with respect to Blumenthal’s high art of deception. In one e-mail he wrote that Gaddafi is “placing bodies to create PR stunts about supposed civilian casualties as a result of Allied bombing. … but now, as you know, [Defense Secretary] Robert Gates gives credence to it.” 

 

 

Another of Rasputin’s planted rumor was “that Gaddafi has adopted a rape policy and has even distributed Viagra to troops." This  disinformation was also presented by Susan Rice to the U.N.

 

 

Once the dictator was dead, al Qaida hell broke out as it did earlier in Iraq,  and  his  death unleashed the huge migration to Europe. Some regime change!   Some statesmanship! Meanwhile, the Russians, observing the bombing pattern in Libya, if not reading Hillary’s e-mail, realized the NATO intervention was no humanitarian mission! In Gates’s words “Convinced they had been tricked [by Hillary], the Russians would subsequently block any such future resolutions, including any against President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.”   

 

 

They were prescient. Risking war with Russia, on top of two other U.S. wars still in progress, Hillary subsequently, began arming the anti-Assad rebels in Syria, forgetting how difficult it was to know whose rebels they really were. Putin finally intervened in Syria to save both his large investments there and dictator Assad. He seems to have observed what Gates did; that when Middle East dictators are killed you can wind up with a failed state and an worse [Islamist] regime.  

 

 

Meanwhile, as Judge Andrew Napolitano has observed, once the regime change “…plot was hatched, Clinton and her fellow conspirators realized that some of these rebel groups were manned by al-Qaida operatives; and selling or providing arms to them is a felony – hence the reason for months’ worth of missing and destroyed Clinton emails.” 

 

 

During this whole Libya-Syria effort, the supposed Benghazi  consulate was not a consulate at all, but a “U.S. Mission” with a top secret CIA annex facilitating the flow of arms from Libya through Turkey to Syria. The crescendo of this whole sorry affair was Benghazi-gate, and the death of four brave Americans fighting to defend the secret facility which had not been secured despite Ambassador Chris Stevens repeatedly begging the Hillary’s State Department for more security.   

 

 

Pulitzer-prize winning reporter Seymour Hersh has reported  that sent with the arms from Gaddafi’s arsenal was sarin gas! In the London Review, he opined that one key reason Obama backed off his red line in 2013 was because the supply of arms and Sarin in what Hersh called the rat line; tested as Libyan. It was not from Assad’s stockpile. When Hersh was asked about Hillary’s role in setting up a sarin gas “to be blamed on Assad” in order to “justify the U.S. invading Syria…” In an interview ” Hersh posits: 

 

“... She’s [Hillary’s] not out of the loop. She knows when there are covert ops…That ambassador [Stevens] who was killed, he was known as a guy, … who would not get in the way of the CIA. …on the day of the mission he was meeting with the CIA base chief and the shipping company. .. And there’s no way somebody in that sensitive of a position is not talking to the boss, [Hillary] by some channel" [our emphasis.]Hersh is highly respected reporter and inference that Hillary okayed sending Sarin gas with other arms to the anti-Assad rebels in Syria appears to have been tied to a plot to provoks regime change a la Iraq and Libya. True, Hersh’s findings, must be further corraborated by other serious reporters.  

 

 

Yet, as more of Hillary’s e-mails are unveiled, the less appealing and more dangerous to our national security she becomes. If Gates is still hesitent about Trump, former CIA director James Woolsey is not. Nor is Ted Cruz. The Bill Clinton’s CIA director, Woolsey explained his choice: “Clinton,” he said, “demonstrated a complete inability to lead the agency she headed in such a way as to maintain its mission and security.”   

 

 

 As the fabric of our society is unraveling with growing crime, increasing Jihadist attacks, disrespect for our national anthem and our police, all amids our catastrophic debt, our nation is at historical crossroads. It cannot be led by Hillary. She is not only a “congenital liar” and “congenital hawk” as another Pullitzer prize winner late Bill Safire labeled her, but a person who is guilty of what would be treated as crimes for anyone else. Gates,m like forrmer CIA director Woolsey, knows it. Hillary  must not be allowed to to turn White House into another Milhause inferno with Sid another John Ehrlichman.

                 

Playwright and former Democratic Party official, Yale-educated Leni Friedman Valenta is the CEO of the Institute of Post Communist Studies and Terrorism, editor of its website, jvlv.net, and author of articles in scholarly journals and newspapers at home an abroad. Published author Dr. Jiri Valenta is a Council on Foreign Relations member and recipient of the Jan Masaryk medal from the Czech Minister of Foreign Affairs, “for his contribution in preserving and promoting relations between the Czech Republic and the United States of America,” A former U.S. Naval PG School faculty member, who taught and supervised three armed forces Masters' programs for a decade, he is recipient of several distinguished fellowships; Brookings, Rockefeller, Wilson Center, CFR, Peace Institute, National Endowment for the Humanities, Fullbright, and Kiel, Uppsala and Colegio de Mexico Universities. The Valentas blogs also appear on the Wall of the Council on Foreign Relations and at the Russian International Affairs Council [RIAC], the principle think tank of Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They have never to their knowledge been censored.