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The press swings at every pitch, we don’t have to.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

Not loving this new fraud based economy.

The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

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Damn right I heard that as a threat.

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Technically true, but collectively nonsense

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You are here: Home / Archives for Silverman on Security / The Trump Doctrine

The Trump Doctrine

The Defense Is Too Aggravated To Rest: Incitement As a Defense For the Charge of Incitement

by Adam L Silverman|  February 12, 20212:29 pm| 226 Comments

This post is in: America, Ammosexuals, Crazification Factor, Domestic Politics, domestic terrorists, Gun nuts, Information Warfare, Open Threads, Politics, Silverman on Security, The Trump Doctrine

The defense presented today in former President Trump’s second impeachment trial just spent the past two hours inciting more violence. It was designed to make Trump happy by attacking the Democrats, making them the bad guys, and confirming that he is the victim. Therefore, both he and his supporters are right to be aggrieved. The other purpose of this defense is to further incite Trump’s supporters by going all in on victimization through these video clips and montages. Those video clips and video montages were specifically produced to be immediately transmitted through pro-Trump/MAGA and QAnon social media and on the various pro-Trump/MAGA and QAnon boards. I’m sure that if Dan Scavino, who has always been Trump’s conduit to and coordinator for the most extreme pro-Trump/MAGA supporters on social and digital media, was not involved in creating them, he was quickly given them to seed them and disseminate them throughout social and digital media.

The defense presented this afternoon is that Trump didn’t incite violence, his supporters aren’t violent, and we’ll prove it by inciting more violence. This is a defense right out of the techniques and neutralization. Shortly after the 6 January insurrection at the Capitol I produced a threat assessment for what could be expected going forward, this excerpt deals with techniques of neutralization:

This social behavioral pathway for behavior was delineated in the 1950s by Sykes and Matza and is called Techniques of Neutralization. Their intention was to clarify the social behavioral pathway that leads to delinquency, deviance, and crime. They posited that neutralization allows one to drift into crime, deviance, and delinquency. Or in the case of the 6 JAN 2021 insurrection that we are interested in: sedition, rebellion, extremism, terrorism, political violence, and possibly treason.

The techniques of neutralization are divided into five types of neutralization: 1) denial of responsibility; 2) denial of injury; 3) denial of victim; 4) condemnation of the condemners; and the 5) appeal to higher loyalties. The first three justifications all deal with denial. They allow the offender to rationalize his behavior as outside of his control. He or she is not really hurting anyone. And even if someone is hurt, they may have deserved it. The fourth justification allows the offender to invert the knowledge of her wrongdoing back upon those criticizing it by asserting that the condemners are hypocrites, do equally bad things, or are out to get the offender. Finally, the fifth rationalization allows for the justification of behavior on the basis of loyalty to one’s group rather than one’s society.

These five types of neutralization are found in every single one of President Trump’s speeches, off-the-cuff remarks at press gaggles, extemporaneous remarks at his rallies, and the formal responses he makes after he and/or his supporters do something illegal and/or violent. On Wednesday 13 JAN 2021, President Trump once again asserted that not only was there nothing wrong with his remarks at the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the violent insurrectionist attack on the Capitol, but that these remarks have all been formally reviewed and determined to be perfect and appropriate by unnamed third parties (essentially using deception and logical fallacies – appeal to authority, third party credibility and handoff – to exonerate himself and his supporters). As the attack on the Capitol was ongoing on the afternoon of 6 JAN, President Trump released a video asking his supporters to cease their attack, but also told them that the election had been stolen from him and them, thereby justifying their anger and actions.

In these remarks, you can see almost all of the five types of neutralization. President Trump has repeatedly denied responsibility. He denies there was any real injury; he has yet to issue any statement regarding the deaths that resulted from the attack including the murder of a Capitol Police officer. He denies the victims; because they are not his supporters so they do not count. He turns the condemnation of his and his supporters actions back on those making them. The classic Trumpian example of this was after Heather Heyer’s murder at the hands of a white supremacist at the pro-Trump, white supremacist, and neo-NAZI Unite the Right March in Charlottesville, VA. In both his initial attempts to make a presidential statement and his walk back of that statement, he tied himself into rhetorical and logical knots as he insisted that there were good people on both sides. Both sides being the pro-Trump white supremacists and neo-NAZIs and those that came out to counter-protest against them. And in all of his remarks he appeals to higher loyalties: the Make American Great Again movement and concept, an invocation of the Constitution, and invocations of the real America and America First. He invoked the MAGA movement and concept in his remarks in Texas on 13 JAN as an appeal to a higher loyalty.

The techniques of neutralization are where the social behavioral rubber meets the road of the social behavioral definitions that drive the extremist, white supremacist, neo-NAZI, and neo-fascist actions of the insurrectionists that stormed the Capitol on Wednesday 6 JAN 2021 in an attempt to overthrow the US Congress, prevent it from certifying the 2020 presidential election results, assassinate Vice President Pence and Speaker Pelosi, and overthrow the American constitutional order. Almost fifty years of purposeful, implicit, and explicit changes in the Republican and conservative definitions promoting, retarding, and neutralizing behavior have borne a bitter destructive fruit in Donald Trump’s techniques of neutralization aided and abetted by the algorithms of social media platforms. The result of that fruit’s perverse blossoming is a uniquely American insider threat composed of the Republican, Republican leading Independent, predominantly white and nominally Christian supporters of President Trump combined with yoga moms worried about the safety of vaccines or processed food or gluten.

