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| Russia Launches ‘Information' War, U.S. Responds with Lawsuit and Self-Destruction |
| 2018-02-18 |
| [NationalReview] Mueller’s indictment is an ineffectual response to a provocation by Russia. The Russians are engaged in "information warfare" against the United States. That was the big soundbite at Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s press conference Friday afternoon, announcing Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s election-meddling indictment against 13 Russians and three Russian businesses. That is certainly a fair assessment of what the indictment alleges. The account is disturbing, but its form leaves many of us underwhelmed. Our government says Russia is levying war. It is attacking a foundational institution ‐ the electoral system of our democratic society and, more basically, our society’s cohesion as such. Our response should not be, nor appear to be, the filing of a lawsuit. That is provocatively weak. The Russia probe has been a counterintelligence investigation, as it should be. That is why I’ve complained from the first that it was inappropriate to put a prosecutor in charge of it. This contention is reiterated in my weekend column. The main thrust of this complaint has been that a prosecutor should not be assigned unless there is first strong evidence of a crime. But that is not the half of it. A government lawyer is a hammer who sees every problem as the nail of a lawsuit. As we saw in the Clinton and Obama years (and will tend to see in transnational-progressive governments that prize legal processes over the pursuit of national interests by the most effective means available), administrations dominated by government lawyers find even belligerent provocations by foreign power to be fit for judicial resolution. To the contrary, we use counterintelligence rather than criminal investigation to thwart foreign adversaries because prosecution is a woefully inadequate response. The point of counterintelligence is to gather information so we can stop our enemies, through meaningful retaliation and discouragement. Generally, that means diplomatic, economic, intelligence, and, in extreme cases, military means. It could mean deploying our own cyber capabilities. The idea is not to invade every rogue nation. It is to respond to provocations in a manner that hurts our rivals ‐ conveying that the prohibitive cost we will exact makes attacking us against their interests. That cannot be accomplished by a mere indictment on which no one will be tried. |
| Posted by:JohnQC |
| #6 I would agree wholeheartedly with this article. It's disturbing that with all the supposedly awesome power of agencies like the CIA and NSA we can't quietly and effectively counteract the type of thing Mueller claims the Russians did in his indictment. We shouldn't even be hearing about it. |
| Posted by: Abu Uluque 2018-02-18 15:25 |
| #5 Obviously. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2018-02-18 11:42 |
| #4 I remember listening to "Radio Free Europe" as a kid in (then) Soviet Union. Obviously it had no effect. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2018-02-18 11:34 |
| #3 I remember listening to "Radio Free Europe" as a kid in (then) Soviet Union. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2018-02-18 11:32 |
| #2 The Deep State is taking the rest of us for complete fools. |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2018-02-18 10:34 |
| #1 The intent with the Mueller witch hunt is to manufacture an excuse to impeach the president. It's neither a criminal investigation not a criminal investigation -- it's a coup attempt. |
| Posted by: Rob Crawford 2018-02-18 08:40 |