ACCORDING TO THE DEMOCRATS AND THE FBI – an organization that gets it wrong as much as it gets it right – Present Trump’s advisers colluded with the Russians to defeat Hillary Clinton in the presidential election.
The Democrats contend that the Russians promised Trump’s people they would swing the election to Trump by exposing, apparently among her other embarrassments, Mrs. Clinton’s secret emails.
They also, again “apparently” used (ro)bots to flood social media with anti-Sanders comments (about which little is being said) and anti-Clinton comments.
So far, all claims above must be preceded by “apparently.”
A BRIEF LOOK AT ELECTION interference would show that the U.S. is near the top of the list of countries trying – and sometimes succeeding – to swing an election to the candidate favored by the U.S. ruling party. Jackass or elephant, same story.
Even liberal media admits it
The liberal media may be downplaying it now, but a quick look at the internet shows that even the liberal media reported on U.S. interference.
- Washington Post: The long history of the U.S. interfering with elections elsewhere1
LA Times: The U.S. is no stranger to interfering in the elections of other countries2
NPR: Database Tracks History Of U.S. Meddling In Foreign Elections3
On the other side
- New American: U.S. Has Interfered in Foreign Elections Multiple Times4
Spectator: Obama’s Meddling in Foreign Elections: Six Examples5
From the (liberal) media
According to the Washington Post, mixing news and editorials,
- the United States does have a well-documented history of interfering and sometimes interrupting the workings of democracies elsewhere. It has occupied and intervened militarily in a whole swath of countries in the Caribbean and Latin America and fomented coups against democratically elected populists.
The most infamous episodes include the ousting of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953 — whose government was replaced by an authoritarian monarchy favorable to Washington — the removal and assassination of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba in 1961, and the violent toppling of socialist Chilean President Salvador Allende, whose government was swept aside in 1973 by a military coup led by the ruthless Gen. Augusto Pinochet.
Aside from its instigation of coups and alliances with right-wing juntas, Washington sought to more subtly influence elections in all corners of the world. And so did Moscow. Political scientist Dov Levin calculates that the “two powers intervened in 117 elections around the world from 1946 to 2000 — an average of once in every nine competitive elections.”
The LA Times, also referring to Dov Levin’s research, notes that
- The U.S. has a long history of attempting to influence presidential elections in other countries – it's done so as many as 81 times between 1946 and 2000, according to a database amassed by political scientist Dov Levin of Carnegie Mellon University.
That number doesn't include military coups and regime change efforts following the election of candidates the U.S. didn't like, notably those in Iran, Guatemala and Chile. Nor does it include general assistance with the electoral process, such as election monitoring.
"We threw everything, including the kitchen sink" at helping the Christian Democrats beat the Communists in Italy, said Levin, including covertly delivering "bags of money" to cover campaign expenses, sending experts to help run the campaign, subsidizing "pork" projects like land reclamation, and threatening publicly to end U.S. aid to Italy if the Communists were elected.
In Czechoslovakia that same year (1990), the U.S. provided training and campaign funding to Vaclav Havel's party and its Slovak affiliate as they planned for the country's first democratic election after its transition away from communism.
The U.S. also attempted to sway Russian elections. In 1996, with the presidency of Boris Yeltsin and the Russian economy flailing, President Clinton endorsed a $10.2-billion loan from the International Monetary Fund linked to privatization, trade liberalization and other measures that would move Russia toward a capitalist economy.
In the Middle East, the U.S. has aimed to bolster candidates who could further the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. In 1996, seeking to fulfill the legacy of assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the peace accords the U.S. brokered, Clinton openly supported Shimon Peres, convening a peace summit in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el Sheik to boost his popular support and inviting him to a meeting at the White House a month before the election.
In 1999, in a more subtle effort to sway the election, top Clinton strategists, including James Carville, were sent to advise Labor candidate Ehud Barak in the election against Netanyahu.
In 2000, the U.S. spent millions of dollars in aid for political parties, campaign costs and independent media. Funding and broadcast equipment provided to the media arms of the opposition were a decisive factor in electing opposition candidate Vojislav Kostunica as Yugoslav president, according to Levin.
