Robert Kagan -- a despicable Iraq war proponent,
a peddler of false dichotomy between neoliberalism and authoritariam
"Being a neoconservative should receive at least as much vitriolic societal rejection as being a Ku Klux Klan member or a
child molester" ~Caitlin
Johnstone
The Neocons never cease to amaze me and their latest stunt with Venezuela falls into this bizarre category of events which are both absolutely unthinkable and simultaneously absolutely predictable. This apparent logical contradiction is the direct result of a worldview and mindset which is, I believe, unique to the Neocons: a mix of imperial hubris and infinite arrogance, a complete lack of decency, a total contempt for the rest of mankind, crass ignorance, a narcissist/sociopath's inability to have any kind of empathy or imagine another guy's reaction and, finally, last but most certainly not least, crass stupidity.
"And you could say in some respects this 'shadow behind the power' that makes money off war, period, no matter who's the belligerent,
makes money off that volatility now, especially with computers that are able to assist them in doing so, like currency manipulation,
for example, or just general speculation. And they don't care about what they're doing to the real economy, because they're raking
in the dough."
Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell
“The confluence of their interests as Jews in promoting
the policies of the Israeli right wing and their construction of American interests allows them to submerge or even deny
the relevance of their Jewish identity while posing as American patriots. […]
Indeed, since neoconservative Zionism of the Likud Party variety is
well known for promoting a confrontation between the United States and the entire Muslim world, their policy
recommendations best fit a pattern of loyalty to their ethnic group, not to America.”[4]Kevin
McDonald, Cultural Insurrection, op. cit., p. 66.
If we choose one phase to define Robert Kagan that would be "the second rate". He is a mediocre political scientist (mostly he is
a propagandist), who got his position mostly due to nepotism. He tried to compensate this fundamental deficiency with
arrogance. He fares better as a MIC propagandist. and staunch advocate of Neoconservatism. According to
Wikipedia
In 2008, Kagan wrote an article titled "Neocon Nation: Neoconservatism, c. 1776" for World Affairs, describing the main components
of American Neoconservatism as a belief in the rectitude of applying US moralism to the world stage, support for the US to act
alone, the promotion of American-style liberty and democracy in other countries, the belief in American hegemony,[31]
the confidence in US military power, and a distrust of international institutions.[32]
According to Kagan, his foreign-policy views are "deeply rooted in American history and widely shared by Americans".[33]
But he is a talented propagandist, the lobbyist of MIC. Even such an expert in political bullsh*t as Obama admired his skills as
a propagandist. His main topic is inciting hostility to Russia. Because without this hostility there will be no
cushy MIC positions, no big money speaking gigs, no fat book deals, no ‘ThinkTanks’ gravy, no government agency appointments, and so
on and so forth.
But as a political analyst he is intellectual mediocrity, or worse. Looking at the history of his prognostications one can
only ask, why this guy ws not send packing before. And still is being able to publish his crap in major MSM. Kagan
has been an argent supporter of Iraq invasion, which was based on total lies, but served interesting of US MIC and , especially
Israel, really well. As neocons are lobbyists for MIC this combination of
a talent of propagandist and writer with upper mediocrity as intellectual, and, especially, as a political analyst is actually is the defining feature of neocons
intellectual, be it Kagan,, Bill Kristol, or Max Boot.
All of them advocated Iraq war and those bottomfeeders should commit hara-kiri and send all their ill gotten money to the
families of the victims of Iraq war. The fact that they have access to MSM is the sign of complete domination of military industrial
complex and Israel in the US political scene.
Unable to earn "honest living" (although they probably would be good copywriters)
they just discovered (or in case of Kristol and Kagan their parents discovered for them) that being a MIC lobbyist means money
they can never earn elsewhere.
American exceptionalism now confined to Washington and few others regions of the USA. But since those regions control the MSM and
foreign policy, the world is finding itself more and more contemptuous of the arrogant, hypocritical superpower righteously
condemning the other countries as being uncooperative just before begging for their help.
As a political analyst Robert Kagan is a weakling and like Max Boot would be downgraded to painting house, if MIC support
seize to exist. In political science you need a solid framework in order to be able to understand
things to write about that. That's why some former Trotskyites such as James Burnham were
not bad political analysts. In case of Kagan, this philosophical framework is completely absent. He writes from the preconceived agenda as if trying to mold the
world to his dangerous agenda of "full spectrum dominance." At least on paper.
Kagan was one of the cheerleaders on the disastrous for the USA geopolitical position and prestige war in Iraq and as such should
commit hara-kiri. But he does not have any honor, unlike Japanese militarists. He is a typical chickenhawk. A weakling
pretending to be a war dog.
As for his predictions about the US future and desirable course of foreign policy -- they concentrate on the task of
preservation of the global neoliberal empire the USA
established after the dissolution of the USSR. An old saying "If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans" is fully
applicable.
He does not understand that the empire became too costly to maintain and the US people are paying huge price for his jingoism with their
health and well well-being (and sometimes with lives). he just counting his Benjamins. The reality it does not matter -- as any
lobbyist he does not care about common Americans ("deplorable" at Hillary called them). His dual loyalty are
not that uncommon for the MIC lobbyists. Neocons typically put Israel
first.
In case of Max Boot some explained this shortsightness by the fact that he is a former émigré from Soviet Russia, who wanted to be
"more Catholic than the Pope." He is so pious about the USA that it creates strong negative reaction. It is also
difficult for an émigré raised within based on deception culture of fake Jewish "refugees"
(in reality economic migrants) from Soviet Russia to understand the USA neoliberalism and the genesis of global imperial ambitions (aka
"full spectrum dominance") that arose in late 80th among the US elite with the weakening and then collapse of the USSR.
In an way the existence of the USSR prevented the US elite from going completely bonkers.
In case of Kagan his complete detachment from reality can partially be an be explained by greed (for a historian becoming MIC
lobbyist is pretty lucrative in money dimension career move) although such a move entails complete betrayal of his academic upbringing
and culture.
I would stress the deep provinciality of his worldview. The fact that the USA geostrategic position deteriorated
due the collapse of neoliberal ideology in 2008 and economic rise of the EU, China, Japan and South Korea makes current US
policies simply reckless and support for them akin to treason. Correspondingly the USA military dominance also is challenged
despite enormous size of Pentagon budget due to disastrous, neocon inspired wars in Middle East and Afghanistan, the rise of China
(and possible alliance of China and Russia, which means the end of the US military supremacy) as well as emergence new nuclear
powers such as India and Pakistan as well as (currently weak) attempts by EU to escape the vassal status and create their own army.
Potential diminishing of the role of the dollar as world reserve currency is another development that somewhat weaken the USA
geopolitical position, although the dollar position as the "first among equals" will probably continue for foreseeable future.
Add to this slipping technological superiority due to transition of high-tech manufacturing to China (the rise of Huawei, which
currently the USA is trying to reverse, is the result of those development)
Along with other neocons Kagan definitely helped to destroy carefully constructed post WWII order (based on Yalta
agreements), but it unclear whether what the USA instead gets is a better deal. It is definitely created a more dangerous,
less predictable geopolitical environment.
All his papers, which are also second rate (which makes him somewhat similar to Max Book, although Max Boot is mostly third rate
character, which only in some cases reaches the second rate level) have value only as propaganda booklets for MIC. He helps
them to make money as a lobbyist and is lavishly paid for his despicable services.
Wikipedia tells us that Robert Kagan (born September 26, 1958 in Athens, Greece) is a historian, and
foreign-policy commentator. He is neither. He is first a foremost MIC lobbyist but several other sleazy characters in Washington, DC Like Max Boot this shady character is just yet another MIC wardog -- a well paid MIC lobbyist.
While Kagan is considered to be leading neoconservative, intellectually there is nothing leading in this guy. All his
papers are filled with banalities and clichés. Her forte is promotion of American exeptionalism and jingoism. Real analysis of the
situation in the worlds and attempts to decipher emerging trends, which are sine qua
non for any real political analyst are absolution absent. hi mostly tried to fit the world into his brain dead neocon
schemes. Valuable insight are "missing in action". Moreover as he spend his life in the USA his papers spell with
provincialism (reading Kagan you understand why British elite despise American elite as
uncultured provincials).
He does not understand Western Europe, to say nothing about Russia, and China. He views them via simplistic
propaganda lenses of WaPo (aka Bezos blog) and his role of MIC lobbyist.
A co-founder of the neocon Project for the New American Century, Kagan is also is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution
and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. So he operates within the limits of traditional neocon territory.
Concil of forign relations is probably the leading thing tank which is negating any chance for a gradual, phased dismantling of
the US neoliberal empire (which after collapse of neoliberal ideology in 2008 is unsustainable, the question is not if, but when,
and how). Creating
instead a dynamic in which a
sudden collapse becomes more probable.
Unfortunately Kagan has been a foreign
policy adviser to US Republican presidential candidates as well as Democrats such as Hillary Clinton,
when Clinton was Secretary of State under President Obama (which characterizes Hillary as a warmongering neocon and she
really is such). He writes a monthly column on world affairs
for the Washington Post, and is a contributing editor at The New Republic.
Neoconservatism runs in the whole family as those "historians" really want to improve their material wellbeing by doubling
as lobbyists for MIC. Robert Kagan is the son of historian Donald Kagan, Sterling Professor of Classics and History at
Yale University who is viewed by some people as specialist in the history of the Peloponnesian War. In reality he is just
another
despicable neocon, and a neocon can be a good historian by definition.
False dichotomy between neoliberalism and authoritarianism
Neoliberalism is a political ideology. Authoritarianism, like democracy, is a method of government. Neoliberal authoritarianism
is possible (Chile Pinochet). So is anti-neoliberal democracy, although due due to the dominance of neoliberalism and the
geopolitical power of the USA which is hell-bent of destroying such regimes it is nowhere to be seen. Any opposing the USA
regime can survive if and only if it is at least partially authoritarian; otherwise the USA will quickly organize a color
revolution, injecting huge amount of money to distro the will of electorate, and install their marionette. Even
clearly neoliberal (and definitely corrupt as any neoliberal is ) president Yanukovich was deposed by Washington in a color
revolution (EuroMaydan) when it tried to play the West against Russia to get some benefits for Ukraine. Kagan's wife, Dick Cheney
protégé Victoria Nuland was instrumental in this installation of far right government in Ukraine (see "Fuck the EU":
neocons show EU its real place ). See, for example, letter of G7 ambassadors to Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen
Avakov(March 17, 2018) in which G7 ambassadors are urging him to act against violent political extremist groups who might
threaten to disrupt the upcoming vote and usurp the role of the Ukrainian National Police and to consider outlawing them down the
road ( G7
Letter Takes Aim At Role Of Violent Extremists In Ukrainian Society, Election )
In the letter that was addressed to Avakov on March 15, French Ambassador Isabelle Dumont wrote on behalf of her fellow
ambassadors that "the G7 group is concerned by extreme political movements in Ukraine, whose violent actions are worrying in
themselves."
"They intimidate Ukrainian citizens, attempt to usurp the role of the National Police in safeguarding elections, and damage the
Ukrainian government's national and international reputation," Dumont continued, in a thinly veiled reference to the National
Corps and National Militia, the far-right Azov group's political and vigilante wings, respectively.
... ... ...
'Nationalist Hate Groups'
The National Corps and National Militia were products of the Azov Battalion, a volunteer military regiment formed in the early
days of the conflict against Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine that began in 2014. The battalion has been accused by
international human rights groups of "war crimes" on the battlefield and has since been brought under the control of the National
Guard, which is overseen by Avakov.
Members of the National Corps and National Militia have been blamed for multiple violent attacks on minorities in Ukraine,
particularly Roma and LGBTI persons, in the past year.
The U.S. State Department described those far-right entities as "nationalist hate groups" in its Ukraine country report on Human
Rights for 2018 released on March 13.
.... ... ...
On March 9, the National Corps and National Militia clashed with police outside the presidential administration in Kyiv and
later in Cherkasy, where Poroshenko was campaigning.
At least 15 police officers were wounded.
"The violent incidents of March 9 were a reminder that, just a few weeks ahead of the elections, one crucial challenge is to
prevent an escalation of tensions," Dumont wrote in the letter to Avakov. "We have noted with concern that the very same groups
involved in the violent incidents have registered as election observers and publicly threatened to use violence should they
consider that election fraud is occurring."
Indeed, Ukraine's Central Election Commission has approved the National Militia to monitor the polling. Soon after that
announcement, the group's spokesman warned that "if law enforcers turn a blind eye to outright violations and don't want to
document them," then they plan to follow the lead of a group leader
who said they would "punch someone in the face in the name of justice...without hesitation."
The idea the neoliberalism is necessary democratic is compete nonsense. The nature of democracy in the USA (democracy for
whom? For top one percent (or top 10% ) as in one dollar one vote?) is also open
to review. While elections are democratic, the selection of candidates is clearly undemocratic and involves
intelligence agencies (which derails Sanders in 2016 elections). Modifying famous Stalin's quote we can say -- it does not matter
how people vote, what matter is who is allowed to became a candidate.
Neoliberalism in its many manifestations – economic, social, political – is often imposed from above on unwilling populations in
decidedly undemocratic ways. Economic neoliberalization in developing countries, for instance, is often the product of brutal
direct pressure from Western lenders (neocolonialism) and the International Monetary Fund (debt slavery). It’s certainly not democratic.
The point here is that liberalism vs. authoritarianism is a false dichotomy. Just a cute propaganda cliché. If nothing else, it
ignores the vast differences between different regimes which are labeled as ‘authoritarian’ or ‘democratic’. For example, if
we take Hungary it is difficult to point out were exactly it stands. Hungary certainly have democratic elections, but at the same time is has
right wing government. At the same time it is completely different from North Korea to put them into one basket of evil
"authoritarian regimes" is just silly. And this is what Kagan tried to do for the propaganda purposes. Propaganda does not needs to
be logical. Just attractive and simplistic.
So when this propagandist label both this is not oversimplification, this is the agenda of "full spectrum dominance" in
action. any state that for some reason opposes the USA hegemony is authoritarian, and vassals including Saudi are all democratic.
Very convenient, and very simple. To the rise of the " authoritarianism" should be translated from "Kagan Speak" to regular
English as the state which is some way oppose the USA hegemony.
And BTW if
Hungary is authoritarian, what about his favorite country -- Israel with far right wing politician Netanyahu at the helm and
his Likud party, the program of which contains many elements that can be classified as neo-fascist ? It is close to Kahanism, which
is a neofascist Jewish movement known for advocacy of violence against Arabs, both Palestinian and Arab-Israeli.
If you read the following quote from his long long
essay In WaPo you will instantly recognize it as sophisticated propaganda treat called "demonizing the enemy"
directed on people who does not have clear definition of what authoritarianism means
Authoritarianism has now returned as a geopolitical force, with strong nations such as China and Russia championing
anti-liberalism as an alternative to a teetering liberal hegemony. … It has returned armed with new and hitherto unimaginable
tools of social control and disruption … reaching into the very heart of liberal societies to undermine them from within.
Simplifying authoritarianism is both a personality type and the hierarchical method of governance used in military,
large corporations and government institutions.
As for personality type such people have a high degree of willingness to submit to authorities they perceive as established and
legitimate, who adhere to societal conventions and norms and who are hostile and punitive in their attitudes towards people who do
not adhere to them. Often they are "kiss up,. kick down personalities." They prefer punishment over other means of influence of
deviant behaviour. They value uniformity and are in favor of using group authority, including coercion, to achieve it.In
short, that corresponds to the type of people who generally flock to the Republican Party in the USA and Kagan considers himself to be a Republican. Pot,
kettle, black ;-)
As a governance type it is closely related to bureaucracy (as Thatcher said for a different topic -- "there is no
alternative" ;-) . Any hierarchical organization is simultaneously authoritarian. On state governance level the extreme form authoritarianism means monarchy. So KSA is by definition an
authoritarian state. Of course, sleazy MIC stooge Kagan prefers to omit this interesting fact.
Biographic trivia
His brother, Frederick, is
a military historian and author is yes another neocon. Kagan managed to get a BA in history (1980) from Yale (that's a low, almost community college level of education
with some training in color revolution mechanics ;-). But he is a
good writer and talanted (abiet skeasy) propagandist journalist, who as early as 1979 he had been Editor in Chief of the Yale Political Monthly, a periodical
that he is credited with reviving.
He
later earned an MPP from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and a PhD in American history from American
University in Washington, D.C. The latter is as far from Ivy Scholl universities as one can get (PhD from American
University is a bad joke). so they do not cout. BA in history from Yale remain his only education and that's not enough.
He never did any important research or Ph.D. He instantly switch to journalism and propaganda.
Kagan is married to the American diplomat Victoria Nuland, who is Cheney protégée and was Ambassador to NATO. She was the State
department spopeswoman which is dead end position for any diplomat. But somehow Hillary with her feminist inclinations appointed her as Assistant Secretary of
European and Eurasian Affairs in the Barack Obama administration. in thsi role Nuland was one of persons responsible to EuroMaydan color
revolution in Ukraine (see "F*ck the EU": State Department neocons
show EU its real place)
Ideas and career[edit]
In 1983, Robert Kagan was foreign policy advisor to New York Republican Representative Jack Kemp.
From 1984–86, under the administration of Ronald Reagan, he was a speechwriter for Secretary of
State George P. Shultz and a member of the State Department Policy Planning Staff. From 1986–1988
he served in the State Department Bureau of Inter-American Affairs.[8]
Kagan co-founded the now-defunct Project for the New American Century with William Kristol
in 1997.[2][4][9] From 1998 until August, 2010, Kagan was a Senior Associate with the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace. He was appointed senior fellow in the Center on United States and
Europe at the Brookings Institution in September 2010.[10][11][12][13]
During the 2008 presidential campaign he served as foreign policy advisor to John McCain, the Republican
Party's nominee for President of the United States in the 2008 election.[14][15]
Kagan also serves on the State Department's Foreign Affairs Policy Board under Secretaries of State
Hillary Clinton[16] and John Kerry.[17] He is also a member of the board of directors for The Foreign
Policy Initiative (FPI).[18]
Andrew J. Bacevich referred to Kagan as "the chief neoconservative foreign-policy theorist" in reviewing
Kagan's book The Return of history and the end of dreams.[19] A profile in the The Guardian described
Kagan as being "uncomfortable" with the 'neocon' title, and stated that "he insists he is 'liberal'
and 'progressive' in a distinctly American tradition".[20] In 2008, Kagan wrote an article titled "Neocon
Nation: Neoconservatism, c. 1776" for World Affairs, describing the main components of American neoconservatism
as a belief in the rectitude of applying US moralism to the world stage, support for the US to act alone,
the promotion of American-style liberty and democracy in other countries, the belief in American hegemony,[21]
the confidence in US military power, and a distrust of international institutions.[22] Kagan describes
his foreign-policy views as "deeply rooted in American history and widely shared by Americans".[23]
In 2006, Kagan wrote that Russia and China are the greatest "challenge liberalism faces today": "Nor
do Russia and China welcome the liberal West's efforts to promote liberal politics around the globe,
least of all in regions of strategic importance to them. ... Unfortunately, al-Qaeda may not be the
only challenge liberalism faces today, or even the greatest."[24]
Writings
Despite the low quality and mainly propaganda content of his writings, Karan, as a MIC lobbyst, gets unfettered access to
all major neoliberal MSMKagan is a columnist for the Washington Post and a contributing editor at The New Republic and
in the past to now defunct Weekly Standard. He has also written for the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, the Wall Street Journal,
Commentary, World Affairs, and Policy Review.
Regarding Kagan's opinion piece "Problem with Powell" (Washington Post July 23, 2000), scholar Guy
Roberts states that "the PNAC co-founder Robert Kagan sought to explain core differences" between the
positions of the neoconservatives and those of Colin Powell.[25] In that piece, Kagan wrote
The problem with Powell is his political and strategic judgment. He doesn’t believe the United States
should enter conflicts without strong public support, but he also doesn't believe that the public will
support anything. That kind of iron logic rules out almost every conceivable post-Cold War intervention.[26]
Clarence Lusane has described Kagan as blaming Powell “for Saddam Hussein remaining in power” in
the Washington Post piece.[27] In a subsequent opinion piece "Spotlight on Colin Powell" (Philadelphia Inquirer, February 12, 2002)
Kagan praised Powell for "Articulately defending the new Bush Doctrine" and declaring "his support for
"regime change" in Iraq..."[28]
In 2003, Kagan's book, Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order, published
on the eve of the US invasion of Iraq, created something of a sensation through its assertions that
Europeans tended to favor peaceful resolutions of international disputes while the United States takes
a more "Hobbesian" view in which some kinds of disagreement can only be settled by force, or, as he
put it: "Americans are from Mars and Europe is from Venus." New York Times book reviewer, Ivo H. Daalder
wrote:
When it comes to setting national priorities, determining threats, defining challenges, and fashioning
and implementing foreign and defense policies, the United States and Europe have parted ways, writes
Mr. Kagan, concluding, in words already famous in another context, 'Americans are from Mars and Europeans
are from Venus.'[29]
Kagan's book, Dangerous Nation: America's Place in the World from its Earliest Days to the Dawn of
the Twentieth Century (2006), argued forcefully against what he considers the widespread misconception
that the United States had been isolationist since its inception. It was awarded a Lepgold Prize from
Georgetown University.[30]
Kagan's essay "Not Fade Away: The Myth of American Decline" (The New Republic, February 2, 2012)[31]
was very positively received by President Obama. Josh Rogin reported in Foreign Policy that the president
"spent more than 10 minutes talking about it...going over its arguments paragraph by paragraph."[32]
That essay was excerpted from his book, The World America Made (2012).
John Bew and Kagan lectured on March 27, 2014, on Realpolitik and American Exceptionalism at the
Library of Congress.[8][33]
Kagan books
All are junk:
A Twilight Struggle: American Power and Nicaragua, 1977-1990. (1996) ISBN 978-0-028-74057-7
Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in America's Foreign and Defense Policy, with William Kristol
(2000)
Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order. (2003) ISBN 1-4000-4093-0
Dangerous Nation: America's Place in the World from its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the Twentieth Century.
(2006) ISBN 0-375-41105-4
The Return of History and the End of Dreams. (2008) ISBN 978-0-307-26923-2
The World America Made. (2012) ISBN 978-0-307-96131-0
I'm in the middle of Armstrong's
essay and am at the first reference to Kagan's vision:
"What should that role be? Benevolent global hegemony. Having defeated the 'evil empire,'
the United States enjoys strategic and ideological predominance. The first objective of
U.S. foreign policy should be to preserve and enhance that predominance by strengthening
America's security, supporting its friends, advancing its interests, and standing up for its
principles around the world .'
It's absolutely clear that Kagan has no clue as to the reality of what is actually the
objective of the Neoliberal Parasites running the Outlaw US Empire; for aside from "advancing
its interests," the Parasites have zero motivation to do any of that as their sole
ambition/goal is to vacuum up all the wealth they can and leave a shell just as they planned
and failed with Russia, but have succeeded elsewhere. And as for principles, the reality is
it has none, nor does it have any friends, just vassals and victims. This analogy by
Armstrong's excellent:
"The U.S. is sitting on a dragon and it daren't get off or the dragon will kill it. But
because it can't kill the dragon, it must sit on it forever: no escape. And dragon's eggs are
hatching out all around: think how much bigger the Russian, Chinese and Iranian dragons are
today than they were a quarter-century ago when Kagan & Co so confidently started PNAC;
think how bigger they'll be in another....
"But the more sanctions, the stronger Russia gets: as an analogy, think of sanctions on
Russia as similar to the over-use of antibiotics – Russia is becoming immune."
And tying it all up is this excellent summation:
"Has there ever been a subject on which people have been so wrong for so long as Russia?
How many times have they said Putin's finished? Remember when cheese was going to bring him
down? Always a terminal economic crisis. A year ago they were sure COVID would do it. A U.S.
general is in Ukraine and Kiev's heavy weapons are moving east but, no, it's Putin who, for
ego reasons – and his "failing" economy – wants the war. Why do they keep doing
it? Well, it's easy money – Putin (did we tell you he was in the KGB?) wants to expand
Russia and rule forever; therefore, he's about to invade somebody. He doesn't, no problem,
our timely warning scared him off; we'll change the date and regurgitate it next year. In the
meantime his despotic rule trembles because of some-triviality-of-the-moment. These pieces
write themselves: the anti-Russia business is the easiest scam ever. And there's the
difficulty of admitting you're wrong: how can somebody like Kagan, such a triumphantasiser
back then, admit that it's all turned to dust and worse, turned to dust because they took his
advice? Much better to press on – it's not as if anybody in the lügenpresse will
call him out or deny him space. Finally, these people are locked in psychological projection:
because they can only envisage military expansion, they assume the other guy is equally
obsessed and so they must expand to counter his expansion. They suspect everybody of
suspecting them. Their hostility sees hostility everywhere. Their belligerence finds
belligerence. The hyperpower is forever compelled to respond to lesser powers. They look
outside, see themselves and fear; in their mental universe the USA is arrogantly strong and
fearfully weak at the same time."
The Walking Dead is finally becoming a metaphor for the Outlaw US Empire, its
policies, and what it terms values--which aren't values but vices. But TWD was fiction and
was thus capable of reforming itself. The Empire's goals and polices are essentially the same
as in 1940 and even further back to 1913, and haven't changed very much, being just as
illegal and immoral then as now. What's different are the "Dragons" which didn't exist in
1918 or 1944, and the Parasites have almost total control that's finally seeing domestic
pushback.
It's absolutely clear that Kagan has no clue as to the reality of what is actually the
objective of the Neoliberal Parasites running the Outlaw US Empire.
Why do you give him the benefit of the doubt?
Are we really to believe that Kagan, and others like him, talk of these things for DECADES
and yet aren't aware of the ramifications?
IMO it is absolutely clear that he knows the neoliberal reality as well as the neocon and
neocolonial realities.
But we are supposed to avoid cynicism and be polite so as to not be thought a
malcontent?
=
@karlof1 The need for more cynicism is a theme of mine (which I've written about at moa
many times) so please don't respond in a knee-jerk way.
By 2016 the concept of "liberal democracy," once bright with promise, had dulled into a
neoliberal politics that was neither liberal nor democratic. The Democratic Party's turn toward
market-driven policies, the bipartisan dismantling of the public sphere, the inflight marriage
of Wall Street and Silicon Valley in the cockpit of globalization -- these interventions
constituted the long con of neoliberal governance, which enriched a small minority of Americans
while ravaging most of the rest.
Jackson Lears is Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of History at Rutgers,
Editor in Chief of Raritan, and the author of Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern
America, 1877–1920, among other books. (January 2021)
Neocons like the historian Robert Kagan may be
connecting with Hillary Clinton to try to regain influence in foreign policy.
Credit...
Left,
Stephanie Sinclair/VII via Corbis; right, Colin McPherson/Corbis
WASHINGTON -- AFTER nearly a decade in the political wilderness, the
neoconservative movement is back, using the turmoil in Iraq and Ukraine to claim that it is President Obama,
not the movement's interventionist foreign policy that dominated early George W. Bush-era Washington, that
bears responsibility for the current round of global crises.
Even as they castigate Mr. Obama, the neocons may be preparing a more brazen
feat: aligning themselves with Hillary Rodham Clinton and her nascent presidential campaign, in a bid to
return to the driver's seat of American foreign policy.
To be sure, the careers and reputations of the older generation of neocons --
Paul D. Wolfowitz, L. Paul Bremer III, Douglas J. Feith, Richard N. Perle -- are permanently buried in the
sands of Iraq. And not all of them are eager to switch parties: In April, William Kristol, the editor of The
Weekly Standard, said that as president Mrs. Clinton would "be a dutiful chaperone of further American
decline."
But others appear to envisage a different direction -- one that might allow
them to restore the neocon brand, at a time when their erstwhile home in the Republican Party is turning
away from its traditional interventionist foreign policy.
It's not as outlandish as it may sound. Consider the historian Robert Kagan,
the author of a recent,
roundly praised article
in The New Republic that amounted to a neo-neocon manifesto. He has not only
avoided the vitriolic tone that has afflicted some of his intellectual brethren but also co-founded an
influential bipartisan advisory group during Mrs. Clinton's time at the State Department.
Mr. Kagan has also been careful to avoid landing at standard-issue neocon
think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute; instead, he's a senior fellow at the Brookings
Institution, that citadel of liberalism headed by Strobe Talbott, who was deputy secretary of state under
President Bill Clinton and is considered a strong candidate to become secretary of state in a new Democratic
administration. (Mr. Talbott called the Kagan article "magisterial," in what amounts to a public baptism
into the liberal establishment.)
Perhaps most significantly, Mr. Kagan and others have insisted on
maintaining the link between modern neoconservatism and its roots in muscular Cold War liberalism. Among
other things, he has frequently praised Harry S. Truman's secretary of state, Dean Acheson, drawing a line
from him straight to the neocons' favorite president: "It was not Eisenhower or Kennedy or Nixon but Reagan
whose policies most resembled those of Acheson and Truman."
Other neocons have followed Mr. Kagan's careful centrism and respect for
Mrs. Clinton. Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations,
noted in The New Republic
this year that "it is clear that in administration councils she was a
principled voice for a strong stand on controversial issues, whether supporting the Afghan surge or the
intervention in Libya."
And the thing is, these neocons have a point. Mrs. Clinton voted for the
Iraq war; supported sending arms to Syrian rebels; likened Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin, to Adolf
Hitler; wholeheartedly backs Israel; and stresses the importance of promoting democracy.
It's easy to imagine Mrs. Clinton's making room for the neocons in her
administration. No one could charge her with being weak on national security with the likes of Robert Kagan
on board.
Of course, the neocons' latest change in tack is not just about intellectual
affinity. Their longtime home, the Republican Party, where presidents and candidates from Reagan to Senator
John McCain of Arizona supported large militaries and aggressive foreign policies, may well nominate for
president Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who has been beating an ever louder drum against American
involvement abroad.
In response, Mark Salter, a former chief of staff to Senator McCain and a
neocon fellow traveler, said that in the event of a Paul nomination, "Republican voters seriously concerned
with national security would have no responsible recourse" but to support Mrs. Clinton for the presidency.
Still, Democratic liberal hawks, let alone the left, would have to swallow
hard to accept any neocon conversion. Mrs. Clinton herself is already under fire for her foreign-policy
views -- the journalist Glenn Greenwald, among others, has condemned her as "like a neocon, practically." And
humanitarian interventionists like Samantha Power, the ambassador to the United Nations, who opposed the
second Iraq war, recoil at the militaristic unilateralism of the neocons and their inveterate hostility to
international institutions like the World Court.
But others in Mrs. Clinton's orbit, like Michael A. McFaul, the former
ambassador to Russia and now a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, a neocon haven at Stanford, are much
more in line with thinkers like Mr. Kagan and Mr. Boot, especially when it comes to issues like promoting
democracy and opposing Iran.
Far from ending, then, the neocon odyssey is about to continue. In 1972,
Robert L. Bartley, the editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal and a man who championed the early
neocon stalwarts, shrewdly diagnosed the movement as representing "something of a swing group between the
two major parties." Despite the partisan battles of the early 2000s, it is remarkable how very little has
changed.
"... A chorus of neocons rushed to second his praise: Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA officer and prominent Never Trumper, lauded Trump's intestinal fortitude, while Representative Liz Cheney hailed Trump's "decisive action." It was Carlson who was left sputtering about the forever wars. "Washington has wanted war with Iran for decades," Carlson said . "They still want it now. Let's hope they haven't finally gotten it." ..."
"... Neoconservatism as a foreign policy ideology has been badly discredited over the last two decades, thanks to the debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan. But in the blinding flash of one drone strike, neoconservatism was easily able to reinsert itself in the national conversation. It now appears that Trump intends to make Soleimani's killing -- which has nearly drawn the U.S. into yet another conflict in the Middle East and, in typical neoconservative fashion, ended up backfiring and undercutting American goals in the region -- a central part of his 2020 reelection bid . ..."
"... The neocons are starting to realize that Trump's presidency, at least when it comes to foreign policy, is no less vulnerable to hijacking than those of previous Republican presidents, including the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. The leading hawks inside and outside the administration shaping its approach to Iran include Robert O'Brien, Bolton's disciple and successor as national security adviser; Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook; Mark Dubowitz, the CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies; David Wurmser, a former adviser to Bolton; and Senators Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton. Perhaps no one better exemplifies the neocon ethos better than Cotton, a Kristol protégé who soaked up the teachings of the political philosopher Leo Strauss while studying at Harvard. Others who have been baying for conflict with Iran include Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who is now Trump's personal lawyer and partner in Ukrainian crime. In June 2018, Giuliani went to Paris to address the National Council of Resistance of Iran, whose parent organization is the Iranian opposition group Mujahedin-e-Khalq, or MeK. Giuliani, who has been on the payroll of the MeK for years, demanded -- what else? -- regime change. ..."
"... The fresh charge into battle of what Sidney Blumenthal once aptly referred to as an ideological light brigade brings to mind Hobbes's observation in Leviathan : "All men that are ambitious of military command are inclined to continue the causes of war; and to stir up trouble and sedition; for there is no honor military but by war; nor any such hope to mend an ill game, as by causing a new shuffle." The neocons, it appears, have caused a new shuffle. ..."
"... the killing of Soleimani revealed that the neocon military-intellectual complex is very much still intact, with the ability to spring back to life from a state of suspended animation in an instant. Its hawkish tendencies remain widely prevalent not only in the Republican Party but also in the media, the think-tank universe, and in the liberal-hawk precincts of the Democratic Party. Meanwhile, the influence and reach of the anti-war right remains nascent; even if this contingent has popular support, it doesn't enjoy much backing in Washington beyond the mood swings of the mercurial occupant of the Oval Office. ..."