Unfortunately, the techniques of neutralization are not limited to just President Trump and his base of supporters who have decided that if they cannot control the United States government then they will tear it apart. Before Wednesday 6 January had given way to Thursday 7 January, and since then, Republican Senators Hawley and Cruz, Republican House Minority Leader McCarthy, Republican Freedom Caucus members like Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz, and conservative news media personalities like Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Brian Kilmeade, and Rush Limbaugh have all used techniques of neutralization to signal both solidarity with President Trump and his supporters and threaten Democrats and everyone else in America who is not a Trump supporter with more low intensity warfare and political violence. These statements warning Democrats not to hold President Trump responsible or accountable are not only self-serving as it seeks to move responsibility off of their own support for his factually inaccurate claims, disinformation and deception about widespread election fraud in the presidential election, the lie that he won by a landslide, and the lie that the election was stolen from him, Republicans, and his supporters, they are also classic examples of techniques of neutralization. They deny responsibility, they deny real injury, they condemn the condemners, they appeal to higher loyalties, and they contain implicit and explicit threats. They are the basic template of all domestic abusers: “if you don’t forget what happened and let it go, we can’t move on and it will happen again and then it will be your fault, again”.

All of these appeals to not hold President Trump responsible and accountable are threats against Democrats if they do. They are all couched as President Trump’s 70 million plus voters are angry, upset, outraged, and feel cheated, so if the Democrats hold President Trump accountable those angry 70 million Trump voters and supporters might just do something violent again. Explicit threats have been made to Republican members of the House and the Senate regarding their and their families’ safety if they vote to impeach or convict President Trump. A Republican member of the House from Utah, who voted against impeaching President Trump for the second time on Wednesday 13 January 2021, revealed to MNBCS that a death threat, referring to him as a traitor, had been taped to his office door at the Capitol the following day. Given the newly increased security measures at the Capitol, in addition to the COVID-19 pandemic public health measures, which have further reduced who can be and is in the Capitol at any one time, the only person who could have left him the threat is another member of either the House or Senate, a member of their staffs, a member of committee staffs, a member of the Capitol Police, a member of the staff that maintains the Capitol, or someone who was escorted in by a member of the House or the Senate. This is the ultimate insider threat. And it, like the similar threats issued – including by members of Congress themselves, it is: nice Congress and Republic you got there, be a shame if something were to happen to it…

You can see this dynamic in American Conservative Union President Matt Schlapp’s tweets:

If they continue w sham impeachment and very real SDNY and NYAG investigations of Pres Trump. They will make him stronger and push him to run again in 2024 as it will be the only way to make it all stop. If they want rid of Trump stop pursuing and persecuting him.

— Matt Schlapp (@mschlapp) February 12, 2021

You guys won. If you spend the next year w these politicized prosecutions you will rile us up unify us and lose the Congress. And for Trump if he has no legal rest he will come back hard either as a candidate or a force. My advice is leave us alone and govern. Miss you! https://t.co/YdLeW11jRo

— Matt Schlapp (@mschlapp) February 12, 2021

There’s a reason they went heavy into Democratic elected women, women of color, and people of color calling to fight back or resist or protest. It was to clearly show that these angry black and brown men and women are the real threat to America and the real Americans, not Trump and his supporters who are overwhelmingly white while also appealing to the 1st Amendment. They were denying injury and victim, while condemning the condemners, and appealing to a higher loyalty. This is impeachment defense by incitement and the real point of it wasn’t to give the Republican Senators a fig leaf of cover to vote to acquit, which they were going to do regardless of what was said over the past three days. The real point of it was to further threaten, terrorize, and incite to domestic terrorism, insurrection, and revolt Trump’s extremist supporters. Democratic senators and representatives, other Democratic and liberal movement leaders, as well as news media figures like Chris Cuomo and Nicole Wallace will be targeted as a result of the defense presented today. It was yet again another expression of the real Trump Doctrine: “I, Donald J. Trump, will be treated fairly…. or else!”

Open thread!

 

The Defense Is Too Aggravated To Rest: Incitement As a Defense For the Charge of IncitementPost + Comments (226)

Lordy! There Are Tapes! Bob Woodward’s Rage Has Leaked To CNN & By Leaked I Mean Bob Woodward Gave CNN the Book and the Tapes

by Adam L Silverman|  September 9, 202012:41 pm| 220 Comments

This post is in: America, Covid-19 & National Security, Domestic Politics, Election 2016, Election 2020, Open Threads, Politics, Silverman on Security, The Trump Doctrine

Boizhe Moi!

There’s a LOT in this book, which comes out Tuesday, 9/15. Woodward conducted 18 interviews with Trump, and CNN has obtained copies of some of the audio tapes, which you can listen to above. THREAD on the key highlights in Rage, w/ @jamiegangel @elizabethstuart:

— Jeremy Herb (@jeremyherb) September 9, 2020

From CNN (emphasis mine):

President Donald Trump admitted he knew weeks before the first confirmed US coronavirus death that the virus was dangerous, airborne, highly contagious and “more deadly than even your strenuous flus,” and that he repeatedly played it down publicly, according to legendary journalist Bob Woodward in his new book “Rage.”

