begin quote from:
As
one of his last acts in office, President Obama will do something he’s
rarely done: please Republicans. The president’s decision to ask
American intelligence agencies for a report on the hacking attacks
connected to the …
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With Russia Probe, Obama Finally Hacks the Hearts of Defense Hawks
After nearly eight years in office, President Obama finally did something to make defense hawks happy … ish.
12.09.16 4:31 PM ET
As one of his last acts in office, President Obama will do something he’s rarely done: please Republicans.
The president’s decision to ask American intelligence agencies
for a report on the hacking attacks connected to the presidential
election—in particular, what impact Russian agents may have had on the
election results—was cheered by hawkish Republicans and neoconservative
foreign policy experts who have found hardly any common ground with the
Obama White House over the past eight years.
“It
appears... that after eight years the administration has suddenly
awoken to the threat,” said Rep. Devin Nunes, the Republican chairman of
the House Intelligence Committee. "Russia’s cyber-attacks are no
surprise to the House Intelligence Committee, which has been closely
monitoring Russia’s belligerence for years.
"All
I can say is that this a very good but overdue move," added Eliot
Cohen, who served as the State Department under Condoleeza Rice.
The
report will be delivered to Congress before Obama’s term is complete,
potentially putting President-elect Donald Trump at odds with members of
his own party on the eve of his inauguration.
Trump
has dismissed the role Russian agents have had in the presidential
election—during one debate he guessed that the hacking of the Democratic
National Committee’s emails could have been "somebody sitting on their
bed that weighs 400 pounds.” However, the intelligence community has assessed
that Russia was responsible for the email breaches at the DNC and with
Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s personal emails.
“Russia
is clearly the issue on which Trump diverges the most from the rest of
the GOP,” said Dan Drezner, a hawkish foreign policy intellectual who
teaches at Tufts University.
In
fact, while there are few issues on which both parties agree, there is
wide bipartisan agreement on the issue of Russian belligerence.
Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham and John McCain have announced their
intention to begin investigations into Russia, while House Democrats
have crafted legislation that would create an independent commission to report on Russian interference in the American election, similar in concept to the 9/11 Commission.
"After
many briefings by our intelligence community, it is clear to me that
the Russians hacked our democratic institutions and sought to interfere
in our elections and sow discord,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, the
highest-ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, saying he
was “pleased” to hear of the White House’s announced investigation,
urging that they declassify as much of it as possible.
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Still,
even while Republicans generally agreed with the president’s decision
to request a report on Russian meddling in the U.S. elections, some on
the right wondered what took so long for him to respond to Russian
aggression—and only after an election loss.
“Years
enabling Putin, Kerry shining [Russian Foreign Minister] Lavrov’s
shoes, and NOW he’s upset?” American Enterprise Institute senior vice
president Danielle Pletka told The Daily Beast. “This is blatantly
political. It’s not that Russia didn’t seek to interfere, it’s that
while they were doing so, not to speak of their activities in Europe and
in Syria, Obama was indifferent.”
“The
Obama administration, dedicated to delusions of ‘resetting’ relations
with Russia, ignored pleas by numerous Intelligence Committee members to
take more forceful action against the Kremlin’s aggression,” Nunes
said.
In fact, in one of the ironies of the 2016 presidential election, the Obama administration originally sought to ‘reset’ relations with Russia, a strategy in which Hillary Clinton was a key player.
The
American attempts to form closer ties with Russia were ultimately
unsuccessful—Russia would go on to annex Crimea and support unrest in
Ukraine—and the Eurasian nation ultimately played a key role against
Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. But before Trump enters
office, Obama is trying allow lawmakers—and perhaps the public—to
understand just how hard the Russians tried to manipulate the American
electorate.
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