NYT: Colonel Vindman's America - It's not a place that Donald Trump knows much about.
(Not behind paywall. Very good editorial opinion)
by Jesse Wegman
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Republicans tried to dismiss Mr. Trump’s call for investigations of the Bidens as a harmless request. Colonel Vindman shot that down quickly. “The culture I come from, the military culture, when a senior asks you to do something, even if it’s polite and pleasant, it’s not to be taken as a request, it’s to be taken as an order.”
Especially given the power disparity between the United States and Ukraine, Colonel Vindman said, it was clear that Mr. Zelensky wasn’t being given a choice. Slowly it dawned on the colonel that Mr. Trump’s true interest was not defending Ukraine against Russian aggression or helping it shake off its long history of official corruption — both longstanding and bipartisan American foreign policy goals.
“It was probably an element of shock that maybe in certain regards, my worst fear of how our Ukraine policy could play out was playing out, and how this was likely to have significant implications for U.S. national security,” he said.
The Rest:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/19/opinion/vindman-volker-impeachment-hearings.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage