John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY DANIEL LARISON IN CHECKPOINT ASIA (ANTI-EMPIRE)
“Trump Picks Fool Who Blew Up US-German Relations to Head US Intelligence Agencies
“Absurdly Grenell gets to also stay on as Ambassador to Berlin”
https://www.anti-empire.com/trump-picks-fool-who-blew-up-us-german-relations-to-head-us-intelligence-agencies/
I read before of the impact Richard Grenell, in his role as American Ambassador, has had in Germany, and it has been truly the opposite of what diplomacy is supposed to accomplish.
I agree with the author's assessment. Grenell offers a complete lack of expertise in intelligence, but he offers dogged loyalty and readiness to please, as with views and information never contradicting, only reconfirming, Trump’s own. That is always one of hazards of “Big Intelligence” - as when the CIA during the Cold War, over and over, produced annual assessments of the USSR that were wildly out of line with reality – their aim being to juice up their budgets. But in this case, it seems a guaranteed outcome.
Considering all the hotspots Trump has created in the world, how easy it would be for this kind of man to deliberately feed him dangerously slanted intelligence about any of them.
I think particularly of Iran, the focus of so many unwarranted, irrational American hatred – I think far more so than North Korea, a genuine renegade nuclear power - and a country we know that Israel’s Netanyahu would just relish seeing attacked. He has in the past, several times, manufactured various kinds of “evidence” that fortunately no one believed.
After all, in one of Trump's insane missile attacks on Syria, over a clearly faked poison gas event, it was reported at the time that it was Ivanka tearfully pleading with him about injured children that propelled him to act without any evidence.
As we all know from observation, Ivanka is pretty much what old Trump associate, Steve Bannon, once said she was, "dumb as a brick." Yet she has a deep mutual-admiration relationship with her father, much as this man will.
Maybe one of the qualities Trump looks for in major appointments is just sheer unlikability.
It is a feature of his every major appointment, except for former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who was doomed from his first day on the job because he liked facts and was ready to disagree when he didn’t see any.
Being a truly dislikable man himself, Trump is comfortable with others of the same kind.
Almost something resembling a monster in an old fairy tale seeking the company of other monsters in the dark forest.
In the end, you just have to wonder what Trump thinks he is doing with all of his "work" as President.
He is piling up an amazing record of failures and half-done stunts and doing things that were better not done. He has to be the most unsuitable man ever for the role of a world leader.
All of it is destructive, his every act towards friends and foes. Even in the case of Israel, which he rewards like a Mafia Don recognizing a loyal soldier, he builds something that cannot have a stable future because it ignores so many interests. He is reviled from China and across most of the Middle East over to huge parts of Latin America. And while he likely believes he is making America a better place, he is doing quite the opposite, pushing the world’s leaders to speed the day of a new set of international relationships, while contributing to the instability of a world already under grave economic stress.
LATER NOTE
Well, apparently, Grenell's real task is just quickly taking a meat ax to some of the agencies, and he may only keep his title for a matter of weeks.
He's enough of a bastard for the job, for sure.
From CNN:
"Richard Grenell, the newly installed acting director of American spy agencies and loyalist to President Donald Trump, began his temporary tenure by moving aggressively to put his stamp on the intelligence community that Trump has repeatedly attacked.
"Grenell ousted a veteran intelligence officer on Friday who served as the number two at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, according to The New York Times, and on Thursday he brought on board a former staffer of Rep. Devin Nunes, a California Republican who's a staunch Trump ally.
"He also asked to see the intelligence behind the classified briefing last week where lawmakers were told Russia was interfering in the 2020 election to aid Trump, the Times reported."
