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Truman would have agreed with Trump on the CIA in Syria
This dire warning about the propensity of the Central Intelligence Agency to go rogue came from Harry S. Truman. Truman's call to "limit the CIA role to intelligence" was published in December 22, 1963, by the Washington Post (WaPo). The same newspaper is now decrying President Trump's decision to "end the CIA's covert program to arm and train moderate Syrian rebels battling the government of Bashar al-Assad, a move long sought by Russia, according to U.S. officials." The move is a good one. The WaPo threw Russia into the reportorial mix purely to sully President Trump (and due to the intellectual deficiencies of correspondents incapable of teasing apart policy from political intrigue). The 33rd U.S. president, a Democrat before the great deformation of that party, was first to issue the warning against the agency he had established. Not only was the newly founded intelligence arm of President Truman mutating into "a policy-making arm of government," but it was "a subverting influence in the affairs of other people," he cautioned. In 1963, Truman was meditating on restoring the monster he had created "to its original assignment" of intelligence-gathering in the raw. The CIA's sole purpose was to keep the president apprised of information, unfiltered and un-politicized. In 2017, Trump is dealing with a genie too powerful to beat back into the bottle. So is this a screeching U-turn in Trump's foreign policy? Who knows, but in Syria, at least, President Trump is inching closer to delivering on a campaign promise. The president finally appears to be seeking a solution sans regime change, with strongman Bashar Assad still at the helm. Curtailing this "symbol of sinister and mysterious foreign intrigue" ‐ stopping the CIA and the National Security Council (another of President Truman's metastatic creations) from fomenting more war in Syria and confrontation with Russia ‐ is a start. In ending the "covert CIA program to arm anti-Assad rebels in Syria," Trump, hopefully, has disassociated from the "rebels." The little we know about these people is not good. Posted by: Besoeker 2017-07-23 |
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