As a life-long Democrat, I am increasingly perplexed by elected Democrats who appear to align themselves unflinchingly with the CIA and the most hawkish members of the Republican Party.
I don’t have anything profound to say about it beyond the simple fact that it is “odd.”
Is it possible that Democrats simply have a new affinity for, and trust in, the intelligence community?
Are congressional Democrats privy to some startling new developments that now clearly support the view that American foreign policy is best shaped by the intelligence community without challenge?
What happened to the outrage of Democrats over the Bush era intelligence that led us into Iraq?
Are Democrats so shaken by the hacking of their emails and by election losses that they feel a new kinship with the snoops they previously passionately distrusted (with or without cause)?
The current Democratic assault on U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard follows an increasingly comical “The Russians Did It” partisan/media alliance narrative on Trump.
For Democrats old enough to remember Vietnam, this moved from “strange but entertaining” to “disturbing” in the aftermath of the American cruise missile strikes in Syria.
For those who have watched the arch of American foreign policy since the Clinton administration’s decision to intervene in Kosovo, the attacks on Gabbard are both suspicious and disturbing.
Whether she is right or wrong is not the point.
The fact that she is being isolated and in effect being accused of being a traitor, for not blindly embracing the narrative of an intelligence community that has a sketchy track record of its own, forces any objective, reasonable person to look more critically at the “unusual” behavior of intelligence players in the lead up to Trump’s transition to power.
It’s not something you want to believe. But, the dark world of intelligence operatives and anonymous media sources has always been a murky and dangerous place for politicians predisposed to speak their mind.
When Democrats add the weight of unvarnished public attacks against a member of their own Democratic caucus, nothing good can come if it.