This is deadly stuff,” Trump told Woodward on February 7.

In a series of interviews with Woodward, Trump revealed that he had a surprising level of detail about the threat of the virus earlier than previously known. “Pretty amazing,” Trump told Woodward, adding that the coronavirus was maybe five times “more deadly” than the flu.

Trump’s admissions are in stark contrast to his frequent public comments at the time insisting that the virus was “going to disappear” and “all work out fine.”

The book, using Trump’s own words, depicts a President who has betrayed the public trust and the most fundamental responsibilities of his office. In “Rage,” Trump says the job of a president is “to keep our country safe.” But in early February, Trump told Woodward he knew how deadly the virus was, and in March, admitted he kept that knowledge hidden from the public.

“I wanted to always play it down,” Trump told Woodward on March 19, even as he had declared a national emergency over the virus days earlier. “I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”

Woodward reveals new details on the early warnings Trump received — and often ignored.

In a January 28 top secret intelligence briefing, national security adviser Robert O’Brien gave Trump a “jarring” warning about the virus, telling the President it would be the “biggest national security threat” of his presidency. Trump’s head “popped up,” Woodward writes.

O’Brien’s deputy, Matt Pottinger, concurred, telling Trump it could be as bad as the influenza pandemic of 1918, which killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide, including 675,000 Americans. Pottinger warned Trump that asymptomatic spread was occurring in China: He had been told 50% of those infected showed no symptoms.

Asked by Woodward in May if he remembered O’Brien’s January 28 warning that the virus would be the biggest national security threat of his presidency, Trump equivocated. “No, I don’t.” Trump said. “I’m sure if he said it — you know, I’m sure he said it. Nice guy.”

He also disclosed a clandestine and highly classified new nuclear weapons program* to Woodward on tape!

Woodward reports on Trump’s tensions with military leaders, writing a Mattis aide heard Trump say in a meeting, "my f—ing generals are a bunch of pussies" because they cared more about alliances than trade deals. Mattis asked the aide to document the comment in an email.

— Jeremy Herb (@jeremyherb) September 9, 2020

And, of course, we’ve got further confirmation of Jeffrey Goldberg’s reporting from last Friday too!

Both Secretary Mattis and DNI Coats had serious, significant concerns about the President, his abilities, and his allegiance! (emphasis mine)

Mattis is quoted as calling Trump “dangerous” and “unfit” to be commander in chief. Woodward writes that Coats “continued to harbor the secret belief, one that had grown rather than lessened, although unsupported by intelligence proof, that Putin had something on Trump.” Woodward continues, writing that Coats felt, “How else to explain the president’s behavior? Coats could see no other explanation.”

Woodward also has assessments of the President from Dr. Fauci:

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the administration’s top infectious disease expert, is quoted telling others Trump’s leadership was “rudderless” and that his “attention span is like a minus number.”

“His sole purpose is to get reelected,” Fauci told an associate, according to Woodward.

Woodward was also able to get his hands on the love letters, or, at least, copies of the love letters between the President and Kim Jong Un.

Woodward obtained the 27 LETTERS Trump and Kim Jong Un exchanged in 2018 and 2019. Kim flatters Trump by repeatedly, calling him "Your Excellency," and writes in one letter that meeting again would be "reminiscent of a scene from a fantasy film."

— Jeremy Herb (@jeremyherb) September 9, 2020

As many of you know, I’m generally not a big fan of Bob Woodward’s books. He never cites sources and many of us in the nat-sec world that have had to refer to his books in our professional work have speculated that his modus operandi is that if you refuse to talk to him on or off the record, that he’ll just make stuff up to fit and support the narrative he’s creating. In this case, however, he has tapes. 18 hours of tapes of the President from interviews the President chose to sit for. And tapes, which the President in his own, charming fashion, will spend the next two months loudly, repeatedly, and often incoherently, but definitely angrily denying are actually of him. He’ll tell anyone and everyone who’ll listen or give him air time that he doesn’t think that’s actually him on the tapes. Just as he’s done with the Access Hollywood tape.

I expect that between The Lincoln Project, VoteVets, Don Winslow, and several other groups, as well as the Biden campaign, will have all of this teed up and ready to go in advertisement over the next two months. Including, if they can get permission to use them, the audio from Woodward’s tapes of the President.

ETA: Audio at the CNN link.

Open thread!

* Would one of our New Mexican readers please do a welfare check on Cheryl? Thanks, The Management…

Lordy! There Are Tapes! Bob Woodward’s Rage Has Leaked To CNN & By Leaked I Mean Bob Woodward Gave CNN the Book and the TapesPost + Comments (220)

In Non-Impeachment News, the President Has, Apparently, Shifted the Republic of Korea Into an Alliance With the People’s Republic of China

by Adam L Silverman|  November 19, 20191:06 pm| 175 Comments

This post is in: America, Foreign Affairs, Military, Open Threads, Politics, Silverman on Security, The Trump Doctrine

Faced with the President’s demand that the Republic of Korea (ROK) increase their cost sharing of the basing and sustainment of US military and civilian personnel in the Republic of Korea to $5 billion, the ROK’s leadership was not amused and very concerned. Especially, as this would mean not just a four to five time increase, but that the ROK would be covering the entire cost, rather than sharing it. Earlier today, things took a turn for the worst.

