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http://spectator.org/print/61216
The Self-Hating Americans
What the CIA report says about the American Left.
By Jeffrey Lord – 12.11.14
They hate America. They hate themselves for being Americans.
And in a vivid display of just how far self-hating Americans will go to smear their own country, look no further than this quickly infamous leftist-generated so-called CIA report. Its title as bequeathed by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence: Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program.
Three former CIA directors, two former deputy CIA directors, and a former Democratic Senator on the Senate Intelligence Committee have responded in detail to the report pushed out by California’s Senator Dianne Feinstein, the outgoing committee chairwoman. And they have not been kind.
In the Wall Street Journal, the three former CIA directors — George Tenet, Porter Goss, and Michael Hayden — say this:
The Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on Central Intelligence Agency detention and interrogation of terrorists, prepared only by the Democratic majority staff, is a missed opportunity to deliver a serious and balanced study of an important public policy question. The committee has given us instead a one-sided study marred by errors of fact and interpretation—essentially a poorly done and partisan attack on the agency that has done the most to protect America after the 9/11 attacks.
… We can only conclude that the committee members or staff did not want to risk having to deal with data that did not fit their construct. Which is another reason why the study is so flawed. What went on in preparing the report is clear: The staff picked up the signal at the outset that this study was to have a certain outcome, especially with respect to the question of whether the interrogation program produced intelligence that helped stop terrorists. The staff members then “cherry picked” their way through six million pages of documents, ignoring some data and highlighting others, to construct their argument against the program’s effectiveness.
In the intelligence profession, that is called politicization.
The former Senate Democrat is Nebraska’s Bob Kerrey, who said this in the pages of USA Today:
I do not need to read the report to know that the Democratic staff alone wrote it. The Republicans checked out early when they determined that their counterparts started out with the premise that the CIA was guilty and then worked to prove it.
When Congress created the intelligence committees in the 1970's, the purpose was for people's representatives to stand above the fray and render balanced judgments about this most sensitive aspect of national security. This committee departed from that high road and slipped into the same partisan mode that marks most of what happens on Capitol Hill these days.
And oh yes… last night on Fox former Vice President Dick Cheney called the report “crap.”
So what we have here are six very serious people (seven counting Cheney) who understand the CIA inside and out and what goes on behind the scenes in the Senate Intelligence Committee inside and out. And all have come to the exact same conclusion.
The CIA Directors put it this way:
We can only conclude that the committee members or staff did not want to risk having to deal with data that did not fit their construct.
Former Senator Kerrey put it this way:
I do not need to read the report to know that the Democratic staff alone wrote it. The Republicans checked out early when they determined that their counterparts started out with the premise that the CIA was guilty and then worked to prove it.
In other words? What is being described here is a deliberate effort to make the CIA and by extension the country look as bad as it could possibly look, and they were willing to cook the books to accomplish their objective.
But why? There’s the real question.
In the Jewish world there is a term that should be adapted to America. The “self-hating Jew” is defined (here at the Jewish Virtual Library) this way:
A Jew who expresses self-hatred, according to Kurt Lewin [in Resolving Social Conflicts], “will dislike everything specifically Jewish, for he will see in it that which keeps him away from the majority for which he is longing. He will show dislike for those Jews who are outspokenly so, and will frequently indulge in self-hatred.”
Change the word “Jew” to the word “American” and the description reads this way:
“An American who expresses self-hatred… will dislike everything specifically American, for he will see in it that which keeps him away from the majority for which he is longing. He will show dislike for those Americans who are outspokenly so, and will frequently indulge in self-hatred.”
A more exact description of today’s American Left could not be had. “Dislike everything specifically American” extends on a scale of one to ten from the Jonathan Grubers of the world who hold themselves out as so much smarter than their “stupid” fellow Americans all the way to the other end and all those Bill Ayers types who spend their time finding ways to literally blow up the country or this or that part of it. They all feel a dripping contempt for both their countrymen and their country, merely differing on how to express that contempt.
Sometimes that hatred extends to specific, high-profile Americans. All conservatives of course, and Fox and talk radio. But they can’t abide capitalism, Wall Street, the middle class, two-parent heterosexual families of a Mom and Dad. Marriage is a target. Religion certainly, Catholics, Jews, and Evangelical Christians specifically. (Islamic fundamentalism, virulently anti-American, not -so-coincidentally finds favor with the self-haters.) Culturally speaking this would include things like country music or Disney and oh so much more. The contempt expressed by Leftists in various venues for any or all of these things is the epitome of American self-hatred. They hate the country, its people, its history, its culture, and most of all its power.
Anything and everything that spits in the eyes of all of these things and more are made attractive to American self-haters precisely because middle class America may frown on it. Or religious leaders. Or office holders or other authority figures. Legalizing marijuana is not as much about marijuana as it is about the kind of Americans who are in opposition to legalization. If sex is presented in American society as a husband/wife/man/woman relationship than the objective is to go as far in the opposite direction as possible. Gays are, in a real sense, irrelevant to the conversation. The military, like religion, is another target for smirking contempt. Not to mention that ultimate symbol of America — the American flag.
As has been said of the self-hating in the Jewish world, the self-hating American is a “social-psychological phenomenon.” Indeed. In this case that “phenomenon” has targeted the CIA. But the real target is America itself. First, last — and most disturbingly? Always.
