Mary Anne Marsh is a firm believer in the power of immigration into the US, and she’s right. However, the three examples she threw up to illustrate her position merely serve to deprecate it.
For background, she opened her op-ed with this:
[W]e are sorely tested by those who serve not the idea of America but an individual who acts like a tyrannical monarch and puts the wishes of Russian President Vladimir Putin before the best interests of this country.
Fortunately, though, that man no longer is in office. Ex-President Barack Obama (D) openly, nakedly promised “Vladimir” more flexibility once he—Obama—no longer had to worry about pesky, impertinent clingers-to-religion-and-gun American voters.
Then she named her three canonical immigrants: ex-Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, NSC staffer LtCol Alexander Vindman, and ex-NSC staffer Fiona Hill. Marsh, while lionizing these three, chose to elide certain other pertinent information about them.
Yovanovitch testified under oath, in response to Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff’s (D, CA) readout of a Trumpian tweet and question about it, that she found the tweet “intimidating.” The tweet? It was nothing more than a bluntly put performance review. Yovanovitch’s confession to being frightened by rude words sends a dangerous, emboldening signal to our enemies that we can be pushed around easily.
Vindman testified to concern about a telecon between President Donald Trump and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a telecon about which both Zelenskiy and his Foreign Minister have averred not only no concerns but positively that the telecon was a good and friendly one. Marsh chose to omit from her paean to Vindman that he had been reprimanded for—during a joint exercise with Putin’s Russia, yet—yocking it up with his Russian exercise counterparts about how foolish the US was and is.
Marsh quoted from Hill’s testimony:
Some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country—and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did. This is a fictional narrative….
The only fiction here, as was exposed during Republican questioning, was the bit about some on the committee believing Russia “did not conduct a campaign against our country.” Examples were produced, and under oath Hill acknowledged their accuracy, of the Republicans on the committee having repeatedly sounded the alarm over Russian interference in our 2016 elections—especially with the complicity of the Democratic National Committee—and of their continued attempts to interfere with our 2018 and 2020 elections.
Hill also was exposed for her false dichotomy in her implication that because Russia had and was interfering, Ukraine must not be. A woman as intelligent and accomplished as Hill surely knew her dichotomy was false when she presented it, and her…error…was exposed, also, during Republican questioning.
The value of immigration to our great nation is vast, and it includes those who’ve fought in our defense from our beginnings down through today, serve in our Congress, and less glamorously “merely” work in our business enterprises, charity organizations, and governments at all levels. Marsh’s three examples do not match these. At all.
Marsh’s keyboard is clacking. She might want to see to that.