In a rare public display of disagreement in the alliance, US negotiators abruptly walked out of today's talks with South Korea after the 66-year ally balked at President Trump's price tag for funding 28,500 American troops in the country.https://t.co/utKjCvauvU

— Min Joo Kim (@Min_Joo_Kim_) November 19, 2019

The United States broke off talks with South Korea on Tuesday over how to share the cost of the two nations’ military alliance, injecting fresh tension into the relationship over Washington’s demands that Seoul pay sharply more.

President Trump has demanded South Korea raise fivefold its contribution to cover the cost of stationing 28,500 U.S. troops in the country, asking for nearly $5 billion, officials on both sides said. But that demand has triggered anger from Korean lawmakers and sparked concerns that Trump may decide to reduce the U.S. troop presence in the Korean Peninsula if talks break down.

The top U.S. negotiator, James DeHart, said the U.S. side decided to cut short the negotiations on Tuesday morning, the second of two days of planned talks. In a rare public show of disunity between the allies, he blamed South Korea for making proposals that “were not responsive to our request for fair and equitable burden sharing.”

“As a result we cut short our participation in the talks today in order to give the Korea side time to reconsider,” he said in a statement. “We look forward to resuming our negotiations when the Korean side is ready to work on the basis of partnership, on the basis of mutual trust.”

This year, South Korea agreed to pay about $890 million toward the cost of stationing U.S. troops in the country, a little more than 40 percent of the day-to-day expenses. It also provides land for bases rent-free, paid more than 90 percent of the $10.7 billion cost of moving the main U.S. base out of Seoul, and buys significant amounts of U.S. military equipment.

But Trump insists that South Korea, as a “very wealthy nation,” needs to pay more. His demand for up to $5 billion would imply South Korea was effectively not only being asked to cover local costs but also the entire wage bill for the U.S. troops.

This genius move of walking out on a negotiation, which is not taught as part of how to conduct a negotiation to any career US government officials, such as Mr. DeHart who is a career foreign service officer, is a hallmark of the President’s understanding of how to conduct negotiations. Specifically, make an outrageous demand, posture and preen, throw a fit at the negotiations and walk out, then wait for the other party to come back and grovel for a deal. The Republic of Korea is not going to play the President’s game.
Here’s the text from Yahoo News:

The defense ministers of South Korea and China have agreed to develop their security ties to ensure stability in northeast Asia, the latest indication that Washington’s longstanding alliances in the region are fraying.

Mission accomplished!

Open thread!

In Non-Impeachment News, the President Has, Apparently, Shifted the Republic of Korea Into an Alliance With the People’s Republic of ChinaPost + Comments (175)

Ambassador Taylor’s Opening Statement to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

by Adam L Silverman|  October 22, 20194:18 pm| 157 Comments

This post is in: America, Domestic Politics, Election 2016, Election 2020, Foreign Affairs, Impeachment Inquiry, Open Threads, Politics, Silverman on Security, The Trump Doctrine, The Whistleblower Saga

The Washington Post has obtained and published Ambassador Taylor’s opening statement to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. The link to it is here. And the pdf can be directly accessed from Balloon Juice below.

Ambassador_Taylor_Opening_Statment

Open thread!

Ambassador Taylor’s Opening Statement to the House Permanent Select Committee on IntelligencePost + Comments (157)

The Vice President Announces a Ceasefire That Is Not a Ceasefire & the President Announces That Everyone is Happy With It

by Adam L Silverman|  October 17, 20193:41 pm| 184 Comments

This post is in: America, Crimes against humanity, Domestic Politics, Foreign Affairs, Military, Politics, Silverman on Security, The Trump Doctrine, War

Earlier this afternoon, the Vice President, with the Secretary of State behind him, announced a ceasefire he had gotten Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan to agree to. The President then did an impromptu press gaggle on the tarmac of the Dallas-Ft. Worth Airport where he ran with this news. The President spun the Vice President’s announcement of what Turkey supposedly agreed to as great for the Kurds, the Turks, the US, and civilization itself.

There's no apparent basis for Trump's claim just now that "everybody" has been trying to get this Turkey deal for "10 years," unless he means Turkey's government. (He habitually claims that previous administrations couldn't have achieved deals they never tried to achieve.)

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) October 17, 2019

Trump now says it was "more than" 15 years people have tried to get this deal. This is some of the fastest lieflation in recent memory. https://t.co/04GFSKQYaR

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) October 17, 2019

Trump concludes of his deal with Turkey: "Civilization is very happy."

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) October 17, 2019

This comment about “having to have it cleaned out” is an excuse and rationalization for ethnic cleansing!

Referring to Kurds living along Turkish border in Syria, Trump says of Turkey, "they had to have it cleaned out." pic.twitter.com/W8J7IFctO3

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 17, 2019

TRUMP: "What Turkey is getting now is they are not going to have to kill millions of people." ? pic.twitter.com/JXKfam96hv

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 17, 2019

The Turks, however, have their own understanding of what was agreed to and it is not a cease fire.