"... The neocons supplied the patina of intellectual legitimacy for policies that might once have seemed outré. ..."
"... But it was the neoconservatives, not the paleocons, who amassed influence in the 1990s and took over the GOP's foreign policy wing. Veteran neocons like Michael Ledeen were joined by a younger generation of journalists and policymakers that included Robert Kagan, Bill Kristol (who founded The Weekly Standard in 1994), Paul Wolfowitz, and Douglas J. Feith. The neocons consistently pushed for a hard line against Iraq and Iran. In his 1996 book, Freedom Betrayed, for example, Ledeen, an expert on Italian fascism, declared that the right, rather than the left, should adhere to the revolutionary tradition of toppling dictatorships. In his 2002 book, The War Against the Terror Masters, Ledeen stated , "Creative destruction is our middle name. We tear down the old order every day." ..."
"... Still, a number of neocons, including David Frum, Max Boot, Anne Applebaum, Jennifer Rubin, and Kristol himself, have continued to condemn Trump vociferously for his thuggish instincts at home and abroad. They are not seeking high-profile government careers in the Trump administration and so have been able to reinvent themselves as domestic regime-change advocates, something they have done quite skillfully. In fact, their writings are more pungent now that they have been liberated from the costive confines of the movement. ..."
"... And so, urged on by Mike Pompeo, a staunch evangelical Christian, and Iraq War–era figures like David Wurmser , Trump is apparently prepared to target Iran for destruction. In a tweet, he dismissed his national security adviser, the Bolton protégé Robert O'Brien, for declaring that the strike against Soleimani would force Iran to negotiate: "Actually, I couldn't care less if they negotiate," he said . "Will be totally up to them but, no nuclear weapons and 'don't kill your protesters.'" Neocons have been quick to recognize the new, more belligerent Trump -- and the potential maneuvering room he's now created for their movement. Jonathan S. Tobin, a former editor at Commentary and a contributor to National Review , rejoiced in Haaretz that "the neo-isolationist wing of the GOP, for which Carlson is a spokesperson, is losing the struggle for control of Trump's foreign policy." Tobin, however, added an important caveat: "When it comes to Iran, Trump needs no prodding from the likes of Bolton to act like a neoconservative. Just as important, the entire notion of anyone -- be it Carlson, former White House senior advisor Steve Bannon, or any cabinet official like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo -- being able to control Trump is a myth." ..."
"... One reason is institutional. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Hudson Institute, and AEI have all been sounding the tocsin about Iran for decades. Once upon a time, the neocons were outliers. Now they're the new establishment, exerting a kind of gravitational pull on debate, pulling politicians and a variety of news organizations into their orbit. The Hudson Institute, for example, recently held an event with former Iranian Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, who exhorted Iran's Revolutionary Guard to "peel away" from the mullahs and endorsed the Trump administration's maximum pressure campaign. ..."
"... Meanwhile, Wolfowitz, also writing in the Times , has popped up to warn Trump against trying to leave Syria: "To paraphrase Trotsky's aphorism about war, you may not be interested in the Middle East, but the Middle East is interested in you." With the "both-sides" ethos that prevails in the mainstream media, neocon ideas are just as good as any others for National Public Radio or The Washington Post, whose editorial page, incidentally, championed the Iraq War and has been imbued with a neocon, or at least liberal-hawk, tinge ever since Fred Hiatt took it over in 2000. ..."
"... Above all, Trump hired Michael Flynn as his first national security adviser. Flynn was the co-author with Ledeen of a creepy tract called Field of Fight, in which they demanded a crusade against the Muslim world ..."
"... At a minimum, the traditional Republican hard-line foreign policy approach has now fused with neoconservatism so that the two are virtually indistinguishable. At a maximum, neoconservatism shapes the dominant foreign policy worldview in Washington, which is why Democrats were falling over themselves to assure voters that Soleimani -- a "bad guy" -- had it coming. Any objections that his killing might boomerang back on the U.S. are met with cries from the right that Democrats are siding with the enemy. This truly is a policy of "maximum pressure" at home and abroad. ..."
There was a time not so long ago, before President Donald Trump's surprise decision early this year to liquidate the Iranian commander
Qassem Soleimani, when it appeared that America's neoconservatives were floundering. The president was itching to withdraw U.S. forces
from Afghanistan. He was staging exuberant photo-ops with a beaming Kim Jong Un. He was reportedly willing to hold talks with the
president of Iran, while clearly preferring trade wars to hot ones.
Indeed, this past summer, Trump's anti-interventionist supporters in the conservative media were riding high. When he refrained
from attacking Iran in June after it shot down an American drone, Fox News host Tucker Carlson
declared , "Donald Trump was elected president precisely to keep us out of disaster like war with Iran." Carlson went on to condemn
the hawks in Trump's Cabinet and their allies, who he claimed were egging the president on -- familiar names to anyone who has followed
the decades-long neoconservative project of aggressively using military force to topple unfriendly regimes and project American power
over the globe. "So how did we get so close to starting [a war]?"
he asked. "One of [the hawks'] key allies is the national security adviser of the United States. John Bolton is an old friend
of Bill Kristol's. Together they helped plan the Iraq War."
By the time Trump met with Kim in late June, becoming the first sitting president to set foot on North Korean soil, Bolton was
on the outs. Carlson was on the president's North Korean junket, while Trump's national security adviser was in Mongolia. "John Bolton
is absolutely a hawk,"
Trump
told NBC in June. "If it was up to him, he'd take on the whole world at one time, OK?" In September, Bolton was fired.
The standard-bearer of the Republican Party had made clear his distaste for the neocons' belligerent approach to global affairs,
much to the neocons' own entitled chagrin. As recently as December, Bolton, now outside the tent pissing in, was hammering Trump
for "bluffing" through an announcement that the administration wanted North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons program. "The
idea that we are somehow exerting maximum pressure on North Korea is just unfortunately not true,"
Bolton told Axios . Then Trump ordered the drone
strike on Soleimani, drastically escalating a simmering conflict between Iran and the United States. All of a sudden the roles were
reversed, with Bolton praising the president and asserting that Soleimani's death was "
the first step to regime change in Tehran ." A chorus of neocons rushed to second his praise: Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former
CIA officer and prominent Never Trumper, lauded Trump's intestinal fortitude, while Representative Liz Cheney hailed Trump's
"decisive action." It was Carlson
who was left sputtering about the forever wars. "Washington has wanted war with Iran for decades,"
Carlson said . "They
still want it now. Let's hope they haven't finally gotten it."
Neoconservatism as a foreign policy ideology has been badly discredited over the last two decades, thanks to the debacles
in Iraq and Afghanistan. But in the blinding flash of one drone strike, neoconservatism was easily able to reinsert itself in the
national conversation. It now appears that Trump intends to make Soleimani's killing -- which has nearly drawn the U.S. into yet
another conflict in the Middle East and, in typical neoconservative fashion, ended up backfiring and undercutting American goals
in the region -- a central part of his
2020 reelection bid
.
The anti-interventionist right is freaking out. Writing in American Greatness, Matthew Boose
declared , "[T]he Trump movement, which was generated out of opposition to the foreign policy blob and its endless wars, was
revealed this week to have been co-opted to a great extent by neoconservatives seeking regime change." James Antle, the editor of
The American Conservative, a publication founded in 2002 to oppose the Iraq War,
asked , "Did
Trump betray the anti-war right?"
In the blinding flash of one drone strike, neoconservatism was easily able to reinsert itself in the national conversation.
Their concerns are not unmerited. The neocons are starting to realize that Trump's presidency, at least when it comes to foreign
policy, is no less vulnerable to hijacking than those of previous Republican presidents, including the administrations of Ronald
Reagan and George W. Bush. The leading hawks inside and outside the administration shaping its approach to Iran include Robert O'Brien,
Bolton's disciple and successor as national security adviser; Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; Special Representative for Iran Brian
Hook; Mark Dubowitz, the CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies; David Wurmser, a former adviser to Bolton; and Senators
Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton. Perhaps no one better exemplifies the neocon ethos better than Cotton, a Kristol protégé who soaked
up the teachings of the political philosopher Leo Strauss while studying at Harvard. Others who have been baying for conflict with
Iran include Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who is now Trump's personal lawyer and partner in Ukrainian crime. In
June 2018, Giuliani went to Paris to address the National Council of Resistance of Iran, whose parent organization is the Iranian
opposition group Mujahedin-e-Khalq, or MeK. Giuliani, who has been on the payroll of the MeK for years, demanded -- what else? --
regime change.
The fresh charge into battle of what Sidney Blumenthal once aptly referred to as an ideological light brigade brings to mind
Hobbes's observation in Leviathan : "All men that are ambitious of military command are inclined to continue the causes of
war; and to stir up trouble and sedition; for there is no honor military but by war; nor any such hope to mend an ill game, as by
causing a new shuffle." The neocons, it appears, have caused a new shuffle.
Donald Trump has not dragged us into war with Iran (yet). But the killing of Soleimani revealed that the neocon military-intellectual
complex is very much still intact, with the ability to spring back to life from a state of suspended animation in an instant. Its
hawkish tendencies remain widely prevalent not only in the Republican Party but also in the media, the think-tank universe, and in
the liberal-hawk precincts of the Democratic Party. Meanwhile, the influence and reach of the anti-war right remains nascent; even
if this contingent has popular support, it doesn't enjoy much backing in Washington beyond the mood swings of the mercurial occupant
of the Oval Office.
But there was a time when the neoconservative coalition was not so entrenched -- and what has turned out to be its provisional
state of exile lends some critical insight into how it managed to hang around respectable policymaking circles in recent years, and
how it may continue to shape American foreign policy for the foreseeable future. When the neoconservatives came on the scene in the
late 1960s, the Republican old guard viewed them as interlopers. The neocons, former Trotskyists turned liberals who broke with the
Democratic Party over its perceived weakness on the Cold War, stormed the citadel of Republican ideology by emphasizing the relationship
between ideas and political reality. Irving Kristol, one of the original neoconservatives,
mused in 1985 that " what communists call the theoretical organs always end up through a filtering process influencing a lot
of people who don't even know they're being influenced. In the end, ideas rule the world because even interests are defined by ideas."
At pivotal moments in modern American foreign policy, the neocons supplied the patina of intellectual legitimacy for policies
that might once have seemed outré. Jeane Kirkpatrick's seminal 1979 essay in Commentary, "Dictatorships and Double Standards,"
essentially set forth the lineaments of the Reagan doctrine. She assailed Jimmy Carter for attacking friendly authoritarian leaders
such as the shah of Iran and Nicaragua's Anastasio Somoza. She contended that authoritarian regimes might molt into democracies,
while totalitarian regimes would remain impregnable to outside influence, American or otherwise. Ronald Reagan read the essay and
liked it. He named Kirkpatrick his ambassador to the United Nations, where she became the most influential neocon of the era for
her denunciations of Arab regimes and defenses of Israel. Her tenure was also defined by the notion that it was perfectly acceptable
for America to cozy up to noxious regimes, from apartheid South Africa to the shah's Iran, as part of the greater mission to oppose
the red menace.
The neocons supplied the patina of intellectual legitimacy for policies that might once have seemed outré.
There was always tension between Reagan's affinity for authoritarian regimes and his hard-line opposition to Communist ones. His
sunny persona never quite gelled with Kirkpatrick's more gelid view that communism was an immutable force, and in 1982, in a major
speech to the British Parliament at Westminster emphasizing the power of democracy and free speech, he declared his intent to end
the Cold War on American terms. As Reagan's second term progressed and democracy and free speech actually took hold in the waning
days of the Soviet Union, many hawks declared that it was all a sham. Indeed, not a few neocons were livid, claiming that Reagan
was appeasing the Soviet Union. But after the USSR collapsed, they retroactively blessed him as the anti-Communist warrior par excellence
and the model for the future. The right was now a font of happy talk about the dawn of a new age of liberty based on free-market
economics and American firepower.
The fall of communism, in other words, set the stage for a new neoconservative paradigm. Francis Fukuyama's The End of History
appeared a decade after Kirkpatrick's essay in Commentary and just before the Berlin Wall was breached on November 9,
1989. Here was a sharp break with the saturnine, realpolitik approach that Kirkpatrick had championed. Irving Kristol regarded it
as hopelessly utopian -- "I don't believe a word of it," he wrote in a response to Fukuyama. But a younger generation of neocons,
led by Irving's son, Bill Kristol, and Robert Kagan, embraced it. Fukuyama argued that Western, liberal democracy, far from being
menaced, was now the destination point of the train of world history. With communism vanquished, the neocons, bearing the good word
from Fukuyama, formulated a new goal: democracy promotion, by force if necessary, as a way to hasten history and secure the global
order with the U.S. at its head. The first Gulf War in 1991, precipitated by Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, tested the neocons'
resolve and led to a break in the GOP -- one that would presage the rise of Donald Trump. For decades, Patrick Buchanan had been
regularly inveighing against what he came to call the neocon "
amen corner" in and around the
Washington centers of power, including A.M. Rosenthal and Charles Krauthammer, both of whom endorsed the '91 Gulf War. The neocons
were frustrated by the measured approach taken by George H.W. Bush. He refused to crow about the fall of the Berlin Wall and kicked
the Iraqis out of Kuwait but declined to invade Iraq and "finish the job," as his hawkish critics would later put it. Buchanan then
ran for the presidency in 1992 on an America First platform, reviving a paleoconservative tradition that would partly inform Trump's
dark horse run in 2016.
But it was the neoconservatives, not the paleocons, who amassed influence in the 1990s and took over the GOP's foreign policy
wing. Veteran neocons like Michael Ledeen were joined by a younger generation of journalists and policymakers that included Robert
Kagan, Bill Kristol (who founded The Weekly Standard in 1994), Paul Wolfowitz, and Douglas J. Feith. The neocons consistently
pushed for a hard line against Iraq and Iran. In his 1996 book, Freedom Betrayed, for example, Ledeen, an expert on Italian
fascism, declared that the right, rather than the left, should adhere to the revolutionary tradition of toppling dictatorships. In
his 2002 book, The War Against the Terror Masters, Ledeen
stated , "Creative destruction
is our middle name. We tear down the old order every day."
We all know the painful consequences of the neocons' obsession with creative destruction. In his second inaugural address, three
and a half years after 9/11, George W. Bush cemented
neoconservative ideology into presidential doctrine: "It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of
democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world." The neocons'
hubris had already turned into nemesis in Iraq, paving the way for an anti-war candidate in Barack Obama.
But it was Trump -- by virtue of running as a Republican -- who appeared to sound neoconservatism's death knell. He announced
his Buchananesque policy of "America First" in a speech at Washington's Mayflower Hotel in 2016, signaling that he would not adhere
to the long-standing Reaganite principles that had animated the party establishment.
The pooh-bahs of the GOP openly declared their disdain and revulsion for Trump, leading directly to the rise of the Never Trump
movement, which was dominated by neocons. The Never Trumpers ended up functioning as an informal blacklist for Trump once he became
president. Elliott Abrams, for example, who was being touted for deputy secretary of state in February 2017, was rejected when Steve
Bannon alerted Trump to his earlier heresies (though he later reemerged, in January 2019, as Trump's special envoy to Venezuela,
where he has pushed for regime change). Not a few other members of the Republican foreign policy establishment suffered similar fates.
Kristol's The Weekly Standard, which had held the neoconservative line through the Bush years and beyond , folded
in 2018. Even the office building that used to house the American Enterprise Institute and the Standard, on the corner of
17th and M streets in Washington, has been torn down, leaving an empty, boarded-up site whose symbolism speaks for itself.
Still, a number of neocons, including David Frum, Max Boot, Anne Applebaum, Jennifer Rubin, and Kristol himself, have continued
to condemn Trump vociferously for his thuggish instincts at home and abroad. They are not seeking high-profile government careers
in the Trump administration and so have been able to reinvent themselves as domestic regime-change advocates, something they have
done quite skillfully. In fact, their writings are more pungent now that they have been liberated from the costive confines of the
movement.
It was Trump -- by virtue of running as a Republican -- who appeared to sound neoconservatism's death knell.
But other neocons -- the ones who want to wield positions of influence and might -- have, more often than not, been able to hold
their noses. Stephen Wertheim, writing in The New York Review of Books, has perceptively dubbed this faction the anti-globalist
neocons. Led by John Bolton, they believe Trump performed a godsend by elevating the term globalism "from a marginal slur
to the central foil of American foreign policy and Republican politics,"
Wertheim argued . The U.S. need not
bother with pesky multilateral institutions or international agreements or the entire postwar order, for that matter -- it's now
America's way or the highway.
And so, urged on by Mike Pompeo, a staunch evangelical Christian,
and Iraq War–era figures like
David Wurmser , Trump is apparently prepared to target Iran for destruction. In a tweet, he dismissed his national security adviser,
the Bolton protégé Robert O'Brien, for declaring that the strike against Soleimani would force Iran to negotiate: "Actually, I couldn't
care less if they negotiate,"
he said . "Will be totally up to them but, no nuclear weapons and 'don't kill your protesters.'" Neocons have been quick to recognize
the new, more belligerent Trump -- and the potential maneuvering room he's now created for their movement. Jonathan S. Tobin, a former
editor at Commentary and a contributor to National Review ,
rejoiced in Haaretz that "the neo-isolationist wing of the GOP, for which Carlson is a spokesperson, is losing the struggle
for control of Trump's foreign policy." Tobin, however, added an important caveat: "When it comes to Iran, Trump needs no prodding
from the likes of Bolton to act like a neoconservative. Just as important, the entire notion of anyone -- be it Carlson, former White
House senior advisor Steve Bannon, or any cabinet official like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo -- being able to control Trump is
a myth."
In other words, whether the neocons themselves are occupying top positions in the Trump administration is almost irrelevant. The
ideology itself has reemerged to a degree that even Trump himself seems hard pressed to resist it -- if he even wants to.
How were the neocons able to influence another Republican presidency, one that was ostensibly dedicated to curbing their sway?
One reason is institutional. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Hudson Institute, and AEI have all been sounding the
tocsin about Iran for decades. Once upon a time, the neocons were outliers. Now they're the new establishment, exerting a kind of
gravitational pull on debate, pulling politicians and a variety of news organizations into their orbit. The Hudson Institute, for
example, recently held an event with former Iranian Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, who exhorted Iran's Revolutionary Guard to "peel away"
from the mullahs and endorsed the Trump administration's maximum pressure campaign. The event was hosted by Michael Doran, a
former senior director on George W. Bush's National Security Council and a senior fellow at the institute, who
wrote in
The New York Times on January 3, "The United States has no choice, if it seeks to stay in the Middle East, but to check
Iran's military power on the ground." Then there's Jamie M. Fly, a former staffer to Senator Marco Rubio who was appointed this past
August to head Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty; he previously co-authored an essay in Foreign Affairs contending that it isn't enough to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities: "If the United States seriously considers military action,
it would be better to plan an operation that not only strikes the nuclear program but aims to destabilize the regime, potentially
resolving the Iranian nuclear crisis once and for all."
Meanwhile, Wolfowitz, also writing in the Times , has
popped up to warn Trump against
trying to leave Syria: "To paraphrase Trotsky's aphorism about war, you may not be interested in the Middle East, but the Middle
East is interested in you." With the "both-sides" ethos that prevails in the mainstream media, neocon ideas are just as good as any
others for National Public Radio or The Washington Post, whose editorial page, incidentally, championed the Iraq War
and has been imbued with a neocon, or at least liberal-hawk, tinge ever since Fred Hiatt took it over in 2000.
But there are plenty of institutions in Washington, and neoconservatism's seemingly inescapable influence cannot be chalked up
to the swamp alone. Some etiolated form of what might be called Ledeenism lingered on before taking on new life at the outset of
the Trump administration. Trump's overt animus toward Muslims, for example, meant that figures such as Frank Gaffney, who opposed
arms-control treaties with Moscow as a member of the Reagan administration and resigned in protest of the 1987 Intermediate-Range
Nuclear Forces Treaty, achieved a new prominence. During the Obama administration, Gaffney, the head of the Center for Security Policy,
claimed that the Muslim Brotherhood had infiltrated the White House and National Security Agency.
Above all, Trump hired Michael Flynn as his first national security adviser. Flynn was the co-author with Ledeen of a
creepy tract called Field of Fight, in which they demanded a crusade against the Muslim world: "We're in a world
war against a messianic mass movement of evil people." It was one of many signs that Trump was susceptible to ideas of a civilizational
battle against
"Islamo-fascism,"
which Norman Podhoretz and other neocons argued, in the wake of 9/11, would lead to World War III. In their millenarian ardor
and inflexible support for Israel, the neocons find themselves in a position precisely cognate to evangelical Christians -- both
groups of true believers trying to enact their vision through an apostate. But perhaps the neoconservatives' greatest strength lies
in the realm of ideas that Irving Kristol identified more than three decades ago. The neocons remain the winners of that battle,
not because their policies have made the world or the U.S. more secure, but by default -- because there are so few genuinely alternative
ideas that are championed with equal zeal. The foreign policy discussion surrounding Soleimani's killing -- which accelerated Iran's
nuclear weapons program, diminished America's influence in the Middle East, and entrenched Iran's theocratic regime -- has largely
occurred on a spectrum of the neocons' making. It is a discussion that accepts premises of the beneficence of American military might
and hegemony -- Hobbes's "ill game" -- and naturally bends the universe toward more war.
At a minimum, the traditional Republican hard-line foreign policy approach has now fused with neoconservatism so that the
two are virtually indistinguishable. At a maximum, neoconservatism shapes the dominant foreign policy worldview in Washington, which
is why Democrats were falling over themselves to assure voters that Soleimani -- a "bad guy" -- had it coming. Any objections that
his killing might boomerang back on the U.S. are met with cries from the right that Democrats are siding with the enemy. This truly
is a policy of "maximum pressure" at home and abroad.
As Trump takes an extreme hard line against Iran, the neoconservatives may ultimately get their long-held wish of a war with the
ayatollahs. When it ends in a fresh disaster, they can always argue that it only failed because it wasn't prosecuted vigorously enough
-- and the shuffle will begin again.
Jacob Heilbrunn is the editor of The National Interest and the author of They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons.
@ JacobHeilbrunn
"... "Today I say to Mr. Putin: We will not allow you to undermine American democracy or democracies around the world," Sanders said. "In fact, our goal is to not only strengthen American democracy, but to work in solidarity with supporters of democracy around the globe, including in Russia. In the struggle of democracy versus authoritarianism, we intend to win." ..."
"... And yet, Warren too seems in thrall to the idea that the world order is shaping up to be one in which the white hats (Western democracies) must face off against the black hats (Eurasian authoritarians). Warren says that the "combination of authoritarianism and corrupt capitalism" of Putin's Russia and Xi's China "is a fundamental threat to democracy, both here in the United States and around the world." ..."
"... The Cold War echoes here are as unmistakable as they are worrying. As Princeton and NYU professor emeritus Stephen F. Cohen has written, during the first Cold War, a "totalitarian school" of Soviet studies grew up around the idea "that a totalitarian 'quest for absolute power' at home always led to the 'dynamism' in Soviet behavior abroad was a fundamental axiom of cold-war Soviet studies and of American foreign policy." ..."
"... Cold warriors in both parties frequently mistook communism as a monolithic global movement. Neoprogressives are making this mistake today when they gloss over national context, history, and culture in favor of an all-encompassing theory that puts the "authoritarian" nature of the governments they are criticizing at the center of their diagnosis. ..."
"... By citing the threat to Western democracies posed by a global authoritarian axis, the neoprogressives are repeating the same mistake made by liberal interventionists and neoconservatives. They buy into the democratic peace theory, which holds without much evidence that a world order populated by democracies is likely to be a peaceful one because democracies allegedly don't fight wars against one another. ..."
"... George McGovern once observed that U.S. foreign policy "has been based on an obsession with an international Communist conspiracy that existed more in our minds than in reality." So too the current obsession with the global authoritarians. Communism wasn't a global monolith and neither is this. By portraying it as such, neoprogressives are midwifing bad policy. ..."
"... Some of these elected figures, like Trump and Farage, are symptoms of the failure of the neoliberal economic order. Others, like Orban and Kaczyński, are responses to anti-European Union sentiment and the migrant crises that resulted from the Western interventions in Libya and Syria. Many have more to do with conditions and histories specific to their own countries. Targeting them by painting them with the same broad brush is a mistake. ..."
"... "Of all the geopolitical transformations confronting the liberal democratic world these days," writes neoconservative-turned-Hillary Clinton surrogate Robert Kagan, "the one for which we are least prepared is the ideological and strategic resurgence of authoritarianism." Max Boot also finds cause for concern. Boot, a modern-day reincarnation (minus the pedigree and war record) of the hawkish Cold War-era columnist Joe Alsop, believes that "the rise of populist authoritarianism is perhaps the greatest threat we face as a world right now." ..."
You can hear echoes of progressive realism in the statements of leading progressive
lawmakers such as Senator Bernie Sanders and Congressman Ro Khanna. They have put ending
America's support for the Saudi war on Yemen near the top of the progressive foreign policy
agenda. On the stump, Sanders now singles out the military-industrial complex and the runaway
defense budget for criticism. He promises, among other things, that "we will not continue to
spend $700 billion a year on the military." These are welcome developments. Yet since November
of 2016, something else has emerged alongside the antiwar component of progressive foreign
policy that is not so welcome. Let's call it neoprogressive internationalism, or
neoprogressivism for short.
Trump's administration brought with it the Russia scandal. To attack the president and his
administration, critics revived Cold War attitudes. This is now part of the neoprogressive
foreign policy critique. It places an "authoritarian axis" at its center. Now countries ruled
by authoritarians, nationalists, and kleptocrats can and must be checked by an American-led
crusade to make the world safe for progressive values. The problem with this neoprogressive
narrative of a world divided between an authoritarian axis and the liberal West is what it will
lead to: ever spiraling defense budgets, more foreign adventures, more Cold Wars -- and hot
ones too.
Unfortunately, Senators Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have adopted elements of the
neoprogressive program. At a much remarked upon address at Westminster College in Fulton,
Missouri, the site of Churchill's 1946 address, Sanders put forth a vision of a Manichean
world. Instead of a world divided by the "Iron Curtain" of Soviet Communism, Sanders sees a
world divided between right-wing authoritarians and the forces of progress embodied by American
and Western European progressive values.
"Today I say to Mr. Putin: We will not allow you to undermine American democracy or
democracies around the world," Sanders said. "In fact, our goal is to not only strengthen
American democracy, but to work in solidarity with supporters of democracy around the globe,
including in Russia. In the struggle of democracy versus authoritarianism, we intend to
win."
A year later, Sanders warned that the battle between the West and an "authoritarian axis"
which is "committed to tearing down a post-Second World War global order that they see as
limiting their access to power and wealth." Sanders calls this "a global struggle of enormous
consequence. Nothing less than the future of the -- economically, socially and environmentally
-- is at stake."
Sanders's focus on this authoritarian axis is one that is shared with his intraparty rivals
at the Center for American Progress (a think-tank long funded by some of the least progressive
regimes on the planet), which he has pointedly criticized for smearing progressive Democrats
like himself. CAP issued a report last September about "the threat presented by opportunist
authoritarian regimes" which "urgently requires a rapid response."
The preoccupation with the authoritarian menace is one Sanders and CAP share with prominent
progressive activists who warn about the creeping influence of what some have cynically hyped
as an "authoritarian Internationale."
Cold War Calling
Senator Warren spelled out her foreign policy vision in a speech at American University in
November 2018. Admirably, she criticized Saudi Arabia's savage war on Yemen, the defense
industry, and neoliberal free trade agreements that have beggared the American working and
middle classes.
"Foreign policy," Warren has said, "should not be run exclusively by the Pentagon." In the
second round of the Democratic primary debates, Warren also called for a nuclear "no first use"
policy.
And yet, Warren too seems in thrall to the idea that the world order is shaping up to be
one in which the white hats (Western democracies) must face off against the black hats
(Eurasian authoritarians). Warren says that the "combination of authoritarianism and corrupt
capitalism" of Putin's Russia and Xi's China "is a fundamental threat to democracy, both here
in the United States and around the world."
Warren also sees a rising tide of corrupt authoritarians "from Hungary to Turkey, from the
Philippines to Brazil," where "wealthy elites work together to grow the state's power while the
state works to grow the wealth of those who remain loyal to the leader."
The concern with the emerging authoritarian tide has become a central concern of progressive
writers and thinkers. "Today, around the world," write progressive foreign policy activists
Kate Kinzer and Stephen Miles, "growing authoritarianism and hate are fueled by oligarchies
preying on economic, gender, and racial inequality."
Daniel Nexon, a progressive scholar of international relations, believes that "progressives
must recognize that we are in a moment of fundamental crisis, featuring coordination among
right-wing movements throughout the West and with the Russian government as a sponsor and
supporter."
Likewise, The Nation 's Jeet Heer lays the blame for the rise of global
authoritarianism at the feet of Vladimir Putin, who "seems to be pushing for an international
alt-right, an informal alliance of right-wing parties held together by a shared
xenophobia."
Blithely waving away concerns over sparking a new and more dangerous Cold War between the
world's two nuclear superpowers, Heer advises that "the dovish left shouldn't let Cold War
nightmares prevent them [from] speaking out about it." He concludes: "Leftists have to be ready
to battle [Putinism] in all its forms, at home and abroad."
The Cold War echoes here are as unmistakable as they are worrying. As Princeton and NYU
professor emeritus Stephen F. Cohen has written, during the first Cold War, a "totalitarian
school" of Soviet studies grew up around the idea "that a totalitarian 'quest for absolute
power' at home always led to the 'dynamism' in Soviet behavior abroad was a fundamental axiom
of cold-war Soviet studies and of American foreign policy."
Likewise, we are seeing the emergence of an "authoritarian school" which posits that the
internal political dynamics of regimes such as Putin's cause them, ineffably, to follow
revanchist, expansionist foreign policies.
Cold warriors in both parties frequently mistook communism as a monolithic global
movement. Neoprogressives are making this mistake today when they gloss over national context,
history, and culture in favor of an all-encompassing theory that puts the "authoritarian"
nature of the governments they are criticizing at the center of their diagnosis.
By citing the threat to Western democracies posed by a global authoritarian axis, the
neoprogressives are repeating the same mistake made by liberal interventionists and
neoconservatives. They buy into the democratic peace theory, which holds without much evidence
that a world order populated by democracies is likely to be a peaceful one because democracies
allegedly don't fight wars against one another.
Yet as Richard Sakwa, a British scholar of Russia and Eastern Europe, writes, "it is often
assumed that Russia is critical of the West because of its authoritarian character, but it
cannot be taken for granted that a change of regime would automatically make the country align
with the West."
George McGovern once observed that U.S. foreign policy "has been based on an obsession
with an international Communist conspiracy that existed more in our minds than in reality." So
too the current obsession with the global authoritarians. Communism wasn't a global monolith
and neither is this. By portraying it as such, neoprogressives are midwifing bad
policy.
True, some of the economic trends voters in Europe and South America are reacting to are
global, but a diagnosis that links together the rise of Putin and Xi, the elections of Trump in
the U.S., Bolsonaro in Brazil, Orban in Hungary, and Kaczyński in Poland with the
right-wing insurgency movements of the Le Pens in France and Farage in the UK makes little
sense.
Some of these elected figures, like Trump and Farage, are symptoms of the failure of the
neoliberal economic order. Others, like Orban and Kaczyński, are responses to
anti-European Union sentiment and the migrant crises that resulted from the Western
interventions in Libya and Syria. Many have more to do with conditions and histories specific
to their own countries. Targeting them by painting them with the same broad brush is a
mistake.
Echoes of Neoconservatism
The progressive foreign policy organization Win Without War includes among its 10 foreign
policy goals "ending economic, racial and gender inequality around the world." The U.S.,
according to WWW, "must safeguard universal human rights to dignity, equality, migration and
refuge."
Is it a noble sentiment? Sure. But it's every bit as unrealistic as the crusade envisioned
by George W. Bush in his second inaugural address, in which he declared, "The survival of
liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best
hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world."
We know full well where appeals to "universal values" have taken us in the past. Such
appeals are not reliable guides for progressives if they seek to reverse the tide of unchecked
American intervention abroad. But maybe we should consider whether it's a policy of realism and
restraint that they actually seek. Some progressive thinkers are at least honest enough
to admit as much that it is not. Nexon admits that "abandoning the infrastructure of American
international influence because of its many minuses and abuses will hamstring progressives for
decades to come." In other words, America's hegemonic ambitions aren't in and of themselves
objectionable or self-defeating, as long as we achieve our kind of hegemony. Progressive
values crusades bear more than a passing resemblance to the neoconservative crusades to remake
the world in the American self-image.
"Of all the geopolitical transformations confronting the liberal democratic world these
days," writes neoconservative-turned-Hillary Clinton surrogate Robert Kagan, "the one for which
we are least prepared is the ideological and strategic resurgence of authoritarianism." Max
Boot also finds cause for concern. Boot, a modern-day reincarnation (minus the pedigree and war
record) of the hawkish Cold War-era columnist Joe Alsop, believes that "the rise of populist
authoritarianism is perhaps the greatest threat we face as a world right now."
Neoprogressivism, like neoconservatism, risks catering to the U.S. establishment's worst
impulses by playing on a belief in American exceptionalism to embark upon yet another global
crusade. This raises some questions, including whether a neoprogressive approach to the crises
in Ukraine, Syria, or Libya would be substantively different from the liberal interventionist
approach of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton. Does a neoprogressive foreign policy
organized around the concept of an "authoritarian axis" adequately address the concerns of
voters in the American heartland who disproportionately suffer from the consequences of our
wars and neoliberal economic policies? It was these voters, after all, who won the election for
Trump.
