Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman is a patriot who deserves respect. President Trump and others who deride his character without evidence deserve condemnation. But I’m sick of the holier-than-thou Democrats who condemn those Republicans.
Because when it comes to attacking the character of patriotic public servants who choose to defend our country, Democrats do the same. In fact, they have done so quite recently — but in a worse manner and on a far greater scale.
Consider, for example, the 2014 Democratic Senate Intelligence Committee Report into the CIA’s post-9/11 interrogation program. The absurd Hollywood propaganda aside, that report was a disgrace. Authored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the report provided selective half-truths, factual errors, and omitted crucial context. It pretended to serve the truth, but its actual mission was very simple: selling career CIA officers down the river.
In the truest measure of hypocrisy, those Democrats hid their own culpability in authorizing CIA interrogation techniques they would later turn around and criticize. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who supported the report’s findings and condemned the CIA, had received a 2002 CIA briefing on the particulars of the interrogation program. Pelosi did not oppose the program at that time. She saw its benefit … until she and other Democrats didn’t.
The report made good men and women — national security public servants like Vindman — fear for their futures. But it did more than that. It told them that Congress, the representatives of the people, viewed them as criminals rather than patriots. The result: CIA officers who made hard decisions that saved innocent lives were betrayed by their political overseers. Remember this the next time you hear a Democrat present himself as a great defender of deep-state patriots.
So yes, by all means, criticize Republicans who unfairly attack Vindman. But Democrats shouldn’t pretend they are heroic defenders of public service. At least on the CIA, their own record is a disgrace.