#BREAKING 'Pause of Turkey's operation in Syria is not cease-fire, cease-fire can only happen between two legitimate sides': Turkish foreign minister

— ANADOLU AGENCY (ENG) (@anadoluagency) October 17, 2019

Cavusoglu added that a “safe zone” would need to be established at 32 kilometer (roughly 20 miles) depth from east of Euphrates to the Iraqi border. (Which is what Turkey wanted initially.)

— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) October 17, 2019

The ceasefire that the Vice President announced at his press conference in Turkey is not one. Moreover, it doesn’t actually bind the proxy extremist groups that Turkey has turned loose in the area and who have been committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in their fight with the Kurds. I’m honestly not even sure this binds the Kurds. And, as a result, we can predict what will happen.

As the Kurds move through this now supposedly temporarily pacified battlespace, to both collect the dead, the wounded, those trapped behind their enemy’s lines and to make it to the new lines 20 miles from the Turkish border, they will come into contact with the Syrian extremist groups that the Turks are using as proxies and a force multiplier. Those Syrian extremists, not bound by the agreement, will initiate hostilities with the Syrian Kurds and Arabs that make up the Syrian Democratic Forces because part of this Turkish operation was to colonize the buffer area they have just been granted by the President via the Vice President and Secretary of State. And the Syrian extremists that Erdogan is using as a proxy force are not going to want to have to let the Syrian Kurds and Arabs trying to get clear of the new buffer area take their property and possessions with them. Those are spoils of war that belong to those extremists who are going to set up shop in the buffer zone with whomever else Erdogan relocates there.

That’s right, you’re not crazy, you’re not hallucinating Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo, on orders from the President, just ceded 20 miles of Syria to Turkey. Land that Syria’s Kurds have long claimed as a homeland where they deserve self determination and recognition as a nation-state. This was done unilaterally. Without consulting with the Syrians. Or the UN. Or Congress. Or seemingly anyone else. I’m sure Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs got asked for their opinions though. The President definitely knows how to get a real estate deal done!

Once the Kurds and Arabs of the SDF come into contact with the Syrian extremists that Erdogan is using as a proxy force and force multiplier, those extremists will attack. And the Syrian Democratic Forces will defend themselves. And once they do that, the Turks will claim that the temporary cessation of hostilities was violated by the Kurds and the SDF, and the Turkish military will restart offensive operations. I give it 12 hours, tops, before we’re back to where we were before the Vice President’s press conference today.

But civilization is happy, so good job everyone!

Mr. President, please help yourself to a Nobel Peace Prize. Take it out of petty cash.

Open thread!

The Vice President Announces a Ceasefire That Is Not a Ceasefire & the President Announces That Everyone is Happy With ItPost + Comments (184)

President Obama & His Administration Did Indeed Have a Strategy for Syria: It is Not President Obama’s Fault if You Don’t Understand It and It is Not an Excuse for What the President Did Last Week

by Adam L Silverman|  October 16, 20197:14 pm| 88 Comments

This post is in: Absent Friends, America, Domestic Politics, Election 2020, Foreign Affairs, Military, RIP, Silverman on Security, The Trump Doctrine, War

(Figure 1: Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve Campaign Design)

Since the President’s horrendous decision to pull US Special Forces, as well as the US Marine Corps artillery batteries supporting them out of Syria, a cottage industry has sprung up among the President’s supporters and defenders that this is really the fault of President Obama because President Obama and his administration either had no Syria strategy or they had a bad one. And that this is the ultimate driver of the President’s betrayal of our Syrian Kurdish and Arab partners in the Syrian Democratic Forces that has enabled Erdogan to begin a campaign that will likely include an attempted ethnocide of Syria’s Kurds.

Some of these defenders would not know, let alone understand, low intensity warfare and/or strategy and policy if it walked up and bit them. Some actually know better. But all of them are actually grappling with a strawman. President Obama and his administration had two different, but related strategies regarding Syria. The first was to quite simply not get sucked into the Syrian Civil War. Humanitarian assistance would be provided to refugees seeking shelter in adjacent states, internally displaced Syrians that made it to where the US was operating along the Syrian-Iraqi border or within Syria would be provided for and protected, but the US would not get pulled into the Syrian Civil War, and the underlying proxy wars by regional powers that had been partially driving it, and risk escalating that conflict as it would have regional consequences. Frankly, from a semi-informed observer as this was playing out, this drove a number of President Obama’s actual advisors and senior national security officials nuts as several of them wanted the US to intervene because of the humanitarian crisis being created by the Syrian Civil War. Instead President Obama opted for what was, essentially, a containment strategy of trying to keep the Syrian Civil War and the proxy wars being fought by Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Iran under its cover contained within Syria so as not to destabilize the rest of the region.

