USA administration used to be
considered as one of the most stable administration and with protection of the
constitutional posts and some duly ratified by the Congress.
There are so many Congress
committees, which overseas various ministries including the working of CIA and
FBI which are considered to be the most powerful agencies in the world. The CIA
is known to even destabilise the countries and involved in making and breaking
the non-compliant foreign governments.
Both FBI and CIA agents are
present in the American embassies throughout the world under different
capacities with specific assignments from their headquarters. CIA agents are
controlled by a senior agent called as Station Chief. Basically, both these
agencies are the real eyes and ears of the US Administration. These agencies
also get assistance from diplomatic service, which is part of State Department,
in the respective country. Basically the success of secretary of State and
director CIA depend on their teams both at home and abroad.
President Donald Trump over a
span of a year has fired a number of most senior advisers including FBI
Director James Comey, Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, FBI Deputy Director Andrew
McCabe and most recently Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. President Trump
sacked some, such as Rex and Comey, while others resigned for a variety of
reasons.
The Acting Attorney General Sally
Yates from the Obama administration was the first to get dismissed on Jan 30
2017 after she refused to defend the first iteration of Trump’s travel ban on
Muslim countries. Feb. 13:
The national security adviser
Michael Flynn resigned on 13th Feb, shortly after a controversy surfaced that
he had misled officials, including Vice President Pence, about his
communications with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
Normally, the chief ushers in US
administrations hold their positions for several years and over a number of
administrations and so the reasons for Angella Ried’s dismissal on 5th May are
unclear yet.
James Comey, the FBI director,
according to the White House, was fired on the basis of Justice Department’s
recommendation, over his handling of the Clinton email probe on May 9.
Mike Dubke, Trump’s first communication
director resigned right after 3 months on the job. He said he didn’t know Trump
before getting hired and so he didn’t want to work on his campaign.
The director of the Office of
Government Ethics, Walter Shaub handed his resignation on 6th July as he had
repeated clashes with the president.
After the hiring of Anthony
Scaramucci as Trump’s communications director without the advice of White House
Press Secretary Sean Spicer, he announced his resignation on July 21, 2017.
White House assistant press
secretary Michael Short resigned on July 25, 2017 right after Scaramucci said
he was intending to fire him while talking to the press.
Reince Priebus within a period of
six months of his job as chief of staff handed his resignation on 28th July 2017,
as he was often a target of Trump’s loyalists over his performance.
Anthony Scaramucci couldn’t work
for more than just 11 days and was removed on the request of newly appointed
Chief of Staff John Kelly on 31st July.
Steve Bannon was removed from his
position as White House chief strategist on Aug. 18, 2017 after immense
pressure was imposed to remove him. After John Kelly appointment, he was being
increasingly isolated inside White House being a hardcore populist.
The White House on 25th August
2017 announced that Sebastian Gorka was no longer a part of Trump’s
administration as counterterrorism adviser whereas he insisted that he had
resigned. After his dismissal he said Trump’s populist campaign agenda had been
hijacked by establishment figures.
The Health and Human Services
Secretary Tom Price resigned on 29th Sept. 2017 after a major criticism came
upon his use of $400,00 private flights while traveling on official business.
Dina Powell, Trump’s deputy
national security adviser, who was a driving force behind the president’s
Middle East policy, departed herself from the administration on 8th Dec 2017.
A former “Apprentice” star,
Omarosa Manigault Newman who joined the Trump administration as the director of
communications for the White House Office of Public Liaison was fired on 13th
Dec 2017 as she came under fire for bringing her 39-person bridal party to the
White House for a photo shoot in 2017.
Rob Porter offered his
resignation as the White House staff secretary on 7th Feb upon allegations of
domestic abuse and physical violence against ex-wives.
Yet another person, White House
speechwriter David Sorensen resigned on Feb. 9 over domestic abuse allegations.
White House communications
director Hope Hicks would be resigning in the coming days as she announced it
on Feb. 28. She has been the longest serving aide of Trump’s administration and
the announcement came a day after Hicks confessed to a House intelligence panel
that she has occasionally told “white lies” for Trump but denied lying about
anything relevant to the Russia investigation.
FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe
was recently fired on March 16. He was fired just two days before he was to
retire. He said that his firing is a part of the Trump administration’s “war on
the FBI” he was removed because of the “role I played, the actions I took, and
the events I witnessed in the aftermath of the firing of James Comey.”
Trump’s longtime personal aide
John McEntee was put aside from the White House and was moved to Trump’s 2020
campaign, where he will serve as a senior adviser for campaign operations on
March 13.
Rex Tillerson the secretary of
the State served as the nation’s top diplomat since February 2017. Rumors of
his departure had circulated for months, especially after he reportedly called
Trump a “moron” in front of other Cabinet officials in July 2017. CIA Director
Mike Pompeo would replace him.
