Trump DIDN'T DECLASSIFY! He passed secrets on to a foreign adversary!!!

[Igel]

9. Here's something to consider.

The US and Russia have an exchange of information system set up in Syria and Afghanistan to keep from attacking each other's forces.

Is the operational information--when missions are going to be conducted, where they'll be conducted, what their purposes and extent are--classified or not?

If not, then publishing what the sorties the US will fly over the next week and where their operatives on the ground will be should be published in the NYT, in the interest of the public's right to know.

If it is classified, how dare we share this information with Russia?

Publishing the information is contrary to US interests; it would get US citizens killed. Not sharing the information is contrary to US interests; it would get US citizens killed. Those are apparently the only two moral choices, and both end in ideologically straitjacketed deaths. You may consider this an example of "reduction to the absurd." The classification system and the loopholes in it are old, very old, and both the system and loopholes exist for good reasons.

Now, this particular op-sharing system isn't Trump's. It was set up under President Obama's tenure. Which really means, Do we think that Obama set up a routine system to commit treason or not? Those, again, are the two choices you have, boiling down to, "Obama should have let US soldiers die or he's a traitor." More silliness.


We'll leave aside that there are different levels of classification and that all executive power originates, for good or for bad, with the president (at least until we change the Constitution or redefine "president" in some way that momentarily suits us).

As for passing info to the Russians, it's something FDR did. Routinely. In spite of the fact that Stalin's attitude to the US really hadn't changed. It suited FDR and his goals for US policy to cooperate with the Soviets who, even as the war was being conducted in Europe, had spies in the US to steal secrets, information that FDR didn't authorize sharing with them, and possibly be a position to resume hostilities against us after the Nazis had been defeated.

Now, Trump's bragging was unseemly. It's a sucky reason, if it's really the reason, for sharing information. Yet it's what he is.

And as for Russia's being our adversary, sorry. I rued the day Putin was elected, and did so on the very day he was elected. That was a long, long time ago, and the only time DU didn't allow near admiration for Putin was when Bush II said favorable things about him. DUers' attitudes to Putin are, overall, more based on who's in the White House than anything outside the US, which is sad. I also thought it ridiculous when Romney was ridiculed for calling Russia a "foe" and DU was in an uproar because President Obama was still busy trying his "reset". It was a stupid, idiotic strategy at the time but to say so was not proper politics. The only thing that's changed between then and now is that a lot of there are a lot of johnny-come-lately folk who are anti-Putin not because of new information but because what Russia did finally hurt them domestically. And the only real action they can come up with is to sow dissent and contempt for the US political process and play with discrediting domestic politics (which as the security agencies themselves said in the report whose first page is regularly reported as "...", is their first goal).

Twain said it's easier to trick people than to convince them they've been tricked. Russia's been successful enough that the rumor is they're even concerned about the chaos in US politics. They want to win, but they also value stability. "Win" means "have the US be isolationist and leave Russia to do what they want where they want it." They want to be #1 in a stable world, not #1 in a chaotic world, so it's not a completely implausible rumor. (And, yes, attributing our definition to them is foolishness; in psychology, a reward isn't what the experimenter or boss or teacher says it is, it's what the subject says it is. "I offered them a reward and they turned it down" means "I offered them something they didn't value but I did, why can't they be like me!?&quot