Donald Trump's failure to keep his campaign promise to bring the forever wars to a close
while fashioning a new foreign policy oriented around core U.S. national security interests
provides Democrats with an opportunity. By repeatedly intervening in Syria, keeping troops in
Afghanistan, kowtowing to the Israelis and Saudis, ratcheting up tensions with Venezuela, Iran,
Russia, and China, Trump has ceded the anti-interventionist ground he occupied when he ran for
office. He can no longer claim the mantle of restraint, a position that found support among
six-in-ten Americans in 2016.
Yet with the exception of Tulsi Gabbard, for the most part the Democratic field is offering
voters a foreign policy that amounts to "Trump minus belligerence." A truly progressive foreign
policy must put questions of war and peace front and center. Addressing America's post 9/11
failures, military overextension, grotesquely bloated defense budget, and the ingrained
militarism of our political-media establishment are the proper concerns of a progressive U.S.
foreign policy.
But it is one that would place the welfare of our own citizens above all. As such, what is
urgently required is the long-delayed realization of a peace dividend. The post-Cold War peace
dividend that was envisioned in the early 1990s never materialized. Clinton's secretary of
defense Les Aspin strangled the peace dividend in its crib by keeping the U.S. military on a
footing that would allow it to fight and win two regional wars simultaneously. Unipolar
fantasies of "full spectrum dominance" would come later in the decade.
One might have reasonably expected an effort by the Obama administration to realize a
post-bin Laden peace dividend, but the forever wars dragged on and on. In a New Yorker profile
from earlier this year, Sanders asked the right question: "Do we really need to spend more than
the next ten nations combined on the military, when our infrastructure is collapsing and kids
can't afford to go to college?"
The answer is obvious. And yet, how likely is it that progressives will be able realize
their vision of a more just, more equal American society if we have to mobilize to face a
global authoritarian axis led by Russia and China?
FDR's Good Neighbor Policy
The unipolar world of the first post-Cold War decade is well behind us now. As the world
becomes more and more multipolar, powers like China, Russia, Iran, India, and the U.S. will
find increasing occasion to clash. A peaceful multipolar world requires stability. And
stability requires balance.
In the absence of stability, none of the goods progressives see as desirable can take root.
This world order would put a premium on stability and security rather than any specific set of
values. An ethical, progressive foreign policy is one which understands that great powers have
security interests of their own. "Spheres of influence" are not 19th century anachronisms, but
essential to regional security: in Europe, the Western Hemisphere and elsewhere.
It is a policy that would reject crusades to spread American values the world over. "The
greatest thing America can do for the rest of the world," George Kennan once observed, "is to
make a success of what it is doing here on this continent and to bring itself to a point where
its own internal life is one of harmony, stability and self-assurance."
Progressive realism doesn't call for global crusades that seek to conquer the hearts and
minds of others. It is not bound up in the hoary self-mythology of American Exceptionalism. It
is boring. It puts a premium on the value of human life. It foreswears doing harm so that good
may come. It is not a clarion call in the manner of John F. Kennedy who pledged to "to pay any
price, bear any burden." It does not lend itself to the cheap moralizing of celebrity
presidential speechwriters. In ordinary language, a summation of such a policy would go
something like: "we will bear a reasonable price as long as identifiable U.S. security
interests are at stake."
A policy that seeks to wind down the global war on terror, slash the defense budget, and
shrink our global footprint won't inspire. It will, however, save lives. Such a policy has its
roots in Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first inaugural address. "In the field of World policy,"
said Roosevelt, "I would dedicate this nation to the policy of the good neighbor, the neighbor
who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others, the
neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a
World of neighbors."
What came to be known as the "Good Neighbor" policy was further explicated by FDR's
Secretary of State Cordell Hull at the Montevideo Conference in 1933, when he stated that "No
country has the right to intervene in the internal or external affairs of another." Historian
David C. Hendrickson sees this as an example of FDR's principles of "liberal pluralism," which
included "respect for the integrity and importance of other states" and "non-intervention in
the domestic affairs of neighboring states."
These ought to serve as the foundations on which to build a truly progressive foreign
policy. They represent a return to the best traditions of the Democratic Party and would likely
resonate with those very same blocs of voters that made up the New Deal coalition that the
neoliberal iteration of the Democratic Party has largely shunned but will sorely need in order
to unseat Trump. And yet, proponents of a neoprogressive foreign policy seem intent on running
away from a popular policy of realism and restraint on which Trump has failed to deliver.
James W. Carden is contributing writer for foreign affairs at The Nation and a
member of the Board of the Simone Weil Center for Political Philosophy.
Neocons lie should properly be called "threat inflation"
The underlying critical
point-at-issue is credibility as I noted in my comment on b's 2017 article. I've since
linked to tweets and other items by that trio; the one major change seems to have been the
epiphany by them that they needed to go to where the action is and report it from there to
regain their credibility.
The fact remains that used car salespeople have a stereotypical reputation for lacking
credibility sans a confession as to why they feel the need to lie to sell cars.
Their actions belie the guilt they feel for their choices, but a confession works much
better at assuaging the soul while helping convince the audience that the change in heart's
genuine. And that's the point as b notes--genuineness, whose first predicate is
credibility.
Neocons are lobbyists for MIC, the it is MIC that is the center of this this cult. People like Kriston, Kagan and Max Boot are
just well paid prostituttes on MIC, which includes intelligence agencies as a very important part -- the bridge to Wall Street so to
speak.
Being a neoconservative should receive at least as much vitriolic societal rejection as being a Ku Klux Klan member or a child
molester, but neocon pundits are routinely invited on mainstream television outlets to share their depraved perspectives.
Notable quotes:
"... Washington Post ..."
"... Neoconservatism is a psychopathic death cult whose relentless hyper-hawkishness is a greater threat to the survival of our species than anything else in the world right now. These people are traitors to humanity, and their ideology needs to be purged from the face of the earth forever. I'm not advocating violence of any kind here, but let's stop pretending that this is okay. Let's start calling these people the murderous psychopaths that they are whenever they rear their evil heads and stop respecting and legitimizing them. There should be a massive, massive social stigma around what these people do, so we need to create one. They should be marginalized, not leading us. ..."
Glenn Greenwald has just published a very important
article in The Intercept that I would have everyone in America read if I could. Titled "With New D.C. Policy Group,
Dems Continue to Rehabilitate and Unify With Bush-Era Neocons", Greenwald's excellent piece details the frustratingly under-reported
way that the leaders of the neoconservative death cult have been realigning with the Democratic party.
This pivot back to the party of neoconservatism's origin is one of the most significant political events of the new millennium,
but aside from a handful of sharp political analysts like Greenwald it's been going largely undiscussed. This is weird, and we need
to start talking about it. A lot. Their willful alignment with neoconservatism should be the very first thing anyone ever talks about
when discussing the Democratic party.
When you hear someone complaining that the Democratic party has no platform besides being anti-Trump, your response should be,
"Yeah it does. Their platform is the omnicidal death cult of neoconservatism."
It's absolutely insane that neoconservatism is still a thing, let alone still a thing that mainstream America tends to regard
as a perfectly legitimate set of opinions for a human being to have. As what Dr. Paul Craig Roberts rightly
calls "the most dangerous ideology that has ever
existed," neoconservatism has used its nonpartisan bloodlust to work with the Democratic party for the purpose of escalating tensions
with Russia on multiple fronts, bringing our species to the brink of what could very well end up being a
world war with a nuclear superpower and its allies.
This is not okay. Being a neoconservative should receive at least as much vitriolic societal rejection as being a Ku Klux Klan
member or a child molester, but neocon pundits are routinely invited on mainstream television outlets to share their depraved perspectives.
Check out leading neoconservative Bill Kristol's response to the aforementioned Intercept article:
... ... ...
Okay, leaving aside the fact that this bloodthirsty psychopath is saying neocons "won" a Cold War that neocons have deliberately
reignited by fanning the flames of the Russia hysteria and
pushing for more escalations , how insane is it that we live in a society where a public figure can just be like, "Yeah, I'm
a neocon, I advocate for using military aggression to maintain US hegemony and I think it's great," and have that be okay? These
people kill children. Neoconservatism means piles upon piles of child corpses. It means devoting the resources of a nation that won't
even provide its citizens with a real healthcare system to widespread warfare and all the death, destruction, chaos, terrorism, rape
and suffering that necessarily comes with war. The only way that you can possibly regard neoconservatism as just one more set of
political opinions is if you completely compartmentalize away from the reality of everything that it is.
This should not happen. The tensions with Russia that these monsters have worked so hard to escalate could blow up at any moment;
there are too many moving parts, too many things that could go wrong. The last Cold War brought our species
within a hair's
breadth of total annihilation due to our inability to foresee all possible complications which can arise from such a contest,
and these depraved death cultists are trying to drag us back into another one. Nothing is worth that. Nothing is worth risking the
life of every organism on earth, but they're risking it all for geopolitical influence.
... ... ...
I've had a very interesting last 24 hours. My
article about Senator John
McCain (which I titled "Please Just Fucking Die Already" because the title I really wanted to use seemed a bit crass) has received
an amount of attention that I'm not accustomed to, from
CNN to
USA Today to the
Washington Post . I watched Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar
talking about me on The View . They called me a "Bernie
Sanders person." It was a trip. Apparently some very low-level Republican with a few hundred Twitter followers went and retweeted
my article with an approving caption, and that sort of thing is worthy of coast-to-coast mainstream coverage in today's America.
This has of course brought in a deluge of angry comments, mostly from people whose social media pages are full of Russiagate
nonsense , showing
where McCain's current support base comes from. Some call him a war hero, some talk about him like he's a perfectly fine politician,
some defend him as just a normal person whose politics I happen to disagree with.
This is insane. This man has actively and enthusiastically pushed for every single act of military aggression that America has
engaged in, and some that
it hasn't , throughout his entire career. He makes Hillary "We came, we saw, he died" Clinton look like a dove. When you look
at John McCain, the very first thing you see should not be a former presidential candidate, a former POW or an Arizona Senator; the
first thing you see should be the piles of human corpses that he has helped to create. This is not a normal kind of person, and I
still do sincerely hope that he dies of natural causes before he can do any more harm.
Can we change this about ourselves, please? None of us should have to live in a world where pushing for more bombing campaigns
at every opportunity is an acceptable agenda for a public figure to have. Neoconservatism is a psychopathic death cult whose relentless
hyper-hawkishness is a greater threat to the survival of our species than anything else in the world right now. These people are
traitors to humanity, and their ideology needs to be purged from the face of the earth forever. I'm not advocating violence of any
kind here, but let's stop pretending that this is okay. Let's start calling these people the murderous psychopaths that they are
whenever they rear their evil heads and stop respecting and legitimizing them. There should be a massive, massive social stigma around
what these people do, so we need to create one. They should be marginalized, not leading us.
-- -- --
I'm a 100 percent reader-funded journalist so if you enjoyed this, please consider helping me out by sharing it around, liking
me on Facebook , following me on
Twitter , or throwing some money into my hat on
Patreon .
"... Yes, people tend to forget that Bolton and all the other neocons are worshipers at the altar of a secular religion imported to the US by members of the Frankfurt School of Trotskyite German professors in the 1930s. These people had attempted get the Nazis to consider them allies in a quest for an ordered world. Alas for them they found that the Nazi scum would not accept them and in fact began preparations to hunt them down. ..."
"... Thus the migration to America and in particular to the University of Chicago where they developed their credo of world revolution under that guidance of a few philosopher kings like Leo Strauss, the Wohlstetters and other academic "geniuses" They also began an enthusiastic campaign of recruitment of enthusiastic graduate students who carefully disguised themselves as whatever was most useful politically. ..."
"Carlson concluded by warning about the many other Boltons in the federal bureaucracy,
saying that "war may be a disaster for America, but for John Bolton and his fellow neocons,
it's always good business."
He went on to slam Trump's special representative for Iran and contender to replace Bolton,
Brian Hook, as an "unapologetic neocon" who "has undisguised contempt for President Trump, and
he particularly dislikes the president's nationalist foreign policy." Iranian Foreign Minister
Mohammad Javad Zarif echoed Carlson hours later in a tweet, arguing that "Thirst for war
– maximum pressure – should go with the warmonger-in-chief." Reuters and
Haaretz
-------------
Yes, people tend to forget that Bolton and all the other neocons are worshipers at the altar
of a secular religion imported to the US by members of the Frankfurt School of Trotskyite
German professors in the 1930s. These people had attempted get the Nazis to consider them
allies in a quest for an ordered world. Alas for them they found that the Nazi scum would not
accept them and in fact began preparations to hunt them down.
Thus the migration to America and in particular to the University of Chicago where they
developed their credo of world revolution under that guidance of a few philosopher kings like
Leo Strauss, the Wohlstetters and other academic "geniuses" They also began an enthusiastic
campaign of recruitment of enthusiastic graduate students who carefully disguised themselves as
whatever was most useful politically.
They are not conservative at all, not one bit. Carlson was absolutely right about that.
They despise nationalism. They despise the idea of countries. In that regard they are like
all groups who aspire to globalist dominion for their particular ideas.
Have you ever noticed how whenever someone inconveniences the dominant western power
structure, the entire political/media class rapidly becomes very, very interested in letting us
know how evil and disgusting that person is? It's true of the leader of every nation which
refuses to allow itself to be absorbed into the blob of the US-centralized power alliance, it's
true of anti-establishment political candidates, and it's true of WikiLeaks founder Julian
Assange.
Corrupt and unaccountable power uses its
political and
media influence to smear Assange because, as far as the interests of corrupt and
unaccountable power are concerned, killing his reputation is as good as killing him. If
everyone can be paced into viewing him with hatred and revulsion, they'll be far less likely to
take WikiLeaks publications seriously, and they'll be far more likely to consent to Assange's
imprisonment, thereby
establishing a precedent for the future prosecution of leak-publishing journalists around
the world. Someone can be speaking 100 percent truth to you, but if you're suspicious of him
you won't believe anything he's saying. If they can manufacture that suspicion with total or
near-total credence, then as far as our rulers are concerned it's as good as putting a bullet
in his head.
Those of us who value truth and light need to fight this smear campaign in order to keep our
fellow man from signing off on a major leap in the direction of Orwellian dystopia, and a big
part of that means being able to argue against those smears and disinformation wherever they
appear. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find any kind of centralized source of information
which comprehensively debunks all the smears in a thorough and engaging way, so with the help
of hundreds of
tips from my
readers and social media followers
I'm going to attempt to make one here. What follows is my attempt at creating a tool kit people
can use to fight against Assange smears wherever they encounter them, by refuting the
disinformation with truth and solid argumentation.
This article is an ongoing project which will be updated regularly where it appears on
Medium and caitlinjohnstone.com as new information comes in and new smears spring up in need of
refutation.
You're right. I see people like Robert Kagan's opinions being respectfully asked on foreign affairs, John Bolton and Elliott Abrams
being hired to direct our foreign policy.
The incompetent, the corrupt, the treacherous -- not just walking free, but with reputations intact, fat bank balances, and
flourishing careers. Now they're angling for war with Iran.
It's preposterous and sickening. And it can't be allowed to stand, so you can't just stand off and say you're "wrecked". Keep
fighting, as you're doing. I will fight it until I can't fight anymore.
Fact-bedeviled JohnT: “McCain was a problem for this nation? Sweet Jesus! There quite simply is no rational adult on the planet
who buys that nonsense.”
McCain had close ties to the military-industrial complex. He was a backer of post-Cold War NATO. He was a neoconservative darling.
He never heard of a dictator that he didn’t want to depose with boots on the ground, with the possible exception of various Saudi
dictators (the oil-weaponry-torture nexus). He promoted pseudo-accountability of government in campaign finance but blocked accountability
for the Pentagon and State Department when he co-chaired the United States Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs with John
Kerry.
And, perhaps partly because of the head trauma and/or emotional wounds he suffered at the hands of Chinese-backed Commies,
it’s plausible to think he was regarded by the willy-nilly plotters of the deep state as a manipulable, and thus useful, conduit
of domestic subversion via the bogus Steele dossier.
Unfortunately, the episode that most defines McCain’s life is the very last one–his being a pawn of M-16 in the the deep state’s
years-long attempt to derail the presidency of Donald Trump.
Measuring success means determining goals. The goals of most wars is to enrich the people in charge. So, by this metric, the war
was a success. The rest of it is just props and propaganda.
“Pyrrhic Victory” look it up the Roman Empire Won but lost if the US is invaded and the government does not defend it I would
like to start my own defense: But the knee jerk politics that stirs America’s cannon fodder citizens is a painful reminder of
a history of jingoist lies where at times some left and right agree at least for a short moment before the rich and powerful push
their weight to have their way.
If All politics is relative Right wingers are the the left of what? Nuclear destruction? or Slavery?
My goodness! I am also a veteran, but of the Vietnam war, and my father was a career officer from 1939-1961 as a paratrooper first,
and later as an intelligence officer. He argued vigorously against our Vietnam involvement, and was cashiered for his intellectual
honesty. A combat veteran’s views are meaningless when the political winds are blowing.
Simply put, we have killed thousands of our kids in service of the colonial empires left to us by the British and the French
after WWII. More practice at incompetent strategies and tactics does not make us more competent–it merely extends the blunders
and pain; viz the French for two CENTURIES against the Britsh during the battles over Normandy while the Planagenet kings worked
to hold their viking-won inheritance.
At least then, kings risked their own lives. Generals fight because the LIKE it…a lot. Prior failures are only practice to
the, regardless of the cost in lives of the kids we tried to raise well, and who were slaughtered for no gain.
We don’t need the empire, and we certainly shouldn’t fight for the corrupt businessmen who have profited from the never-ending
conflicts. Let’s spend those trillions at home, so long as we also police our government to keep both Democrat and Republican
politicians from feathering their own nests. Term limits and prosecutions will help us, but only if we are vigilant. Wars distract
our attention while corruption is rampant at home.
Thanks, I appreciate this article.
I’ll make two points, my own opinion:
it’s the same story as Vietnam, the bull about how the politicians or anti-war demonstrators tied the military ‘hand,’ blah, blah.
Nonsense. Invading a nation and slaughtering people in their towns, houses…gee…what’s wrong with that, eh?
The average American has a primitive mind when it comes to such matters.
Second point I have, is that both Bushes, Clinton, Obama, Hillary and Trump should be dragged to a world court, given a fair trial
and locked up for life with hard labor… oh, and Cheney too,for all those families, in half a dozen nations, especially the children
overseas that suffered/died from these creeps.
And, the families of dead or maimed American troops should be apologized to and compensation paid by several million dollars to
each.
The people I named above make me sick, because I have feelings and a conscience. Can you dig?
Though there is a worldly justification for killing to obtain or maintain freedoms, there is no Christian justification for it.
Which suggests that Christians who die while doing it, die in vain.
America’s wars are prosecuted by a military that includes Christians. They seldom question the killing their country orders
them to do, as though the will of the government is that of the will of God. Is that a safe assumption for them to make? German
Christian soldiers made that assumption regarding their government in 1939. Who was there to tell them otherwise? The Church failed,
including the chaplains. (The Southern Baptist Convention declared the invasion of Iraq a just war in 2003.) These wars need to
be assessed by Just War criteria. Christian soldiers need to know when to exercise selective conscientious objection, for it is
better to go to prison than to kill without God’s approval. If Just War theory is irrelevant, the default response is Christian
Pacifism.
“Iraq Wrecked” a lot of innocent people. Millions are dead, cities reduced to rubble, homes and businesses destroyed and it was
all a damned lie. And the perpetrators are Free.
Now there is sectarian violence too, where once there was a semblance of harmony amongst various denominations. See article link
below.
“Are The Christians Slaughtered in The Middle East Victims of the Actions of Western War Criminals and Their Terrorist Supporting
NATO ‘Allies’”?
We are a globalist open borders and mass immigration nation. We stand for nothing. To serve in this nation’s military is very
stupid. You aren’t defending anything. You are just a tool of globalism. Again, we don’t secure our borders. That’s a very big
give away to what’s going on.
If our nation’s military really was an American military concerned with our security we would have secured our border after 9/11,
reduced all immigration, deported ALL muslims, and that’s it. Just secure the borders and expel Muslims! That’s all we needed
to do.
Instead we killed so many people and imported many many more Muslims! And we call this compassion. Its insane.
Maybe if Talibans get back in power they will destroy the opium. You know, like they did when they were first in power…. It seems
that wherever Americans get involved, drugs follow…
“Yet, we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very
structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether
sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.” In Eisenhower’s televised farewell address January 17, 1961.
Rational thought would lead one to believe such words from a fellow with his credentials would have had a useful effect. But it
didn’t. In point of fact, in the likes of Eric Prince and his supporters the notion of war as a profit center is quite literally
a family affair.
The military-industrial complex couldn’t accomplish this all by its lonesome self. The deep state was doing its thing. The two
things overlap but aren’t the same. The deep state is not only or mainly about business profits, but about power. Power in the
world means empire, which requires a military-industrial complex but is not reducible to it.
We now have a rare opportunity to unveil the workings of the deep state, but it will require a special counsel, and a lengthy
written report, on the doings in the 2016 election of the FBI (Comey, Strzok, et. al.), and collaterally the CIA and DIA (Brennan
and Clapper). Also the British government (M-16), John McCain, and maybe Bush and Obama judges on the FISA courts.
This slur "authoritarian state" is now peddled by neocons as synonym for the "countries we do not like"
This neocons in not very inventive... We already saw this line from Robert Kagan, who
actually is a better writer. This neocon/neolib pressitute can't even use proper terms such as
"neoliberalism" and "Washington consensus"
And slide to far-right nationalism and neo-fascism is direct result of neoliberalism
dominance for the last 40 years (since Carter) and sliding of the standard of living of workers
and the middle class.
Notable quotes:
"... Both countries have touted the virtues of their systems, while arguing that Western values are a source of decadence, amorality and disorder in the Western world. ..."
As international rivalry intensifies, the core strategic task for the U.S.-led democratic
community is to contain the geopolitical influence and political disruption caused by
authoritarian great powers, namely China and Russia. Yet that task is made all the harder
because illiberalism -- and sympathy for those illiberal powers -- is simultaneously surging
among key actors on the political right. If the U.S. and its allies are to succeed in the great
global rivalry of the 21st century, the right must confront the threat of illiberalism within
its ranks -- just as the left did during a previous twilight struggle in the 20th century.
... ... ...
This time, the threat is not expansionist communism, but a combination of autocracy and
geopolitical revisionism. China has been moving toward a dystopian future of high-tech
authoritarianism, as it pushes for greater power and influence overseas. Putin's Russia has
consolidated an illiberal oligarchy, while using information warfare, political meddling and
other tools to subvert liberal democracies in Europe, the U.S. and beyond.
Both countries have touted the virtues of their systems, while arguing that Western
values are a source of decadence, amorality and disorder in the Western world.
... ... ...
It is not for nothing that the political scientist Marc Plattner has
written that the gravest threat to liberal democracy today is “that it will end up
being abandoned by substantial segments of the right.” And even in the U.S., there are
alarming signs that conservative commitment to the norms of liberal democracy is under
strain.
Communism was not a threat, but actually benefited the world in many ways.
It was communism that put pressure on capitalism to provide labor a fair share of wealth and
income. As soon as Soviet communism collapsed, capitalism returned to its avaricious roots,
resulting in stagnant wages for the working class. And the pauperization of the working class
in recent decades is the cause for the current revolt against liberal capitalism.
So it was the competition from communism that was helping capitalism to stay healthy. Without
it capitalism has degenerated into a Dickensian dystopia. We should therefore welcome any
alternative socio-economic models to liberal capitalism.
It was communism that put pressure on capitalism to provide labor a fair
share of wealth and income. As soon as Soviet communism collapsed,
capitalism returned to
Thats a great point Che.
I have never ever looked at it from that angle.
Interesting.
Robert Kagan of the Brookings Institution, who has long been a leading conservative
intellectual, warns that this disillusion with liberal democracy “is clearly present
among American conservatives, and not just among the ‘alt-right.’
Honest and real conservatives are far and fewer in today's MAGA/tea party infested GOP.
Forget career politicians like Ted Cruz or McConnell, even the previously decent conservative
think tanks/pundits like from NR or Erik Erickson or others have all given up on any
principles and just bow at the altar of Trump now.
No they haven’t, Trump decided to put McConnell in charge so of course the
#neverTrumpers like the McConnell presidency...which consists of appointing Republican judges
at record pace and little else.
The biggest need is to resist holy warriors like Hal Brands who want to destroy the world
if it resists their version of revealed truth. They are the biggest threat to the human
future. The United States has to learn to live in a world that it cannot control. The
American goal should be to work towards a constructive human future not some kind of holy war
to impose American control on the rest of the world. The United States is the biggest
military spender. In recent history, It has been the world's global aggressor.
It has an
history of wars that have made little difference whether America won or lost them. Perhaps
the United States could succeed with some kind of genocide that wiped out all of the parts of
the world that refuse to accept American supremacy. But, short of that kind of disgrace, the
United States is not going to succeed in achieving any meaningful goal through war. As long
as America does not destroy the world, the future is going to be determined by economic
competition and the destinies that the people of different parts of the world choose for
themselves.
I had wondered if it was noticed the Liberalism was dying. The world has turned hard
right, with all the anger, nationalism, do-as-I-say, and social intolerance.
I don't even the children of today.
I might suggest that liberals themselves are destroying their freedoms with illogical
illiberal liberalism.
YOU can't do that, say that, act like that, think like that...no no no...we must act and
be correct, nice, polite, all forgiving and never critical.
Huh?
The freedoms that so many of us marched for, fought for, voted for, sang about (thank gawd
the music still lives), got bloody for, even died for, are slipping away quicker than you can
say me, me, me...it's all about me.
Maybe...small maybe...our youth can once again awaken America and the world's conscience.
Maybe? Maybe not!
Wha? It seems our LIttle Cultural Revolution is just warming up. Wait till AOC et al are
all growed up.
"This is a moment when the “free world” needs to be strong and united."
Is this the same "free" world that jails grandmothers over contested historical views?
That has reneged on free speech?
Thanks to a truly ethnomasochistic immigration policy, I assure you that this will not
happen. The West will be lucky if squeaks through this period without a civil war.
This article by late Robert Parry is from 2016 but is still relevant in context of the
current Ukrainian elections and the color revolution is Venezuela. The power of neoliberal
propaganda is simply tremendous. For foreign events it is able to distort the story to such an
extent that the most famous quote of CIA director William Casey "We'll know our disinformation
program is complete when everything the American public believes is false" looks like
constatation of already accomplished goal.
Exclusive: Several weeks before Ukraine's 2014 coup, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State
Nuland had already picked Arseniy Yatsenyuk to be the future leader, but now "Yats" is no
longer the guy, writes Robert Parry.
In reporting on the resignation of Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the major
U.S. newspapers either ignored or distorted Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland's
infamous intercepted
phone call before the 2014 coup in which she declared "Yats is the guy!"
Though Nuland's phone call introduced many Americans to the previously obscure Yatsenyuk,
its timing – a few weeks before the ouster of elected Ukrainian President Viktor
Yanukovych – was never helpful to Washington's desired narrative of the Ukrainian people
rising up on their own to oust a corrupt leader.
Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who pushed for the
Ukraine coup and helped pick the post-coup leaders.
Instead, the conversation between Nuland and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt
sounded like two proconsuls picking which Ukrainian politicians would lead the new government.
Nuland also disparaged the less aggressive approach of the European Union with the pithy
put-down: "Fuck the E.U.!"
More importantly, the intercepted call, released onto YouTube in early February 2014,
represented powerful evidence that these senior U.S. officials were plotting – or at
least collaborating in – a coup d'etat against Ukraine's democratically elected
president. So, the U.S. government and the mainstream U.S. media have since consigned this
revealing discussion to the Great Memory Hole.
On Monday, in reporting on Yatsenyuk's Sunday speech in which he announced that he is
stepping down, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal didn't mention the Nuland-Pyatt
conversation at all. The New York Times did mention the call but misled its readers regarding
its timing, making it appear as if the call followed rather than preceded the coup. That way
the call sounded like two American officials routinely appraising Ukraine's future leaders, not
plotting to oust one government and install another.
The Times
article by Andrew E. Kramer said: "Before Mr. Yatsenyuk's appointment as prime minister in
2014, a leaked recording of a telephone conversation between Victoria J. Nuland, a United
States assistant secretary of state, and the American ambassador in Ukraine, Geoffrey R. Pyatt,
seemed to underscore the West's support for his candidacy. 'Yats is the guy,' Ms. Nuland had
said."
Notice, however, that if you didn't know that the conversation occurred in late January or
early February 2014, you wouldn't know that it preceded the Feb. 22, 2014 coup. You might have
thought that it was just a supportive chat before Yatsenyuk got his new job.
You also wouldn't know that much of the Nuland-Pyatt conversation focused on how they
were going to "glue this thing" or "midwife this thing," comments sounding like prima facie
evidence that the U.S. government was engaged in "regime change" in Ukraine, on Russia's
border.
The 'No Coup' Conclusion
But Kramer's lack of specificity about the timing and substance of the call fits with a long
pattern of New York Times' bias in its coverage of the Ukraine crisis. On Jan. 4, 2015, nearly
a year after the U.S.-backed coup, the Times published an "investigation" article declaring
that there never had been a coup. It was just a case of President Yanukovych deciding to leave
and not coming back.
That article reached its conclusion, in part, by ignoring the evidence of a coup, including
the Nuland-Pyatt phone call. The story was co-written by Kramer and so it is interesting to
know that he was at least aware of the "Yats is the guy" reference although it was ignored in
last year's long-form article.
Instead, Kramer and his co-author Andrew Higgins took pains to mock anyone who actually
looked at the evidence and dared reach the disfavored conclusion about a coup. If you did, you
were some rube deluded by Russian propaganda.
"Russia has attributed Mr. Yanukovych's ouster to what it portrays as a violent,
'neo-fascist' coup supported and even choreographed by the West and dressed up as a popular
uprising," Higgins and Kramer
wrote . "Few outside the Russian propaganda bubble ever seriously entertained the Kremlin's
line. But almost a year after the fall of Mr. Yanukovych's government, questions remain about
how and why it collapsed so quickly and completely."
The Times' article concluded that Yanukovych "was not so much overthrown as cast adrift by
his own allies, and that Western officials were just as surprised by the meltdown as anyone
else. The allies' desertion, fueled in large part by fear, was accelerated by the seizing by
protesters of a large stock of weapons in the west of the country. But just as important, the
review of the final hours shows, was the panic in government ranks created by Mr. Yanukovych's
own efforts to make peace."
Yet, one might wonder what the Times thinks a coup looks like. Indeed, the Ukrainian coup
had many of the same earmarks as such classics as the CIA-engineered regime changes in Iran in
1953 and in Guatemala in 1954.
The way those coups played out is now historically well known. Secret U.S. government
operatives planted nasty propaganda about the targeted leader, stirred up political and
economic chaos, conspired with rival political leaders, spread rumors of worse violence to come
and then – as political institutions collapsed – watched as the scared but duly
elected leader made a hasty departure.
In Iran, the coup reinstalled the autocratic Shah who then ruled with a heavy hand for the
next quarter century; in Guatemala, the coup led to more than three decades of brutal military
regimes and the killing of some 200,000 Guatemalans.
Coups don't have to involve army tanks occupying the public squares, although that is an
alternative model which follows many of the same initial steps except that the military is
brought in at the end. The military coup was a common approach especially in Latin America in
the 1960s and 1970s.
' Color Revolutions'
But the preferred method in more recent years has been the "color revolution," which
operates behind the façade of a "peaceful" popular uprising and international pressure
on the targeted leader to show restraint until it's too late to stop the coup. Despite the
restraint, the leader is still accused of gross human rights violations, all the better to
justify his removal.
Later, the ousted leader may get an image makeover; instead of a cruel bully, he is
ridiculed for not showing sufficient resolve and letting his base of support melt away, as
happened with Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran and Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala.
But the reality of what happened in Ukraine was never hard to figure out. Nor did you have
to be inside "the Russian propaganda bubble" to recognize it. George Friedman, the founder of
the global intelligence firm Stratfor, called Yanukovych's overthrow "the most blatant coup
in history."
Which is what it appears if you consider the evidence. The first step in the process was to
create tensions around the issue of pulling Ukraine out of Russia's economic orbit and
capturing it in the European Union's gravity, a plan defined by influential American neocons in
2013.
On Sept. 26, 2013, National Endowment for Democracy President Carl Gershman, who has been a
major neocon paymaster for decades, took to the op-ed page of the neocon Washington Post and
called Ukraine "the biggest prize" and an important interim step toward toppling Russian
President Vladimir Putin.
At the time, Gershman, whose NED is funded by the U.S. Congress to the tune of about $100
million a year, was financing scores of projects inside Ukraine training activists, paying for
journalists and organizing business groups.
As for the even bigger prize -- Putin -- Gershman wrote: "Ukraine's choice to join Europe
will accelerate the demise of the ideology of Russian imperialism that Putin represents.
Russians, too, face a choice, and Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near
abroad but within Russia itself."
At that time, in early fall 2013, Ukraine's President Yanukovych was exploring the idea of
reaching out to Europe with an association agreement. But he got cold feet in November 2013
when economic experts in Kiev advised him that the Ukrainian economy would suffer a $160
billion hit if it separated from Russia, its eastern neighbor and major trading partner. There
was also the West's demand that Ukraine accept a harsh austerity plan from the International
Monetary Fund.
Yanukovych wanted more time for the E.U. negotiations, but his decision angered many western
Ukrainians who saw their future more attached to Europe than Russia. Tens of thousands of
protesters began camping out at Maidan Square in Kiev, with Yanukovych ordering the police to
show restraint.