.
The Self-Hating Americans
What the CIA report says about the American Left.
By Jeffrey Lord – 12.11.14
They hate America. They hate themselves for being Americans.
And in a vivid display of just how far self-hating Americans will go to smear their own country, look no further than this quickly infamous leftist-generated so-called CIA report. Its title as bequeathed by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence: Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program.
Three former CIA directors, two former deputy CIA directors, and a former Democratic Senator on the Senate Intelligence Committee have responded in detail to the report pushed out by California’s Senator Dianne Feinstein, the outgoing committee chairwoman. And they have not been kind.
In the Wall Street Journal, the three former CIA directors — George Tenet, Porter Goss, and Michael Hayden — say this:
The Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on Central Intelligence Agency detention and interrogation of terrorists, prepared only by the Democratic majority staff, is a missed opportunity to deliver a serious and balanced study of an important public policy question. The committee has given us instead a one-sided study marred by errors of fact and interpretation—essentially a poorly done and partisan attack on the agency that has done the most to protect America after the 9/11 attacks.
… We can only conclude that the committee members or staff did not want to risk having to deal with data that did not fit their construct. Which is another reason why the study is so flawed. What went on in preparing the report is clear: The staff picked up the signal at the outset that this study was to have a certain outcome, especially with respect to the question of whether the interrogation program produced intelligence that helped stop terrorists. The staff members then “cherry picked” their way through six million pages of documents, ignoring some data and highlighting others, to construct their argument against the program’s effectiveness.
In the intelligence profession, that is called politicization.
The former Senate Democrat is Nebraska’s Bob Kerrey, who said this in the pages of USA Today:
I do not need to read the report to know that the Democratic staff alone wrote it. The Republicans checked out early when they determined that their counterparts started out with the premise that the CIA was guilty and then worked to prove it.
When Congress created the intelligence committees in the 1970's, the purpose was for people's representatives to stand above the fray and render balanced judgments about this most sensitive aspect of national security. This committee departed from that high road and slipped into the same partisan mode that marks most of what happens on Capitol Hill these days.
And oh yes… last night on Fox former Vice President Dick Cheney called the report “crap.”
So what we have here are six very serious people (seven counting Cheney) who understand the CIA inside and out and what goes on behind the scenes in the Senate Intelligence Committee inside and out. And all have come to the exact same conclusion.
The CIA Directors put it this way:
We can only conclude that the committee members or staff did not want to risk having to deal with data that did not fit their construct.
Former Senator Kerrey put it this way:
I do not need to read the report to know that the Democratic staff alone wrote it. The Republicans checked out early when they determined that their counterparts started out with the premise that the CIA was guilty and then worked to prove it.
In other words? What is being described here is a deliberate effort to make the CIA and by extension the country look as bad as it could possibly look, and they were willing to cook the books to accomplish their objective.
But why? There’s the real question.
In the Jewish world there is a term that should be adapted to America. The “self-hating Jew” is defined (here at the Jewish Virtual Library) this way:
A Jew who expresses self-hatred, according to Kurt Lewin [in Resolving Social Conflicts], “will dislike everything specifically Jewish, for he will see in it that which keeps him away from the majority for which he is longing. He will show dislike for those Jews who are outspokenly so, and will frequently indulge in self-hatred.”
Change the word “Jew” to the word “American” and the description reads this way:
“An American who expresses self-hatred… will dislike everything specifically American, for he will see in it that which keeps him away from the majority for which he is longing. He will show dislike for those Americans who are outspokenly so, and will frequently indulge in self-hatred.”
A more exact description of today’s American Left could not be had. “Dislike everything specifically American” extends on a scale of one to ten from the Jonathan Grubers of the world who hold themselves out as so much smarter than their “stupid” fellow Americans all the way to the other end and all those Bill Ayers types who spend their time finding ways to literally blow up the country or this or that part of it. They all feel a dripping contempt for both their countrymen and their country, merely differing on how to express that contempt.
Sometimes that hatred extends to specific, high-profile Americans. All conservatives of course, and Fox and talk radio. But they can’t abide capitalism, Wall Street, the middle class, two-parent heterosexual families of a Mom and Dad. Marriage is a target. Religion certainly, Catholics, Jews, and Evangelical Christians specifically. (Islamic fundamentalism, virulently anti-American, not -so-coincidentally finds favor with the self-haters.) Culturally speaking this would include things like country music or Disney and oh so much more. The contempt expressed by Leftists in various venues for any or all of these things is the epitome of American self-hatred. They hate the country, its people, its history, its culture, and most of all its power.
Anything and everything that spits in the eyes of all of these things and more are made attractive to American self-haters precisely because middle class America may frown on it. Or religious leaders. Or office holders or other authority figures. Legalizing marijuana is not as much about marijuana as it is about the kind of Americans who are in opposition to legalization. If sex is presented in American society as a husband/wife/man/woman relationship than the objective is to go as far in the opposite direction as possible. Gays are, in a real sense, irrelevant to the conversation. The military, like religion, is another target for smirking contempt. Not to mention that ultimate symbol of America — the American flag.
As has been said of the self-hating in the Jewish world, the self-hating American is a “social-psychological phenomenon.” Indeed. In this case that “phenomenon” has targeted the CIA. But the real target is America itself. First, last — and most disturbingly? Always.
.
