By Dr. Ron Paul
The most shocking thing about the House impeachment hearings to this point is not a “smoking gun” witness providing irrefutable evidence of quid pro quo. It’s not that President Donald Trump may or may not have asked the Ukrainians to look into business deals between then-Vice President Joe Biden’s son and a Ukrainian oligarch. The most shocking thing to come out of the hearings thus far is confirmation that no matter who is elected president of the United States, the permanent government will not allow a change in our aggressive interventionist foreign policy, particularly when it comes to Russia. Even more shocking is that neither Republicans nor Democrats are bothered in the slightest.
Take Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who earned high praise in the mainstream media. He did not come forth with first-hand evidence that Trump had committed any “high crimes” or “misdemeanors.” He brought a complaint against the president because he was worried that Trump was shifting U.S. policy away from providing offensive weapons to the Ukrainian government.
He didn’t think the president had the right to suspend aid to Ukraine because he supported providing aid to Ukraine.
According to his testimony, Vindman was concerned over “influencers promoting a false narrative of Ukraine inconsistent with the consensus views of the interagency.”
“Consensus views of the interagency” is another word for “Deep State.”
Vindman continued, “While my interagency colleagues and I were becoming increasingly optimistic on Ukraine’s prospects, this alternative narrative undermined U.S. government efforts to expand cooperation with Ukraine.”
Let that sink in for a moment: Vindman did not witness any crimes; he just didn’t think the elected president of the United States had any right to change U.S. policy toward Ukraine or Russia.
Likewise, his boss on the National Security Council staff, Fiona Hill, sounded more like she had just stepped out of the 1950s with her heated Cold War rhetoric. Citing the controversial 2017 “Intelligence Community Assessment” put together by then-CIA director John Brennan’s “handpicked” analysts, she asserted that “President Putin and the Russian security services aim to counter U.S. foreign policy objectives in Europe, including in Ukraine.”
And who gets to decide U.S. foreign policy objectives in Europe? Not the president, according to government bureaucrat Hill. In fact, Hill told Congress, “If the president, or anyone else, impedes or subverts the national security of the United States in order to further domestic political or personal interests, that is more than worthy of your attention.”
Who was Hill’s boss? Former National Security Advisor John Bolton, who no doubt agreed that the president has no right to change U.S. foreign policy. Bolton’s the one who “explained” that when Trump said U.S. troops would come home it actually meant troops would stay put.
One by one, the parade of “witnesses” before House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff sang from the same songbook. As U.S. Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland put it, “In July and August 2019, we learned that the White House had also suspended security aid to Ukraine. I was adamantly opposed to any suspension of aid, as the Ukrainians needed those funds to fight against Russian aggression.” Meanwhile, both Democrats and Republicans in large majority voted to continue spying on the rest of us by extending the unpatriotic Patriot Act.
Authoritarianism is the real bipartisan philosophy in Washington.
Ron Paul, a former U.S. representative from Texas and medical doctor, continues to write his weekly column for the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, online at www.ronpaulinstitute.org.
