Russians, Democrats and David Webb.

[Editor’s Update. Mike Ford is traveling and can’t update this himself so he asked me to do it for him. In today’s testimony, Fiona Hill said that the objective of the Russians is to sow discord. They didn’t care who won 2016 and they don’t care who is president. They just want continual political turmoil

https://twitter.com/Chris_1791/status/1197560081052618753

Mike made the same points in this chat he had with talker David Webb back on June 3. Enjoy.]

I had the opportunity a short while ago to have a nice little conversation on the air with David Webb. Webb, a conservative pundit has a regular call-in show on Sirius XM. We got to speaking about the Russian attempt to meddle in our elections. I like listening to Webb because he is a great analyst. He gets right to the fundamentals, often before many other folks.

The thing that caused me to call into the show that particular day, was Webb’s comment regarding the Democrat Party and Russian meddling in our election. As usual, Mr. Webb brought into focus something that has been long ignored, actual Democrat culpability in the Russian Interference issue. I’m not talking about Clinton, the “dossier” or any of that media chum.

I’m talking about the ultimate Russian objective, which wasn’t to elect a preferred candidate in the U.S. Presidential election, but rather to sow chaos and undermine the public’s faith in our system. Webb, as far as I know, is the only major pundit to clearly call out the Democrats (and the press too) for actually helping to achieve the Russian objective of sowing discord — discord meant to undermine the public faith in our electoral systems and institutions.

And what a result the Russians achieved! With the help of the Democrats, the press and, of course, their RINO enablers, the Russians were able to keep the first two years of the Trump Presidency focused on a 35 Million Dollar investigation that proved—nothing. While busily proving nothing, the investigation sucked attention from the President’s many accomplishments and kept the entire nation focussed on a crime that never happened.

Mr. Webb asked me, based on my undergraduate work in Soviet Foreign Area Studies and Russian Language, what was my take on Putin’s objectives, especially given that Russia really has only one asset—oil, so it’s difficult for him to have a large impact on the U.S. without expending scarce resources.

What has really happened, I responded, was that Putin used the old Soviet technique of disinformatsiya (disinformation, PSYOP or Public Diplomacy) as an Economy Of Force” operation. EOF ops are used when military forces are extended across multiple fronts or geographic locales. Because we cannot be everywhere at all times, commanders must set priorities.

The examples I used were Afghanistan, Iraq, and Africa. The U.S. Military was deeply engaged in both Afghanistan and Iraq, burning through resources at an unsustainable clip and giving units little downtime to rest, rearm and refit, before being sent back into the fight. At that same time, we had serious problems in Africa, where Al Qaida was making significant inroads.

Instead of landing yet another Heavy Corps with tanks and mechanized/motorized troops, CENTCOM (US Central Command) used Special Operations forces to conduct an Economy Of Force operation across the top of Africa; Special Forces used to train indigenous forces while Civil Affairs units helped out with such things as digging wells for the locals, which along with our own information ops, helped gain and maintain public support for the local government’s fight against Al Qaida.

How does that tie into Russia? Putin did essentially the same thing. Using very few resources, he turned the entire United States Government on its head. The Russians likely spent less than a million bucks for some Facebook ads and a “bot” farm to put out false or misleading information…against both Trump and Clinton.

Think about this. If you are the President of these United States, what are your two most precious commodities? The answer, of course, is time and personal energy. For a pittance, the Russians were able to execute an operation with very little effort, that took a goodly chunk of our President’s time and energy and diverted it away from supporting and defending the Constitution of these United States…each and every day since he was elected.

As I told Mr. Webb, the FSB (successor to KGB) Lieutenant Colonel who developed and ran this op, likely passed up full Colonel and is now a General. The constant cacophony of the Democrats, the press, and more than a few RINO enablers helped secure that promotion.

David Webb can be found M-F, 0900-1200 EST on Sirius XM 125.

Mike Ford is a retired Infantry Officer who writes on Military, Foreign Affairs and occasionally dabbles in Political and Economic matters.

Follow him on Twitter: @MikeFor10394583

You can find his other Red State work here.