Yes, Virginia, There Is A Deep State And It's Feeding The Anti-POTUS Mob

By David Stockman

The prepared statement of the latest UkraineGate whistle-blower is well worth the read. It tells you all you need to know about why the Deep State apparatchiks are coming out of the woodwork in a massive assault on America's duly elected president.

• They are deathly afraid Trump will begin to dismantle a far-flung Empire which has
•  wreaked havoc around the world, 
• bled America's fiscal accounts dry, and  
• fostered unspeakable prosperity among the beltway's legions of empire-supporting agencies, contractors, think tanks, foreign lobbies, NGO's and K-street racketeers.

Whether out of common sense, naiveté or just contrariness, the Donald has dared to question and disrupt the Empire's core policy on the Ukraine/Russia file. And that's apparently exactly why the whistleblower de jour, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, wrote his now ballyhooed memos.


He feared that Trump's appropriate desire to get to the bottom of the well-documented Ukrainian involvement in the Obama Administration's illegal spying on his 2016 presidential campaign would undermine the bipartisan consensus on Capitol Hill for Washington's utterly wrong-headed Ukraine policy.

Stated more crudely, Washington overthrew the duly elected government of Ukraine in
early 2014 because its leader was deemed too cozy with Moscow. And in the vanguard of
that illegal meddling in the governance of a sovereign foreign state was Obama's state
department led by neocon Assistant Secretary Victoria Nuland, Washington's self-
appointed roving proconsul John McCain and at length Vice-President Joe Biden.

After aiding a motley phalanx of ultra-nationalists, crypto-Nazi and political fortune
seekers in overthrowing President Viktor Yanukovych, Washington has stood-up what
are essentially puppet governments. The purpose has been to cause maximum abrasion
with Putin and Russia; and at a cost of billions in aid from the US and other western
agencies designed to prop up the economic basket case and cease pool of corruption
which passes for the Ukrainian economy.

The Deep State narrative turns these realities on their head, of course, claiming that the
mess in Ukraine is all the doing of the demonic Vladimir Putin. Accordingly, the very
safety and security of the citizens of Lincoln NE and Springfield MA is allegedly on the
line in a territory on Russia's doorstep, which has historically been a meandering set of
borders in search of a country when it was not otherwise a willing vassal and economic
adjunct of Mother Russia.

As it happens, Lt. Colonel Vindman is a vociferous partisan of Washington's Big Lie
about the Russian ogre, and was virtually a fifth column operative in the viper's nest of
neocons at the Donald's national security council. In fact, Vindman reported to
Russophobe Fiona Hill, who reported to the Walrus of Forever War himself, John
Bolton.

So despite all the Democrats' crocodile tears for the constitution and rule of law,
Vindman's beef wasn't really about their whole abuse of power canard. Nor did it touch
upon the risible Dem/MSM nonsense that in asking a foreign government to undertake
a legitimate action (an investigation of the corrupt use of taxpayers money by the former
Vice President) Trump was committing a violation of U.S. election laws.

To the contrary, the gravamen of the colonel's concern was domestic politics and the
possibility that in withholding the $380 million of pending Ukrainian aid (which should
have been zero in the first place) and pressing the Biden investigation, Trump would
alienate Capitol Hill Democrats and leave the Deep State's policy of using the Ukraine as
an anti-Putin battering ram high and dry.

".... I was worried about the implications for the U.S. government's support of
Ukraine.... "I realized that if Ukraine pursued an investigation into the Bidens
and Burisma, it would likely be interpreted as a partisan play which would
undoubtedly result in Ukraine losing the bipartisan support it has
thus far maintained." 

"This would all undermine U.S. national security. Following the call, I
again reported my concerns to NSC's lead counsel."

Folks, Lt. Col. Vindman was not elected to nothin'. If he's a proud 20-year veteran of the
US Army and diplomatic service as he claims, fine.

But his job is to implement policy as decided by the elected representatives of the
people, not to free lance in the cause of the Empire group-think in which he is obviously
and hopelessly steeped.

So let's cut to the chase: The policy he feared the Donald might be jeopardizing by his
pressure tactics with President Zelensky has been a travesty from start to finish. The
Ukraine has no bearing on America's homeland security whatsoever, and the policies of
its government vis a vis Russia or any of its other neighbors are none of Washington's
cotton picking business.

You can't be more emphatic about the utter irrelevancy of Ukraine to America's
homeland security. Even at the pre-coup peak in 2013 it had a miniscule GDP of $185
billion, which has since plunged by 30% to $130 billion. Even if Putin were foolish
enough to annex the approximate 30 million Russian-hating Ukrainians outside of the
Russian-speaking eastern Donbas region, which he surely is not, it wouldn't amount to a
hill of beans in the strategic equation.