This strategy was really an assumption of risk strategy in order to buy time. The US, as the leader and largest and most militarily powerful member of the multinational coalition operating in the area, would assume the risk that the Syrian Civil War and the proxy wars for regional hegemony subsumed within it, would and could be kept within Syria. That they would not spill out and over its borders and negatively impact Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Israel. And that they wouldn’t negatively effect the two sets of high level diplomatic negotiations being undertaken in the region: the Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative of 2014 and what we now know were the JCPOA+5 negotiations with Iran regarding its nuclear energy and weapons programs. President Obama had decided to play for time. To assume the risk that either the Syrian Civil War, the proxy wars for regional hegemony taking place within it, or both wouldn’t blow up into a larger conflagration, spill over Syria’s borders, and engulf the entire region.

It is also important to remember that in 2013, when Bashar Assad’s chemical attack on his own citizenry crossed the red line that President Obama had unequivocally stated, there were calls for both a retaliatory strike to punish and deter Assad and for Congress to weigh in before any action was taken, President Obama did, in fact, seek Congressional approval for such a strike. The majority Republican House of Representatives refused to provide President Obama with the authorization to make that strike and enforce the red line he had set. Congressman Paul Ryan, the chair of House Budget Committee at the time, went so far as to assert that the called for strikes would not achieve US strategic objectives and that they would be “feckless show of force” that would “only damage our credibility”. A New York real estate developer and reality TV star named Donald Trump tweeted that “The only reason President Obama wants to attack Syria is to save face over his very dumb RED LINE statement. Do NOT attack Syria, fix U.S.A.” As a result of Congress denying him explicit military authorization to engage Syrian military targets outside of the Authorization for Military Force for the global war on terror, President Obama did not order a strike.

The Obama administrations’s second Syria strategy was for pursuing the campaign against ISIS. Specifically to apply low intensity and unconventional warfare doctrine to reduce ISIS’s physical caliphate that spanned Iraq and Syria’s shared border, and, ultimately, to reduce ISIS. This is the “by, with, and through” strategy that I’ve referenced here before and that you may have seen mentioned or referred to in news reports and other analyses. Simply put the “by, with, and through” strategy focuses on finding reliable host country partners who are willing to fight on their own behalf and then sending the US’s unconventional warfare specialists, the Green Berets (Special Forces) to embed with them in a train, advise, and assist mission. This is a very, very light footprint strategy. Small teams of US Special Forces known as Operational Detachments Alpha (ODAs), with specific enablers from other elements of US Special Operations Forces and, most likely some of the CIA’s paramilitary operators at the outset, as well as a small support element were sent into Syria to identify, recruit, and vet local Syrians that would then be trained, advised, and assisted with operations against ISIS. Eventually a small contingent of US Marine artillery were also moved into the US led Coalition’s theater of operations in Syria to provide fire support for the ODAs and their host country partners they were embedded with.

Train, advise, and assist has a very specific meaning here. Training means that the Soldiers on the ODAs would teach the Syrian Kurds and Arabs that are known as the Syrian Democratic Forces how to fight more effectively against ISIS. These host country fighters didn’t need to be taught how to fight, both the Syrian Kurds and Arabs have their own ways of war. What the Special Forces Soldiers on the ODAs did do was to teach them to fight more effectively at the tactical and operational levels against the specific type of enemy that is ISIS within the theater strategy that was established based on the US’s national strategy against ISIS. Training blends into advising and assisting, especially in regard to logistics and planning. As the Syrian Democratic Forces became a more effective host country fighting force, especially within the context of the type of campaign that had been designed to reduce ISIS’s physical caliphate, defeat them, and then retard their ability to continue to terrorize and destabilize the region*, the US Special Forces would do less assisting in the actual combat operations. Part of the assistance was also air support. The US led Coalition flew sorties day and night as necessary to degrade ISIS targets on the ground.  Here is the link to the continually updated list of these sorties and strikes.

The US and its coalition partners had been trying to successfully adapt and implement a “by, with, and through” strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan since GEN (ret) Petraues’s revised Counterinsurgency Manual, FM 3-24: Counterinsurgency, arrived to great fanfare in the mid aughts. The key idea behind a “by, with, and through” strategy is to empower the lowest societal level you can work with, ie the population layer/element, work from that level up (work from the bottom up), and then reconcile the tactical and operations gains made with the state to state strategic efforts, such as diplomatic initiatives and the use of economic and information power, being made at the top end. This never really worked during Operations Iraqi and Enduring Freedom (OIF and OEF) because we didn’t actually institute a true “by, with, and through” strategy. Rather, we had US Conventional Forces and our Coalition partners, also usually Conventional Forces, trying to implement and realize something that is the specialty of US Special Forces. I’m not knocking the efforts put in or the actual tactical and operational successes achieved, as there were and are many, just that the size of Iraq and Afghanistan and the need to have Conventional Forces work outside their expertise by undertaking an unconventional warfare strategy, did not lead to theater strategic success. Often because of failures at the national and theater strategic levels and despite the tactical and operational successes.

The size, scope, and scale of OIF and OEF made it impossible to let Special Forces take the lead as we simply do not have enough Green Berets to work one entire theater the size of Iraq, let alone two with the second theater being the size of Afghanistan. Even if we pulled in all the other US Special Operations Forces – SEALs, Operational Detachment Delta/Delta Force, Rangers, Air Commandos, Recon Marines, the Intelligence Support Activity (Gray Fox/Field Operating Group), Civil Affairs, and PSYOPers – and had them pick up the slack while ignoring their own missions and mission specialty areas, we still wouldn’t have had enough Special Operations Forces to do the job. There is a reason that Marines and Special Operations Forces fight battles and conventional Armies fight campaigns and wars in the Land Domain; because the former do not have the capacity to scale to the latter.

