Who elected Jim Jeffrey? Right: no one. My latest in FrontPage:
Robert Spencer is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
DefenseOne reported Thursday that Jim Jeffrey, President Trump’s former special envoy for Syria, who got that job despite the fact that in 2016 he was a signer of “the now-infamous ‘Never Trump’ letter condemning then-presidential candidate Donald Trump as a danger to America,” has boasted that he circumvented Trump’s orders to withdraw American troops from Syria by lying to the President.
Jeffrey, according to DefenseOne, “acknowledges that his team routinely misled senior leaders about troop levels in Syria.” Jeffrey explained: “We were always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had there,” and said that “the actual number of troops in northeast Syria is ‘a lot more than’ the roughly two hundred troops Trump initially agreed to leave there in 2019.”
Jeffrey decided to thwart the will of the Commander-In-Chief of the United States Armed Forces because, he said, the order to withdraw from Syria was “the most controversial thing in my fifty years in government.” Jeffrey, along with former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who resigned because of the order, appear to be indefatigably committed to the idea that Trump has publicly and repeatedly opposed: that the United States has a moral duty to act as the world’s policeman and commit our blood and treasure to ensuring that other countries have good governments, even as our own infrastructure crumbles, and even if this involves our getting embroiled in military adventures that have no conceivable national interest, goal, or end point.
But at least Mattis chose the honorable option by resigning. Jeffrey covered himself in dishonor by staying on the job and deciding to set U.S. policy himself, despite never having been elected President and being entirely unaccountable to the American electorate.
Jeffrey even boasted about his defiance: “What Syria withdrawal? There was never a Syria withdrawal. When the situation in northeast Syria had been fairly stable after we defeated ISIS, [Trump] was inclined to pull out. In each case, we then decided to come up with five better arguments for why we needed to stay. And we succeeded both times. That’s the story.”
Who elected this clown? Who gave him the authority to determine United States policy toward Syria? Rating America’s Presidents discusses how Trump has been obstructed at every turn by a coterie of unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats who have arrogated power to themselves and represent the political, military, and media establishment. This oligarchy has decided to ignore the will of the people and rule the United States as its personal fiefdom, with a steady erosion of our constitutional freedoms.
In the 2020 presidential election, it appears at this point that they have beaten back the challenge to their hegemony that Trump represented. But at very least, now the existence of this sinister oligarchy is widely known. Most Americans assumed that when Trump became president, he would be able to implement his own agenda insofar as he could secure the cooperation of Congress, as other presidents had done. But now it is abundantly established that Jim Jeffrey was only one of an entrenched gang of bureaucrats at all levels who were determined to thwart his every move.
Although the media dismissed talk of a “deep state” as a conspiracy theory, the New York Times admitted its existence on September 5, 2018, when it published an anonymous op-ed that proclaimed, “I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.” The author was revealed in October 2020 to be a low-level staffer, Miles Taylor, who never met Trump. The Times elaborated on these foes of Trump within his own administration in October 2019: “President Trump is right: The deep state is alive and well. But it is not the sinister, antidemocratic cabal of his fever dreams. It is, rather, a collection of patriotic public servants—career diplomats, scientists, intelligence officers and others—who, from within the bowels of this corrupt and corrupting administration, have somehow remembered that their duty is to protect the interests, not of a particular leader, but of the American people.”
While this sounded high-minded, there is no doubt whatsoever that the New York Times would have taken the opposite position if the federal bureaucracy had dared interfere with the Obama agenda. Even Jim Jeffrey might have been angry. But the Washington establishment has decided that insubordination in the Trump administration was only fitting and proper. The array of globalist, socialist, internationalist forces opposing Trump’s challenges to their hegemony would allow that establishment to take no other position.
Infidel says
In his second term, one thing I hope that President Trump does is a wholesale purge of everyone in the bureaucracy that predated his term in office. There have been enough saboteurs who’ve sabotaged various policies of his – be it the wall, relations w/ Russia, withdrawal of troops, withdrawal from NATO, removing the earned income tax credit, the list goes on… It’s only in the last few weeks that the president actually decided to hire Col Doug McGregor to make sure his policy on withdrawal of troops was actually implemented. If he wins the elections challenges, the President should make Col McGregor the next secretary of Defense
Draining the swamp actually means pulling the plug on the drain and letting everyone go! On Jan 21st, that needs to happen!
