Anti-Russian Rhetoric Has Meaning

But not much any more.

In their zeal to portray Donald Trump as a dangerous threat to national security, the Clinton campaign has taken a starkly anti-Russian stance, one that completes a total role reversal for the two major American parties on U.S.-Russian relations that Hillary Clinton will now be committed to, if she becomes president.

  WaPo

It's a good point, but a false one. Hillary Clinton will not be committed to anything she says before she's elected (nor even afterward). No politician is. Look at Barack Obama's record, if you need proof.

[I]n the past year, Trump’s Russia-friendly policy has filled the pro-engagement space that Democrats once occupied.

Now that's the point to be pondered. When you have a political system that operates like a sports event (two teams vying for the top position), you invite disingenuous politicking. When one side comes up with something, the other side has to oppose it. If Donald Trump is good for one thing, it's to point a finger at this absurdity.

And now, for mostly political reasons, the Clinton campaign has decided to escalate its rhetoric on Russia.

Exactly. While there are still plenty of die-hard anti-communists in the Democratic Party, this posture is for mostly political reasons.

Russia clearly does not need Trump’s permission to hack U.S. political organizations or government institutions. And there’s no consensus that Russia released the Democratic National Committee emails in order to disrupt the presidential election. In fact, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has his own personal vendetta against Clinton, claimed that he alone chose the timing of the release of the DNC emails.

[...]

Former national security adviser Tom Donilon said that Russia is interfering with elections all over Europe and said Trump is helping Russia directly.

“The Russians have engaged in cyberattacks in a number of places that we know about, in Georgia, in Estonia and in Ukraine. . . . In the Russian takeover of Crimea, information warfare was a central part of their operations,” Donilon said.

How dare they? Interfering with international elections is our prerogative.  1  2  3, etc.

Oh, and...

A Time magazine "exclusive":  The secret story of how American advisers helped Yeltsin win.

That would be Boris Yeltsin, of Russia, in case you're very young.  You need a subscription to read that.  Here's the LA Times story.

And wasn't Yeltsin a boon to Russia?  Yeah, right.  Yanks "to the rescue" indeed.

Former defense secretary and CIA director Leon Panetta said that if Donilon was still in the White House, he would have tasked the CIA to retaliate against Moscow. Panetta then doubled down on Sullivan’s argument that Trump’s comments by themselves are making the United States less safe.

Yeah, yeah. We know. Be afraid. Get in line. Do not say anything other than what is state sanctioned. Loose lips sink ships. The Russians are coming. The Russians are coming.

"It has already represented a threat to our national security,” Panetta said. “Because if you go abroad and talk to people, they are very worried that someone like this could become president of the United States.”

Yes, and if you went abroad when Dubya was elected, you heard the same thing.

Now that the Democrats are the tough-on-Russia party, they should explain exactly what that means. What would Clinton do about Russia’s increasingly aggressive cyber-espionage and information warfare in Europe and around the world? Would she expand sanctions on Russia in response to the hacks? Would she use U.S. cyber forces to retaliate? Would she abandon President Obama’s plan to deepen U.S.-Russian military and intelligence cooperation in Syria?

The Clinton team hasn’t said.

And it wouldn't matter if they did, because after she's in office, she can do whatever she likes, no matter what she's said.

If your interest was piqued by the Yeltsin "election", here's another article.

With Russians on the streets protesting yet another fraud-riddled election, and Hillary Clinton lecturing the Kremlin on the evils of election fraud, we are reposting this important background story on Russian election fraud, and how the West, led by Hillary’s husband Bill, enabled and whitewashed Russia’s 1996 fraud-riddled, stolen elections, which assured that the hugely unpopular Boris Yeltsin, “the butcher of Chechnya” and the creator of Russia’s oligarchy, would remain in power for another term–thanks to the Chechens overwhelmingly “voting” “for” Yeltsin by an overwhelming 73% vote (of 1 million votes even though there were only an estimated 500,000 voting-aged people living in Chechnya at the time of the 1996 presidential elections). Yeltsin’s Western-backed victory allowed him to pick his own successor, Vladimir Putin, in 2000–and here we are today. Among the top whitewashers of 1996’s stolen elections was none other than Michael McFaul, President Obama’s nominee to become the new US Ambassador to Russia.

  Exiled

Read the whole thing here.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.