Letter to the editor: Government purges echo Stalin

The firing of the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency echoes the USSR of 90 years ago. Throughout the 1930s, Joseph Stalin conducted purges of his military (among other agencies). There were firings, imprisonment, even executions, based not on the victim’s competence or honesty. Rather, they were people deemed not sufficiently loyal to Stalin himself, or just willing to tell Stalin when he was wrong. Charges were trumped up and publicized through show trials, designed to justify the actions and to intimidate those people still working in government.

The most obvious result came in 1941. The Soviets were surprised when Hitler’s Nazi hordes invaded. Stalin himself was surprised when his armies, now led by toadies without military acumen, collapsed in the face of the onslaught. It was the inevitable result of valuing personal loyalty over experience and know-how. Millions of lives were lost that needn’t have been.

The recent firings at the Pentagon show this lesson was lost on President Trump and his lackeys, as they continue to purge our military, our intelligence services and the entire list of functionaries who have kept government working for us. Instead, we are approaching a state where intimidation will prevent people from speaking the truth when necessary. The results are disastrous.

It is a cliche in the U.S. to mock the “inefficient” bureaucracy of government. But a lot of those people knew how things worked. If you think they were bad, “you ain’t seen nothing yet.”

Howard Schmitt

Green Tree