The campaign against ISIS in Syria, however, was different. The theater of operations was limited in size. We had been able to identify, recruit, vet, and then train reliable host country partners that we and our Coalition allies could work “by, with, and through”. A limited number of Operational Detachment Alphas, plussed up with personnel from other SOF elements, with a small support element and a small amount of Marine artillery batteries for fire support were tremendously successful! Perhaps beyond anyone’s legitimate expectations based on the mixed results from trying to apply the “by, with, and through” strategy during the latter portions of Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom. And that success carried over to maintaining the peace in the area of operations once ISIS’s physical caliphate had been reduced. About 1,000 US Special Forces and Special Operating Forces, working with the SDF, had been able to reduce ISIS’s physical caliphate to nothing because the SDF, as the host country partners, did the hard, dangerous, and deadly work. Which is why the SDF suffered over 10,000 killed in action and the US Special Forces partnering with them suffered zero KIA in this campaign.

What the President has thrown away with his rash and ill considered pull out and betrayal of our Syrian Kurdish and Arab allies, and what his defenders and supporters don’t understand in their rush to defend him by blaming all of this on President Obama and his administration, is just how successful this campaign against ISIS has been. How much reward we reaped in exchange for the amount of blood and treasure wagered and risk assumed. And how well it was working to maintain the peace in this area of Syria by preventing ISIS from reestablishing a stable physical ground base of operations from which to try to reestablish the physical caliphate.

There wasn’t one single Obama administration strategy for Syria, there were two distinct and specific strategies. The first was to assume risk by not intervening in the Syrian Civil War in order to buy time for what were considered to be other regional priorities – the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations and the JCPOA+5 negotiations and the reduction of ISIS. The second was an unconventional warfare strategy to degrade and reduce ISIS’s physical caliphate and reduce ISIS’s capacity to continue to terrorize and destabilize the region. While the first strategy’s efficacy is debatable, the second strategy to counter ISIS has been successful beyond all possible expectations. And the President has thrown away all of that success and by doing so betrayed our Syrian Kurdish and Arab partners, weakened and diminished the United States power and ability to project power, and degraded our moral standing. He has further destabilized the region. He has handed the Russians, the Syrians, the Iranians, and the Turks a victory without them having to actually contest for it. And he has most likely set the conditions for Erdogan to try to finally solve his Kurdish problem.

Open thread!

This post is dedicated to the late Sergeant First Class (ret) Terry Caldwell. Terry was my Area Specialty Officer (ASO) and taught me everything I know about small team operations and the practical realities of asymmetric, irregular, and unconventional warfare. Rest well Old Man!

* Interestingly enough the chart at the previous link is based on the four phases of conventional warfare, not the seven phases of unconventional warfare used by US Special Forces, which is the result of the commend element of CJTF-OIR being a conventional 3 star Corps headquarters. There is also a full description of the campaign at that link.

Disclosure: In May 2015 I was on site to present the kickoff and keynote briefing of XVIII Airborne Corps’ strategic assessment week and was on site throughout the week as the cultural subject matter expert/cultural advisor as their preparation for assuming command of Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve. The briefing focused on the regional strategic and geo-strategic considerations of the Levantine problem set and the campaign against ISIS. It was specifically prepared for the Commanding General, Command Group, senior staff, as much of their staff as could be jammed into the auditorium, and a variety of attendees by secure videoteleconference at a number of outstations. Also in attendance were several senior leaders (general officers) from our Coalition partners who were on the Coalition senior staff. In the weeks after the briefing I prepared a strategic assessment on how to leverage the campaign against ISIS to set the conditions in the theater of operations to secure the peace after the termination of military operations. My work for XVIII Airborne Corps was as a private consultant being paid on contract. I was asked to do this work by the then Corps’ G5 (Officer in Charge of Plans), who I’d both previously worked with at III Corps and who was a student at USAWC when I was the cultural advisor at both. My civilian mobilization/appointment as a senior civil servant at both USAWC and the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Security Dialogue assigned to US Army Europe were not political appointments. I was not then, nor have a I ever been, part of President Obama’s appointed foreign policy, national security, and/or defense policy team, though I did provide significant support to a number of those appointees during my civilian mobilization from 2010 through 2014.