Ukraine amounts to just 8% of Russia's pint-sized GDP and is actually worthless to
the Kremlin. That's because the cost of occupation and pacification of the non-Russian
speaking majority of the country would vastly outweigh whatever industrial and
material output it might steal from the Ukrainians.

Besides, what in the hell is wrong with Washington when it gets all hot and bothered
about a no-count territory plagued with economic failure and which generates annually
about two days worth of US output?

Moreover, even if you have warm and fuzzy regard for the rights and liberties of the
Ukrainian "nation", which has existed only infrequently as an independent state with
wildly variant borders during the last 800 years, the question remains. Namely, how in
the world can it be argued that its people were not better off in 2013 under an elected
government of the Regions party that tilted toward Russia compared to the economic
calamity which exits today and is only saved from complete collapse by US and
European subventions?

So here's where the Deep State's hegemonic "sole super-power" world view comes
in. Washington's Ukraine policy has nothing to do with homeland security or prevention
of military attack on American shores.

Instead, it is based on policing the world and demonizing the rump-state of
Russia which emerged after the Soviet Union slithered off the pages of history in 1991.
What was left was a decimated economy with half the former population and a current
day GDP of $1.6 trillion, which is actually less than the GDP of the New York metro area.
Still, the Warfare State needs palpable "enemies" and adversaries---no matter how
tendentious the case--- to justify its massive fiscal drain ($1.1 trillion counting
everything) on US taxpayers, both current and unborn; and it also needs expansive
missions like spreading the blessings of democracy, prosperity and western culture to
the far corners of the earth.

And that's not our hyperbole in the slightest; it's essentially the content of Vindman's
whistleblower testimony to Shifty Schiff's Star Chamber proceedings today.

Thus, when it comes to the blatant lie that Russia is an expansionist power, Vindman's
purple prose would make even the late war-mongering Senator from Arizona proud:

Since 2008, Russia has manifested an overtly aggressive foreign policy,
leveraging military power and employing hybrid warfare to achieve its
objectives of regional hegemony and global influence. Absent a deterrent to
dissuade Russia from such aggression, there is an increased risk of
further confrontations with the West. In this situation, a strong and
independent Ukraine is critical to U.S. national security interests because
Ukraine is a frontline state and a bulwark against Russian
aggression.

Wow! That's just bellicose rubbish. A "frontline state and bulwark"my eye.
In fact, during the years since 1991 when Washington has invaded and virtually
destroyed upwards of a dozen sovereign countries, Russia hasn't invaded anyone!
But the reference to 2008 does tell you exactly where Vindman is coming from. He's
obviously referring to Russia's thwarting of Georgia's invasion of South Ossetia in
August 2008.

That incident has been spun by the Deep State ever since as Russian aggression when it
was just the opposite.

To wit, it was an aggressive military invasion by Georgia designed to reclaim the break-
away republic of South Ossetia. The real culprit was its mercurial leader and

Washington tool, Mikheil Saakashvili, who had been egged on by Senator McCain and
the usual cast of neocons with the promise of Washington military help, which
fortunately did not happen.

But a subsequent 1,000 page report by an independent EU fact-finding mission led by a
renown Swiss diplomat makes clear that the Georgian accusations of Russian
aggression were completely fabricated.

"It was Georgia which triggered off the war when it attacked (South Ossetian
capital) Tskhinvali" said Heidi Tagliavini, the mission head, in a statement.
Although the EU commission tactfully avoided using the word "lie," the report
implies that Saakashvili did not tell the truth about how the war started.

The same is true of the so-called annexation of Crimea and the Kremlin's support for the
breakaway republics in eastern Ukraine.

As to the former, the population of Crimea is overwhelmingly Russian, and for 171-years
from 1783 to 1954 it was an integral province of Czarist Russia. It got
arbitrarily assigned to the Ukraine Soviet Socialist Republic by Khrushchev after he won
the post-Stalin power struggle in 1954 as a reward to his compatriots in Kiev---even
though less than 15% of the population was Ukrainian.

After the US funded, supported and instantly recognized coup in Kiev in February 2014
and the immediate passage of virulent anti-Russian legislation by the putsch, the
Russian-speaking population of Crimea voted overwhelmingly (87%) to return to
Mother Russia. The so-called coercive annexation by Russia is a figment of War Party
propaganda, and implies a willingness to use American money and arms to enforce the
dead hand of the Soviet Presidium.

And the same story goes for the Donbas. The largely Russian speaking population of this
industrial region, which is highly integrated with the Russian economy, wants to be
separated from the Ukrainian nationalists in Kiev who have launched a vicious war to
subdue them.

But if the Donbas were to be partitioned or even if it voted to join the Russian
Federation, so what?

The honest truth of the matter is that Europe is flush with partitioned states. These
include Slovakia and the Czech Republic as well as the manifold offspring of Yugoslavia
including North Macedonia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Serbia, which,
at the insistence of Washington, got further carved up by the partition of Kosovo.