NPR’s Ari Shapirio went directly to the source, Carnegie Mellon University researcher Dov Levin, for Shapirio’s All Things Considered talk show.
- SHAPIRO: How often are these interventions public versus covert?
LEVIN: Well, it's - basically there's about - one-third of them are public, and two-third of them are covert. In other words, they're not known to the voters in the target before the election.
SHAPIRO: Your count does not include coups, attempts at regime change. It sounds like depending on the definitions, the tally could actually be much higher.
LEVIN: Well, you're right. I don't count and discount covert coup d'etats like the United States did in Iran in 1953 or in Guatemala in 1954. I only took when the United States is trying directly to influence an election for one of the sides. Other types of interventions - I don't discuss. But if we would include those, then of course the number could be larger, yeah.
SHAPIRO: How often do other countries like Russia, for example, try to alter the outcome of elections as compared to the United States?
LEVIN: Well, for my dataset, the United States is the most common user of this technique. Russia or the Soviet Union since 1945 has used it half as much. My estimate has been 36 cases between 1946 to 2000. We know also that the Chinese have used this technique and the Venezuelans when the late Hugo Chavez was still in power in Venezuela and other countries.
SHAPIRO: In your view, is technology - the way that we saw in the November election - dramatically changing the game? Or is this just the latest evolution of an effort that has always used whatever tools are available?
LEVIN: I would say it's more the latter. I mean the Russians or the Soviets before unfrequentlycq did these type of intervention, just, you know, without the cyber-hacking tools - you know, the old style people meeting in the park in secret giving out and getting information and things like that, so to speak.
But was there collusion?
I doubt anyone denies that there was conversations between Trump staffers and Russians working for Putin or the oligarchs. Conversations between leaders – and in Trump’s case, potential leaders – is, and should be, Standard Operating Procedure (SOP). That’s how these people get to know what to expect. Informally laying out expectations before formal negotiations commence.
Did Mrs. Clinton or her sycophants meet with any foreign governments when she was the Democrat heir(ess) apparent? Even a “friendly” government such as Canada or England? If she did, where are the news reports? If she did not, why not. Was she already convinced the election was Trump’s?
Then there is the “alleged” Russian attacks against Mrs. Clinton’s primary rival, Bernie Sanders.
Is Sanders a Socialist or Democrat Socialist? The internet is replete with conflicting opinions. According to Politico.com6,
- Sanders, 73, has been preaching socialism for nearly half a century, and he cites Eugene Debs, the five-time presidential candidate of the Socialist Party of America, as his hero. But he hasn’t always embraced the label.
“I myself don’t use the word socialism,” he said in 1976 in the Vermont Cynic, a student publication at the University of Vermont, “because people have been brainwashed into thinking socialism automatically means slave-labor camps, dictatorship and lack of freedom of speech.”
Was the Clinton campaign in any way involved with “the Russians” (or anyone else, perhaps the Chinese) to sink Sanders or to damage Trump or any other GOP or Democrat?
We know, based on Benghazi and other incidents when she was Secretary of State – not forgetting the “sensitive” emails on non-government secured servers – that she sometimes plays “fast and loose” with both the truth and laws.
We also know her boss, ex-President Obama, did meddle in foreign elections5
The Obama meddling was generally ignored by the leftist media, and Mrs. Clinton’s multiple faux pas were quickly pushed aside by the same media. (Even President Trump gave her a “pass” on her emails.)
The Democrats and the liberal media are behaving like Janus – the Roman god, not Joplin, the late singer.
It’s time to get real in Washington.
Sources
1. WashPost: http://tinyurl.com/yaj34b53
2. LA Times: http://tinyurl.com/gvknssl
3. NPR: http://tinyurl.com/y99ourme
4. New American: http://tinyurl.com/yby4g9gu
5. Spectator: http://tinyurl.com/y6vummzu
6. Politico: http://tinyurl.com/y9b6yea4
PLAGIARISM is the act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or parts or passages of his writings, or the ideas or language of the same, and passing them off as the product of one’s own mind.