Rob says
Exactly! T’s biggest mistake in his first term was assuming that senior career officials and Obama appointees would cooperate w his policies or at least be neutral. Wrong move.
curious george says
Infidel,
?? ??? ??
Treason is no barrier to the Left’s lust for power
https://canadafreepress.com/article/treason-is-no-barrier-to-the-lefts-lust-for-power
gravenimage says
Swamp Rat Boasts of How He Lied to Trump to Defy Syria Withdrawal Orders
……………….
Just appalling–and now he is bragging about this.
del says
It seems to me that another way that US Government bureaucrats, in the The Centers for Disease Propagation, have chosen to not protect the interests of the American People, is in their stonewalling, refusal to make any updated recommendation, and general Sergeant Schultz act concerning widespread Vitamin D insufficiency and deficiency in the US population, particularly among darker-skinned and elderly people. It is as if the so-called CDC has wanted to keep so many people deficient.
Vitamin D is not just for bone health, upon which the current RDA levels have been set. Vitamin D metabolites regulate and optimize many physiological and cellular processes, including in the human immune system. Most cells in the body have Vitamin D receptors. That is not a random happenstance.
Most people get most of their Vitamin D from sunlight (UVB) exposure. It is basically a hormone made in the skin from a type of cholesterol, then modified in various cells and organs in a couple of steps into an “active” form. At temperate and northern latitudes, most people’s, including light-skinned people’s, levels drop in the fall and winter – unless they eat a lot of fatty fish, or seal blubber, or take supplements. An unfortunate majority of Nursing Home residents, African-Americans and Hispanics and people who adhere to the teachings attributed to a certain Arabian lunatic presumed to have lived about 1400 years ago are deficient in Vitamin D year round.
Fauci is the best of a bad bunch. In September, he admitted to personally taking 6000 IU of Vitamin D supplements daily and said that people who are deficient in Vitamins C and D should endeavor to raise their levels. He somehow neglected to simultaneously point out that about 40% of the total US population is at least seasonally physiologically deficient in Vitamin D (without knowing), with majorities being deficient among several sub-populations: elderly, and dark-skinned and avoiders of sunlight. His implication was that only a smallish number of people are insufficient or deficient. Beyond him, it hasn’t even been mentioned by any US Public Health Official. Attempts to contact them result in no response. Attempts to communicate with Medical School doctors result in tight-lipped shakes of the head and “I know NOTHING! NOTHING!”
The seasonal deficiency, along with closer indoor interactions, also causes seasonal flu outbreaks. People with higher serum levels (> 30 ng/ml, but 40 to 60 seems to be best for immune system operation) of the measured metabolite HAVE BEEN SHOWN to be significantly less likely to experience upper respiratory infections. Sufficient Vitamin D doesn’t make one immune to viral pathogens, but it does improve the innate immune response, so that a higher viral load is required to cause a real infection, and it modulates the adaptive immune system to reduce excessive responses which cause friendly-fire damage within the human body.
It does usually take at least a few weeks of supplements to actually improve Vitamin D deficient physiology because it takes a few weeks for the body to produce the active form from the sun or dietary precursor, and for various tissues to “adapt” to increased levels.
disclaimer: I’m not a doctor and I don’t play one on tv. It is best to talk to one’s primary care provider and be tested for serum levels of the usually-measured form.
Phil Copson says
“There was never a Syria withdrawal. When the situation in North-East Syria had been fairly stable after we defeated ISIS, [Trump] was inclined to pull out.”
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Who exactly is “we” ?
Note how Jim Jeffries eagerly takes the credit for an initiative that probably never even occurred to him – (given the previous inaction when serving under his pal Obama) – yet feels no shame in betraying the real victor.
mortimer says
Unelected appointees don’t have a right to make policy. They may ‘suggest’ policies, but the decision falls to our elected representatives.
Jim Jeffries made a very serious error.
Thomas Faddis says
These traitors need to be dressed in white pants before hanging, like General Washington did with filthy traitors!!!
Tim C says
He may not be military exactly/not literally in the chain of command, but I’d say defying your commander = trip to the brig….