Meanwhile, with Yanukovych shifting back toward Russia, which was offering a more generous
$15 billion loan and discounted natural gas, he soon became the target of American neocons and
the U.S. media, which portrayed Ukraine's political unrest as a black-and-white case of a
brutal and corrupt Yanukovych opposed by a saintly "pro-democracy" movement.
Cheering an Uprising
The Maidan uprising was urged on by American neocons, including Assistant Secretary of State
for European Affairs Nuland, who passed out cookies at the Maidan and reminded Ukrainian
business leaders that the United States had invested $5 billion in their "European
aspirations."
A screen shot of U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland
speaking to U.S. and Ukrainian business leaders on Dec. 13, 2013, at an event sponsored by
Chevron, with its logo to Nuland's left.
Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, also showed up, standing on stage with right-wing extremists
from the Svoboda Party and telling the crowd that the United States was with them in their
challenge to the Ukrainian government.
As the winter progressed, the protests grew more violent. Neo-Nazi and other extremist
elements from Lviv and other western Ukrainian cities began arriving in well-organized brigades
or "sotins" of 100 trained street fighters. Police were attacked with firebombs and other
weapons as the violent protesters began seizing government buildings and unfurling Nazi banners
and even a Confederate flag.
Though Yanukovych continued to order his police to show restraint, he was still depicted
in the major U.S. news media as a brutal thug who was callously murdering his own people. The
chaos reached a climax on Feb. 20 when mysterious snipers opened fire, killing both police and
protesters. As the police retreated, the militants advanced brandishing firearms and other
weapons. The confrontation led to significant loss of life, pushing the death toll to around 80
including more than a dozen police.
U.S. diplomats and the mainstream U.S. press immediately blamed Yanukovych for the sniper
attack, though the circumstances remain murky to this day and some investigations have
suggested that the lethal sniper fire came from buildings controlled by Right Sektor
extremists.
To tamp down the worsening violence, a shaken Yanukovych signed a European-brokered deal on
Feb. 21, in which he accepted reduced powers and an early election so he could be voted out of
office. He also agreed to requests from Vice President Joe Biden to pull back the police.
The precipitous police withdrawal opened the path for the neo-Nazis and other street
fighters to seize presidential offices and force Yanukovych and his officials to flee for their
lives. The new coup regime was immediately declared "legitimate" by the U.S. State Department
with Yanukovych sought on murder charges. Nuland's favorite, Yatsenyuk, became the new prime
minister.
Throughout the crisis, the mainstream U.S. press hammered home the theme of white-hatted
protesters versus a black-hatted president. The police were portrayed as brutal killers who
fired on unarmed supporters of "democracy." The good-guy/bad-guy narrative was all the American
people heard from the major media.
The New York Times went so far as to delete the slain policemen from the narrative and
simply report that the police had killed all those who died in the Maidan. A typical Times
report on March 5, 2014, summed up the storyline: "More than 80 protesters were shot to death
by the police as an uprising spiraled out of control in mid-February."
The mainstream U.S. media also sought to discredit anyone who observed the obvious fact that
an unconstitutional coup had just occurred. A new theme emerged that portrayed Yanukovych as
simply deciding to abandon his government because of the moral pressure from the noble and
peaceful Maidan protests.
Any reference to a "coup" was dismissed as "Russian propaganda." There was a parallel
determination in the U.S. media to discredit or ignore evidence that neo-Nazi militias had
played an important role in ousting Yanukovych and in the subsequent suppression of anti-coup
resistance in eastern and southern Ukraine. That opposition among ethnic-Russian Ukrainians
simply became "Russian aggression."
Nazi symbols on helmets worn by members of Ukraine's Azov battalion. (As filmed by a
Norwegian film crew and shown on German TV)
This refusal to notice what was actually a remarkable story – the willful unleashing
of Nazi storm troopers on a European population for the first time since World War II –
reached absurd levels as The New York Times and The Washington Post buried references to the
neo-Nazis at the end of stories, almost as afterthoughts.
The Washington Post went to the extreme of rationalizing Swastikas and other Nazi symbols by
quoting one militia commander as calling them "romantic" gestures by impressionable young men.
[See Consortiumnews.com's " Ukraine's
'Romantic' Neo-Nazi Storm Troopers ."]
But today – more than two years after what U.S. and Ukrainian officials like to
call "the Revolution of Dignity" – the U.S.-backed Ukrainian government is sinking into
dysfunction, reliant on handouts from the IMF and Western governments.
And, in a move perhaps now more symbolic than substantive, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk is
stepping down. Yats is no longer the guy.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The
Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America's Stolen
Narrative, either in print here or
as an e-book (from
Amazon and
barnesandnoble.com ).
Khalid Talaat , April 16, 2016 at 20:39
Is it too far fetched to think that all these color revolutions are a perfection of the
process to unleash another fake color revolution, only this time it is a Red, White and Blue
revolution here at home? Those that continue to booze and snooze while watching the tube will
not know the difference until it is too late.
The freedom and tranquility of our country depends on finding and implementing a
counterweight to the presstitutes and their propaganda. The alternative is too
destructive in its natural development.
Abe , April 15, 2016 at 18:49
Yats and Porko are the guys who broke Ukraine. By the end of December 2015, Ukraine's
gross domestic product had shrunk around 19 percent in comparison with 2013. Its decimated
industrial sector needs less fuel. Yatsie did a heck of a job.
The timing of "Yats" departure is ominous. Mid-April, six weeks from now would be the
first chance to renew the invasion of DPR Donesk/Lugansk."Yats" failed in 2014, and didn't
try in 2015. Who is "the new guy"? Will the new Prime Minister begin raving about renewing
the holy war to recover the lost oblasts? 2016 is really Ukraine's last chance. Ukraine
refuses to implement Minsk2, and they have been receiving lots of new weapons. I believe
President Putin put the Syrian operation on " standby" not only to avoid approaching the
border, provoking a Turkish intervention, but also so he can give undistracted attention to
DPR Donesk/Lugansk.
Bill Rood , April 12, 2016 at 11:50
I guess I must be inside the Russian propaganda bubble. It was obvious to me when I
looked at the YouTube videos of policemen burning after being hit with Molotov
cocktails.
We played the same game of encouraging government "restraint" in Syria, where we
demanded Assad free "political prisoners," but we now accuse him of deliberately encouraging
ISIS by freeing those people, so that he can point to ISIS and ask, "Do you want that?"
Targeted leaders are damned if they do and damned if they don't.
Andrei , April 12, 2016 at 10:26
"the Ukrainian coup had many of the same earmarks as such classics as the
CIA-engineered regime changes in Iran in 1953 and in Guatemala in 1954", Romania 1989 Shots
were fired by snipers in order to stirr the crowds (sounds familiar?) and also by the army
after Ceasescu ran away, which resulted in civilians getting murdered. Could it possibly be
that it was said : "Iliescu (next elected president) is the guy!" ?
Joe L. , April 12, 2016 at 11:00
Check out the attempted coup against Hugo Chavez in Venezuela 2002, that is very
similar with protesters, snipers on rooftops, IMF immediately offering loans to the new coup
government, new government positions for the coup plotters, complacency with the media
– propaganda, funding by USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy etc. John
Pilger documents how the coup occurred in his documentary "War on Democracy" –
https://vimeo.com/16724719 .
archaos , April 12, 2016 at 09:45
It was noted in the minutes of Verkhovna Rada almost 2 years before Maidan 2 , that
Geoffrey Pyatt was fomenting and funding destabilisation of Ukraine.
All of Svoboda Nazis in parliament (and other fascisti) then booed the MP who stated
this.
Mark Thomason , April 12, 2016 at 06:57
Also, the Dutch voted "no" on the economic agreement the coup was meant to force through
instead of the Russian agreement accepted by the President it overthrew. Now both "Yats" and
the economic agreement are gone. All that is left is the war. Neocons are still happen.
They wanted the war. They really want to overthrow Putin, and Ukraine was just a tool in
that.
Realist , April 12, 2016 at 05:51
You're right, it doesn't have to be the military that carries out a coup by deploying
tanks on the National Mall. In 2000, it was the United States Supreme Court that exceeded
its constitutional authority and installed George W. Bush as president, though in reality he
had lost that election. I wonder when that move will rightfully be characterized as a coup by
the historians.
"On Sept. 26, 2013, National Endowment for Democracy President Carl Gershman, who has
been a major neocon paymaster for decades, took to the op-ed page of the neocon Washington
Post and called Ukraine "the biggest prize" and an important interim step toward toppling
Russian President Vladimir Putin."
It should be remembered that Victoria Nuland took up the post of Assistant Secretary of
State for European and Eurasian Affairs in Washington on September 18, 2013.
Coincidentally, two other women closely connected to events in Ukraine were also in
Washington during September 2013.
Friend of Nuland and boss of the IMF, which has its own HQ in Washington, Christine
Lagarde was swift to respond to a Ukraine request for IMF loans on February 27th 2014, just
five days after the removal of Yanukovych on February 22nd. Lagarde is pictured with
Baronness Catherine Ashton in Washington in a Facebook entry dated September 30th 2013.
Ashton was High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy at the
time.
Though visiting Kiev at the same time as Nuland in February 2014 Catherine Ashton never
appeared in public with her, which seems a little odd considering the women were on the same
mission, and talking to the same people. Nevertheless, despite appearing shy of being
photographed with each other the two women weren't quite so shy of being pictured with
leaders of the coup, including the right wing extremist, Oleh Tyahnybok.
Ashton refused to be drawn into commenting on Nuland's "Fuck the E.U.!" outburst,
describing Nuland as "a friend of mine." The two women certainly weren't strangers, they had
worked closely together before. September 2012 saw them involved in discussions with Iran
negotiator Saeed Jalili over the country's supposed nuclear arms ambitions.
The question is not so much whether the three women talked about Ukraine's future –
it would be ridiculous to think they did not – but how closely they worked together,
and exactly how closely they might have been involved in events leading up to the overthrow
of the legitimate government in Kiev. More on this here:
Another failed "regime change". Aren't these guys (Neoconservatives) great. They fail,
piss off/kill millions, yet seem to keep making money and retaining power. Time to WAKE UP
AMERICA.
Skip Edwards , April 11, 2016 at 20:06
Read "The Devil'Chessboard" by David Talbot to understand what has been occurring as a
result of America's Dark, Shadow government, an un-elected bunch of vicious psychopaths
controlling our destiny; unless stopped. Get a clue and realize that "Yats is our guy"
Victoria Nuland was Hillary Clinton's "gal." Hillary Clinton is Robert Kagen's "gal." Time to
flush all these rats out of the hold and get on with our lives.
Joe L. , April 11, 2016 at 18:40
Mr. Parry thank you for delving into the proven history of coups and the parallels with
Ukraine. It amazes me how anyone can outright deny this was a coup especially if they know
anything about US coups going back to WW2 (Iran 1953, Guatemala 1954, Chile 1973, attempt in
Venezuela 2002 etc. – and there are a whole slew more). I read before, as you have
rightly pointed out, that in 1953 the CIA led a propaganda campaign in Iran against Mossadegh
as well as financing opposition protesters and opposition government officials. Another
angle, as well, is looking historically back to what papers such as the New York Times were
reporting around the time of the coup in Iran – especially when we know that the
US/Britain overthrew the democratically elected Mossadegh for their own oil interests
(British Petroleum):
New York Times: "Mossadegh Plays with Fire" (August 15, 1953):
The world has so many trouble spots these days that one is apt to pass over the odd one
here and there to preserve a little peace of mind. It would be well, however, to keep an eye
on Iran, where matters are going from bad to worse, thanks to the machinations of Premier
Mossadegh.
Some of us used to ascribe our inability to persuade Dr. Mossadegh of the validity of our
ideas to the impossibility of making him understand or see things our way. We thought of him
as a sincere, well-meaning, patriotic Iranian, who had a different point of view and made
different deductions from the same set of facts. We now know that he is a power-hungry,
personally ambitious, ruthless demagogue who is trampling upon the liberties of his own
people. We have seen this onetime champion of liberty maintain martial law, curb freedom of
the press, radio, speech and assembly, resort to illegal arrests and torture, dismiss the
Senate, destroy the power of the Shah, take over control of the army, and now he is about to
destroy the Majlis, which is the lower house of Parliament.
His power would seem to be complete, but he has alienated the traditional ruling classes
-the aristocrats, landlords, financiers and tribal leaders. These elements are
anti-Communist. So is the Shah and so are the army leaders and the urban middle classes.
There is a traditional, historic fear, suspicion and dislike of Russia and the Russians. The
peasants, who make up the overwhelming mass of the population, are illiterate and
nonpolitical. Finally, there is still no evidence that the Tudeh (Communist) party is strong
enough or well enough organized, financed and led to take power.
All this simply means that there is no immediate danger of a Communist coup or Russian
intervention. On the other hand, Dr. Mossadegh is encouraging the Tudeh and is following
policies which will make the Communists more and more dangerous. He is a sorcerer's
apprentice, calling up forces he will not be able to control.
Iran is a weak, divided, poverty-stricken country which possesses an immense latent wealth
in oil and a crucial strategic position. This is very different from neighboring Turkey, a
strong, united, determined and advanced nation, which can afford to deal with the Russians
because she has nothing to fear -and therefore the West has nothing to fear. Thanks largely
to Dr. Mossadegh, there is much to fear in Iran.
My feeling is that the biggest sin that our society has is forgetting history. If we
remembered history I would think that it would be very difficult to pull off coups but most
media does not revisit history which proves US coups even against democracies. I actually
think that the coup that occurred in Ukraine was similar to the attempted coup in Venezuela
in 2002 with snipers on rooftops, immediate blame for the deaths on Hugo Chavez where media
manipulated the footage, immediate acceptance of the temporary coup government by the US
Government, immediately offering IMF loans for the new coup government, government positions
for many of the coup plotters, and let us not leave out the funding for the coup coming from
USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy. I also remember seeing the New York Times
immediately blaming Chavez and praising the coup but when the coup was overturned and US
fingerprints started to become revealed (with many of the coup plotters fleeing to the US)
then the New York Times wrote a limited retraction buried in their paper. Shameless.
SFOMARCO , April 11, 2016 at 15:16
How was NED able to finance "scores of projects inside Ukraine training activists,
paying for journalists and organizing business groups", not to mention to host such
dignitaries as Cookie Nuland, Loser McCain and assorted Bidens? Seems like a recipe for a
coup "hidden in plain sight".
Bob Van Noy , April 11, 2016 at 14:36
Ukraine, one would hope, represents the "Bridge Too Far" moment for the proponents of
regime change. Surely Americans must be catching on to what we do for selected nations in the
name of "giving them their freedoms". The Kagan Family, empowered by their newly endorsed
candidate for President, Hillary Clinton, will feel justified in carrying on a new cold war,
this time world wide. Of course they will not be doing the fighting, they, like Dick Cheney
are the self appointed intellects of geopolitical chess, much like The Georgetown Set of the
Kennedy era, they perceive themselves as the only ones smart enough to plan America's
future.
Helen Marshall , April 11, 2016 at 17:11
I wish. How many Americans know ANYTHNG about what has happened in Ukraine, about Crimea
and its history, and/or could even locate them on a map?
Pastor Agnostic , April 12, 2016 at 04:11
Nuland is merely the inhouse, PNAC female version of Sidney Blumenthal. Which raises the
scary question. Who would she pick to be SecState?
As usual, Trump
made the announcement
of recognizing Israel's claim to the Golan Heights without any consultation with any of the relevant administration officials...
President Donald Trump's tweet on Thursday recognizing the Golan Heights as Israeli territory surprised members of his own
Middle East peace team, the State Department, and Israeli officials.
U.S. diplomats and White House aides had believed the Golan Heights issue would be front and center at next week's meetings
between Trump and Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House. But they were unprepared for any presidential
announcement this week.
No formal U.S. process or executive committees were initiated to review the policy before Trump's decision, and the diplomats
responsible for implementing the policy were left in the dark.
Even the Israelis, who have advocated for this move for years, were stunned at the timing of Trump's message.
After more than two years of watching Trump's impulsive and reckless "governing" style, it doesn't come as a surprise to anyone
that he makes these decisions without advance warning. There is no evidence that Trump ever thinks anything through, and so he probably
sees no reason to tell anyone in advance what he is going to do. Trump almost never bothers consulting with the people who will be
responsible for carrying out his policies and dealing with the international fallout, and that is probably why so many of his policy
decisions end up being exceptionally poor ones. The substance of most of Trump's foreign policy decisions was never likely to be
good, but the lack of an organized policy process on major decisions makes those decisions even more haphazard and chaotic than they
would otherwise be.
There is absolutely no upside for the United States in endorsing illegal Israeli claims to the Golan Heights. It is a cynical
political stunt intended to boost Netanyahu and Likud's fortunes in the upcoming election, and it is also a cynical stunt aimed at
shoring up Trump's support from Republican "pro-Israel" voters and donors.
"... "The Warrior Kagan Family", that must have been Greenwald's big joke, I hope. Those people give a meaning to the name chickenhawks, they would not know from which end a gun fires, but they certainly know how to get millions killed by others. ..."
"... Their money ensures that their aggressive writings still get published in the usual Deep State media. I particularly liked a touch of light humor by Mr Parry: "There was also hope that a President Hillary Clinton would recognize how sympatico the liberal hawks and the neocons were by promoting Robert Kagan's neocon wife, Victoria Nuland, to Secretary of State." ..."
"... What is troublesome is with the Kagan's screaming out, 'watch the Russians, beware of the Russians' and with the 24/7 MSM alarm bells going off over Russia, will the Trump Adminstration need to craft their foreign policy around the likes of these Russia Haters? ..."
"... The common denominator is profit and increased market share fueled by greed ..Part of the blame can be laid at the feet of the average USA investor who fuels the stock market looking for the best return on his/her money. ..."
"... After finding this early warning essay by Cartalucci I have often wondered that if our MSM were to have scooped this kind of news regarding the travels of Senator John McCain would the tragedy of Benghazi have never happened. ..."
"... Plus this article adds insight to how the Deep State operates. McCain should be the one held for high treason, but as things are that will never happen. The more you may learn the more you may find that Donald Trump seems to be less of a problem than we all know. Now that isn't an endorsement of Trump, as much as it is a heads up to notice who all is behind the curtain. ..."
"... I recommend reading the latest blog by Moon of Alabama and enlightened comments. You will get further details on what the Kagans' plans are – what they would have done for sure under their L'Amour Toujours, Clinton as President. ..."
"... I read that moonofalabama, b is always right on. In fact b and Robert Parry are excellent examples of how 'small' is good. http://journal-neo.org/2017/03/15/us-expands-defacto-syrian-invasion/ The above article by Tony Cartalucci is along the same lines as moonofalabama. ..."
"... Excellent point – how to quickly recognise psychopaths: "psychopathy is the habit of using emotionally loaded language in tones which betray no actual connection to the content". A large proportion of our politicians fit the description. ..."
"... "I noted two years ago in an article entitled "A Family Business of Perpetual War": "Neoconservative pundit Robert Kagan and his wife, Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, run a remarkable family business: she has sparked a hot war in Ukraine and helped launch Cold War II with Russia and he steps in to demand that Congress jack up military spending so America can meet these new security threats. This extraordinary husband-and-wife duo makes quite a one-two punch for the Military-Industrial Complex, an inside-outside team that creates the need for more military spending, applies political pressure to ensure higher appropriations, and watches as thankful weapons manufacturers lavish grants on like-minded hawkish Washington think tanks." ..."
"... "the so-called "#Resistance" to Trump's presidency and President Obama's unprecedented use of his intelligence agencies to paint Trump as a Russian "Manchurian candidate" gave new hope to the neocons and their agenda. It has taken them a few months to reorganize and regroup but they now see hope in pressuring Trump so hard regarding Russia that he will have little choice but to buy into their belligerent schemes. As often is the case, the Family Kagan has charted the course of action – batter Republicans into joining the all-out Russia-bashing and then persuade a softened Trump to launch a full-scale invasion of Syria. In this endeavor, the Kagans have Democrats and liberals as the foot soldiers." ..."
"... For instance, Robert's brother Frederick works at the American Enterprise Institute, which has long benefited from the largesse of the Military-Industrial Complex, and his wife Kimberly runs her own think tank called the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). ..."
"... Andrew Bacevich referred to Kagan as "the chief neoconservative foreign-policy theorist" in reviewing Kagan's book The Return of history and the end of dreams.[21] ..."
"... Here's Andrew Bacevich's 2014 piece on the Kagans: https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/duplicity-ideologues ..."
"... But Mr Parry, I think it will also be interesting to examine the 'Vault 7' disclosure with regards to this Russia bashing. If the CIA has the ability to put out any email or documentation without a trail as to its origin, the Kagans could be shown as the charlatans they are if it was the CIA who meddled with the US election. ..."
"... "The US military will try to take Raqqa from ISIS with the help of the Kurds in coordination with Syrian government forces. The Syrian government will also destroy al Qaeda in Idleb. The chance that Trump will pick up on any of these neo-con plans is practically zero. But who knows?" ..."
"... On MSNBC's "Morning Joe" show, Friedman demanded that the Russia hacking allegations be treated as a casus belli: "That was a 9/11 scale event. They attacked the core of our democracy. That was a Pearl Harbor scale event." Both Pearl Harbor and 9/11 led to wars. ..."
"... It's just reported on Global Research that Russia has absorbed 2.5 million Ukrainian refugees since the US 2014 coup and Europe 900,000 more, according to a Kremlin parliamentarian in February. Thanks to Victoria Nuland! ..."
"... Far too much money which MIC wants play with. ..and as Admiral Thomas Moorer commented, " No American President can stand up to Israel " ..."
"... the virulent fixation on Russia is out of control. ..."
It's not the Family Kagan, but rather as Glenn Greenwald dubbed them, The Warrior Kagan
Family with a trade mark sign as suffix.
I'll bet Victoria resigned from State, seeing her future there granting visas in Baku.
Thanks, Robert, I haven't had a Kagan fix in quite a while!
Kiza , March 15, 2017 at 8:26 pm
"The Warrior Kagan Family", that must have been Greenwald's big joke, I hope. Those people
give a meaning to the name chickenhawks, they would not know from which end a gun fires, but they
certainly know how to get millions killed by others.
As to Mr Parry, calling them the American neocon royalty, it certainly is some foul-mouth royalty,
telling another Zio servant EU to get f'ed.
Thank you Robert Parry for a great article, just like Bart I was wondering what happened to
the cookie distributing "royalty" after the Clinton fail. It is not surprising that they are now
learning to manipulate outcomes from the opposition. Their money ensures that their aggressive
writings still get published in the usual Deep State media. I particularly liked a touch of light
humor by Mr Parry: "There was also hope that a President Hillary Clinton would recognize how
sympatico the liberal hawks and the neocons were by promoting Robert Kagan's neocon wife,
Victoria Nuland, to Secretary of State."
Between the Clinton liberals and the Ziocons C'est une Affaire d'Amour Toujours , as
Pepé Le Pew likes to say.
Skip Edwards , March 15, 2017 at 11:28 pm
"The Warrior Kagan Family", that must have been Greenwald's big joke, I hope. Those people
give a meaning to the name chickenhawks, they would not know from which end a gun fires, but they
certainly know how to get millions killed by others.
I learned how to laugh again; and, at the expense of all those despicable Kagen's.
Joe Tedesky , March 15, 2017 at 11:49 pm
KIza there is good news inside Robert Parry's article if you look for it. One good thing is
that Hillary isn't the president, and if she were one could only imagine what her and the Kagan's
would be up to right now. The other piece of good news, is that the Kagan's are writing op-eds
and not working for the Trump Adminstration.
Now I have read somewhere where the U.S. is working with Russia, and that for the most part
for now has to be done on the low key. Of course with news being 'fake' and all of that, who's
to know?
What is troublesome is with the Kagan's screaming out, 'watch the Russians, beware of the
Russians' and with the 24/7 MSM alarm bells going off over Russia, will the Trump Adminstration
need to craft their foreign policy around the likes of these Russia Haters?
Cheney and Rumsfeld developed 'the Continuity of Government Program' and I'm wondering if that
cast of characters could seep into the mix of things? Plus don't forget the ever reliable CIA
So with all of that working against you, one could only wonder if Ghandi and Jesus could do much
better up against this evil array of villains.
Joe Tedesky , March 16, 2017 at 12:10 am
Here is something worth reading Tony Cartalucci explains the Deep State, and goes on to talk
about how it may be defeated. Here's a hint, the world will not be run by the New World Order.
Very good link, Joe!! The common denominator is profit and increased market share fueled
by greed ..Part of the blame can be laid at the feet of the average USA investor who fuels the
stock market looking for the best return on his/her money. I would not look for much altruistic
behavioral changes in human nature Greed is still the preferred method of operation .and firmly
in control ..
Joe, many thanks for this powerful link on the deep state, and its explanation of the multi-polar
conditions needed, and as happening, plus the link you supplied below related to what's going
on in Syria, also clear and helpful.
Joe Tedesky , March 16, 2017 at 3:30 pm
I'm glad that you all found the link to be informative. I am posting another link to a Tony
Cartalucci article that got my attention of his work a few years ago, and ever since I look forward
to reading his reporting.
This link is interesting for the fact that the original article was published March 2012 which
was somewhere in the neighborhood of six months before the deadly attack took place in Benghazi.
After finding this early warning essay by Cartalucci I have often wondered that if our MSM were
to have scooped this kind of news regarding the travels of Senator John McCain would the tragedy
of Benghazi have never happened.
Plus this article adds insight to how the Deep State operates. McCain should be the one
held for high treason, but as things are that will never happen. The more you may learn the more
you may find that Donald Trump seems to be less of a problem than we all know. Now that isn't
an endorsement of Trump, as much as it is a heads up to notice who all is behind the curtain.
Curious , March 16, 2017 at 5:16 pm
Thanks for the two links Joe. I didn't think it was possible for me to dislike McCain more
than I already did, but I was wrong. I did like Senator Pauls' comment about McCain today however.
He basically said McCain is a perfect example of why we should have term limits in the Senate,
which is so true.
Kiza , March 16, 2017 at 12:24 am
Oh no, I did not mean that it is bad news this is why I wrote that the Kagans are learning
to spew hate from the opposition not from the government. Like D5-5, I recommend reading the
latest blog by Moon of Alabama and enlightened comments. You will get further details on what
the Kagans' plans are – what they would have done for sure under their L'Amour Toujours, Clinton
as President.
As to Jesus, he self-sacrificed himself to show the way out of human predicament. Jesus was
fighting against such ideologues of hate and moneychangers as the Kagans, who are an exemplar
of the mad-gleaming-eye-greedy-finger types so well known in the old Europe. Just observe the
first photo to the article: she looks like she would murder just about any baby in the world to
take her sweet candy.
Joe Tedesky , March 16, 2017 at 1:08 am
I read that moonofalabama, b is always right on. In fact b and Robert Parry are excellent
examples of how 'small' is good.
The above article by Tony Cartalucci is along the same lines as moonofalabama.
At this stage of the game the best that I can put forward with, is we got to take one day at
a time, in order to make sense of whatever the real news is going on inside Syria. From one article
to another it's hard to tell who's fighting, or going to fight who. With the atmosphere here in
America I'm waiting for an arrest to be made if you talk favorably about Russia, or Putin. Seriously,
our MSM cable news networks are going hells bells on this Russian hacking, Russian tampering with
our democracy, Russia has a puppet in the White House, Russia _______fill in the blank. We have
gone totally nuts this time, and it looks like we are going to stay that way for awhile.
I always like to ponder the politics that would have prevailed during the time of Jesus. If
you get a grasp on that then Jesus really stands out better for what he was preaching too, and
preaching against. I'm sure Herod or Ceasar had their Kagan's around in their day, and who knows
how discreetly those ancient Kagan's could have whispered vile and nasty ideas of war and conquest
into their leaders head. When it's all about power and money it's easy to lose ones head, or so
they say. Let's all hope the Kagan's amount to be nothing more than sore losers.
Peter Loeb , March 16, 2017 at 6:13 am
WITH MCCAIN AS HELPER
A good comment Joe Tedesky.
As to Syria, we already have invaded and already plan more (see Defense Appropriation). Of
interest would be Putin's response on the ground.
(When Netanyahu went to Moskow to ask for help in getting Syria to reign in Iran, he was referred
to the sovereign government of Syria! Is the current (and future) US invasion of the sovereign
state of Syria at the invitation of the Syrian Government??
Ans: No! See UN Charter on aggression, I think it is Article 4(2) if memory serves. Besides
the current administration wants to make all its sins of commission such as drones done by the
CIA Which is to say covert and not accountable to anyone (such as DOD, White House etc.).Our
invasion will evidently be
accountable to Israel and Saudi Arabia.
I am certain Moscow has a plan, a response (diplomatic or otherwise).
Donald Trump likes war and being "Commander-in-Chief". All countries involved in war are always
absolutely persuaded that their victory will be quick, easy etc.It also helps(??) the US economy
as all wars have for hundreds of years. No one will oppose more money for defense. I have already
contacted my Mass. Senators in regard to funds for the invasion of Syria as well as my Congressional
Representative. (I expect little support. All lawgivers are dependent on AIPAC support )
--Peter Loeb, Boston, MA, USA
Joe Tedesky , March 16, 2017 at 10:15 am
Except for Desert Storm every war has lasted long past it's end date, and even one could argue
over Desert Storm if you add in the time of occupation or establishing no fly zones to how long
we have been there.
I'm not all that sure yet that Trump likes war. There are times he stresses peace, after he
rally's the people around a powerful military speech. Now, what I do worry about is the people
around him. NIkki Haley just recently in a NBC interview said how we should never trust Russia.
Wow, and she is our UN ambassador. So much for statesmanship and diplomacy.
As far as our CIA goes they are going to get everyone on this planet killed. It's long overdue
to crunch the CIA down to being an information gatherer and stop with the convert intrigue. If
we factor in stability and the quality of human life, then tell me about the one CIA operation
which has been a success. The CIA's interference, and trashing of foreign government sovereignty
is a disgrace, and should I add be prosecuted as a war crime in the highest order. If Trump could
shred the CIA into a thousand pieces then I say, do it Mr President.
The real problem we face while attempting to establish the Yinon Plan, is that we will finally
either partner with Russia somehow over something, or end up fighting Russia and possibly not
fight them through proxies. I don't see either Russia or the U.S. using nukes on each other at
first, but I would be praying for the poor souls in places such as Iran, Yemen, or places like
that. And while we are at it North and South Korea, and once again Japan would most likely be
countries well inside the lines of being in jeopardy.
Russia, and China, should be our natural allies, but there's nothing natural about our country's
foreign policy when world hegemony overrides man's human nature to life in peace.
John , March 16, 2017 at 4:24 pm
Joe,
The other piece of good news is that they are actually starting to walk back the Russia hacked
the election an we can prove it nonsense. Read Glenn Greenwald's latest piece at The Intercept.
At long last sir have they actually some human decency? Nah!!!
Joe Tedesky , March 16, 2017 at 4:52 pm
Thanks John I will be sure to read Greenwald's article, but you know we in America need a bogey
man .so if not Russia then who?
Concerning the foul-mouthing, I was disturbed to hear such strong talk (at least to this earthy
soul) in such a delicate voice. To me a sign of psychopathy is the habit of using emotionally
loaded language in tones which betray no actual connection to the content. Another is causing
the killing of no small amount of people with a large amount of apparent unconcern, but then again
that's a net which would drag an alarming amount of people from corridors of power. Perhaps the
majority of these have mastered the art of matching tone and content in their requirement to at
least appear Human to their subjects.
Kiza , March 16, 2017 at 6:00 am
Excellent point – how to quickly recognise psychopaths: "psychopathy is the habit of using
emotionally loaded language in tones which betray no actual connection to the content". A large
proportion of our politicians fit the description. Thank you.
Nastarana , March 16, 2017 at 10:34 am
Kiza, Please don't forget that is a "sign of psychopathy". There are other kinds of derangement
in which the unfortunate sufferers are prone to the use of inappropriate body language and verbal
tone, but are not necessarily a danger to others. As for the Kagans, I consider them to be criminals,
plain and simple.
Anon , March 16, 2017 at 1:31 pm
I am waiting to see the male ballerina "foot soldiers" demanding transgender bathrooms in the
trenches.
Joe Tedesky , March 16, 2017 at 3:46 pm
Anon in 1919 Max Sennett was way ahead of you. You might get a kick out of watching Sennett's
movie called 'Yankee Doodle in Berlin'. It is a story about an American soldier dressed as a woman
going behind enemy lines to entice the Kaiser. Also notice the slanted propaganda of the way American
Hollywood film producers were characterizing the Germans. We are all but a product of who came
before us I'm sad to say .but hey enjoy the silent flick anyway.
Oh and with all due respect let's at least give a salute to Chelsea Manning.
BART GRUZALSKI PROF. EMERITUS , March 16, 2017 at 9:26 am
BART IN VIRGINIA!!
Are you really "Bart" as in short for "Bartholomew"!!!!
Parry, thank you for a GREAT article.
Early on you pegged them:
"Back pontificating on prominent op-ed pages, the Family Kagan now is pushing for an expanded
U.S. military invasion of Syria and baiting Republicans for not joining more enthusiastically
in the anti-Russian witch hunt over Moscow's alleged help in electing Donald Trump."
Then skillfully reminding us: "I noted two years ago in an article entitled "A Family Business
of Perpetual War": "Neoconservative pundit Robert Kagan and his wife, Assistant Secretary of State
Victoria Nuland, run a remarkable family business: she has sparked a hot war in Ukraine and helped
launch Cold War II with Russia and he steps in to demand that Congress jack up military spending
so America can meet these new security threats. This extraordinary husband-and-wife duo makes
quite a one-two punch for the Military-Industrial Complex, an inside-outside team that creates
the need for more military spending, applies political pressure to ensure higher appropriations,
and watches as thankful weapons manufacturers lavish grants on like-minded hawkish Washington
think tanks."