If you look at the profiles of
these advisers you would find that they were the close aids of President Donald
Trump before landing in the White House and had spoken good words about the ability
by praising each adviser.
The world is wondering was there
something wrong with Donald Trump or in reality these advisers were incompetent
and could not come to the expectations of the president. When compared we would
find the administration under president Bush and president Obama had been
significantly stable with continuity of the US policies.
Secretaries of State like
Condoleezza Rice, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton almost completed their
tenures. I had my personal working experience with the above three secretaries
and found them most professional and competent. We can say that the three
secretaries survived because of their competence. The recently fired Secretary
Tillerson had the same administrative, intelligence and diplomatic tools but he
failed to perform to the expectations of President Trump. Obviously President
Trump cannot get himself absolved of the incompetency of the sacked or resigned
top advisers unless he justifies his actions to the Americans, which has created
a history for the Americans.
The American public has the right
to question the ability of the president for making wrong choices on the most
sensitive official positions, which matter a lot, both for the Americans and
the world, being a superpower.
Let us see as to how President
Donald Trump was being seen to be working. Majority of his actions were not as
per the book but significantly through personal wishes. Against all norms as
set by the USA state procedure, he adopted a new way of communication to run
the affairs of the government. The people of USA often hear his policy
statements through Twitter rather than through official communication channels,
which brought embracement to USA many times.
His twitters messages and threats
to various States were unbecoming of a president of a superpower. The threats
to Pakistan via twitter and later on to the president of North Korea were
nothing but reflected on his perplexed emotions. I am sure if he has taken the
expert advice as per the State rules then he would have not given such
undesirable tweets.
The American administration
despite having many constitutional protections, in fact, has failed to block
the hasty actions of President Donald Trump and I remember the famous TV show
“Yes Minister”. The official functionaries followed “yes minister” phrase and
it now looks that it is perhaps looking that Mr. president is “Mr. President “
who wants see NO to anything.
The unstable and hasty decisions
by President Trump or his teams are not only going to detrimental for USA but
also for the world. Will President Trump continue to treat State of USA as his
personal empire or he will start working with capable advisers, as any mistake
by him can cost heavy for USA.
Some of the loose statements
mentioned hereunder will show his instability and lack of appreciation of
international principles of governance:
• He said he would force the
military to commit war crimes.
• He said about women, “You have
to treat ’em like shit”
• He proposed to create a
database system to track Muslims in the US and advocated shutting down mosques
as well. He even called for a ban on Muslims entering the US after holding the
prime office.
• He being racist said a US-born
judge couldn’t be impartial because of his “Mexican heritage”. He also called
Mexican immigrants rapists.
• He advocated assassinating
terrorists’ families.
• He advocated waterboarding as
punishment even if it doesn’t help gain information, because “they deserve it
anyway.”
• He said women should be
punished for having abortions.
• He publically made fun of a reporter’s
physical disability.
• He responded to the murder of
49 people at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub with “appreciate the congrats for being
right on Islamic terrorism”.
• He being a white
supremacistre-tweeted bogus crime statistics that wildly inflated the rate at
which blacks kill whites.
• He conspiringly claimed he saw
thousands of Muslims in New Jersey celebrating the 9/11 attacks.
• He doesn’t pay his bills and
also has refused to show his tax returns database.
• He once said he didn’t know how
many articles were there in the constitution as well as he didn’t know the
meaning of the term “Brexit” less than a month before the UK referendum on
leaving the EU showing the height of ignorance being the President of US.
• He even gave weird remarks
about his daughter saying, “If Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be
dating her”.
Look at all the remarks and his
official action as president then it is not difficult to make out that
president is least bothered as to what he has to state as president and where
to hold. If it continues then day is not for that he brings some irreversible
national loss and embarrassment to USA. Every adviser out of these 22-sacked
advisors will have their side of the stories and the world will get to over
dozen of books out of these advisers.
All these hasty actions entail to
a vital question that if President Donald Trump was utilising the services of
his elite agencies namely CIA and FBI like his predecessors or not. It is also
worth questioning if these two agencies are actually supporting Donald Trump or
not as the changes in the CIA and FBI suggests a kind of mutual mistrust
between the agencies and White House. A world power who used to make &
break the other governments globally with powerful CIA is now going through its
own internal crises. Will the world ever witness a non-interfering policy of
USA?
Now world is waiting to see the
final report of former director FBI Mr Muller on Russian scandal and one has to
see if he would be able to get away with the allegations or get into deeper
trouble. The history will prove if these continued sackings of advisers were
competency or incompetency of President Trump.
The writer is Chairman of think
tank “Global Eye”, Chairman Senate Standing Committee on Interior and Former
Interior Minister of Pakistan. He can be reached at Email: rmalik1212@gmail.com,
Twitter @SenRehmanMalik
The original article was
published by The News International on March 22, 2018 and the link to the
Article is: Hasty sackings by President Donald Trump by Senator A. Rehman Malik
No comments:
Post a Comment