Pelosi – USA Gov Policy

There should be concern about the partisan-tenor of the statements Speaker Pelosi issued in response to the triumph of American special forces in eliminating ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

President George Washington famously warned about the dangers of political parties. He was deeply concerned that dedication to party would exceed loyalty to the nation as a whole. While both sides have their share of overenthusiastic zealots, it cannot be reasonably denied that the leadership of the Democratic Party, and its steadfast media friends have adopted a slash and burn mindset that places the fortunes of party above the national interest.

The raid on Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was a substantive victory in the War on Terror. While ISIS will continue to exist albeit in a weakened form, it has lost a crucial leadership element. Combined with the prior destruction of the ISIS caliphate by the Trump Administration, significant progress has been made.

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But that progress has apparently not been uppermost in the minds of Speaker Pelosi. After giving due praise to the military for its heroism, Pelosi complained: “The House must be briefed on this raid, which the Russians but not top Congressional Leadership were notified of in advance, and on the Administration’s overall strategy in the region. Our military and allies deserve strong, smart and strategic leadership from Washington.” (The White House noted that Turkish, Russian, and Kurdish forces needed to be partially informed since they had forces in the region.)

Pelosi’s comments were given prominence in major media outlets. The Associated Press reported: “ House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is criticizing the White House for failing to notify congressional leaders before the U.S. raid in Syria that President Donald Trump says killed the leader of the Islamic State group… Pelosi says the Trump administration must brief Congress on the operation and on the administration’s overall strategy for the Mideast.”

Similarly, USA Today wrote: “President Donald Trump did not give House Speaker Nancy Pelosi or other key members of Congress advance notice of the Saturday night raid that ended in the death of terrorist leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Trump said he knew about plans for the top-secret mission for three days but kept most members of Congress in the dark because he feared the information would be leaked to the public and endanger the lives of American forces. ‘Washington leaks like I’ve never seen before,’ Trump told reporters at the White House on Sunday. ‘There’s no country in the world that leaks like we do. And Washington is a leaking machine.’

Leaks have been a significant Washington news item lately. Earlier this month, WTOP reported that “A Defense Intelligence Agency official was arrested…and charged with leaking classified intelligence information to two journalists, including a reporter he was dating…He was charged with willfully disclosing national defense information. The official had a top secret government security clearance, and reportedly ‘accessed at least five classified intelligence reports and provided top secret information about another country’s weapons systems to the reporter with whom he was having a relationship’…The arrest is the latest in a series of prosecutions under the Trump administration of government workers accused of providing nonpublic information to journalists.”

The leadership of the Democratic Party have had a significant problem with leaks and internal security matters. Former Democratic Party National Committee Chair, Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-Florida) protected her IT aide, Imram Awan, who hacked house servers. As National Review notes “Awan, who worked as an IT aide for roughly two-thirds of House Democrats, was found to have gained ‘unauthorized access’ to House servers in July 2016. …Wasserman Schultz became ‘frantic, not normal’ and began ‘making the rounds’ to pressure House officials to kill the probe, according to the Daily Caller‘s sources. She reportedly attacked House chief administrative officer Phil Kiko, calling him a “f***ing Islamophobe.’”

The partisanship-above-everything emphasis by the Democratic leadership is precisely what President Washington warned about.

Photo: Speaker Pelosi

Quick Analysis

Putin’s Saber Rattling

Earlier this week, President Biden reversed his 2022 decision, authorizing the provision of antipersonnel land mines to the Ukrainian government. It follows an earlier Administration authorization to allow the use of an advanced American missile system capable of striking as deep as 100 miles inside Russian territory. The US election season may be ending, but both Russia and the West show no indication of stepping down the conflict. Russian propaganda continues to swell as the Kremlin increases its threats to use nuclear weapons against the West. Last week Andrey Sushentsov, program director of the pro-Kremlin think tank Valdai Discussion Club (VDC), published an article on growing nuclear tensions in the region. Official Russian language in the last few years has been threatening. Since the US election, rhetoric like that in the Sushentsov article, has approached the level of nuclear blackmail. The VDC article’s main theme centers on Russia’s intent to directly confront the West militarily if the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) becomes involved in Russia’s conflict with Ukraine. “On the one hand, these threats are intended to frighten the West, but on the other, Russian propagandists themselves are starting to believe in the inevitability of escalation,” according to Ksenia Kirillova of the Jamestown Foundation. On November 11, Sushentsov wrote that “The conflict will reach a completely new level, with unpredictable consequences for Europe and the entire world.” Kirillova points out that Putin’s distorted image of the world is divorced from reality and is causing the Kremlin to issue demands that are impossible to fulfill. Financial and other Russian resources needed to support Putin’s war are growing scarcer at the same time. This week the Kremlin announced a reduction of payments to its soldiers. Recently North Korea acknowledged it was sending soldiers to fight in Ukraine as Putin is running out of bodies to use as cannon fire. The war is not going well for Russia. One question floating around the Washington intelligence community is whether Putin will act out of desperation before President-elect Trump assumes office. In recent months the Russian propaganda machine is spewing out materials from fairly reputable analytical platforms inside the country. Kirillova says that “Kremlin ‘experts’ do not conceal that such threats are only intended to break the West psychologically, as they themselves are not prepared for full-scale nuclear war.” Despite Russia’s lack of preparation for an all-out war with the West, the expanding nuclear rhetoric carries with it an increase in the threat of a full-scale war in multiple theaters of operation. In June 2023 a founder of the Russian Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, Sergey Karaganov, called for “delivering a pre-emptive strike of retaliation” on Poland to force the West to surrender. In the previous month, Dmitry Suslov, a direct of research programs at the policy center proposed organizing “a demonstration nuclear explosion” aimed at intimidating the West. In September, President Putin announced a reappraisal of Russian nuclear doctrine after speaking earlier in the year at the plenary session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum and jokingly calling Suslov a “scary person.” Pavel Baev, writing in the European Daily Monitor, says “Putin intends his announcement to mark an escalation of nuclear brinkmanship and influence the proceedings of future Ukrainian peace efforts.” Putin is expanding the list of environmental conditions that are acceptable for using a nuclear weapon and incorporating it into Russian military doctrine. Baev adds that “The ups and downs of Russian brinkmanship are disconnected from the kinetic battles of the war, correlating instead with Ukrainian peace offensives, such as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s first peace summit in Bürgenstock, Switzerland.” Despite the increase in vitriolic language, in a You Tube video published a week before the US presidential election, Karaganov openly assured the West the primary goal of the escalation is to break the American spirit and that of the West, not outright nuclear war. By Election Day in the US, with political prognosticators predicting a win for former president Trump, Karaganov changed his tune and called for an increased role in nuclear deterrence. Kirillova points out that Western concessions to Russia are unlikely to reduce the risk of nuclear escalation. The distorted reality inside the Kremlin continues to push that President-elect Trump is an adherent of “world government,” that Ukraine will create a nuclear weapon, and Russia must prepare for a nuclear conflagration to achieve its ambitions for a new world order. President-elect Trump has indicated he will not agree to concessions that destabilize Europe, the Middle East or other regions. Going forward a strong US foreign policy may be the most stabilizing course the West can count on to restrain Putin and his intent to rebuild the Russian empire. Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept. Illustration: Pixabay

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