Your conclusion is actually overly optimistic:
"the so-called "#Resistance" to Trump's presidency and President Obama's unprecedented
use of his intelligence agencies to paint Trump as a Russian "Manchurian candidate" gave new hope
to the neocons and their agenda. It has taken them a few months to reorganize and regroup but
they now see hope in pressuring Trump so hard regarding Russia that he will have little choice
but to buy into their belligerent schemes. As often is the case, the Family Kagan has charted
the course of action – batter Republicans into joining the all-out Russia-bashing and then persuade
a softened Trump to launch a full-scale invasion of Syria. In this endeavor, the Kagans have Democrats
and liberals as the foot soldiers."
Instead, the Deep State is preparing to begin getting rid of Trump on June 1st:
IF you the reader haven't read my "The Deep State Versus President Trump" it is time (on Amazon
for only $12.95 or less).
Parry, I will immediately post this EXCELLENT article on Facebook. Because my wife and I are
living "by the skin of our teeth" on social security, I can't make a donation, but I will send
in an article on why the Deep State wants Trump gone as a pro bono contribution. Hope you think
it is worthy of publication.
Dr. Bart Gruzalski, Professor Emeritus, Philosophy (ethics, public policy) and Religion
(books: "On the Buddha": "On Gandhi"; and "Why Christians and World-Peace Advocates Voted for
President Donald Trump"), Northeastern University, Boston, MA-and the only Ph.D. in philosophy
among the thousands that I and my mentor Professor Samuel Gorovitz know who voted for and supports
Trump [no, Sam was and is opposed to our POTUS].
dineesh , March 15, 2017 at 7:01 pm
Who is behind them rascals?
evelync , March 15, 2017 at 8:22 pm
Good question! And I don't know the answer, but I googled the question and FWIW depending on
the reliability of the writers of the articles, here's what I found:
"A Family Business
There's also a family-business aspect to these wars and confrontations, since the Kagans collectively
serve not just to start conflicts but to profit from grateful military contractors who kick back
a share of the money to the think tanks that employ the Kagans.
For instance, Robert's brother Frederick works at the American Enterprise Institute, which
has long benefited from the largesse of the Military-Industrial Complex, and his wife Kimberly
runs her own think tank called the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
According to ISW's annual reports, its original supporters were mostly right-wing foundations,
such as the Smith-Richardson Foundation and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, but it was
later backed by a host of national security contractors, including major ones like General Dynamics,
Northrop Grumman and CACI, as well as lesser-known firms such as DynCorp International, which
provided training for Afghan police, and Palantir, a technology company founded with the backing
of the CIA's venture-capital arm, In-Q-Tel. Palantir supplied software to US military intelligence
in Afghanistan.
Since its founding in 2007, ISW has focused mostly on wars in the Middle East, especially Iraq
and Afghanistan, including closely cooperating with Gen. David Petraeus when he commanded US forces
in those countries. However, more recently, ISW has begun reporting extensively on the civil war
in Ukraine. [See "Neocons Guided Petraeus on Afghan War."]
"In 1983, Robert Kagan was foreign policy advisor to New York Republican Representative
Jack Kemp. From 1984–86, under the administration of Ronald Reagan, he was a speechwriter for
Secretary of State George P. Shultz and a member of the United States Department of State Policy
Planning Staff. From 1986–1988 he served in the State Department Bureau of Inter-American Affairs.[10]
In 1997, Kagan co-founded the now-defunct neoconservative think tank Project for the New
American Century with William Kristol.[3][5][11] Through the work of the PNAC, Kagan was a
strong advocate of the Iraq war.
From 1998 until August, 2010, Kagan was a Senior Associate with the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace. He was appointed senior fellow in the Center on United States and Europe
at the Brookings Institution in September 2010.[12][13][14][15] He is also a member of the
board of directors for the neoconservative think tank The Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI).[16]
During the 2008 presidential campaign he served as foreign policy advisor to John McCain,
the Republican Party's nominee for President of the United States in the 2008 election.[17][18]
Since 2011, Kagan has also served on the 25-member State Department's Foreign Affairs Policy
Board under Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton[19] and John Kerry.[20]
Andrew Bacevich referred to Kagan as "the chief neoconservative foreign-policy theorist"
in reviewing Kagan's book The Return of history and the end of dreams.[21]
It's not too difficult to identify the think-tanks the Kagans belong to or run. These organizations
have web sites, and the web sites usually list who the funders are. That's the information you
seek.
For example, the Institute for the Study of War is supported by the likes of General Dynamics,
CACI, Microsoft, Centerra, Capital Bank, etc.
Diana , March 16, 2017 at 7:02 am
Robbie Martin has produced a three-part documentary on them rascals called "A Very Heavy Agenda."
It's well worth watching, but it's expensive the box set of the three DVDs costs $50.00. I opted
for the Vimeo version, where each part can be purchased for $6.99 or rented for $2.99. You can
watch the trailers and learn more at http://averyheavyagenda.com
.
Diana , March 16, 2017 at 8:10 am
You can find the Vimeo versions at
https://vimeo.com/ondemand/averyheavyagenda
. Watch the trailer for Part 3 and you will see that it refers to Robert Parry's "Family Kagan"
article.
Sam , March 16, 2017 at 7:03 am
The ME warmongers are largely zionist Jews, including the Kagan/Nulands and the 2003 Iraq War
II sponsors SecDef Wolfowitz and his Israeli spy operatives Perl, Feith, and Wurmser installed
at CIA/DIA/NSA offices to select known-bad "intelligence" to incite war. The Kochs are of course
complicit. Any who aren't zionist Jews are after their stolen US funds to Israel, fed to stink
tanks and political bribe donations.
The war in Iraq was such a success that the US was forced out having ensured the pro-Iran government
it most feared, having built AlQaeda from a CIA proxy to a regional and then a worldwide enemy,
and having guaranteed the violent Sunni uprising now called IS. Read Bamford's Pretext for War.
Don't we need more of those wars.
BART GRUZALSKI PROF. EMERITUS , March 16, 2017 at 9:29 am
dineesh,
This is a reply to your (lost in the undergrowth): MORE RASCALS, in fact, THE ENTIRE DEEP STATE.
dineesh's question: Who is behind those rascals.
D5-5 , March 15, 2017 at 7:17 pm
Take a look at Moon of Alabama on this Kagan rehash. The comments in response to the analysis
also recommended. Posted today.
Apparently, the lessons taught in Iraq have been forgotten.
Scott , March 15, 2017 at 8:06 pm
A lesson can be had only by those willing to learn. Democrats just lost over 900 seats across
state and federal offices and even that proved not to be a teachable moment.
Curious , March 15, 2017 at 7:50 pm
What a disturbing headline. I had hoped they would have been neutered after the Hillary defeat.
But Mr Parry, I think it will also be interesting to examine the 'Vault 7' disclosure with
regards to this Russia bashing. If the CIA has the ability to put out any email or documentation
without a trail as to its origin, the Kagans could be shown as the charlatans they are if it was
the CIA who meddled with the US election. It would shake their entire platform of blaming
Russia to the core. It is difficult enough as it is to tell the originator of many internal docs
leaked to the public, so the blame game is false as it is. I would welcome more release of the
CIA vault 7 if only to show how often the CIA is involved in internal US politics and "homeland"
situations. This meddling is supposedly against the law.
One could only hope.
Tannenhouser , March 15, 2017 at 8:26 pm
Not only that .A 'democrats' views are so symbiotic to a kagans shows they play for the same
team while occasionally wearing different color jersey's. Curious indeed . I share your hope.
As b says, analyst at Moon of Alabama (he's German by the way) on this topic, "The US military
will try to take Raqqa from ISIS with the help of the Kurds in coordination with Syrian government
forces. The Syrian government will also destroy al Qaeda in Idleb. The chance that Trump will
pick up on any of these neo-con plans is practically zero. But who knows?"
He also finds the Kaganista notions on a THIRD try at raising "the moderates" to get rid of
Assad "drinking the kool aid."
My question is how does this troop infusion, made problematical as Assad has not okayed it,
calling it illegal, and which includes 2500 "tip of the spear" paratroopers in Kuwait, move the
situation on, additional to (or beyond) the goal of cleaning out ISIS? To what, why? Suppose ISIS
defeated (replaced in how long by another ISIS unless the political/economic situation changes
for the sunnis) then what? Trump does an Obama and the US leaves again? Or cuts a deal with the
neocons on pipeline projects etc?
LJ , March 15, 2017 at 9:01 pm
I read that article. The Qatar Turkey Pipeline was one of the hoped for outcomes of the Regime
Change in Syria . This was problematic for Russia and will remain so. If the USA>NATO>EU thought
that they could bring Turkey into the fold with this pipeline it might make sense but right now
this is very unlikely.
Personally I do not think Trump and Tillerson would go for World War .Do not forget that China
is allied with Russia on this and they see Syria as very important to the completion of One Belt
One Road'. Israel's role in the region and in Syria should not be forgotten ever. They are anxious
about the Golan and Russia and they always want the USA to attack Iran. So does Saudi Arabia and
you may have noticed the Saudi Foreign Minister dropping a comment a couple days ago that this
planned action against Hezbollah and Iran is very much on the table.
There are many heads on the chopping block right now not just Assad's, enemies and allies also.
The Planners cannot control the outcome in Turkey (We played our card already), in Iraq, in Syria
or in Lebanon. WE are not liked. All the USA can do at this point is destroy, we can never win
hearts and minds in the Middle East.. Can of Worms.
Joe Tedesky , March 16, 2017 at 1:23 am
I think the biggest worry is to hope that whoever loses can bear the cost of loss. This Syrian
war I don't think at this point is as much about ISIS as it is about land. Land for pipelines
mostly, but land for a whole host of other reasons as well. Sunni, Shia, and Kurds, are the predominant
people who are fighting for space, but so are countries like Turkey, Saudi's, and the Israeli's
in the Golan Heights. So stretching pipelines, and building new one road infrastrutures need land oh
and let's not forget the Shia Crescent and Iran. This area is so messed up I'm not that sure even
the winner will have won much more than a big headache.
Enjoyed reading both of your comments, and thought I'd make some noise to accompany your conversation.
MEexpert , March 16, 2017 at 2:41 am
Joe, both the Syrian and Iraq wars now have two purposes. First is to prevent the dreaded "Shia
Crescent," and the second is to protect Israel. The latest surge in Iraq and Syria by the US forces
is to keep the perpetual wars going by creating "Sunni" zones in Iraq and Syria. When the Iraqi
Army and the Shia militias were battling the ISIS, there were no US boots on the ground. Same
thing in Syria. Consider the timing of this surge. ISIS is almost routed in Iraq and Syria and
all of a sudden Trump sends ground forces to help mop up the remnants of ISIS.
The real purpose is not to clean up ISIS but to prevent the government forces to establish
rule in Mosul. Saudi Arabia wants that part to remain Sunni. This way Iran doesn't win. The US
wants to divide Iraq in three parts, Shia, Sunni, and Kurdish, as has been her plan all along.
Similarly, in Syria, if Assad wins the whole of Syria is under his rule. By inserting herself
in the war, the US wants to set up a Sunni section on behalf of Saudi Arabia and Israel, to be
a thorn in Assad's side and a Kurdish side to punish Erdogan for his behavior and keep him occupied.
The wars will continue in the Middle East, the Military-Industrial Complex will continue to sell
weapons and Israel will be worry free.
What I don't understand is why is US so against the Shias. I can understand Israel's position.
Israel got her rear end kicked twice by a tiny Hezbollah force but why US. It can't be just to
please Israel or is it? So much bloodshed just for that.
Sam , March 16, 2017 at 7:13 am
The US is involved solely to get political campaign funds from Israel stolen from US "aid".
Joe Tedesky , March 16, 2017 at 10:25 am
Going back to the old communist days and Nassar the U.S. sided with Israel. That was back at
a time when we Americans were exposed to the propaganda that Israeli's were like us Americans,
and all Arabs were crazy. We were fine with Iran as long as we had the Shad there to protect our
interest. The Iran Hostage event was excellent PR to demonize Iran for over a forty year period,
and life goes on.
You and I along with many others here believe now is a great time to hit the Middle East reset
button .now how do we convince our country's leadership to do that, is the question.
John P , March 16, 2017 at 8:49 pm
Good article and I think you hit the nails on the heads MEexpert. Your final paragraph, I think
the U.S. wants a stable ally in the region and they believe Israel fills that roll, even though
I see little common interest in eithers ambitions, one for stability the other for annexations.
Perhaps the U.S. politicians hold their noses and hope.
Sam , March 16, 2017 at 7:21 am
The Qatar-Turkey pipeline concept tried to break the "Shiite crescent" of Iran/Iraq/Syria/Lebanon
and compete with the southern Russia-Turkey pipeline; otherwise they would not be seeking war
near pipelines that could more easily have coexisted.
MEexpert , March 16, 2017 at 2:57 am
"Suppose ISIS defeated (replaced in how long by another ISIS unless the political/economic
situation changes for the sunnis) then what?"
Why such concern about the Sunnis? In Iraq only 20% population is Sunni. Yet Saddam, a Sunni,
ruled more that 60% Shias for 35 years and other Sunni rulers before that. There was no concern
for their feelings or their safety by Papa Bush in 1991 or after that when Saddam gassed the Shias
and the Kurds. Bahrain, on the other hand, at one time was 90% Shia with a Sunni ruler, thanks
to the British. The Emir of Bahrain has been systematically stripping the Shias of their citizenship
and importing Sunnis from other countries and giving them Citizenship by recruiting them into
the Bahraini Armed Forces. Even when the uprising started in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia moved in
there to put the uprising down, all US did was to send down the Chairman of the Joints Chiefs
to reassure the Emir of Bahrain and to make sure that the 5th fleet was safe.
D5-5 , March 16, 2017 at 1:02 pm
@ ME Expert:
Thank you for your comments! I'm looking at the above responses, including the additional link
on Syria from Joe, which provides historical perspective also, in terms of US establishing a presence
in eastern Syria to be "a thorn in Assad's side" as you say, and continue to push for regional
control allied with Israel and Saudi Arabia, et al.
On your question why such concern about the Sunnis, here's my impression, which could be too
simple.
With the conquest of Iraq and Bremer's releasing the 400,000 military, a highly Shia favored
sort of revenge government program fell into place, favoring Shias and leading to problems for
Sunnis (including high unemployment) that led on to the creation of ISIS. If similar economic
and political problems are not dealt with, wiping out this iteration of ISIS could lead to another
version of it. I also have the impression the potential number of these dissatisfied, as potential
recruits, could number in many millions (not sure how many). I don't intend to take a position
favoring Sunnis, but am trying to understand the complexity of the grievances of whomever. As
part of this, my understanding is that many members of ISIS are not head-chopping maniacs but
joined as ISIS was the only available opposing force.
On your question why is the US so against the Shias, my impression is they haven't been against
the Shias in Iraq, while simultaneously (and shortsightedly) exercising no influence on fair governance
of Iraq following the 03 invasion, and this favoritism favored the Shias there and stirred Sunni
resistance. But, I'm thinking, the animosity toward Shias elsewhere is related to alignments in
the region, toward dominating the entire region, including taking down Syria and Iran. So it's
not so much animosity toward Shias per se as it is to regime change uncooperative rulers, whether
in Lebanon, Syria, or Iran, with their Shia populations (and lately of course throw in Russia).
At stake is pipelines of various sorts, and water rights, and overall in terms of globalism and
full spectrum dominance taking over the entire middle east region.
I welcome being straightened out on where I'm correct or too simplistic. Thanks again.
D5-5 , March 16, 2017 at 1:08 pm
Meant to say INcorrect or too simplistic!
LJ , March 16, 2017 at 1:48 pm
The politics of divide and conquer can create strange bedfellows. There is deep routed historical
enmity between the Sunnis and Shiites to begin with. Search Twelver. The US has allies and enemies,
Bottom line, Saudi Arabia has a lot of oil and Israel has a lot of political power through it's
representatives in the USA especially but also in Britain and France. The Iranians were our friends
too after the USA overthrow their Democratic Government in 1953 and installed the Shah and the
CIA set up ZAVAK to protect him. It worked until he got weak. . Iran's enmity with the USA and
Israel is well supported by facts . So is Hezbollah's enmity as is the enmity of Palestinians
living in camps in stateless exile in Lebanon and elsewhere. . We don't necessarily hate Shias.
It's policy. A fun fact to know and tell is that the Saudis pump oil from under the feet of the
Shia minority in Saudi Arabia. who have live near the Persian Gulf since they were Persians and
Zoroastrians. Also The US 5th Fleet is stationed in Bahrain courtesy of a treaty with the Sunni
Rulers of the 90% Shiite nation. Yemen in the same story. Policy is a reason why during the Bush
years the USA began referring to the Persian Gulf as the Arabian Gulf. So too, When I was young
Yemen was not unified. It will never be. Houthis are being oppressed in a genocidal manner right
now with US backing because House of Saud sits on the Thrown of Damocles . That is why the King
of Saudi Arabia is on a worldwide tour shaking hands with Xi in China yesterday. etc.,,,, ad nauseum
Joe Tedesky , March 16, 2017 at 4:16 pm
I wouldn't argue with any of you who are commenting here on this thread, because I agree with
all of you. I would like to point out that when Iraq fell the Shia (Shiites) became the popular
ruling segment of Iraq, and then came General David Petraeus. The Sunni Awakening has had profound
ramifications on what we are up against now, if we should be up against anything at all since
most of what we are dealing with is U.S. inspired. The ultimate goal was to descale Iraq away
from Iranian influence, and this social engineering by the U.S. could not have been a bigger mistake
than what it's turned out to be. Now we are turning Yemen into our new Cambodia, and this will
also turn out to be an even bigger mistake unless better minds prevail inside of our White House
(if the Oval Office even has the deciding decision on this). Take a look at a map and see where
Iran is, and then see where we are positioning ourselves. My thoughts are that Iran is the final
goal, and until Iran is brought down, done of us will get a good nights sleep hoping to wake up
to a peaceful world. Also don't take that last sentence of mine to be an endorsement to attack
Iran. I am more than happy to let Iran be Iran.
If we wish to end war, then let's quit fighting them!
MEexpert , March 16, 2017 at 5:57 pm
I agree Iran is the real target. The Afghan and Iraq wars were less against Al-Qaeda, since
there was no Al-Qaeda in Iraq, but more against Iran. George Bush wanted to establish bases around
Iran. In addition to these two countries, he wanted to establish one more in Turkmenistan. US
already had a base in Turkey. Turkmenistan refused to allow any US base. Turkey refused the use
of Turkish base to launch an attack on Iran. US got bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq. So the
attack on Iran never came. Mind you, the largest US base in Iraq is near the Iran border.
The dismantling of the Iraqi army wasn't the only thing Paul Bremer did wrong. He gave veto
power to the minority Kurds and Sunnis. That is the reason for the non-functional Iraqi government.
Nothing gets done. The Kurds are taking advantage of this situation and with the help of US are
consolidating their territorial position. Saudi Arabia doesn't want another Shia government as
its neighbor and so keeps the sectarian war going adding to the instability of the government.
D5-5 , March 16, 2017 at 7:56 pm
I keep trying to post a link to The Saker for Feb 7 this year, and it keeps disappearing. Easy
to find, however. His analysis on what war with Iran would mean is excellent. "US vs Iran a war
of apples vs. oranges."
LJ , March 15, 2017 at 8:36 pm
Pence seems to be on board already as are McCain and Graham.I agree we can't can't on the Pelosi,
Feinstein, Schumer's Liberal wing of the Democrats here. Maybe the Trump's Generals will save
us? Yeah right. The House of Representatives ? Not likely . Strange days indeed .,
CitizenOne , March 15, 2017 at 9:45 pm
I was not aware of the Kagan's role and I thank you for doing the due diligence on outlining
how this family is intertwined with recent misadventures. But also it is kind of picking at Nits.
This is a smallish operation. It does not compare to the decades long operation of Cheney to privatize
the DOD, teach his corporate buddies a Halliburton how to cash in, dream of further cashing in
himself with PNAC and the Carlyle Group, gin up a war, destabilize the middle east and get a pass
from the media. Cheney and Bush ignored all of the warnings from the FBI and the CIA that Saudi
terrorists were planning an attack which would instantly make the Carlyle Group the wealthiest
private equity firm on the planet.
I agree it is all planned. Planned well in advance. The goal is to become rich by creating
a war or wars.
I realize it is aimed at a microscopic part of the picture but fails to connect the dots of
Kagan and PNAC and 9/11. Cheney's own admission that short of "A New Pearl Harbor" Americans would
not likely go along with his dreams of launching preemptive wars reveal a naked desire to become
rich along with his buddies over at the Carlyle Group which snatched up defense stocks when the
Berlin Wall fell and the USSR was disintegrating. While the rest of the World was celebrating
the possibility of future peace with Russia, The PNAC folks were buying up stock in the defense
industry and were dreaming of a war. which they created by ignoring all of the signs that 9/11
was underway. I get that they felt some future democratic branch of the government would botch
an opportunity to create a fake enemy in Iraq and would fail to launch a war.
But the facts are the whole thing was avoidable and was pushed with a mountain of lies which
the major media simply regurgitated leading us to war.
It doesn't end there. While we are now busy banning millions of people from coming to America
because they might be terrorists, the real terrorists from abroad and here at home with Islamic
ties were all known by the authorities. Yet they did nothing to stop them and instead have used
their failures as excuses to create chaos which they hope will lead to more violence.
How does a guy who went to the FBI and confessed was delusional and heard voices in his head
trying to convert him to an ISIS terrorist then be allowed to board an airplane with a gun?
How was the underpants bomber allowed on a plane when his parents called the US Consulate to
inform US officials that their son was getting on that plane with a bomb. Yet we let this person
on a plane. Why has the media never investigated this failure?
It is failure after failure with gross incompetence from federal authorities charged with our
security that has led to terrorist acts and not the failure to keep millions of people from traveling
here.
The Boston Marathon bombers were singled out to US intelligence agencies by none other than
the Russians that they were terrorists but we let them in. No investigation of that but banning
entire nations is an option we have now tried twice. What about the failure of intelligence to
flag two people who were singled out as terrorists?
There is a much bigger story here.
The US government and intelligence agencies have obviously allowed terrorist attacks to happen.
This has happened time and time again and yet the media focuses on the terrorists time and time
again while ignoring and under reporting the backstory of how we just let it happen.
It can be rationalized by a reasoned argument that we must allow some attacks to focus our
efforts on thwarting even bigger attacks like nuclear attacks but there has been no action by
the government to actually improve security so what is the point.
The meaningless act of taking ones shoes off at an airport is only not copied by forcing us
to all strip down to our underpants based on a similar event to the shoe bomber because people
would not tolerate being forced to take off all their clothes.
Now since an FAA test of airport security revealed that guns were not detected 95% of the time
we are all preparing for pat downs. Nobody is examining the reason that 95% of the time somebody
with a gun in their baggage gets through security which is supposedly equipped with machines that
can spot guns. Where is the investigation of the machines since they fail so often?
There are all sorts of similar stories which all conclude that we are faced with a rational
reason that our government needs to allow some terrorist action to happen which in turn turns
our state increasingly toward a militaristic police state.
What I have a problem with is that we are more likely to be attacked by known terrorists and
that nobody seems to be concerned with. I guess that allowing terrorist attacks provides the political
concurrence to launch trillion dollar wars against other nations all for profit and put spy cupcakes
in our refrigerators. Watch out! There's a camera just below the icing on the cupcake! Don't eat
it!
We can't just ignore home grown terrorists like the shooters in California who, while on a
watch list, were allowed to purchase weapons or the crazy guy who told FBI ISIS was inside his
head to board an airplane with a gun and do nothing to investigate these intelligence failures
and instead use them to seek Apple to grant access to all our information on smartphones and order
travel bans for millions of people while justifying turning our TVs into Big Brother.
We can't ignore the obvious windfalls of Cheney and his pals at the Carlyle group to grow rich
by allowing terrorists to kill thousands of people.
If we are going to spill blood in preparation for war, then we need to make sure we are doing
everything in our power to prevent it and especially not to seek to become rich from it. We also
need to protect our privacy.
So now it comes down to making Russia the new enemy. We have to reinvent an old enemy to justify
further reasons for keeping America strong. But we spend ten times the money on our National Defense
than the Russians do. Where does that line up with weakness? How do we just invent some myth that
there are liberators working abroad in Ukraine and Syria to justify military spending just like
we invented Vietnam? Has Vietnam attacked us recently? I think not. Is Syria a serious player
in the international terrorism game? I think not.
Here is a suggestion. Apply all that money used to create advanced defensive capability into
an industry aimed at real security.
Destabilizing the whole World to get rich is a bad idea. Getting rich by providing the means
of nonmilitary industry aimed at enhancing security is a good idea. Easy money is a crime. Earning
it the hard way is an honest living.
Time for the easy money folks to be sidelined and for the people interested in long term survival
to hold power.
Anyone in the USA who can say they are not aware of the Kagan clan no nothing and should not
be writing such a long comment. Go back to sleep.
CitizenOne , March 16, 2017 at 7:48 pm
That would be spelled: knows nothing
Perhaps you should wake up, learn to spell, and spend more than a lazy moment trolling me. If
you have something intelligent to say we are all waiting with baited breath.
CitizenOne , March 16, 2017 at 7:54 pm
Well I guess I have to forgive Bruce Walker for not being a very good speller.
That would be : bated breath.
My bad.
geoff , March 15, 2017 at 10:07 pm
kagans never fail to excite. a package of madness on my monitor and how the hell did they get
to screw things up. oh!! scuse me yes, hillary whatsaname!!!
Brad N , March 15, 2017 at 10:15 pm
The picture painted here is actually rather dismal when one considers the long term consequences
of having such nonsense going on. Trump as possible savior from a war with Russia is a really
hard pill to swallow. Very hard indeed, it is worth repeating. I have no confidence in his consistency
at all. As for this article, I wish I could find fault with the analysis presented here. Sadly,
I cannot.
Chris Jonsson , March 15, 2017 at 10:37 pm
War, Inc. A family owned and operated corporation.
"Despite his overall unfitness for the presidency, Trump defeated Clinton,"
I greatly appreciate Mr. Parry's reporting and insights. However, I believe that the determination
of fitness for the Presidency is determined by the voters and democracy determines who is qualified.
Sam , March 16, 2017 at 7:35 am
If only we had a democracy, Fran. But in fact elections and mass media are controlled by money,
and our Constitution has no protection of these tools of democracy from money power, because there
were no businesses then larger than plantations and small ships that would be small businesses
today. We do not have a democracy now.
Bill Bodden , March 15, 2017 at 10:44 pm
On MSNBC's "Morning Joe" show, Friedman demanded that the Russia hacking allegations be
treated as a casus belli: "That was a 9/11 scale event. They attacked the core of our democracy.
That was a Pearl Harbor scale event." Both Pearl Harbor and 9/11 led to wars.
This quote suggests it is time to send a team of men with a strait-jacket into the New York
Times to cart this nutcase off to the loony bin. Come to think of it, maybe they should take several
strait-jackets with them and clean out the editorial staff.
Gregory Herr , March 16, 2017 at 6:17 pm
It's absolutely asinine isn't it?! I'll have to take a look, but I'll bet there wasn't a snicker
or even a raised eyebrow when Friedman (the oh-so-serious-in-the-know hushed-toned Friedman who
reveled in promoting the Iraq killing field) spittled his brain drool. He really should be referred.
At the very least, he should have been called out for his absurdity before being excused at the
next commercial break.
It's amazing how people like Kagan & Friedman can straight-face their farcical musings about
Russian "interference". It's funny too how they can go on about the integrity and reliability
of democratic processes when it is precisely the compromise of such that Wikileaks revealed. As
noted by Mr. Parry:
" by all accounts, the WikiLeaks-released emails were real and revealed wrongdoing by leading
Democrats, such as the Democratic National Committee's tilting of the primaries against Sen. Bernie
Sanders and in favor of Clinton. The emails of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta disclosed
the contents of Clinton's paid speeches to Wall Street, which she was trying to hide from voters,
as well as some pay-to-play features of the Clinton Foundation. In other words, the WikiLeaks'
releases helped inform American voters about abuses to the U.S. democratic process. The emails
were not "disinformation" or "fake news." They were real news."
So much for real news in this country. And my God Mr. Kagan, Trump doesn't necessarily have
faith in the findings or motives of the "intelligence community". I wonder why.
I hope the Kagans find their karma. Oh, and that weasel Friedman too.
Bill Bodden , March 15, 2017 at 10:48 pm
Given the wars the Kagans have helped promote and the consequences of these wars, surely there
is some crime they could be charged with.
MEexpert , March 16, 2017 at 11:29 pm
We wish.
F. G. Sanford , March 15, 2017 at 11:21 pm
The desperation with which neocons are baiting for a new Cold War suggests that there is something
much bigger than "election hacking" that needs covering up. Profit motives aside, the cost-benefit
ratio looks more like a ploy to stay out of jail. Not that anyone in the "deep state" ever faces
penalties for High Crimes and Misdemeanors, but it must be a nagging thought to anyone familiar
with Julius Streicher and Alfred Rosenberg.
Institute for the Study of War, that says it all! I remember when Dennis Kucinich as Representative
from Ohio introduced a bill to create a Department of Peace. It didn't go very far.
I also did not know about Frederick and Kimberly Kagan. How many more of these Kagans can be
spawned?
Thanks for a good warning, Robert Parry. These people must dream of war at night. I hope Trump
and Tillerson are wary of them.
Eric Bischoff , March 16, 2017 at 9:11 am
"How many more of these Kagans can be spawned?"
Yes and how many more Devos and Princes can we afford as well. Or how many Bushes, Clintons
or Trumps!
Sr. Gibbonk , March 16, 2017 at 1:10 am
Ah yes, The Project for a New American Century manifesto: primary authors Robert Kagan and
William Kristol on behalf of the neocon cabal and the European colonial Zionist project. Another
demonstration that narrow, selfish interests, greed and the thirst for power drive this world.
And all the while there are two great storms brewing on the horizon, each capable of driving our's
and the majority of this earth's species to extinction. One, perhaps the most imminent, is the
very real possibility of nuclear annihilation which is being spearheaded by the reckless ideologues
and predatory capitalist deep state demagogues in their quest for Full Spectrum Dominance of global
affairs. Even if the dire specter of nuclear holocaust is somehow avoided the global corporate
world's avaricious, boundless appetite for short term profits, especially through fossil fuel
extraction, will make the worst predictions of climate change inevitable: ecological collapse
and along with it the collapse not only of nation states but of the human capacity to reason.
How will the great nuclear powers, flailing like dinosaurs during the Permian-Triassic extinction
- also known as The Great Dying - not then Become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds?
Stygg , March 16, 2017 at 6:44 pm
FWIW, dinosaurs did not yet exist by the end of the Permian.
Eric Downey , March 16, 2017 at 3:15 am
Robert Parry thank you, and please continue your hard work. Our best hope for peace lies with
Trump, Bannon, Tillerson and the Generals. It sounds crazy (and it is!) but they are well suited
because they are aligned with a good chunk of the vocal electorate. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) proposed
a bill Stop Arming Terrorists Act, and it has a companion in the Senate, sponsored by Rand Paul:
https://www.mintpressnews.com/rand-paul-joins-tulsi-gabbard-calling-congress-stop-funding-isis-al-qaeda/225868/
This is an informed electorate taking action. Parry is doing his job by informing us. Our job
is to support H.R.608 and S.532.
Gary , March 16, 2017 at 5:05 am
There are so many in Washington who deserve to be tried for crimes against humanity that it
is difficult to know where one would start. Actually, come to think of it, the Kagan family would
be a great place to start! Then of course we'd have to move on to Bill and Hillary and another
highly deserving couple Samantha Powers and hubby Cass Sustien of "cognitive infiltration" fame.
Apparently psychopaths do find each other quite attractive, though who knows how many homicidal
fantasies these particular spouses might actually harbor toward each other??
Trump has been neutralised to become a puppet of deep state. The world should expect the war
business as usual.
Geoffrey de Galles , March 16, 2017 at 7:44 am
If I were the Kagans with as loaded an agenda as they share in the worldwide assertion of American
exceptionalism, then I would consider the POTUS's Achilles heel to be Jared Kushner and his wife;
and, in a more or less gentle and subtle way, would endeavour first to establish a relationship
with them as a means of gradually bringing the pater familias around to my bellicose and imperialistic
way of thinking. Myself, I consider the Kagans (among many others) to be the true enemy of the
people. But that's my concern - viz., with trying to anticipate and out-think the enemy. So best
watch out in that direction.
fudmier , March 16, 2017 at 8:00 am
The problem here is lack of ideal structure to for the concerned to become involved with
No one has outlined the ideal America as seen from the point of everyday Americans..
these 340,000,000 millions have no idea what to be for and against because they have
no structure and no purpose .. seems to me developing that structure (culture, education,
health care, voting rights, financial security, infra structure, and the like).
Developing the structure is a first step to mounting the support Trump needs to make the right
decisions..
Trump himself lacks that structure.. Once the structure becomes a household word everyone knows
the
right decision they might agree to disagree on its implementation but the result intended is in
plain view.
Why would the Russians need to undermine democracy in the United States when the Democratic
and Republican party machines are doing such a marvellous job of it by themselves?
The title should be, "How To Turn Unemployment Into A Great Day At The Gallows."
Eric Bischoff , March 16, 2017 at 9:08 am
Aren't there laws that the Kagan family are breaking? Seems to me we should start with them
and arrest them for the lies that took the Bush regime into the Middle East wars and definitely
for the Ukraine coup. They are financing and spreading terrorism therefore the money and the financiers
behind these war think tanks are also guilty. This goes all the way to the Koch Brothers and they
should be arrested as well! Why are we, the peace crusaders, on the defensive. We need to go on
the offensive. Enough already!