 

President Obama & His Administration Did Indeed Have a Strategy for Syria: It is Not President Obama’s Fault if You Don’t Understand It and It is Not an Excuse for What the President Did Last WeekPost + Comments (88)

A Badly Executed Mob Shakedown: The President’s Ukraine Mess Is Just An Extension of His Russia Mess

by Adam L Silverman|  October 14, 201910:36 pm| 170 Comments

This post is in: America, Domestic Politics, Election 2016, Foreign Affairs, Impeachment, Mueller Report, Open Threads, Politics, Silverman on Security, The Trump Doctrine

On Friday I wrote the following in an email explaining what is actually going on with the Ukraine mess that the President has made:

I amazed that all of this current brouhaha is just a really bad Russian mob shakedown. The play here is to get Parnas’s and Fruman’s boss in the Russian mob, Dmitri Firtash, off of house arrest and out from under the extradition warrant to the US so he can go back to Kyiv and take over the Ukrainian natural gas industry, strip it of every last penny, then crash it on behalf of Putin and the Russian mob. This then forces Ukraine to buy natural gas from Russia, which allows Putin to then further knuckle Ukraine by sucking resources out of Ukraine to create leverage to force Ukraine back into his orbit. As was reported last night, Giuliani is on Parnas’s payroll and has been for a while. Parnas is on DiGenova’s and Toensing’s payroll, who are working pro bono with Giuliani on behalf of the President, though they’re using him as their translator for their legal work for Firtash. Parnas and Fruman report to Firtash in regard to Russian organized crime activities. Firtash works for the Kyiv born Semion Mogilevich, who is the titular head of the Bratva. Mogolivech works for Putin who is the functional krysha/roof/protector of the Bratva. The Biden stuff is simply disinformation recycled from the Russians from 2014 as part of the maskirovka.

Earlier this evening, Andrew Weiss, who is the Vice President for Studies of The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and is in their Russia and Eurasia Program, tweeted the following explainer that really delineates all the parts of the network I was describing in my email from last Friday. (I’m going to put the first half above the jump and the second half below it).

Bear with me as I lay out some facts. They exceed the unreality of a Gary @Shteyngart novel. Yet based on my reading of these facts, several questions readily jump out. I don’t have all of the answers to these questions but think it’s worth asking them. 2/

— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

The other point of comparison that immediately comes to mind is an ongoing Federal criminal investigation of Elliot Broidy, a former top Trump fundraiser and the former vice chairman of Trump’s 2016 campaign. More on him in a second. 4/ pic.twitter.com/DWADspZ8sI

— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

That’s a curiously menial role for Parnas who presented himself as a high roller and whose campaign contributions gave him access to Trump and other GOP leaders. (Lawyer John Dowd says they had a similar role for Giuliani on behalf of President Trump) https://t.co/3MYZlQcVc3 6/

— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

In reality ties betw Parnas/Fruman and Firtash run much deeper. They were “working for Firtash" before "Parnas joined [Firtash’s] legal team…Firtash has paid their expenses in the past [including] private jet charters..& foreign travel to Vienna.” https://t.co/1PYZ6oj9eN

— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

Arguably the single biggest set of toes belongs to Firtash. He was arrested immediately after the 2014 Maidan revolution in Ukraine and has been stuck in Vienna fighting extradition to the U.S. after being charged by the Feds with FCPA violations. 10/ pic.twitter.com/gNAOcwdo8F

— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

It’s also good to think of the gas trade as Exhibit #1 for the comingling of the Russian govt/organized crime. Firtash served as the top gas trade intermediary for the Kremlin & a Russian mob figure Semyon Mogilevich who’s on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List & helped control it 12/ pic.twitter.com/LdTWKGpc2h

— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

It’s been all too easy to get a chuckle out of Parnas and Fruman’s bumbling hijinks after they joined the ranks of top GOP/Trump donors, despite having such a long trail of bad debts, evictions, and sketchy relationships back in Ukraine. https://t.co/vYeGu25kYf 14/

— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

show full post on front page

What then to make of the revelation that Parnas and Fruman were arrested at Dulles last Thursday while en route to Vienna? Or that Giuliani planned to leave for Vienna, Firtash’s home base, the following day? https://t.co/TmhXrjmhNn @elainaplott 16/

— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

Bloomberg's @nwadhams broke a story about Trump and Giuliani seeking special favors from DOJ/State Dept for one of the latter’s clients, a convicted Turkish gold trader who had violated Iran sanctions. Rex Tillerson thought these requests were illegal https://t.co/OFJn5fWC1m 18/

— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

That brings us back to where I started. Does this scandal echo the circumstances that led to the naming of Robert Mueller? Was Giuliani ever involved in seeking special favors for Firtash? Did he or anyone else ( DiGenova? Toensing?) raise this case with Trump or others? 20/

— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

What is AG William Barr’s involvement in the search for dirt on the Bidens and conspiracy theories about the 2016 election? Remember: Trump told Zelenskyy to contact Barr. Does Barr have a conflict of interest or at least the appearance of one? Does he need to recuse himself? 22/ pic.twitter.com/3nYNsF64B4

— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

ADDENDUM The Reuters team which broke the story about Firtash’s ties to Giuliani’s associates deserves a major shoutout @AramRoston @karen_freifeld @polinaivanovva

— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

Weiss’s thread, however, goes beyond just making explicitly clear the different key nodes in the network behind this poorly executed mob shakedown. Weiss’s thread makes it very clear that the Republican Party has been bought by Russian and post-Soviet oligarchs and incorporated into their influence network, including the Russian mob. And as was the case with the cost of Putin’s information warfare and active measures campaign against the US, they did it for pennies on the dollar.

Open thread!

 

A Badly Executed Mob Shakedown: The President’s Ukraine Mess Is Just An Extension of His Russia MessPost + Comments (170)

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