That is to say, once Washington upended the tenuous political/ethnic balance of post-
Soviet Ukraine by supporting the nationalist coup, there was still no reason that the

Yugoslav model of partition could not have settled the matter.

In fact, the 5-year war on the Donbas---which has killed upwards of 20,000 and brought
economic and fiscal ruin to both the region and Ukraine as a whole---wouldn't have
lasted more than a few weeks without the promise of western economic and military aid
and political support.

The needless tragedy there is not the fruit of Russian aggression. It's the consequence of
Washington meddling, including all the corruption which has flowered after Ukraine
was turned into a Washington vassal and found it necessary to hire Washington
lobbyists and racketeers like Hunter Biden and Devon Archer (then Secretary of State
John Kerry's former campaign bundler) to keep the cash flowing.

Needless to say, the Deep State slathers this toxic reality in a narrative that is pure
hogwash. And Colonel Vindman has it down pat: Namely, under the tutelage, money
and political and military cover of the Washington Imperium, Ukraine is to be brought
into the "Euro-Atlantic community" as a splendid new democracy.

The bolded term, of course, is an undisguised euphemism for NATO:

In spite of being under assault from Russia for more than five years, Ukraine
has taken major steps towards integrating with the West. The U.S.
government policy community’s view is that the election of President
Volodymyr Zelensky and the promise of reforms to eliminate corruption will
lock in Ukraine’s Western-leaning trajectory, and allow Ukraine to realize its
dream of a vibrant democracy and economic prosperity.

The United States and Ukraine are and must remain strategic partners,
working together to realize the shared vision of a stable, prosperous, and
democratic Ukraine that is integrated into the Euro-Atlantic community.

Here's the thing. The expansion of NATO to the very doorstep of Russia was the most
colossal mistake of the post-cold war period. And the War Party's insistence that this
should to taken all the way to the incorporation of Ukraine and Georgia----historic
vassals of Russia---actually trespasses upon the very border of insanity.

Indeed, the father of containment and the intellectual architect of NATO in the late
1940s, the great George F. Kennan, hit the nail on the head when lightweight Clintonistas like Strobe Talbot and Madeleine Albright launched the NATO expansion process in the 1990s:

''I think it is the beginning of a new cold war,'' said Mr. Kennan from his
Princeton home. ''I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it
will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for
this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would
make the Founding Fathers of this country turn over in their graves. We have
signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the
resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way. [NATO expansion] was
simply a light-hearted action by a Senate that has no real interest in foreign
affairs.''

"What bothers me is how superficial and ill informed the whole Senate debate
was,'' added Mr. Kennan, who was present at the creation of NATO and whose
anonymous 1947 article in the journal Foreign Affairs, signed ''X,'' defined
America's cold-war containment policy for 40 years. ''I was particularly
bothered by the references to Russia as a country dying to attack Western
Europe. Don't people understand? Our differences in the cold war were with the
Soviet Communist regime. And now we are turning our backs on the very
people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove that
Soviet regime.

''And Russia's democracy is as far advanced, if not farther, as any of these
countries we've just signed up to defend from Russia,'' said Mr. Kennan, who
joined the State Department in 1926 and was U.S. Ambassador to Moscow in
1952. ''It shows so little understanding of Russian history and Soviet history. Of
course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO
expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are -- but
this is just wrong.''

He couldn't have been more right about the substance of what would happen. But little
did even Kennan realize that once in motion any even tepid effort to question or stop it--
-per the Donald's campaign rhetoric about the obsolescence of NATO---would actually
provoke a Deep State assault on American democracy itself.

So there's your Deep State at work. It isn't some kind of sinister conspiracy lurking deep
in the shadows of the national security machinery.

To the contrary, it's right there in the broad daylight of the Imperial City. It is populated
by hundreds of thousands of foot soldiers like Colonel Vindman who make a career of
drinking the Cool Aid, collecting a pay check from the state and propagating the policies
of Empire First---policies which are immoral, illegal, unaffordable and have absolutely
nothing to do with protecting America's liberty, prosperity and security inside the great
ocean moats, which once upon a time birthed a peace-loving Republic.

We have no illusions, of course, that the Donald is a peace-lover. He's self-evidently first
and foremost a Donald-lover.

Still, what is underway in Washington---first with the RussiaGate hoax and now with
UkraineGate and impeachment---is an extra-constitutional political lynching, and one
that has turned Washington's desperate, mendacious Dem pols into complaisant
handmaids of the Deep State.

So Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman isn't some kind of whistle-blowing hero. He's just
another mindless cog in the wheel of Empire talking his own book and thereby abetting
the political mob that is now threatening the very constitution he was sworn to uphold.

The above originally appeared at David Stockman's Contra Corner.