As P T barnum said " Theres a sucker born every minute". The real question is ; Are the American
people going to get suckered into a war with Russia and or China? Given their past record of seriously
questioning the propaganda put out by the Kagans et all i am not too hopeful over this present
push to what will be a catastrophic war.
LJ , March 16, 2017 at 2:26 pm
It's all talk. We can't beat the Taliban or the Viet Cong or the Mexican and Central American
drug Gangs on the ground if it comes to that. Russia? China? That's funny. This is to justify
perpetuation of the status quo in this nation. We the People can't be allowed to pick up our heads
and gaze at reality. We need to be preoccupied with the BS. Political Correctness has done it's
job now we have to spend a bunch of money on imaginary threats so billionaires and bankers can
get richer and we can all pretend that they matter and that this is fair and justified and Democracy
in action , We need idiotic Generals in charge and tough talking politicians too. Obfuscation,
whatever word or combination of words you like . It's fascistic crap. We the People didn't want
more war in Syria under Obama . Nothing has changed , next time it won't matter if 90% of calls
to Congressional offices are against a war. This is what Eisenhower said would happen back in
1958 though the entrenchment of the Military Industrial Financial Cyber Intelligence Complex.
exiled off mainstreet , March 16, 2017 at 10:26 am
Rather than being extolled and given mainstream platforms to exercise their baleful interests,
the Kagans should face some sort of legal accountability as professional war criminals.
Stiv , March 16, 2017 at 11:42 am
Jesus Christ. Yea yea yea. Same old same old. In searching for a sign of light after the elections,
the best I was able to do is " well at least Nuland won't be Secretary of State". But to go on
and on and on
Isn't there more important stuff going on? How about the "Hard diplomacy" Trumpistas are spouting
about?
It's been funny .in a sick way to see Trump and administration figures using the same language
as Parry and his hangers on. "McCarthyism", "Deep State" are used every other paragraph.
It's been noted a marked shift towards the Trump administration talking points in commentary
here at Consortium "news". Even the "fake news" debacle is furthered here.
And not in the right direction.
My question .When does the news start, Robert?
D5-5 , March 16, 2017 at 1:17 pm
You know it's possible you're so angry you're not really paying attention. It you think there's
been a "marked shift towards Trump administration talking points in commentary here" you're not
really reading what's here, just swiftly glancing and stamping your foot with irritation. Why
don't you provide a little news yourself instead of your same old same old bitching all the time?
So your grasp of what has "importance" is not aligned with CN and the thrust of its commentary.
I think you've made that clear on several ad nauseam occasions.
I should think that if this site was about reiterating Trump Administration talking points, we'd
have the "hard diplomacy" thing covered by now. If you are concerned about what Mr. Parry publishes,
submit articles on what you think is important. If you are concerned about the level or direction
of commentary here, contribute with something substantive.
LJ , March 16, 2017 at 10:18 pm
Well, the Trump team players even Donald himself need to defend themselves for their own reasons.
I think most commenters here are a little worried and rightly so for their own reasons, I personally
do not like the vilification of all things Russian and the obvious McCarthy like tactics that
have been going on calling for a witch hunt, a special prosecutor on the basis of unsubstantiated
allegations. Democrats aren't calling out for justice they want to geld Trump but Pense would
be even worse. Maybe it's time tobelieve in Democracy at some level.
John , March 16, 2017 at 12:06 pm
The Kagans are simply supplying a strategy to further a growing agenda ..The average USA citizen's
strategy is complacency and their agenda is simply to do nothing ..This is why the 1% rule over
the 99% ..
Tony Cartaluccu's article on The Deep State is excellent, thank you, Joe. The multipolar world
he speaks of, which Putin often refers to, is what the neocon imperialists such as the Kagans
don't want, but they're getting it, anyway. Since the days of the Iraq War, many great alternative
journalists, such as this website, have exposed and continue to expose the facts behind deep state
propaganda so these folks can't dominate as they used to. The USA doesn't look so good to a lot
of nations after the disasters created by the regime change proxy wars. Despite the badmouthing
of Putin and Russia in the US, many other countries aren't signing on to that attitude, from what
I've read. I have just read that China wants to help rebuild Syria, since Syria is an important
geographic route on their One Belt, One Road project. If the US can't recognize it can't remain
top dog forever and that it's a multipolar world, it might find itself isolated.
Dag , March 16, 2017 at 1:23 pm
The Kagans should be in prison for all the crimes they've enabled, all the lives they've destroyed.
Robert Parry & Glenn Greenwald are at the top of my short list of real-life, courageous, truth-telling
heroes but, for today, Kiza reigns supreme with her tour de force:"Between the Clinton liberals
and the Ziocons C'est une Affaire d'Amour Toujours, as Pepé Le Pew likes to say."
Massive props, Zika, for referencing Pepe, HRC, & neocons in a single sentence
Ted , March 16, 2017 at 2:00 pm
OK, I get it about the Kagans, but I still don't trust Putin.
So then, Ted, why don't you move to Russia so that you can do an objective evaluation of the
country and under Putin? Of course, Russian is not an easy language to learn! It's just reported on Global Research that Russia has absorbed 2.5 million Ukrainian refugees
since the US 2014 coup and Europe 900,000 more, according to a Kremlin parliamentarian in February.
Thanks to Victoria Nuland!
Ted , March 16, 2017 at 4:46 pm
Hmm that's a response I would expect at TheBlaze – knee-jerk and black-and-white.
Perhaps I should learn Russian. Are you offering to teach me, comrade?
J'hon Doe II , March 16, 2017 at 3:39 pm
UK/US is the Last Empire and Trump is an 'angel-of-death'.
Nothing good can or will from his spurious administration .
The PNAC psychopaths did their part in 911.
The conquer 7 Nations in 5 years for Israel has been delayed.
The MIC has Al qeada,ISIS. ..even Muslim Brotherhood, ..all over the place, to give the MIC years and years. ..even another decade or more war pleasuring.
Trump kicked huge gift to the Military. ..before the Ides of March arrived.
The Saudi/Qatar block have invested multi millions in regime change Assad.
The trained Mercs forces, logistics, weapons. posture against Iran, and the dream of Pipelines.
Erdogan the Mad Caliph is the receiver of the Terrorists from Saudi or Libya and other, the
reciever of the pipelines.
Israel will not give back the Golan .wants Hezbollah gone from near its Safe Zone.
Far too much money which MIC wants play with. ..and as Admiral Thomas Moorer commented,
" No American President can stand up to Israel "
US boots going back into Afghanistan, in Yemen, in Iraq, going into Syria, media bleating about US needs go back to Libya and fix that mess.
Trump is where on his supposed non intervention promises?
The John McCain and Deep State media rush against Russia with lies like WMD Iraq.
Is this Deja Vu
Ted, my comment was sarcastic because you did not back up your opinion with any facts. The
situation is getting very sticky with now Canada's Foreign Minister getting into the smearfest.
Freeland just pulled out the Crimean Tatars as being victims of Russian aggression, and I, knowing
nothing about the issue, had to start digging, which began with US articles supporting brutalization
by Russia, some from 2016. Digging out further are some articles that this is not the case, Tatars
supported going with Russia as Crimeans voted. All which supports that propaganda is rife, is
there a free press anymore, and the virulent fixation on Russia is out of control. And my position
is that some politicians are willing to take us to extinction to get their way, while we have
a planet with many problems we should be addressing.
"... If undertaken in earnest, the exercise will prove uncomfortable. The establishment centrists who oppose Trump worry, as they should, that he will violate the civil liberties of Muslim Americans, yet few spoke up when Michael Bloomberg presided over a secret program that profiled and spied on Muslim American students, sowing mistrust while generating zero counterterrorism leads. ..."
"... The establishment centrists who denounced Edward Snowden would have to admit that, if Trump is half as bad as they fear, Americans will be better served knowing the scope and capabilities of NSA surveillance than living in ignorance of it. Some will be forced to admit to themselves that they hope the military remains sprinkled with whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning to speak out against serious abuses. ..."
"... For 16 years or more, establishment centrists have been complicit in a historically reckless trend. Come 2017, it may place Donald Trump at a big table, much like the one on The Apprentice ..."
Wake up, establishment centrists: Donald Trump is coming!
After the Vietnam War and Watergate and the spying scandals uncovered by
the Church Committee and the Nixon Administration cronies who nearly firebombed
the Brookings Institution, Americans were briefly inclined to rein in executive
power-a rebuke to Richard Nixon's claim that "if the president does it, that
means it's not illegal." Powerful committees were created to oversee misconduct-prone
spy agencies. The War Powers Resolution revived a legislative check on warmaking.
"In 34 years," Vice President Dick Cheney would lament to ABC News in a January
2002 interview, "I have repeatedly seen an erosion of the powers and the ability
of the president of the United States to do his job. I feel an obligation...
to pass on our offices in better shape than we found them to our successors."
The Bush Administration aggressively moved to expand executive power, drawing
on the dubious legal maneuvering of David Addington, John Yoo, and their enablers.
Starting in 2005, the junior senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, would repeatedly
insist that Bush's assertions of executive power violated the Constitution.
Nonetheless, Obama inherited a newly powerful executive branch, just as Cheney
had hoped. And rather than dismantle it, Obama spent two terms lending the imprimatur
of centrist, establishment bipartisanship to Cheney's vision.
Now, Donald Trump is coming.
Civil libertarians have long warned the partisans who trusted Bush and Obama,
and the establishment centrists who couldn't imagine anyone in the White House
besides an Al Gore or John Kerry or John McCain or Mitt Romney, that they were
underestimating both the seriousness of civil liberties abuses under Bush and
Obama and the likelihood of even less responsible leaders wreaking havoc in
the White House.
Three years ago, in "
All the Infrastructure a Tyrant Would Need, Courtesy of Bush and Obama ,"
I warned that "more and more, we're counting on having angels in office and
making ourselves vulnerable to devils," and that come January, 2017, an unknown
person would enter the Oval Office and inherit all of these precedents:
The president can order American citizens killed, in secret, without
any judicial or legislative review, by declaring them terrorists posing
an imminent threat.
The president can detain prisoners indefinitely without charges or trial.
The president can start a torture program with impunity.
The president can conduct warrantless surveillance on tens of millions
of Americans and tap a database that allows metadata archived in 2007 to
be accessed in 2017.
The federal government can
collect and store DNA swabs of people who have been arrested even if
they are released and never convicted of any crime.
Now, Donald Trump is coming. And many establishment centrists are professing
alarm. There is nothing more establishment than Robert Kagan, a fellow at the
Brookings Institution, writing an op-ed in the Washington Post. He
begins by observing that if Trump wins, his coalition will include tens of millions
of Americans.
"Imagine the power he would wield then," Kagan
wrote . "In addition to all that comes from being the leader of a mass following,
he would also have the immense powers of the American presidency at his command:
the Justice Department, the FBI, the intelligence services, the military. Who
would dare to oppose him then? Certainly not a Republican Party that laid down
before him even when he was comparatively weak. And is a man like Trump, with
infinitely greater power in his hands, likely to become more humble, more judicious,
more generous, less vengeful than he is today, than he has been his whole life?
Does vast power un-corrupt?"
Kagan's article seemed well-received and widely shared among establishment
centrists.
Yet neither he nor most others who share his fears have yet acknowledged
their bygone failures of imagination, or granted that civil libertarians were
right: The establishment has permitted the American presidency to get dangerously
powerful.
While writing or sharing articles that compare Trump to Hitler, Mussolini,
and Franco, few if any have called on Obama or Congress to act now "
to tyrant-proof the White House ." However much they fear Trump, however
rhetorically maximalist they are in warning against his elevation, even the
prospect of him controlling the entire apparatus of the national security state
is not enough to cause them to rethink their reckless embrace of what Gene Healy
calls "
The Cult of the Presidency ," a centrist religion that persisted across
the Bush administration's torture chambers and the Obama administration's unlawful
War in Libya.
With a reality-TV bully is on the doorstep of the White House, still they
hesitate to urge reform to a branch of government they've long regarded as more
than co-equal.
They needn't wait for the Nixon-era abuses to replay themselves as farce
or worse to change course. Their inaction is irresponsible. Just as the conservative
movement is duty bound to grapple with its role in a populist demagogue seizing
control of the Republican Party, establishment centrists ought to grapple with
the implicit blessing they've given to the extraordinary powers Trump would
inherit, and that even the less-risky choice, Hillary Clinton, would likely
abuse.
If undertaken in earnest, the exercise will prove uncomfortable. The
establishment centrists who oppose Trump worry, as they should, that he will
violate the civil liberties of Muslim Americans, yet few spoke up when Michael
Bloomberg presided over a secret program that profiled and spied on Muslim American
students, sowing mistrust while generating zero counterterrorism leads.
The establishment centrists who denounced Edward Snowden would have to
admit that, if Trump is half as bad as they fear, Americans will be better served
knowing the scope and capabilities of NSA surveillance than living in ignorance
of it. Some will be forced to admit to themselves that they hope the military
remains sprinkled with whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning to speak out against
serious abuses.
For 16 years or more, establishment centrists have been complicit in a historically
reckless trend. Come 2017, it may place Donald Trump at a big table, much like
the one on The Apprentice , where he'll decide not which B-list celebrity
to fire, but which humans to kill. Establishment centrists could work to strip
the presidency of that power.
I think to the extent Israel elite interests are congruent with interests of the US neocons Clinton
is pro-Israel. If they stray, she can change. The key here are interests of global corporations and
neoliberal globalization. As such Israel is just a pawn in a big game.
Notable quotes:
"... So who is guilty of putting the interests of a foreign government ahead of those of the United States? I know there are advocates for any number of foreign states running around loose in Washington but the friends of Israel in government and the media come immediately to mind largely because there are so many of them, they are very much in-your-face and they are both extremely well-funded and very successful. Now deceased former Congressman Tom Lantos and Senator Frank Lautenberg were, respectively, often referred to as the congressman and senator from Israel. And there are many more: Chuck Schumer, Chuck Grassley, Ben Cardin, Bob Menendez, Tom Cotton, Mark Kirk, Nita Lowey, Ted Deutch, Brad Sherman, Ileana-Ros Lehtinen and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz to name only a few in the Congress. All are major recipients of Israel related PAC money and all are reliable defenders of Israel no matter what Benjamin Netanyahu does and no matter how it effects the United States. ..."
"... And then there are the Clintons. One only has to go back to Bill's one-sided pro-Israeli diplomacy at Camp David in 2000 to discern how the game was played. And then there was the widely condemned January 2001 last minute pardon of Mossad agent Marc Rich, whose wife Denise was a major contributor to the Clintons, to realize that there was always a deference to Israeli interests particularly when money was involved ..."
"... Trump's crime, per Morell, is that he is disloyal to the United States because he is not sufficiently hostile to the evil Vladimir Putin, which somehow means that he is being manipulated by the clever Russian. Trump has indeed called for a positive working relationship with Putin to accomplish, among other objectives, the crushing of ISIS. And he is otherwise in favor of leaving Bashar al-Assad of Syria alone while also being disinclined to get involved in any additional military interventions in the Middle East or elsewhere, which pretty much makes him the antithesis of the Clintonian foreign policy promoted by Morell. ..."
"... The leading individual foreign donor to the Clinton Foundation between 1999 and 2014 was Ukrainian Viktor Pinchuk, who "directed between $10 and $25 million" to its Global Initiative, has let the Clintons use his private jet, attended Bill's Hollywood 65 th birthday celebration and hosted daughter Chelsea and her husband on a trip to Ukraine. Pinchuk is a Jewish oligarch married to the daughter of notoriously corrupt former Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma. He is very closely tied to Israel, a supporter of regime change in his country, who was simultaneously donating money and also lobbying in Washington while Hillary was Secretary of State and promoting a similar agenda as part of her $5 billion program to "democratize" Ukraine. Clinton arranged a dozen meetings with substantive State Department officers for Pinchuk. ..."
"... Clinton supported Israel's actions in the 2014 Gaza War, which killed more than 500 children, describing them as an appropriate response to a situation that was provoked by Hamas. On the campaign trail recently husband Bill disingenuously defended Hillary's position on Gaza, saying that "Hamas is really smart. When they decide to rocket Israel they insinuate themselves in the hospitals, in the schools " placing all the blame for the large number of civilian casualties on the Palestinians, not on the Israelis. When the media began to report on the plight of the civilians trapped in Gaza Hillary dismissed the impending humanitarian catastrophe, saying "They're trapped by their leadership, unfortunately." ..."
"... Earlier, as a Senator from New York, Hillary supported Israel's building of the separation barrier on Palestinian land and cheer-led a crowd at a pro-Israel rally that praised Israel's 2006 devastation of Lebanon and Gaza. She nonsensically characterized and justified the bombing campaign as "efforts to send messages to Hamas, Hezbollah, to the Syrians, to the Iranians – to all who seek death and domination instead of life and freedom " More than nine hundred civilians died in the onslaught and when a vote came up subsequently in Congress to stop the supply of cluster bombs to countries that use them on civilians Hillary voted against the bill together with 69 other pro-Israel senators. ..."
"... Hillary enjoys a particularly close relationship with Netanyahu, writing in November , "I would also invite the Israeli prime minister to the White House in my first month in office." She has worked diligently to "reaffirm the unbreakable bond with Israel – and Benjamin Netanyahu." She has boasted of her being one of the promoters of annual increases in aid to Israel while she was in the Senate and Secretary of State and takes credit for repeatedly using America's Security Council veto to defend it in the United Nations. ..."
"... o you know how Prince Bandar was coaching G.W. Bush to circumvent the enmity of neocons towards his father? ..."
"... It looks very much like the US public is starting to mirror the Eastern European public under Communism by automatically disregarding government media + there's the added feature of the internet as a new kind of high-powered Samizdat, that clearly worries the Establishment. ..."
On August 5th, Michael Morell, a former acting Director of the CIA, pilloried GOP presidential
candidate Donald Trump, concluding that he was an "unwitting agent of Russia." Morell, who entitled
his New York Times
op-ed "I Ran the CIA and now I'm endorsing Hillary Clinton," described the process whereby Trump
had been so corrupted. According to Morell, Putin, it seems, as a wily ex-career intelligence officer,
is "trained to identify vulnerabilities in an individual and to exploit them. That is exactly what
he did early in the primaries. Mr. Putin played upon Mr. Trump's vulnerabilities In the intelligence
business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian
Federation."
I have previously
observed
how incomprehensible the designation of "unwitting agent" used in a sentence together with "recruited"
is, but perhaps I should add something more about Morell that might not be clear to the casual reader.
Morell was an Agency analyst, not a spy, who spent nearly his entire career in and around Washington.
The high point of his CIA experience consisted of briefing George W. Bush on the President's Daily
Brief (PDB).
Morell was not trained in the arduous CIA operational tradecraft course which agent recruiters
and handlers go through. This means that his understanding of intelligence operations and agents
is, to put it politely, derivative. If he had gone through the course he would understand that when
you recruit an agent you control him and tell him what to do. The agent might not know whom exactly
he is really answering to as in a false flag operation, but he cannot be unwitting.
Morell appears to have a tendency to make promises that others will have to deliver on, but perhaps
that's what delegation by senior U.S. government officials is all about. He was also not trained
in CIA paramilitary operations, which perhaps should be considered when he drops comments about the
desirability of "covertly" killing Russians and Iranians to make a point that they should not oppose
U.S. policies in Syria, as he did in a
softball interview with Charlie Rose on August 6th.
Morell appears to be oblivious to the possibility that going around assassinating foreigners might
be regarded as state sponsored terrorism and could well ignite World War 3. And, as is characteristic
of chickenhawks, it is highly unlikely that he was intending that either he or his immediate family
should go out and cut the throats or blow the heads off of those foreign devils who seek to derail
the Pax Americana. Nor would he expect to be in the firing line when the relatives of those victims
seek revenge. Someone else with the proper training would be found to do all that messy stuff and
take the consequences.
Be that as it may, Morell was a very senior officer and perhaps we should accept that he might
know something that the rest of us have missed, so let's just assume that he kind of misspoke and
give him a pass on the "recruited unwitting agent" expression. Instead let's look for other American
political figures who just might be either deliberately or inadvertently serving the interests of
a foreign government, which is presumably actually what Michael Morell meant to convey regarding
Trump. To be sure a well-run McCarthy-esque ferreting out of individuals who just might be disloyal
provides an excellent opportunity to undertake a purge of those who either by thought, word or deed
might be guilty of unacceptable levels of coziness with foreign interests.
So who is guilty of putting the interests of a foreign government ahead of those of the United
States? I know there are advocates for any number of foreign states running around loose in Washington
but the friends of Israel in government and the media come immediately to mind largely because there
are so many of them, they are very much in-your-face and they are both extremely well-funded and
very successful. Now deceased former Congressman Tom Lantos and Senator Frank Lautenberg were, respectively,
often referred to as the congressman and senator from Israel. And there are many more: Chuck Schumer,
Chuck Grassley, Ben Cardin, Bob Menendez, Tom Cotton, Mark Kirk, Nita Lowey, Ted Deutch, Brad Sherman,
Ileana-Ros Lehtinen and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz to name only a few in the Congress. All are
major recipients of Israel related PAC money and all are reliable defenders of Israel no matter
what Benjamin Netanyahu does and no matter how it effects the United States.
And then there are the Clintons. One only has to go back to Bill's
one-sided pro-Israeli
diplomacy at Camp David in 2000 to discern how the game was played. And then there was the widely
condemned January 2001 last minute
pardon of Mossad agent Marc Rich, whose wife Denise was a major contributor to the Clintons,
to realize that there was always a deference to Israeli interests particularly when money was involved.
The only problem is that the Clintons, relying on Morell's formulation, might more reasonably be
described as witting agents of Israel rather than unwitting as they have certainly known what they
have been doing and have been actively supporting Israeli policies even when damaging to U.S. interests
since they first emerged from the primordial political swamps in Arkansas. If one were completely
cynical it might be possible to suggest that they understood from the beginning that pandering to
Israel and gaining access to Jewish power and money would be a major component in their rise to political
prominence. It certainly has worked out that way.
Trump's crime, per Morell, is that he is disloyal to the United States because he is not sufficiently
hostile to the evil Vladimir Putin, which somehow means that he is being manipulated by the clever
Russian. Trump has indeed called for a positive working relationship with Putin to accomplish, among
other objectives, the crushing of ISIS. And he is otherwise in favor of leaving Bashar al-Assad of
Syria alone while also being disinclined to get involved in any additional military interventions
in the Middle East or elsewhere, which pretty much makes him the antithesis of the Clintonian foreign
policy promoted by Morell.
In comparison with the deeply and profoundly corrupt Clintons, Trump's alleged foreign policy
perfidy makes him appear to be pretty much a boy scout. To understand the Clintons one might consider
the hundreds of millions of dollars, much of it from foreign sources, that have flowed into the Clinton
Foundation while Hillary was Secretary of State. And there is the clear
email evidence that Hillary exploited her government position to favor both foreign and domestic
financial supporters.
The leading
individual foreign donor to the Clinton Foundation between 1999 and 2014 was Ukrainian Viktor
Pinchuk,
who "directed between $10 and $25 million" to its Global Initiative, has let the Clintons use
his private jet, attended Bill's Hollywood 65th birthday celebration and hosted daughter
Chelsea and her husband on a trip to Ukraine. Pinchuk is a Jewish oligarch married to the daughter
of notoriously corrupt former Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma. He is very closely tied to Israel,
a supporter of regime change in his country, who was simultaneously
donating money and also lobbying in Washington while Hillary was Secretary of State and promoting
a similar agenda as part of her $5 billion program to "democratize" Ukraine. Clinton arranged a dozen
meetings with substantive State Department officers for Pinchuk.
Hillary and Bill's predilection for all things Israeli and her promise to do even more in the
future is a matter of public record. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz asserted
that of all the political candidates in the primaries "Clinton had the longest public record of engagement
with Israel, and has spent decades diligently defending the Jewish state." In a speech to AIPAC in
March
she promised to take the "U.S.-Israel alliance to the next level." Hillary's current principal
financial supporter in her presidential run is Haim Saban, an Israeli who has described himself as
a "one issue" guy and that issue is Israel.
Hillary Clinton boasts of having "stood with Israel my entire career." Her website
promises to maintain "Israel's qualitative military edge to ensure the IDF is equipped to deter
and defeat aggression from the full spectrum of threats," "stand up against the boycott, divestment
and sanctions movement (BDS)," and "cut off efforts to unilaterally recognize Palestinian statehood
outside of the context of negotiations with Israel." In a letter to Haim Saban, Hillary
declared that "we need to make countering BDS a priority," which means she is prepared to support
laws limiting First Amendment rights in the U.S. in defense of perceived Israeli interests.
As part of the Obama Administration Hillary Clinton at first supported his attempts to pressure
Israel over its illegal settlements but has now backed off from that position, only rarely criticizing
them as a "problem" but never advocating any steps to persuade Netanyahu to reverse his policy. Notably,
she has repeatedly decried terroristic attacks on Israelis but has never acknowledged the brutality
of the Israeli occupation of much of the West Bank in spite of the fact that ten Palestinians are
killed for each Jewish victim of the ongoing violence.
Clinton supported Israel's actions in the 2014 Gaza War, which killed more than 500 children,
describing them as an appropriate response to a situation that was provoked by Hamas. On the campaign
trail recently husband Bill disingenuously
defended Hillary's position on Gaza, saying that "Hamas is really smart. When they decide to
rocket Israel they insinuate themselves in the hospitals, in the schools " placing all the blame
for the large number of civilian casualties on the Palestinians, not on the Israelis. When the media
began to report on the plight of the civilians trapped in Gaza Hillary dismissed the impending humanitarian
catastrophe, saying "They're trapped by their leadership, unfortunately."
Earlier, as a Senator from New York, Hillary supported Israel's building of the separation
barrier on Palestinian land and cheer-led a crowd at a pro-Israel rally that praised Israel's 2006
devastation of Lebanon and Gaza. She nonsensically
characterized and justified the bombing campaign as "efforts to send messages to Hamas, Hezbollah,
to the Syrians, to the Iranians – to all who seek death and domination instead of life and freedom "
More than nine hundred civilians died in the onslaught and when a vote came up subsequently in Congress
to stop the supply of cluster bombs to countries that use them on civilians Hillary voted against
the bill together with 69 other pro-Israel senators.
Hillary enjoys a particularly close relationship with Netanyahu,
writing in November, "I would also invite the Israeli prime minister to the White House in my
first month in office." She has worked diligently to "reaffirm the unbreakable bond with Israel –
and Benjamin Netanyahu." She has boasted of her being one of the promoters of annual increases in
aid to Israel while she was in the Senate and Secretary of State and takes credit for repeatedly
using America's Security Council veto to defend it in the United Nations.
So I think it is pretty clear who is the presidential candidate promoting the interests of a foreign
country and it ain't Trump. Hillary would no doubt argue that Israel is a friend and Russia is not,
an interesting point of view as Israel is not in fact an ally and has spied on us and copied our
military technology
to re-export to countries like China. Indeed, the most damaging spy in U.S. history Jonathan
Pollard worked for Israel. In spite of all that Israel continues to tap our treasury for billions
of dollars a year while still ignoring Washington when requests are made to moderate policies that
damage American interests. Against that, what exactly has Moscow done to harm us since the Cold War
ended? And who is advocating even more pressure on Russia and increasing the rewards for Israel,
presumably in the completely illogical belief that to do so will somehow bring some benefit to the
American people? Hillary Clinton.
utu, August 23, 2016 at 4:29 am GMT • 100 Words
Find the true reason why G.H. Bush was not allowed to get the 2nd term. Do you remember his
attempt to reign in Yitzhak Shamir when GHB was riding high popularity wave after the Desert Storm?
Do you remember anti-Bush Safire and Friedman columns in NYT week after week? Why Ross Perrot
was called in? Don't you see similarity with Teddy Rosevelt's run to prevent Taft's reelection
and securing Wilson's win? Do you know how Prince Bandar was coaching G.W. Bush to circumvent
the enmity of neocons towards his father? Answer these questions and you will know for whom
Bill Clinton worked. One more thing, Clinton did not touch Palestinian issue until last several
months of his presidency. He did not make G.H. Bush's mistake.
Miro23, August 23, 2016 at 5:45 am GMT • 100 Words
This a straightforward factual article about the Clinton sellout to Israel. So the question
may come down to the effectiveness of MSM propaganda.
It looks very much like the US public is starting to mirror the Eastern European public
under Communism by automatically disregarding government media + there's the added feature of
the internet as a new kind of high-powered Samizdat, that clearly worries the Establishment.
If the script follows through, then there's a good likelihood that the Establishment and their
façade players (Clintons, Bush, Romney, McCain etc) are reaching the end of the line, since like
in E.Europe, there's a background problem of economic failure and extreme élite/public inequality
that can no longer be hidden.
Philip Giraldi, August 23, 2016 at 10:32 am GMT • 100 Words
@hbm
hbm – the FBI concluded that someone working in the White House was MEGA but they decided that
they did not necessarily have enough evidence to convince a jury. He is still around and appears
in the media. As I would prefer not to get sued I will not name him but he is not a Clinton (though
he worked for them as well as for the two Bushes).
"... PNAC members, and signees to its policy documents, include: Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wofowitz, Jeb Bush, Richard Perle, John Bolton, Scooter Libby, Elliot Abrams, Richard Armitage, William Bennet, William Kristol, and Zalmy Khalilzad - men with their hands deep in the private defense, oil, and multi-national corporate industries poised to make vast sums of money and secure huge tracts of power and influence if PNAC policy evolved into U.S. Government policy. Nine months after they rose to power, and assumed central positions of leadership up and down the spectrum of military, civilian, domestic, and international agencies, they got their 'New Pearl Harbor'. And PNAC policy essentially evolved into the Bush Administration's official agenda. While this alarmingly convenient coincidence does not prove anything in and of itself, it does establish motive. And it certainly would raise the eyebrows of concern from any serious investigator looking into the facts of September 11. ..."
"... In an interview with journalist Alex Jones , Hilton reports that, under the supervision of Strauss, his senior thesis detailed a plan to establish a Presidential Dictatorship using a fabricated 'Pearl Harbor-like incident' as justification. He further states that he, Perle, Wolfowitz, and other students of Strauss discussed an array of different plots and incidents 'like September 11th' and 'flying airplanes into buildings way back in the 60s'. ..."
In the summer of 2000, the
Project
for the New American Century (PNAC), a neo-conservative think tank riddled with soon to be Bush
administration officials and advisors, issued a document calling for the radical restructuring of
U.S. government and military policies. It advocated the massive expansion of defense spending, the
re-invasion of Iraq, the military and economic securing of Afghanistan and Central Asia, increased
centralized power and funds for the CIA, FBI, and NSA, among a slew of other policies that would,
in the near future, be enacted upon their ascension to power. In the same document, they cite a potential
problem with their plan. Referring to the goals of transforming the U.S. and global power structure,
the paper states that because of the American Public's slant toward ideas of democracy and freedom,
"this process of transformation is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing
event - like a new Pearl Harbor." (ibid.)
PNAC members, and signees to its policy documents,
include: Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wofowitz, Jeb Bush, Richard Perle, John Bolton, Scooter
Libby, Elliot Abrams, Richard Armitage, William Bennet, William Kristol, and Zalmy Khalilzad - men
with their hands deep in the private defense, oil, and multi-national corporate industries poised
to make vast sums of money and secure huge tracts of power and influence if PNAC policy evolved into
U.S. Government policy. Nine months after they rose to power, and assumed central positions of leadership
up and down the spectrum of military, civilian, domestic, and international agencies, they got their
'New Pearl Harbor'. And PNAC policy essentially evolved into the Bush Administration's official agenda.
While this alarmingly convenient coincidence does not prove anything in and of itself, it does establish
motive. And it certainly would raise the eyebrows of concern from any serious investigator looking
into the facts of September 11.
Another alarming coincidence surrounding PNAC and September 11 has been revealed by attorney Stanley
Hilton. Hilton, a graduate of Harvard Law School and former senior advisor and lead counsel for Bob
Dole, attended the University of Chicago as an undergraduate in the 1960s. He studied under the infamous
Leo Strauss, considered by
many the father of neo-conservatism. Fellow students and acquaintances of Hilton's at the time included
Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle. In an interview with journalist
Alex Jones,
Hilton reports that, under the supervision of Strauss, his senior thesis detailed a plan to establish
a Presidential Dictatorship using a fabricated 'Pearl Harbor-like incident' as justification. He
further states that he, Perle, Wolfowitz, and other students of Strauss discussed an array of different
plots and incidents 'like September 11th' and 'flying airplanes into buildings way back in the 60s'.
In light of these revelations, it is no surprise that Hilton has been trying to blow the whistle
on government involvement in 9/11 for years. He has also filed a lawsuit against the government on
behalf of a number of victims' families. As a result of his actions, Hilton has been harassed, threatened,
burgled, and hounded repeatedly by the authorities.
"... If Donald Trump, as seems more than likely, prevails in the GOP primary, then a number of neocons may defect to the Clinton campaign. Already Robert Kagan announced in the Washington Post ..."
"... The impulse of the neocons to return to the Democratic Party should not be wholly surprising. In 1972, for example, Robert L. Bartley, the editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... For its part, neoconservatism has always had a nationalistic streak. But Trump represents everything that the neocons believed that they had purged from the GOP. He represents continuity with the Buchananite wing, the belief that America should tend to its own knitting before launching hopeless wars abroad. When it comes to foreign policy, however, the second generation of neocons such as Kagan does not trace its lineage back to Ohio Senator Robert Taft but to the one that Republicans in the early 1950s reviled: the Truman administration. ..."
