Rest easy because history shows we’re still the good guys
Feb 20, 2018, 6:33 AM | Updated: 10:05 am
A view of the four-story building known as the "troll factory" in St. Petersburg, Russia. (AP Photo/Naira Davlashyan)
(AP Photo/Naira Davlashyan)
Those indictments revealed last week listing all those Russian names have finally made it clear that the Russian meddling in the 2016 election was real. CBS’s Elizabeth Palmer even managed to find the headquarters of the operation in St. Petersburg, Russia.
But to be fair to Russia — and I hope I’m not offending anyone here — that since World War II the United States has also meddled in foreign elections; at least 80 times between 1946 and 2000, according to a Carnegie Mellon University study. In 1996, American money and a couple of political consultants from California helped elect Boris Yeltsin president of Russia.
I asked Molly McKew, an expert on Russian information warfare, why what Russia did to us is worse than what we did to them.
“The United States of America has been supporting more open, more free, more Democratic systems through a variety of means that you can debate the ways in which that was done, but the goals were very clear that it was toward moving toward better societies.”
Whereas the Russia troll factory was just out to create chaos.
“This was not about putting an ally of someone in some office somewhere. This was a deep societal targeting meant to create division.”
So rest easy. We’re still the good guys.
-
Tune in to KIRO Newsradio weekdays at 5am for Dave Ross on Seattle's Morning News.
