Russia, Russia, Russian Collusio and Obama's legacy

E. Ablorh-Odjidja
March 30, 2019

It hurts to know that the "Russian Collusion," the greatest political fraud in American history, happened on Obama, a Black President's watch.

The investigations are now over. Special Counsel Robert Mueller found Trump innocent of the charge.

Needless to say, the charge was so stupid, right from the go.

But never has Russia been so infamous since the McCarthy era; all to remove Trump from office.

The Russia Collusion case is a sad American political episode. And it raises a question that needs to be answered.

Did Obama, wittingly or unwittingly, participate in the “Russian Collusion” hoax?

Trump is the victim here. But it is to be hoped that history will register Obama as a victim too, just as it should for Trump.

Either case can be affirmed or denied by partisans. What cannot be dismissed easily is that the "Collusion" case happened on Obama's watch. So, the question must be raised whether those who allowed the faux claim to persist cared much for his legacy, he being the first Black president.

The history of Blacks and the power of American politics may provide some answer, but did Blacks, in general, win the American presidency at all?

This writer doubts whether Blacks took over American political power at the presidency, with Obama's election.

The power was offered but quickly taken back and diluted, as has happened throughout history. Try affirmative action projects, starting from “40 Acres and a Mule” to Civil Rights gains of the 60s. The gains have all been betrayed or eroded.

In a sense, Obama's presidency is an affirmative action gain, a watermark in world history, and a historic Civil Rights record. But this is exactly what the false Russian Collusion and the boldness of the claim have threatened.

That boldness, falsehood, and the callousness of the collusion claim may show the little disregard that some in Obama's orbit or administration had for his legacy. And this is a burden that will be placed on Obama's legacy.

The planners considered Trump’s removal more serious and warranted. Put another way, they didn't even care that the pseudo claim propped up Russia's intelligence capabilities above those of the American agencies.

Not stopping Russian intelligence from forage into American internal politics would be a catastrophic failure, something the planners would have loved to hide under other administrations.

Another administration would have liked to sidestep the issue. But under Obama, the first Black president and quarterback of the all-American intelligence team, the false case was allowed in the open to fester but as a useful tool to unseat Trump.

Alas, Russia won. American pride is hurt. But the Russian conquest could only have happened under a Black president.

As Trump had observed, "if Russia was looking to sow discord (in America), they would've said that it (the 2016 election) was their greatest."

America’s relations with Russia have been fractious throughout the period after the period after WWII.

Both have used this period to interfere in each other’s domestic affairs. But it has to be noted that "Russian Collusion" didn't produce an American president under Clinton, the 42nd, Bush, the 43rd, and Obama, the 44th; even though each era had its controversies during elections.

Florida 2000 and the “hanging” chads were the closest and most controversial of presidential elections. But the blame for that was strictly local. The fraud, it appeared later, was done by Democrat operatives.

Enter Trump in 2016 and the power arrangement between Democrats and Republicans was scrambled. The ideological divide between them was gone. And the political chicanery that was once local got imported from Russia!

The Democrats had an open reason. They had lost to Trump in 2016. But for the Republicans, it was because they had lost to an outsider and a disrupter of individual ambitions.

And joined at the hip with the Trump haters were a large portion of the Media and, of course, the so-called "Deep State" of the American bureaucracy; all in the effort to get rid of Trump, the upstart, to preserve the central points of power within the American state.

That, as some said, started the unprecedented attempt to get rid of a duly elected American president by a coup. And Obama became a factor because it all happened under his watch. Did he know something?

No matter. To proceed this long on this false claim shows one thing: An extreme focus on Trump’s removal, with little regard to its impact on Obama's legacy.

But be reminded, children of lesser gods always got the short shrift. For Trump, his ideological gods were not favorable. But Obama, attractive and politically unassailable at the start, because of fear of a charge of racism, now can be used with his race as the defense. Ironically, for the same reason of racism, Obama thus became expendable.

In the end, Mueller’s investigation freed Trump but wounded America’s prestige. The brazen attempt by the plotters to make this falsehood stick, to wrestle power unconstitutionally, should be worrisome. And this is where Obama's association with the plotters becomes worrisome.

But remember, Obama was the President, not the intelligence gatherer making the false claim. The claimers were James Comey, Director of FBI, John Brennan of the CIA, and James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence and other likeminded within the Justice Department.

To a man, the claimants did their best to convince the public that Trump was a traitor. That Hillary Clinton and the Democrats lost in 2016 because of Russian interferences. The man who pushed this narrative most was John Brennan, formerly of the CIA.

Of John Brennan, Kimberley Strassel, writer for The Wall Street Journal, wrote, “Brennan, in particular, has revealed himself to be a total anti-Trump partisan to an extent that's shocking for a public official.”

And that Brennan “animus is raw and deep, as his actions suggest.”

Brennan was allowed by the media, CNN, and the like, as a commentator, to emphasize his animus as Strattel had observed.

It was this same Brennan who first got to Harry Reid, then Democrat Senate Majority Leader, with the "Russian Dossier" to get the FBI involved early in 2016, citing “Russians interfering in our election on Trump's behalf.”

Thus, the fraudulent “Russian Dossier” became the foundation document for the FBI investigations, which falsified documents also got them the FISA warrant to spy on the Trump campaign.

It turned out that the document "Russia Dossier”, was paid for by the Hillary Clinton Campaign and the Democrat National Committee.

Was President Obama aware of this connection to his party, or became aware of the plot in his capacity as the head of state; if not, how could he had not?

An editorial of the Investor's Business Daily of September 23, 2018, wrote that “a gullible Obama was fed phony information from Brennan and the Hillary Clinton campaign. He then over-reacted by tasking the intelligence community to look into it.”

Being the historic first African-American president, in a racially divisive society such as America, Brennan, at least, should have worried about Obama’s legacy. The thought should have been natural for him to want to protect Obama. But he didn’t in his pursuit of Trump.

Same for the many who were part of Obama’s White House counsel. They were more focused on grabbing back the power they lost in 2016.

For them, this power was more crucial than Obama's legacy. Thus, the latter’s presidency also became expendable and the 2020 elections to decide Trump’s fate was too long to wait for, even though it was less than two years away.

The common sense at this stage should be that Obama's legacy also became as much a sacrificial target as Trump's. But no bother, there is no loss here, they would have assumed. Not long ago, Blacks were deemed not good enough to be “quarterbacks.” Ergo, Obama’s presidency could also serve as proof in the racists’ view.

Obama's legacy loss, thus, is now the policy-payment for history’s failure to install the first white female president of the United States.


E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Publisher www.ghanadot.com, Washington, DC, March 30, 2019.
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