Anyone looking for further converts to the Hillary Clinton campaign might do well to look at the
Marco Rubio campaign. If Clinton is the leading liberal hawk, Rubio is the foremost neocon candidate.
In 2014 National Review published an article about him titled "The
neocons return."
Whether it's Cuba or Iran or Russia, he stakes out the most
intransigent line: "I disagree with voices in my own party who argue we should not engage at
all, who warn we should heed the words of John Quincy Adams not to go 'abroad, in search of monsters
to destroy.'" Not surprisingly, he's surrounded himself with neocon advisers, ranging from Max Boot
to Jamie Fly to Elliott Abrams.
If Donald Trump, as seems more than likely, prevails in the GOP primary, then a number of
neocons may defect to the Clinton campaign. Already
Robert Kagan announced in the Washington Post on Thursday that he intends to back Hillary
Clinton if Donald Trump receives the GOP nomination. The fact is that the loyalty of the neocons
has always been to an ideology of American exceptionalism, not to a particular party.
This is what separates the neocon conversion to Clinton from previous examples of Republicans
endorsing Barack Obama. Colin Powell wasn't making an ideological statement. He was making a practical
one, based on his distaste for where the GOP was headed. For the neocons this is a much more heartfelt
moment. They have invested decades in trying to reshape the GOP into their own image, and were quite
successful at it. But now a formidable challenge is taking place as the GOP reverts to its traditional
heritage.
The impulse of the neocons to return to the Democratic Party should not be wholly surprising.
In 1972, for example, Robert L. Bartley, the editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal,
wrote that the fledgling neoconservatives represented "something of a swing group between the two
major parties." He was right. The neoconservatives had their home in the Democratic Party in the
1960s. Then they marched rightward, in reaction to the rise of the adversary culture inside the Democratic
Party. George McGovern's run for the presidency in 1972, followed by the Jimmy Carter presidency,
sent them into the arms of Ronald Reagan and the GOP.
But it wasn't until the George W. Bush presidency that the neocons became the dominant foreign
policy force inside the GOP. They promptly proceeded to wreck his presidency by championing the war
in Iraq. Today, having wrecked it, they are now threatening to bolt the GOP and support Hillary Clinton
rather than Donald Trump for the presidency.
Something like this scenario is
what I predicted in the New York Times in July 2014. Trump wasn't around then as a force
inside the GOP. But already it seemed clear that some of the leading neocons such as Kagan were receptive
to Clinton. Now, in a Washington Post column, Kagan has gone all in.
He decries Republican obstructionism, antipathy to Obama, and the rise of Trump. The tone is apocalyptic.
According to
Kagan,
"So what to do now? The Republicans' creation will soon be let loose on the land, leaving to
others the job the party failed to carry out. For this former Republican, and perhaps for others,
the only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton. The party cannot be saved, but the country
still can be."
This itself represents a curious case of neocon hyperbole. Kagan is an eloquent writer, but he
elides the fact that many of Trump's positions are not all that different from what the GOP has espoused
in the past when it comes to domestic issues. It is on foreign affairs where Trump represents a marked
shift and it is this that truly troubles the neocon wing.
Trump has made it clear that he's dubious about foreign interventions. He's indicated that he
would treat with Russian president Vladimir Putin. His entire foreign policy credo, such as it is,
seems to have a
Jacksonian pedigree-don't tread on me.
For its part, neoconservatism has always had a nationalistic streak. But Trump represents
everything that the neocons believed that they had purged from the GOP. He represents continuity
with the Buchananite wing, the belief that America should tend to its own knitting before launching
hopeless wars abroad. When it comes to foreign policy, however, the second generation of neocons
such as Kagan does not trace its lineage back to Ohio Senator Robert Taft but to the one that Republicans
in the early 1950s reviled: the Truman administration.
Here we come full circle. The origins of the neocons are in the Democratic Party. Should Clinton
become the Democratic nominee and Trump the Republican one, a number of neocons may make common cause
with Clinton. Watch Rubio's ranks first.
Jacob Heilbrunn is editor of the National Interest.
"... Prominent neocon Robert Kagan has endorsed Democrat Hillary Clinton for president, saying she represents the best hope for saving the United States from populist billionaire Donald Trump, who has repudiated the neoconservative cause of U.S. military interventions in line with Israel's interests. ..."
"... Then referring to himself, he added, "For this former Republican, and perhaps for others, the only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton. The [Republican] party cannot be saved, but the country still can be." ..."
"... Kagan, who I've known since the 1980s when he was a rising star on Ronald Reagan's State Department propaganda team (selling violent right-wing policies in Central America), has been signaling his affection for Clinton for some time, at least since she appointed him as an adviser to her State Department and promoted his wife Victoria Nuland, a former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, to be the State Department's chief spokesperson. Largely because of Clinton's patronage, Nuland rose to assistant secretary of state for European affairs and oversaw the provocative "regime change" in Ukraine in 2014. ..."
"... "I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy. If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue it's something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else." ..."
"... Now, Kagan, whose Project for the New American Century wrote the blueprint for George W. Bush's disastrous Iraq War, is now abandoning the Republican Party in favor of Hillary Clinton. ..."
"... While Kagan's op-ed surely makes some accurate points about Republicans, his endorsement of Hillary Clinton raises a different issue for Democrats: Do they want a presidential candidate who someone as savvy as Kagan knows will perpetuate neocon strategies around the world? Do Democrats really trust Hillary Clinton to handle delicate issues, such as the Syrian conflict, without resorting to escalations that may make the neocon disasters under George W. Bush look minor by comparison? ..."
"... Perhaps Robert Kagan's endorsement of Hillary Clinton and what that underscores about the likely foreign policy of a second Clinton presidency might finally force war or peace to the fore of the campaign. ..."
Exclusive: Hillary Clinton's cozy ties to Washington's powerful neocons
have paid off with the endorsement of Robert Kagan, one of the most influential neocons. But it also
should raise questions among Democrats about what kind of foreign policy a President Hillary Clinton
would pursue, writes Robert Parry.
Prominent neocon Robert Kagan has endorsed Democrat Hillary Clinton for president, saying
she represents the best hope for saving the United States from populist billionaire Donald Trump,
who has repudiated the neoconservative cause of U.S. military interventions in line with Israel's
interests.
In a Washington Post
op-ed published on Thursday, Kagan excoriated the Republican Party for creating the conditions
for Trump's rise and then asked, "So what to do now? The Republicans' creation will soon be let loose
on the land, leaving to others the job the party failed to carry out."
Then referring to himself, he added, "For this former Republican, and perhaps for others,
the only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton. The [Republican] party cannot be saved, but
the country still can be."
While many of Kagan's observations about the Republican tolerance and even encouragement of bigotry
are correct, the fact that a leading neocon, a co-founder of the infamous Project for the New American
Century, has endorsed Clinton raises questions for Democrats who have so far given the former New
York senator and Secretary of State mostly a pass on her pro-interventionist policies.
The fact is that Clinton has generally marched in lock step with the neocons as they have implemented
an aggressive "regime change" strategy against governments and political movements that don't toe
Washington's line or that deviate from Israel's goals in the Middle East. So she has backed coups,
such as in Honduras (2009) and Ukraine (2014); invasions, such as Iraq (2003) and Libya (2011); and
subversions such as Syria (from 2011 to the present) all with various degrees of disastrous results.
Yet, with the failure of Republican establishment candidates to gain political traction against
Trump, Clinton has clearly become the choice of many neoconservatives and "liberal interventionists"
who favor continuation of U.S. imperial designs around the world. The question for Democrats now
is whether they wish to perpetuate those war-like policies by sticking with Clinton or should switch
to Sen. Bernie Sanders, who offers a somewhat less aggressive (though vaguely defined) foreign policy.
Sanders has undermined his appeal to anti-imperialist Democrats by muting his criticism of Clinton's
"regime change" strategies and concentrating relentlessly on his message of "income inequality" for
which Clinton has disingenuously dubbed him a "single-issue candidate." Whether Sanders has the will
and the time to reorient his campaign to question Clinton's status as the new neocon choice remains
in doubt.
A Reagan Propagandist
Kagan, who I've known since the 1980s when he was a rising star on Ronald Reagan's State Department
propaganda team (selling violent right-wing policies in Central America), has been signaling his
affection for Clinton for some time, at least since she appointed him as an adviser to her State
Department and promoted his wife Victoria Nuland, a former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney,
to be the State Department's chief spokesperson. Largely because of Clinton's patronage, Nuland rose
to assistant secretary of state for European affairs and oversaw the provocative
"regime change" in Ukraine in 2014.
Later in 2014, Kagan told The New York Times that he hoped that his neocon views which he had
begun to call "liberal interventionist" would prevail in a possible Hillary Clinton administration.
The Times reported that Clinton "remains the vessel into which many interventionists are pouring
their hopes" and quoted Kagan as saying:
"I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy. If she pursues a policy which we think she
will pursue it's something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not
going to call it that; they are going to call it something else."
Now, Kagan, whose Project for the New American Century wrote the blueprint for George W. Bush's
disastrous Iraq War, is now abandoning the Republican Party in favor of Hillary Clinton.
... ... ...
While Kagan's op-ed surely makes some accurate points about Republicans, his endorsement of
Hillary Clinton raises a different issue for Democrats: Do they want a presidential candidate who
someone as savvy as Kagan knows will perpetuate neocon strategies around the world? Do Democrats
really trust Hillary Clinton to handle delicate issues, such as the Syrian conflict, without resorting
to escalations that may make the neocon disasters under George W. Bush look minor by comparison?
Will Clinton even follow the latest neocon dream of "regime change" in Moscow as the ultimate
way of collapsing Israel's lesser obstacles - Iran, Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Palestinian
resistance? Does Clinton have the wisdom to understand that neocon schemes are often half-baked (remember
"the cakewalk" in Iraq) and that the risk of overthrowing Vladimir Putin in Moscow might lead not
to some new pliable version of Boris Yeltsin but to a dangerous Russian nationalist ready to use
the nuclear codes to defend Mother Russia? (For all Putin's faults, he is a calculating adversary,
not a crazy one.)
The fact that none of these life-and-death foreign policy questions has been thoroughly or intelligently
explored during the Democratic presidential campaign is a failure of both the mainstream media moderators
and the two candidates, Sanders and Clinton, neither of whom seems to want a serious or meaningful
debate about these existential issues.
Perhaps Robert Kagan's endorsement of Hillary Clinton and what that underscores about the
likely foreign policy of a second Clinton presidency might finally force war or peace to the fore
of the campaign.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated
Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America's Stolen Narrative,
either in
print here or as an e-book (from
Amazon and
barnesandnoble.com).
"... Prominent neocon Robert Kagan has endorsed Democrat Hillary Clinton for president, saying she represents the best hope for saving the United States from populist billionaire Donald Trump, who has repudiated the neoconservative cause of U.S. military interventions in line with Israel's interests. ..."
"... Then referring to himself, he added, "For this former Republican, and perhaps for others, the only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton. The [Republican] party cannot be saved, but the country still can be." ..."
"... Kagan, who I've known since the 1980s when he was a rising star on Ronald Reagan's State Department propaganda team (selling violent right-wing policies in Central America), has been signaling his affection for Clinton for some time, at least since she appointed him as an adviser to her State Department and promoted his wife Victoria Nuland, a former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, to be the State Department's chief spokesperson. Largely because of Clinton's patronage, Nuland rose to assistant secretary of state for European affairs and oversaw the provocative "regime change" in Ukraine in 2014. ..."
"... "I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy. If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue it's something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else." ..."
"... Now, Kagan, whose Project for the New American Century wrote the blueprint for George W. Bush's disastrous Iraq War, is now abandoning the Republican Party in favor of Hillary Clinton. ..."
"... While Kagan's op-ed surely makes some accurate points about Republicans, his endorsement of Hillary Clinton raises a different issue for Democrats: Do they want a presidential candidate who someone as savvy as Kagan knows will perpetuate neocon strategies around the world? Do Democrats really trust Hillary Clinton to handle delicate issues, such as the Syrian conflict, without resorting to escalations that may make the neocon disasters under George W. Bush look minor by comparison? ..."
"... Perhaps Robert Kagan's endorsement of Hillary Clinton and what that underscores about the likely foreign policy of a second Clinton presidency might finally force war or peace to the fore of the campaign. ..."
Exclusive: Hillary Clinton's cozy ties to Washington's powerful neocons
have paid off with the endorsement of Robert Kagan, one of the most influential neocons. But it also
should raise questions among Democrats about what kind of foreign policy a President Hillary Clinton
would pursue, writes Robert Parry.
Prominent neocon Robert Kagan has endorsed Democrat Hillary Clinton for president, saying
she represents the best hope for saving the United States from populist billionaire Donald Trump,
who has repudiated the neoconservative cause of U.S. military interventions in line with Israel's
interests.
In a Washington Post
op-ed published on Thursday, Kagan excoriated the Republican Party for creating the conditions
for Trump's rise and then asked, "So what to do now? The Republicans' creation will soon be let loose
on the land, leaving to others the job the party failed to carry out."
Then referring to himself, he added, "For this former Republican, and perhaps for others,
the only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton. The [Republican] party cannot be saved, but
the country still can be."
While many of Kagan's observations about the Republican tolerance and even encouragement of bigotry
are correct, the fact that a leading neocon, a co-founder of the infamous Project for the New American
Century, has endorsed Clinton raises questions for Democrats who have so far given the former New
York senator and Secretary of State mostly a pass on her pro-interventionist policies.
The fact is that Clinton has generally marched in lock step with the neocons as they have implemented
an aggressive "regime change" strategy against governments and political movements that don't toe
Washington's line or that deviate from Israel's goals in the Middle East. So she has backed coups,
such as in Honduras (2009) and Ukraine (2014); invasions, such as Iraq (2003) and Libya (2011); and
subversions such as Syria (from 2011 to the present) all with various degrees of disastrous results.
Yet, with the failure of Republican establishment candidates to gain political traction against
Trump, Clinton has clearly become the choice of many neoconservatives and "liberal interventionists"
who favor continuation of U.S. imperial designs around the world. The question for Democrats now
is whether they wish to perpetuate those war-like policies by sticking with Clinton or should switch
to Sen. Bernie Sanders, who offers a somewhat less aggressive (though vaguely defined) foreign policy.
Sanders has undermined his appeal to anti-imperialist Democrats by muting his criticism of Clinton's
"regime change" strategies and concentrating relentlessly on his message of "income inequality" for
which Clinton has disingenuously dubbed him a "single-issue candidate." Whether Sanders has the will
and the time to reorient his campaign to question Clinton's status as the new neocon choice remains
in doubt.
A Reagan Propagandist
Kagan, who I've known since the 1980s when he was a rising star on Ronald Reagan's State Department
propaganda team (selling violent right-wing policies in Central America), has been signaling his
affection for Clinton for some time, at least since she appointed him as an adviser to her State
Department and promoted his wife Victoria Nuland, a former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney,
to be the State Department's chief spokesperson. Largely because of Clinton's patronage, Nuland rose
to assistant secretary of state for European affairs and oversaw the provocative
"regime change" in Ukraine in 2014.
Later in 2014, Kagan told The New York Times that he hoped that his neocon views which he had
begun to call "liberal interventionist" would prevail in a possible Hillary Clinton administration.
The Times reported that Clinton "remains the vessel into which many interventionists are pouring
their hopes" and quoted Kagan as saying:
"I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy. If she pursues a policy which we think she
will pursue it's something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not
going to call it that; they are going to call it something else."
Now, Kagan, whose Project for the New American Century wrote the blueprint for George W. Bush's
disastrous Iraq War, is now abandoning the Republican Party in favor of Hillary Clinton.
... ... ...
While Kagan's op-ed surely makes some accurate points about Republicans, his endorsement of
Hillary Clinton raises a different issue for Democrats: Do they want a presidential candidate who
someone as savvy as Kagan knows will perpetuate neocon strategies around the world? Do Democrats
really trust Hillary Clinton to handle delicate issues, such as the Syrian conflict, without resorting
to escalations that may make the neocon disasters under George W. Bush look minor by comparison?
Will Clinton even follow the latest neocon dream of "regime change" in Moscow as the ultimate
way of collapsing Israel's lesser obstacles - Iran, Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Palestinian
resistance? Does Clinton have the wisdom to understand that neocon schemes are often half-baked (remember
"the cakewalk" in Iraq) and that the risk of overthrowing Vladimir Putin in Moscow might lead not
to some new pliable version of Boris Yeltsin but to a dangerous Russian nationalist ready to use
the nuclear codes to defend Mother Russia? (For all Putin's faults, he is a calculating adversary,
not a crazy one.)
The fact that none of these life-and-death foreign policy questions has been thoroughly or intelligently
explored during the Democratic presidential campaign is a failure of both the mainstream media moderators
and the two candidates, Sanders and Clinton, neither of whom seems to want a serious or meaningful
debate about these existential issues.
Perhaps Robert Kagan's endorsement of Hillary Clinton and what that underscores about the
likely foreign policy of a second Clinton presidency might finally force war or peace to the fore
of the campaign.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated
Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America's Stolen Narrative,
either in
print here or as an e-book (from
Amazon and
barnesandnoble.com).
Please note: IPS Right Web neither represents nor endorses any of the individuals
or groups profiled on this site.
Robert Kagan is a neoconservative writer and historian based at the Brookings Institution. A longtime
proponent of an aggressive, interventionist U.S. foreign policy, Kagan has played an influential
role in shaping the neoconservative agenda for more than two decades.
Kagan was a cofounder of
the
Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a now defunct pressure group that helped build Beltway
support for the U.S. invasion of Iraq throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. In the early years of
the Obama administration, he reprised this role as a cofounder of the
Foreign
Policy Initiative, a PNAC successor group.
Despite Kagan's GOP bona fides, during the 2016 presidential primaries he described himself as
a "former Republican" because of his disappointment over the party's 2016 presidential candidates.
In an op-ed for the Washington Post, Kagan expressed particular concern about the rise of
Donald Trump, whom
he called "the most successful demagogue-charlatan in the history of U.S. politics." Blaming the
Republican Party for the creation of Trump and the emergence of other disastrous candidates like
Sen. Ted Cruz, Kagan
wrote in the Post, "For this former Republican, and perhaps for others, the only choice
will be to vote for Hillary Clinton. The party cannot be saved, but the country still can be."[1]
In 2014, Kagan foreshadowed his endorsement of Hillary Clinton during an interview with the New
York Times. "I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy," he said. "If she pursues a policy which
we think she will pursue, it's something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters
are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else."[2]
Kagan has also maintained a number of bipartisan affiliations. He has visited the Obama White
House, for example, and helped establish a bipartisan civilian advisory board for Democratic Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton.[3]
According to one report, "Kagan has also been careful to avoid landing at standard-issue neocon think
tanks like the
American Enterprise Institute" and has "insisted on maintaining the link between modern neoconservatism
and its roots in muscular Cold War liberalism." Kagan has even shied away from the "neoconservative"
label, saying he prefers to be described as a "liberal interventionist."[4]
U.S. Intervention and the "Global Order"
A key theme in Kagan's work concerns the maintenance of the "liberal world order," which as he
perceives it amounts to a U.S.-enforced international state system. "In my view, the willingness
of the United States to use force and to threaten to use force to defend its interests and the liberal
world order has been an essential and unavoidable part of sustaining that world order since the end
of World War II," he wrote in a 2014 column for the Washington Post.[5]
Kagan spelled out this view in a long 2014 essay for The New Republic. Entitled "Superpowers
Don't Get to Retire," the piece argued that active, forceful U.S. intervention in the affairs of
other countries had reshaped the international system for the better. "In the twenty-first century,
no less than in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, force remains the ultima ratio,"
he claimed. "If there has been less aggression, less ethnic cleansing, less territorial conquest
over the past 70 years, it is because the United States and its allies have both punished and deterred
aggression, have intervened, sometimes, to prevent ethnic cleansing, and have gone to war to reverse
territorial conquest."[6]
Kagan warned darkly that if the United States didn't enforce its will on the international system,
other powers would. "When Vladimir Putin failed to achieve his goals in Ukraine through political
and economic means, he turned to force, because he believed that he could," Kagan wrote. He added:
"What might China do were it not hemmed in by a ring of powerful nations backed by the United States?
For that matter, what would Japan do if it were much more powerful and much less dependent on the
United States for its security? We have not had to find out the answers to these questions, not yet,
because American predominance, the American alliance system, and the economic, political, and institutional
aspects of the present order, all ultimately dependent on power, have mostly kept the lid closed
on this Pandora's box."
Lamenting public war weariness and the Obama administration's reluctance to intervene in Syria
and Ukraine, among other venues, Kagan warned that "there is no democratic superpower waiting in
the wings to save the world if this democratic superpower falters."[7]
Some liberal hawks and neoconservatives hailed the piece as a rejoinder to the prevailing public
skepticism in the United States about the use of force overseas. According to the New York Times,
it "struck such a nerve in the White House that many in the foreign policy establishment considered
part of Mr. Obama's speech [in June 2014] at West Point outlining a narrower vision for American
force in world affairs to be a rebuttal, and the president even invited Mr. Kagan to lunch to compare
world views."[8]
However, Kagan's critics argued that he had badly exaggerated the role of the United States in
shaping world events throughout the post-World War II period and glossed over many of Washington's
more morally dubious policies. Calling Kagan a "polemicist and an ideologue," Andrew Bacevich argued
that the piece's central assertions about the benevolence of U.S. foreign policy failed to stand
up "to even casual scrutiny." Among other things, Bacevich said Kagan had overlooked Washington's
steadfast support for violent, anti-democratic forces in its own sphere of influence, as well as
neglected to seriously consider the fallout from catastrophic interventions in Vietnam, Iraq, and
Afghanistan. "If Americans appear disinclined to have a go at overthrowing Syria's Assad or at restoring
the Crimea to Ukrainian control, it's due to their common-sense assessment of what U.S. policy in
very recent years has produced," Bacevich concluded. "On this subject, astonishingly, Kagan has almost
nothing to say."[9]
Writing for the realist National Interest,
Jacob Heilbrunn observed that Kagan's 2014 ode to American superpower "is not a novel thesis. Rather,
it is Kagan's latest variation on a theme that he has consistently sounded on behalf of American
global activism" since at least the 1990s. "Superpowers don't retire," Heilbrunn quipped, "but Robert
Kagan should."[10]
Kagan followed on the New Republic essay with a September 2014 Wall Street Journal op-ed
titled "America's Dangerous Aversion to Conflict," which bemoaned the "yearning for an escape from
the burdens of power and a reprieve from the tragic realities of human existence." He compared the
current world order to pre-World War II Europe, writing: "As we head deeper into our version of the
1930s, we may be quite shocked, just as our forebears were, at how quickly things fall apart."[11]
In response, John Heilbrunn of the National Interest wrote: "The military solution that
Kagan appears to endorse, first and foremost, is hardly the best ambassador for freedom and democracy.
Quite the contrary. … Maybe Kagan should have more confidence in America and its values. For all
his disdain for declinism, Kagan, in blaming America first, comes dangerously close to submitting
to it himself."[12]
Hawkish Track Record
Kagan hails from a well established neoconservative family. He is the son of the conservative
classicist Donald
Kagan and the brother of
Frederick Kagan,
a scholar at the
American Enterprise Institute who helped promote the U.S. "troop surge" in Iraq. His spouse is
Victoria Nuland, a veteran diplomat and former deputy national security adviser to
Dick Cheney
who is often credited as an editor of Kagan's work.[13]
Kagan launched his career in the early 1980s as a foreign policy adviser to Rep.
Jack Kemp (R-NY),
a future vice presidential candidate who was closely associated with the hawkish wing of the Republican
Party. Then, after a stint on the State Department's Policy Planning Staff, Kagan was appointed by
Elliott Abrams
in 1985 to head the Office of Public Diplomacy, which was created to push for U.S. support of the
anti-communist "Contra" rebels in Nicaragua. (In his 1996 book A Twilight Struggle, which
was touted as the "definitive history" of the U.S. anti-Sandinista campaign, Kagan neglected to mention
Abrams' subsequent criminal conviction for lying to Congress about the Reagan administration's support
for the Contras).[14]
Kagan served in the State Department until 1988, leaving the government to become a public scholar.
In 1997, in a bid to press the Clinton administration to pursue a "Reaganite" foreign policy,
Kagan and veteran neoconservative activist
William Kristol
cofounded the
Project for the New American Century (PNAC). Among other hawkish policies, the group played a
key role in building elite support for a U.S. invasion of Iraq, issuing an open letter after the
9/11 attacks arguing that the United States should respond by invading Iraq "even if evidence does
not link Iraq directly to the attack."[15]
Resistance to the movement for war in Iraq from Europe and elsewhere spurred Kagan, who was then
based at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, to sharpen his theses on U.S. interventionism.
In a 2002 article for Policy Review that became the basis for his book Of Paradise and
Power: America and Europe in the New World Order (2003), Kagan argued, "On the all-important
question of power-the efficacy of power, the morality of power, the desirability of power-American
and European perspectives are diverging. Europe is turning away from power, or to put it a little
differently, it is moving beyond power into a self-contained world of laws and rules and transnational
negotiation and cooperation. It is entering a post-historical paradise of peace and relative prosperity,
the realization of Kant's 'Perpetual Peace.' The United States, meanwhile, remains mired in history,
exercising power in the anarchic Hobbesian world where international laws and rules are unreliable
and where true security and the defense and promotion of a liberal order still depend on the possession
and use of military might."[16]
Of Paradise and Power was widely panned for its support of U.S. unilateralism. Reviewing
the book, leftist historian Howard Zinn wrote that "it is part of the corruption of contemporary
language that an analysis of American foreign policy by a senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace should argue for the right of the United States to use military force, regardless
of international law, and international opinion, whenever it unilaterally decides its 'national interest'
requires it." Zinn opined that Kagan's book supplies "intellectual justification, superficial as
it is, for the bullying and violence of United States foreign policy."[17]
Kagan maintained his support for the Iraq War even after many of his assertions about the conflict-including
that it would come to an early close and that the Bush administration's claims about WMDs in the
country would be vindicated-proved wildly inaccurate.[18]
Instead of walking back his support, however, Kagan called for a troop escalation. "It is precisely
the illusion that a political solution is possible in the midst of rampant violence that has gotten
us where we are today," he wrote in November 2006. "What's needed in Iraq are not more clever plans
but more U.S. troops to provide the security to make any plan workable. Even those seeking a way
out of Iraq as soon as possible should understand the need for an immediate surge in U.S. troop levels
to provide the stability necessary so that eventual withdrawal will not produce chaos and an implosion
of the Iraqi state."[19]
In March 2009, around the time that President Obama announced a plan to increase troop levels
in Afghanistan, Kagan and Kristol launched the
Foreign
Policy Initiative (FPI), which liberal blogger Matt Duss dubbed "The Project for the Rehabilitation
of Neoconservatism."[20]
Among Kagan's early forays on behalf of the group, he promoted the escalation of the war in Afghanistan[21]
and criticized the Obama administration for not taking a more confrontational line on Iran.[22]
FPI's platform "is a watered-down version of the bellicose neoconservative program that worked
so well over the past decade, producing a disastrous war in Iraq and a deteriorating situation in
Central Asia and bringing America's image around the world to new lows," wrote Harvard international
relations professor Stephen M. Walt for Foreign Policy. "The new group's modus operandi
is likely to be similar to the old
Project for a New American Century: bombard Washington with press releases and email alerts,
draft open letters to be signed by assorted pundits and former policymakers, and organize conferences
intended to advance the group's interventionist agenda."[23]
Kagan has on occasion broken with some of his neoconservative colleagues.
One notable instance occurred in 2013, following a coup in Egypt that toppled the country's elected
Muslim Brotherhood government and restored the military to power. While some neoconservatives argued
that the Egyptian military would be a more reliable U.S. ally than the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood,
Kagan argued unequivocally that support for the military's dictatorial rule was short-sighted. It
has become "fashionable," Kagan wrote, "to argue that Muslim Arabs are incapable of democracy-this
after so many millions of them came out to vote in Egypt, only to see Western democracies do little
or nothing when the product of their votes was overthrown." He went on to call for "a complete suspension
of all aid to Egypt, especially military aid, until there is a new democratic government, freely
elected with the full participation of all parties and groups in Egypt, including the Muslim Brotherhood."[24]
Kagan's critique was notable in part for its direct confrontation with the U.S. "Israel lobby,"
which largely supported sending aid to Egypt's coup government. "To Israel, which has never supported
democracy anywhere in the Middle East except Israel," wrote Kagan, "the presence of a brutal military
dictatorship bent on the extermination of Islamism is not only tolerable but desirable." But, he
added, "in Egypt, U.S. interests and Israel's perceptions of its own interests sharply diverge. If
one believes that any hope for moderation in the Arab world requires finding moderate voices not
only among secularists but also among Islamists, America's current strategy in Egypt is producing
the opposite result."[25]
Kagan is the author of several books on U.S. interventionism, including A Twilight Struggle:
American Power and Nicaragua, 1977-1990 (1996), Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe
in the New World Order (2003), Dangerous Nation: America's Place in the World from its Earliest
Days to the Dawn of the Twentieth Century (2006), The Return of History and the End of Dreams
(2008), and The World America Made (2012).
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"... From the man who brought you the Iraq war and the rise of ISIS--how to solve the ISIS crisis. ..."
"... Youd think ppl who brought the Iraq war, the best recruiters of ISIS, would be nowhere to be seen; but no, are telling how to deal w/ISIS. ..."
"... Narrative is the foundation of their skewed analysis. Their object is to sell perpetual war using super high tech, exquisitely expensive, contractor maintained versions of WW II formations to expired resources eternally for the profits they deliver. They starve the safety net to pay for their income security. ..."
"... ... In July of last year, the New York Times ran two pieces tying Clinton to the neoconservative movement. In "The Next Act of the Neocons," (*) Jacob Heilbrunn argued that neocons like historian Robert Kagan are putting their lot in with Clinton in an effort to stay relevant while the GOP shies away from its past interventionism and embraces politicians like Senator Rand Paul: ..."
"... And the thing is, these neocons have a point. Mrs. Clinton voted for the Iraq war; supported sending arms to Syrian rebels; likened Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin, to Adolf Hitler; wholeheartedly backs Israel; and stresses the importance of promoting democracy. ..."
"... It's easy to imagine Mrs. Clinton's making room for the neocons in her administration. No one could charge her with being weak on national security with the likes of Robert Kagan on board ..."
"... Kagan served on Clinton's bipartisan foreign policy advisory board when she was Secretary of State, has deep neocon roots. ..."
"... A month before the Heilbrunn piece, the Times profiled Kagan ( ..."
"... ), who was critical of Obama's foreign policy, but supported Clinton. "I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy," Kagan told the Times. "If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue … it's something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that." ... ..."
"... Are Neocons Getting Ready to Ally With Hillary Clinton? http://nyti.ms/1qJ4eLN ..."
"... Robert Kagan Strikes a Nerve With Article on Obama Policy http://nyti.ms/UEuqtB ..."
"... doublethink has become synonymous with relieving cognitive dissonance by ignoring the contradiction between two world views – or even of deliberately seeking to relieve cognitive dissonance. (Wikipedia) ..."
...Europe was not in great shape before the refugee crisis and the terrorist attacks. The prolonged
Eurozone crisis eroded the legitimacy of European political institutions and the centrist parties
that run them, while weakening the economies of key European powers. The old troika-Britain, France
and Germany-that used to provide leadership on the continent and with whom the U.S. worked most closely
to set the global agenda is no more. Britain is a pale shadow of its former self. Once the indispensable
partner for the U.S., influential in both Washington and Brussels, the mediator between America and
Europe, Britain is now unmoored, drifting away from both. The Labor Party, once led by Tony Blair,
is now headed by an anti-American pacifist, while the ruling Conservative government boasts of its
"very special relationship" with China.
... ... ...
There is a Russian angle, too. Many of these parties, and even some mainstream political movements
across the continent, are funded by Russia and make little secret of their affinity for Moscow. Thus
Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary has praised "illiberalism" and made common ideological cause
with Russian President Vladimir Putin. In Germany, a whole class of businesspeople, politicians,
and current and former government officials, led by former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, presses constantly
for normalized relations with Moscow. It sometimes seems, in Germany
and perhaps in all of Europe, as if the only person standing in the way of full alliance with Russia
is German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Now the Syrian crisis has further bolstered Russia's position. Although Europeans generally share
Washington's discomfort with Moscow's support for Mr. Assad and Russia's bombing of moderate Syrian
rebels, in the wake of the Paris attacks, any plausible partner in the fight against Islamic State
seems worth enlisting. In France, former President Nicolas Sarkozy has long been an advocate for
Russia, but now his calls for partnership with Moscow are echoed by President François Hollande,
who seeks a "grand coalition" with Russia to fight Islamic State.
Where does the U.S. fit into all this? The Europeans no longer know, any more than American allies
in the Middle East do. Most Europeans still like Mr. Obama. After President George W. Bush and the
Iraq war, Europeans have gotten the kind of American president they wanted.
But in the current crisis, this new, more restrained and intensely cautious post-Iraq America has
less to offer than the old superpower, with all its arrogance and belligerence.
The flip side of European pleasure at America's newfound Venusian outlook is the perception, widely
shared around the world, that the U.S. is a declining superpower, and that even if it is not objectively
weaker than it once was, its leaders' willingness to deploy power on behalf of its interests, and
on behalf of the West, has greatly diminished. As former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer
recently put it, the U.S. "quite obviously, is no longer willing-or able-to play its old role."
