Автор неизвестен - A Warning

After I published the op-ed in the Times , Trump responded with a one-word tweet: “TREASON?” Those seven letters say it all. To the president, criticism is treasonous. I find this to be a very un-American position. Former president Theodore Roosevelt argued that it was treacherous not to criticize the nation’s chief executive, as long as it was honest criticism. “To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public,” he wrote. “Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or anyone else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about anyone else.” We do not owe the president our silence. We owe him the truth.

It is worth noting that there is a difference between legitimate criticism and the careless release of sensitive information. Roosevelt said it was “unpatriotic not to tell the truth” about the president, except “in the rare cases where this would make known to the enemy information of military value which would otherwise be unknown to him.” In other words, national security information must be protected. I agree. There have been instances in which, on matters of great sensitivity, the current president has failed the American people by making poorly reasoned decisions, whether in the White House Situation Room or in sensitive conversations with foreign leaders. Some of these examples have been declassified, which we will discuss. Those which haven’t will not be the subject of this book and such details have been omitted. When individuals leak classified information to the press even to make a valid political critique, it can put Americans in danger. Such disclosures should rightfully be condemned and have no place in our public discourse. There are appropriate avenues for whistleblowers to raise classified concerns, which some have already done.

At the same time, it is equally unacceptable for a president to conflate personal criticism with a national security threat. In summer 2018, he ordered staff to revoke the security clearances of former intelligence officials who disagreed with him, and he directed the White House press secretary to announce that the credentials of former CIA director John Brennan, a frequent administration critic, would in fact be rescinded. What would we have said if his predecessor, President Barack Obama, had done the same? Only a few weeks later, in reference to the op-ed, he demanded that “the Times must, for National Security purposes, turn him/her [the author] over to the government at once!” Trump went further and launched a search effort using taxpayer dollars and official government resources to draw up a short list of people considered potential suspects, before the effort fizzled out for lack of leads. It was Trumpian in every way, a pointless and emotion-driven exercise.

He has suggested worse be done to his critics. In September 2019, the president issued a veiled threat against an intelligence community employee who reported the president for inappropriately coaxing a foreign government to investigate one of his political opponents. Trump said the employee was “close to a spy.” He continued, “You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart, right? The spies and treason, we used to handle it a little differently than we do now.” The implicit suggestion was that the whistleblower should be hanged.

Such behavior is unbecoming of a president and the presidency. To anyone with even a modest reverence for the principle of free speech, it is also morally wrong. The nation’s chief executive should never under any circumstances use his office and its extraordinary powers to seek revenge against whistleblowers and political opponents. These are actions we would expect from tin-pot dictators in repressive countries and which we would openly decry as a nation. Yet it is happening in real time here at home, setting a chilling precedent for the use of executive authority.

Many were unsure what we were getting when Donald Trump was voted into office for the first time in 2016. Nevertheless, he deserved a chance from all Americans, despite what was said in the campaign or what he’d done at other points in his career. He became our president, not just the Republican victor. But now we do know what we’ve gotten. We all know. This book will illuminate the reality of the Trump administration and whether the current president is fit to continue leading the United States of America.

I write this on the eve of what may be the most important election of our lifetimes. In the time left until we make our decision, we as a nation must consider the implications of reelecting Trump. I realize that writing this while the president is still in office is an extraordinary step. Some will find it disloyal, but too many people have confused loyalty to a man with loyalty to the country. The truth about the president must be spoken, not after Americans have stood in the voting booth to consider whether to give him another term and not after he has departed office. It must be done now. Hopefully others will remedy the error of silence and choose to speak out.

In these pages, you will not just hear from me. You will hear a great deal from Donald Trump directly, for there is no better witness to his character than his own words and no better evidence of the danger he poses than his own conduct.

The day began like any other in the Trump administration: with a self-inflicted crisis. It was Wednesday, December 19, 2018, and the White House was dealing with a communications problem. The State Department had decided to unveil an economic development program in Latin America the day before, which experts believed would reduce violence and instability in the region. There was one catch. The president was on the brink of scrapping it. He reportedly thought it was too expensive and threatened to kill the deal by tweet. Its architects panicked about whether the president was going to create a diplomatic row.

As it often does, the main show turned out to be a sideshow. The president hadn’t yet come down from the residence to the Oval Office. We all knew why. It was prime tweeting hour, and at 9:29 a.m., he fired off a missive from the executive mansion: “We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency.” Within minutes, news broke that the president had decided to withdraw. He later tweeted: “After historic victories against ISIS, it’s time to bring our great young people home!”

The announcement reverberated across Washington. It was contrary to what had been recommended to him. From the top Pentagon officials to leaders of the intelligence community, most of the president’s top advisors cautioned against arbitrarily pulling the roughly two thousand US troops out of Syria. ISIS was still a potent threat, he was told, and America’s exit would allow the group to reconstitute and plot more deadly attacks. An early pullout would also cede the area to a dictator who used chemical weapons on his own people, to the anti-American Iranian regime that was expanding its reach in the region, and to Russia. What’s more, it would probably result in the slaughter of Kurdish forces who had helped us go after terrorists. In every way, withdrawal would damage US security interests.