Mr. Fischer was referring specifically to America's role as the dominant power in the Middle East,
but since the refugee crisis and the attacks in Paris, America's unwillingness to play that role
has reverberations and implications well beyond the Middle East. What the U.S. now does or doesn't
do in Syria will affect the future stability of Europe, the strength of trans-Atlantic relations
and therefore the well-being of the liberal world order.
This is no doubt the last thing that Mr. Obama wants to hear, and possibly to believe. Certainly
he would not deny that the stakes have gone up since the refugee crisis and especially since Paris.
At the very least, Islamic State has proven both its desire and its ability to carry out massive,
coordinated attacks in a major European city. It is not unthinkable that it could carry out a similar
attack in an American city. This is new.
... ... ...
In 2002, a British statesman-scholar issued a quiet warning. "The challenge to the postmodern
world," the diplomat Robert Cooper argued, was that while Europeans might operate within their borders
as if power no longer mattered, in the world outside Europe, they needed to be prepared to use force
just as in earlier eras. "Among ourselves, we keep the law, but when we are operating in the jungle,
we must also use the laws of the jungle," he wrote. Europeans didn't heed this warning, or at least
didn't heed it sufficiently. They failed to arm themselves for the jungle, materially and spiritually,
and now that the jungle has entered the European garden, they are at a loss.
With the exercise of power barely an option, despite what Mr. Hollande promises, Europeans are
likely to feel their only choice is to build fences, both within Europe and along its periphery-even
if in the process they destroy the very essence of the European project. It is this sentiment that
has the Le Pens of Europe soaring in the polls.
What would such an effort look like? First, it would require establishing a safe zone in Syria,
providing the millions of would-be refugees still in the country a place to stay and the hundreds
of thousands who have fled to Europe a place to which to return. To establish such a zone, American
military officials estimate, would require not only U.S. air power but ground forces numbering up
to 30,000. Once the safe zone was established, many of those troops could be replaced by forces from
Europe, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other Arab states, but the initial force would have to be largely
American.
In addition, a further 10,000 to 20,000 U.S. troops would be required to uproot Islamic State
from the haven it has created in Syria and to help local forces uproot it in Iraq. Many of those
troops could then be replaced by NATO and other international forces to hold the territory and provide
a safe zone for rebuilding the areas shattered by Islamic State rule.
At the same time, an internationally negotiated and blessed process of transition in Syria should
take place, ushering the bloodstained Mr. Assad from power and establishing a new provisional government
to hold nationwide elections. The heretofore immovable Mr. Assad would face an entirely new set of
military facts on the ground, with the Syrian opposition now backed by U.S. forces and air power,
the Syrian air force grounded and Russian bombing halted. Throughout the transition period, and probably
beyond even the first rounds of elections, an international peacekeeping force-made up of French,
Turkish, American and other NATO forces as well as Arab troops-would have to remain in Syria until
a reasonable level of stability, security and inter-sectarian trust was achieved.
Is such a plan so unthinkable? In recent years, the mere mention of
U.S. ground troops has been enough to stop any conversation. Americans, or at least
the intelligentsia and political class, remain traumatized by Iraq, and all calculations about what
to do in Syria have been driven by that trauma. Mr. Obama's advisers have been reluctant to present
him with options that include even smaller numbers of ground forces, assuming that he would reject
them. And Mr. Obama has, in turn, rejected his advisers' less ambitious proposals on the reasonable
grounds that they would probably be insufficient.
This dynamic has kept the president sneering at those who have wanted to do more but have been
reluctant to be honest about how much more. But it has also allowed him to be comfortable settling
for minimal, pressure-relieving approaches that he must know cannot succeed but which at least have
the virtue of avoiding the much larger commitment that he has so far refused to make.
The president has also been inclined to reject options that don't promise to "solve" the problems
of Syria, Iraq and the Middle East. He doesn't want to send troops only to put "a lid on things."
In this respect, he is entranced, like most Americans, by the image of the decisive engagement
followed by the victorious return home. But that happy picture is a myth. Even after the iconic American
victory in World War II, the U.S. didn't come home. Keeping a lid on things is exactly what the U.S.
has done these past 70 years. That is how the U.S. created this liberal world order.
In Asia, American forces have kept a lid on what had been, and would likely be again, a dangerous
multisided conflict involving China, Japan, Korea, India and who knows who else. In Europe, American
forces put a lid on what had been a chronic state of insecurity and war, making it possible to lay
the foundations of the European Union. In the Balkans, the presence of U.S. and European troops has
kept a lid on what had been an escalating cycle of ethnic conflict. In Libya, a similar international
force, with even a small American contingent, could have kept the lid on that country's boiling caldron,
perhaps long enough to give a new, more inclusive government a chance.
Preserving a liberal world order and international security is all about placing lids on regions
of turmoil. In any case, as my Brookings Institution colleague Thomas Wright observes, whether or
not you want to keep a lid on something really ought to depend on what's under the lid.
At practically any other time in the last 70 years, the idea of dispatching even 50,000 troops
to fight an organization of Islamic State's description would not have seemed too risky or too costly
to most Americans. In 1990-91, President George H.W. Bush, now revered as a judicious and prudent
leader, sent half a million troops across the globe to drive Iraq out of Kuwait, a country that not
one American in a million could find on a map and which the U.S. had no obligation to defend. In
1989, he sent 30,000 troops to invade Panama to topple an illegitimate, drug-peddling dictator. During
the Cold War, when presidents sent more than 300,000 troops to Korea and more than 500,000 troops
to Vietnam, the idea of sending 50,000 troops to fight a large and virulently anti-American terrorist
organization that had seized territory in the Middle East, and from that territory had already launched
a murderous attack on a major Western city, would have seemed barely worth an argument.
Not today. Americans remain paralyzed by Iraq, Republicans almost
as much as Democrats, and Mr. Obama is both the political beneficiary and the living symbol of this
paralysis. Whether he has the desire or capacity to adjust to changing circumstances is an open question.
Other presidents have-from Woodrow Wilson to Franklin Roosevelt to Bill Clinton-each
of whom was forced to recalibrate what the loss or fracturing of Europe would mean to American interests.
In Mr. Obama's case, however, such a late-in-the-game recalculation seems less likely. He may be
the first president since the end of World War II who simply doesn't care what happens to Europe.
If so, it is, again, a great irony for Europe, and perhaps a tragic one. Having excoriated the
U.S. for invading Iraq, Europeans played no small part in bringing on the crisis of confidence and
conscience that today prevents Americans from doing what may be necessary to meet the Middle Eastern
crisis that has Europe reeling. Perhaps there are Europeans today wishing that the U.S. will not
compound its error of commission in Iraq by making an equally unfortunate error of omission in Syria.
They can certainly hope.
Mr. Kagan is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of "Of Paradise and
Power: America and Europe in the New World Order" and, most recently, "The World America Made."
You'd think ppl who brought the Iraq war, the best recruiters of ISIS, would be nowhere to
be seen; but no, are telling how to deal w/ISIS.
ilsm said in reply to anne...
Narrative is the foundation of their skewed analysis. Their object is to sell perpetual
war using super high tech, exquisitely expensive, contractor maintained versions of WW II formations
to expired resources eternally for the profits they deliver. They starve the safety net to pay
for their income security.
Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to anne...
Neoconservativism Is Down But Not Out of the 2016 Race
... In July of last year, the New York Times ran two pieces tying Clinton to the neoconservative
movement. In "The Next Act of the Neocons," (*) Jacob Heilbrunn argued that neocons like historian
Robert Kagan are putting their lot in with Clinton in an effort to stay relevant while the GOP
shies away from its past interventionism and embraces politicians like Senator Rand Paul:
'Other neocons have followed Mr. Kagan's careful centrism and respect for Mrs. Clinton.
Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, noted in the New Republic this
year that "it is clear that in administration councils she was a principled voice for a strong
stand on controversial issues, whether supporting the Afghan surge or the intervention in Libya."
And the thing is, these neocons have a point. Mrs. Clinton voted for the Iraq war; supported
sending arms to Syrian rebels; likened Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin, to Adolf Hitler;
wholeheartedly backs Israel; and stresses the importance of promoting democracy.
It's easy to imagine Mrs. Clinton's making room for the neocons in her administration. No one
could charge her with being weak on national security with the likes of Robert Kagan on board.'
(The story also notes, prematurely, that the careers of older neocons like Wolfowitz are "permanently
buried in the sands of Iraq.")
Kagan served on Clinton's bipartisan foreign policy advisory board when she was Secretary
of State, has deep neocon roots. He was part of the Project for a New American Century, a
now-defunct think tank that spanned much of the second Bush presidency and supported a "Reaganite
policy of military strength and moral clarity." PNAC counted Kagan, Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld,
William Kristol, and Jeb Bush among its members. In 1998, some of its members-including Wolfowitz,
Kagan, and Rumsfeld-signed an open letter to President Bill Clinton asking him to remove Saddam
Hussein from power.
A month before the Heilbrunn piece, the Times profiled Kagan (#),
who was critical of Obama's foreign policy, but supported Clinton. "I feel comfortable with her
on foreign policy," Kagan told the Times. "If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue
… it's something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going
to call it that." ...
(I may be a HRC supporter but Neocons still make me anxious.)
'doublethink has become synonymous with relieving cognitive dissonance by ignoring the
contradiction between two world views – or even of deliberately seeking to relieve cognitive dissonance.'
(Wikipedia)
"...Kagan, who cut his teeth as a propaganda specialist in support of the Reagan administration's
brutal Central American policies in the 1980s, is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and
a contributing columnist to The Washington Post's neocon-dominated opinion pages."
If the neoconservatives have their
way again, US ground troops will reoccupy Iraq, the US military will take out Syria's secular
government (likely helping Al Qaeda and the Islamic State take over), and the US Congress will not
only kill the Iran nuclear deal but follow that with a massive increase in military spending.
Like spraying lighter fluid on a roaring barbecue, the neocons also want a military
escalation in Ukraine to burn the ethnic Russians out of the east, and the neocons dream of spreading
the blaze to Moscow with the goal of forcing Russian President Vladimir Putin from the Kremlin.
In other words, more and more fires of Imperial "regime change" abroad even as the
last embers of the American Republic die at home.
Much of this "strategy" is personified by a single Washington power couple: arch-neocon
Robert Kagan, a co-founder of the Project for the New American Century and an early advocate of the
Iraq War, and his wife, Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who engineered
last year's coup in Ukraine that started a nasty civil war and created a confrontation between nuclear-armed
United States and Russia.
Kagan, who cut his teeth as a propaganda specialist in support of the Reagan administration's
brutal Central American policies in the 1980s, is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution
and a contributing columnist to The Washington Post's neocon-dominated opinion pages.
On Friday, Kagan's
column baited the Republican Party to do more than just object to President Barack Obama's Iranian
nuclear deal. Kagan called for an all-out commitment to neoconservative goals, including military
escalations in the Middle East, belligerence toward Russia and casting aside fiscal discipline in
favor of funneling tens of billions of new dollars to the Pentagon.
Kagan also showed how the neocons' world view remains the conventional wisdom of Official Washington
despite their disastrous Iraq War. The neocon narrative gets repeated over and over in the mainstream
media no matter how delusional it is.
For instance, a sane person might trace the origins of the bloodthirsty Islamic State back to
President George W. Bush's neocon-inspired Iraq War when this hyper-violent Sunni movement began
as "Al Qaeda in Iraq" blowing up Shiite mosques and instigating sectarian bloodshed. It later expanded
into Syria where Sunni militants were seeking the ouster of a secular regime led by Alawites, a Shiite
offshoot. Though changing its name to the Islamic State, the movement continued with its trademark
brutality.
But Kagan doesn't acknowledge that he and his fellow neocons bear any responsibility for this
head-chopping phenomenon. In his neocon narrative, the Islamic State gets blamed on Iran and Syria,
even though those governments are leading much of the resistance to the Islamic State and its former
colleagues in Al Qaeda, which in Syria backs a separate terrorist organization, the Nusra Front.
But here is how Kagan explains the situation to the Smart People of Official Washington:
Critics of the recent nuclear deal struck between Iran and the United States are entirely right
to point out the serious challenge that will now be posed by the Islamic republic. It is an aspiring
hegemon in an important region of the world.
It is deeply engaged in a region-wide war that encompasses Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, the Gulf States
and the Palestinian territories. It subsidizes the murderous but collapsing regime of Bashar al-Assad
in Syria, and therefore bears primary responsibility for the growing strength of the Islamic State
and other radical jihadist forces in that country and in neighboring Iraq, where it is simultaneously
expanding its influence and inflaming sectarian violence.
The Real Hegemon
While ranting about "Iranian hegemony," Kagan called for direct military intervention by the world's
true hegemonic power, the United States. He wants the US military to weigh in against Iran on the
side of two far more militarily advanced regional powers, Israel and Saudi Arabia, whose combined
weapons spending dwarfs Iran's and includes – with Israel – a sophisticated nuclear arsenal.
Yet reality has never had much relationship to neocon ideology. Kagan continued:
Any serious strategy aimed at resisting Iranian hegemony has also required confronting Iran
on the several fronts of the Middle East battlefield. In Syria, it has required a determined policy
to remove Assad by force, using US air power to provide cover for civilians and create a safe
zone for Syrians willing to fight.
In Iraq, it has required using American forces to push back and destroy the forces of the Islamic
State so that we would not have to rely, de facto, on Iranian power to do the job. Overall, it
has required a greater US military commitment to the region, a reversal of both the perceived
and the real withdrawal of American power.
And therefore it has required a reversal of the downward trend in US defense spending, especially
the undoing of the sequestration of defense funds, which has made it harder for the military even
to think about addressing these challenges, should it be called upon to do so. So the question
for Republicans who are rightly warning of the danger posed by Iran is: What have they done to
make it possible for the United States to begin to have any strategy for responding?
In Kagan's call for war and more war, we're seeing, again, the consequence of failing
to hold neocons accountable after they pushed the country into the illegal and catastrophic Iraq
War by selling lies about weapons of mass destruction and telling tales about how easy it would be.
Instead of facing a purge that should have followed the Iraq calamity, the neocons consolidated
their power, holding onto key jobs in US foreign policy, ensconcing themselves in influential think
tanks, and remaining the go-to experts for mainstream media coverage. Being wrong about Iraq has
almost become a badge of honor in the upside-down world of Official Washington.
But we need to unpack the truckload of sophistry that Kagan is peddling. First,
it is simply crazy to talk about "Iranian hegemony." That was part of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu's rhetoric before the US Congress on March 3 about Iran "gobbling up" nations – and it
has now become a neocon-driven litany, but it is no more real just because it gets repeated endlessly.
For instance, take the Iraq case. It has a Shiite-led government not because Iran invaded Iraq,
but because the United States did. After the US military ousted Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein, the
United States stood up a new government dominated by Shiites who, in turn, sought friendly relations
with their co-religionists in Iran, which is entirely understandable and represents no aggression
by Iran. Then, after the Islamic State's dramatic military gains across Iraq last summer, the Iraqi
government turned to Iran for military assistance, also no surprise.
Back to Iraq
However, leaving aside Kagan's delusional hyperbole about Iran, look at what he's proposing. He
wants to return a sizable US occupation force to Iraq, apparently caring little about the US soldiers
who were rotated multiple times into the war zone where almost 4,500 died (along with hundreds of
thousands of Iraqis). Having promoted Iraq War I and having paid no price, Kagan now wants to give
us Iraq War II.
But that's not enough. Kagan wants the US military to intervene to make sure the secular government
of Syria is overthrown, even though the almost certain winners would be Sunni extremists from the
Islamic State or Al Qaeda's Nusra Front. Such a victory could lead to genocides against Syria's Christians,
Alawites, Shiites and other minorities. At that point, there would be tremendous pressure for a full-scale
US invasion and occupation of Syria, too.
That may be why Kagan wants to throw tens of billions of dollar more into the military-industrial
complex, although the true price tag for Kagan's new wars would likely run into the trillions of
dollars. Yet, Kagan still isn't satisfied. He wants even more military spending to confront "growing
Chinese power, an aggressive Russia and an increasingly hegemonic Iran."
In his conclusion, Kagan mocks the Republicans for not backing up their tough talk:
"So, yes, by all means, rail about the [Iran] deal. We all look forward to the hours of floor speeches
and campaign speeches that lie ahead. But it will be hard to take Republican criticisms seriously
unless they start doing the things that are in their power to do to begin to address the challenge."
While it's true that Kagan is now "just" a neocon ideologue – albeit one with important platforms
to present his views – his wife Assistant Secretary of State Nuland shares his foreign policy views
and even edits many of his articles. As she told The New York Times last year, "nothing goes out
of the house that I don't think is worthy of his talents. Let's put it that way." [See "Obama's
True Foreign Policy 'Weakness.'"]
But Nuland is a foreign policy force of her own, considered by some in Washington to be the up-and-coming
"star" at the State Department. By organizing the "regime change" in Ukraine – with the violent overthrow
of democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 – Nuland also earned her spurs
as an accomplished neocon.
Nuland has even outdone her husband, who may get "credit" for the Iraq War and the resulting chaos,
but Nuland did him one better, instigating Cold War II and reviving hostilities between nuclear-armed
Russia and the United States. After all, that's where the really big money will go – toward modernizing
nuclear arsenals and ordering top-of-the-line strategic weaponry.
A Family Business
There's also a family-business aspect to these wars and confrontations, since the Kagans collectively
serve not just to start conflicts but to profit from grateful military contractors who kick back
a share of the money to the think tanks that employ the Kagans.
For instance, Robert's brother Frederick works at the American Enterprise Institute, which
has long benefited from the largesse of the Military-Industrial Complex, and his wife Kimberly runs
her own think tank called the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
According to ISW's annual reports, its original supporters were mostly right-wing foundations,
such as the Smith-Richardson Foundation and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, but it was later
backed by a host of national security contractors, including major ones like General Dynamics, Northrop
Grumman and CACI, as well as lesser-known firms such as DynCorp International, which provided training
for Afghan police, and Palantir, a technology company founded with the backing of the CIA's venture-capital
arm, In-Q-Tel. Palantir supplied software to US military intelligence in Afghanistan.
Since its founding in 2007, ISW has focused mostly on wars in the Middle East, especially Iraq
and Afghanistan, including closely cooperating with Gen. David Petraeus when he commanded US forces
in those countries. However, more recently, ISW has begun reporting extensively on the civil war
in Ukraine. [See "Neocons
Guided Petraeus on Afghan War."]
So, to understand the enduring influence of the neocons – and the Kagan clan, in particular –
you have to appreciate the money connections between the business of war and the business of selling
war. When the military contractors do well, the think tanks that advocate for heightened global tensions
do well, too.
And, it doesn't hurt to have friends and family inside the government making sure
that policymakers do their part to give war a chance - and to give peace the old heave-ho.
Latina Lover
Nudelman and the Kagans are minions of the Military Industrial Complex, mouthpieces for hire.
Their job is to create wars for profit, enriching their masters.
Bay of Pigs
And what does Donald Trump have to say about these liars and weasels?
greenskeeper carl
While he has been critical ad the Iraq war in general and bush and Obamas handling of it, I
doubt he'd go so far as to go after the architects of it. Even though he has gone after the two
biggest neocons in the senate, graham and McCain, he didn't call them out for being neocons, he
called them out for being douchebags for other reasons.
Doing so would likely turn off a lot of supporters, even if trump himself feels that way. Few
politicians have the guts to really 'go there' , Ron Paul was really the only one. Most of trumps
supporters are red meat republicans, who while they are, correctly, fed up with all the warfare,
they won't go so far as to call it all a 'mistake' since they still buy into the meme that by
criticizing that they aren't 'supporting the troops' or are being unpatriotic.
James_Cole
However, leaving aside Kagan's delusional hyperbole about Iran, look at what he's proposing.
If US became allied with Iran instead of saudi arabia the world would be a much better / peaceful
place. So long as SA didn't start dropping nukes all over the place.
Iran hasn't started any wars, recently had a female mathematician win the fields medal & is
right now fighting ISIS. SA starts wars frequently, was home to most of the 9/11 hijackers + al
qaeda + almost certainly funds ISIS to some extent & is stuck in the 15th century. Why the fuck
is SA the bff in the ME & not Iran?? They both have oil.
US should just admit a few past mistakes in Iran and then bring them back into the fold. You
can do it US&A! For the good of humanity :)
cowdogg
Much more ambitious than just filling the coffers of the arms industry. The Kagans are Netanyahu's
operatives who are doing their best to instigate a US war with both Russia and China. The idea
is that all parties will destroy each other and leave little Israel and it's hundreds of nuclear
weapons as masters of the earth. It is going to take a while longer to get it going so in the
meantime the Kagans will be contented for the US to conquer Iraq and Syria and incorporate them
into Greater Israel.
Ignatius
Family business combined with a satanic ideology in service of a profitable crime: war.
Luther van Theses
Lies about Iraq are not confined to "weapons of mass destruction."
1. The Baath regime headed by Saddam Hussein was secular, not "Sunni."
2. There is no evidence that Saddam "oppressed the Shiites."
3. There is no evidence that "Saddam gassed the Kurds."
The Goebbels-method beliefs about Iraq are held all across the political spectrum. As a result,
millions of Iraqis die and nobody gives a shit.
Contrarian View
This article should never have been published in ZH. It doesn't meet even the low ZH standards
of rigor and intellectual honesty. The idea that the Kagans are representative of all "neocons"
is ludicrous to anyone who actually knows any neocons.
The article's assertion that it was the Iraq war that birthed ISIS, rather than Obama's support
of Islamic extremism, shows how ignorant the author is.
In foreign policy, conservatives are adrift. They disdain the Wilsonian
multilateralism of the Clinton administration; they are tempted by, but so far have resisted,
the neoisolationism of Patrick Buchanan; for now, they lean uncertainly on some version of
the conservative realism of Henry Kissinger and his disciples. Thus, in this year's election
campaign, they speak vaguely of replacing Clinton's vacillation with a steady, adult foreign
policy under Robert Dole. But Clinton has not vacillated that much recently, and Dole was reduced
a few weeks ago to asserting, in what was heralded as a major address, that there really are
differences in foreign policy between him and the president, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding.
But the fault is not Dole's; in truth, there has been little attempt to set forth the outlines
of a conservative view of the world and America's proper role in it.
Is such an attempt necessary, or even possible? For the past few years, Americans, from
the foreign policy big thinker to the man on the street, have assumed it is not. Rather, this
is supposed to be a time for unshouldering the vast responsibilities the United States acquired
at the end of the Second World War and for concentrating its energies at home. The collapse
of the Soviet Empire has made possible a return to normalcy in American foreign and defense
policy, allowing the adoption of a more limited definition of the national interest, with a
commensurate reduction in overseas involvement and defense spending.
Republicans and conservatives at first tended to be wary of this new post-Cold War consensus.
But they joined it rapidly after 1992, in the wake of the defeat of the quintessential foreign
policy president by a candidate who promised to focus like a laser on the domestic economy.
Now conservatives tailor their foreign and defense policies to fit the presumed new political
reality: an American public that is indifferent, if not hostile, to foreign policy and commitments
abroad, more interested in balancing the budget than in leading the world, and more intent
on cashing in the peace dividend than on spending to deter and fight future wars. Most conservatives
have chosen to acquiesce in rather than challenge this public mood.
In a way, the current situation is reminiscent of the mid-1970s. But Ronald Reagan mounted
a bold challenge to the tepid consensus of that era a consensus that favored accommodation
to and coexistence with the Soviet Union, accepted the inevitability of America's declining
power, and considered any change in the status quo either too frightening or too expensive.
Proposing a controversial vision of ideological and strategic victory over the forces of international
communism, Reagan called for an end to complacency in the face of the Soviet threat, large
increases in defense spending, resistance to communist advances in the Third World, and greater
moral clarity and purpose in U.S. foreign policy. He championed American exceptionalism when
it was deeply unfashionable. Perhaps most significant, he refused to accept the limits on American
power imposed by the domestic political realities that others assumed were fixed.
Many smart people regarded Reagan with scorn or alarm. Liberal Democrats still reeling from
the Vietnam War were, of course, appalled by his zealotry. So were many of Reagan's fellow
Republicans, especially the Kissingerian realists then dominant in foreign affairs. Reagan
declared war on his own party, took on Gerald Ford for the 1976 Republican presidential nomination
(primarily over issues of foreign policy), and trained his guns on Kissinger, whose stewardship
of U.S. foreign policy, he charged, had coincided precisely with the loss of U.S. military
supremacy. Although Reagan lost the battle to unseat Ford, he won the fight at the Republican
convention for a platform plank on morality in foreign policy. Ultimately, he succeeded in
transforming the Republican party, the conservative movement in America, and, after his election
to the presidency in 1980, the country and the world.
BENEVOLENT HEGEMONY
Twenty years later, it is time once again to challenge an indifferent America and a confused
American conservatism. Today's lukewarm consensus about America's reduced role in a post-Cold
War world is wrong. Conservatives should not accede to it; it is bad for the country and, incidentally,
bad for conservatism. Conservatives will not be able to govern America over the long term if
they fail to offer a more elevated vision of America's international role.
What should that role be? Benevolent global hegemony. Having defeated the evil empire, the
United States enjoys strategic and ideological predominance. The first objective of U.S. foreign
policy should be to preserve and enhance that predominance by strengthening America's security,
supporting its friends, advancing its interests, and standing up for its principles around
the world.
The aspiration to benevolent hegemony might strike some as either hubristic or morally suspect.
But a hegemon is nothing more or less than a leader with preponderant influence and authority
over all others in its domain. That is America's position in the world today. The leaders of
Russia and China understand this. At their April summit meeting, Boris Yeltsin and Jiang Zemin
joined in denouncing hegemonism in the post-Cold War world. They meant this as a complaint
about the United States. It should be taken as a compliment and a guide to action.
Consider the events of just the past six months, a period that few observers would consider
remarkable for its drama on the world stage. In East Asia, the carrier task forces of the U.S.
Seventh Fleet helped deter Chinese aggression against democratic Taiwan, and the 35,000 American
troops stationed in South Korea helped deter a possible invasion by the rulers in Pyongyang.
In Europe, the United States sent 20,000 ground troops to implement a peace agreement in the
former Yugoslavia, maintained 100,000 in Western Europe as a symbolic commitment to European
stability and security, and intervened diplomatically to prevent the escalation of a conflict
between Greece and Turkey. In the Middle East, the United States maintained the deployment
of thousands of soldiers and a strong naval presence in the Persian Gulf region to deter possible
aggression by Saddam Hussein's Iraq or the Islamic fundamentalist regime in Iran, and it mediated
in the conflict between Israel and Syria in Lebanon. In the Western Hemisphere, the United
States completed the withdrawal of 15,000 soldiers after restoring a semblance of democratic
government in Haiti and, almost without public notice, prevented a military coup in Paraguay.
In Africa, a U.S. expeditionary force rescued Americans and others trapped in the Liberian
civil conflict.
These were just the most visible American actions of the past six months, and just those
of a military or diplomatic nature. During the same period, the United States made a thousand
decisions in international economic forums, both as a government and as an amalgam of large
corporations and individual entrepreneurs, that shaped the lives and fortunes of billions around
the globe. America influenced both the external and internal behavior of other countries through
the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Through the United Nations, it maintained
sanctions on rogue states such as Libya, Iran, and Iraq. Through aid programs, the United States
tried to shore up friendly democratic regimes in developing nations. The enormous web of the
global economic system, with the United States at the center, combined with the pervasive influence
of American ideas and culture, allowed Americans to wield influence in many other ways of which
they were entirely unconscious. The simple truth of this era was stated last year by a Serb
leader trying to explain Slobodan Milosevic's decision to finally seek rapprochement with Washington.
As a pragmatist, the Serbian politician said, Milosevic knows that all satellites of the United
States are in a better position than those that are not satellites.
And America's allies are in a better position than those who are not its allies. Most of
the world's major powers welcome U.S. global involvement and prefer America's benevolent hegemony
to the alternatives. Instead of having to compete for dominant global influence with many other
powers, therefore, the United States finds both the Europeans and the Japanese -- after the
United States, the two most powerful forces in the world -- supportive of its world leadership
role. Those who anticipated the dissolution of these alliances once the common threat of the
Soviet Union disappeared have been proved wrong. The principal concern of America's allies
these days is not that it will be too dominant but that it will withdraw.
Somehow most Americans have failed to notice that they have never had it so good. They have
never lived in a world more conducive to their fundamental interests in a liberal international
order, the spread of freedom and democratic governance, an international economic system of
free-market capitalism and free trade, and the security of Americans not only to live within
their own borders but to travel and do business safely and without encumbrance almost anywhere
in the world. Americans have taken these remarkable benefits of the post-Cold War era for granted,
partly because it has all seemed so easy. Despite misguided warnings of imperial overstretch,
the United States has so far exercised its hegemony without any noticeable strain, and it has
done so despite the fact that Americans appear to be in a more insular mood than at any time
since before the Second World War. The events of the last six months have excited no particular
interest among Americans and, indeed, seem to have been regarded with the same routine indifference
as breathing and eating.
And that is the problem. The most difficult thing to preserve is that which does not appear
to need preserving. The dominant strategic and ideological position the United States now enjoys
is the product of foreign policies and defense strategies that are no longer being pursued.
Americans have come to take the fruits of their hegemonic power for granted. During the Cold
War, the strategies of deterrence and containment worked so well in checking the ambitions
of America's adversaries that many American liberals denied that our adversaries had ambitions
or even, for that matter, that America had adversaries. Today the lack of a visible threat
to U.S. vital interests or to world peace has tempted Americans to absentmindedly dismantle
the material and spiritual foundations on which their national well-being has been based. They
do not notice that potential challengers are deterred before even contemplating confrontation
by their overwhelming power and influence.
The ubiquitous post-Cold War question -- where is the threat? -- is thus misconceived. In
a world in which peace and American security depend on American power and the will to use it,
the main threat the United States faces now and in the future is its own weakness. American
hegemony is the only reliable defense against a breakdown of peace and international order.
The appropriate goal of American foreign policy, therefore, is to preserve that hegemony as
far into the future as possible. To achieve this goal, the United States needs a neo-Reaganite
foreign policy of military supremacy and moral confidence.
THREE IMPERATIVES
Setting forth the broad outlines of such a foreign policy is more important for the moment
than deciding the best way to handle all the individual issues that have preoccupied U.S. policymakers
and analysts. Whether or not the United States continues to grant most-favored-nation status
to China is less important than whether it has an overall strategy for containing, influencing,
and ultimately seeking to change the regime in Beijing. Whether NATO expands this year or five
years from now is less important than whether NATO remains strong, active, cohesive, and under
decisive American leadership. Whether America builds 20 b-2 bombers or 30 is less important
than giving its military planners enough money to make intelligent choices that are driven
more by strategic than by budget requirements. But it is clear that a neo-Reaganite foreign
policy would have several implications.
The defense budget. Republicans declared victory last year when they added $7 billion to
President Clinton's defense budget. But the hard truth is that Washington -- now spending about
$260 billion per year on defense -- probably needs to spend about $60-$80 billion more each
year in order to preserve America's role as global hegemon. The United States currently devotes
about three percent of its GNP to defense. U.S. defense planners, who must make guesses about
a future that is impossible to predict with confidence, are increasingly being forced to place
all their chips on one guess or another. They are being asked to predict whether the future
is likely to bring more conflicts like the Gulf War or peacekeeping operations like those in
Bosnia and Haiti, or more great power confrontations similar to the Cold War. The best answer
to these questions is: who can tell? The odds are that in the coming decades America may face
all these kinds of conflict, as well as some that have yet to be imagined.
For the past few years, American military supremacy has been living off a legacy, specifically,
the legacy of Ronald Reagan. As former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Colin
Powell once noted, it was Reagan's military, built in the 1980s to deter the Soviet Union,
that won the war against Iraq. No serious analyst of American military capabilities today doubts
that the defense budget has been cut much too far to meet America's responsibilities to itself
and to world peace. The United States may no longer have the wherewithal to defend against
threats to America's vital interests in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, much less to extend
America's current global preeminence well into the future.
The current readiness of U.S. forces is in decline, but so is their ability to maintain
an advantage in high technology weapons over the coming decades. In the search for some way
to meet extensive strategic requirements with inadequate resources, defense planners have engaged
in strategic fratricide. Those who favor current readiness have been pitted against those who
favor high-tech research and development; those who favor maintaining American forward deployment
at bases around the world have been arrayed against those who insist that for the sake of economizing
the job be accomplished at long range without bases. The military is forced to choose between
army combat divisions and the next generation of bombers, between lift capacities and force
projection, between short-range and long-range deterrence. Constructing a military force appropriate
to a nation's commitments and its resources is never an easy task, and there are always limits
that compel difficult choices. But today's limits are far too severe; the choices they compel
are too dramatic; and because military strategy and planning are far from exact sciences, the
United States is dangerously cutting its margin for error.
The defense budget crisis is now at hand. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General John Shalikashvili
has complained that the weapons procurement budget has been reduced to perilously low levels,
and he has understated the problem. Since 1985, the research and development budget has been
cut by 57 percent; the procurement budget has been cut 71 percent. Both the Clinton administration
and the Republican Congress have achieved budget savings over the next few years by pushing
necessary procurement decisions into the next century. The Clinton administration's so-called
Bottom-Up Review of U.S. defense strategy has been rightly dismissed by Democrats like Senate
Armed Services Committee member Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) as already inadequate to the present
and certainly to the future. Both the General Accounting Office and the Congressional Budget
Office have projected a shortfall of $50 billion to $100 billion over the next five years in
funding just for existing force levels and procurement plans.
These shortfalls do not even take into account the development of new weapons, like a missile
defense system capable of protecting American territory against missiles launched from rogue
states such as North Korea or shielding, say, Los Angeles from nuclear intimidation by the
Chinese during the next crisis in the Taiwan Strait. Deployment of such a system could cost
more than $10 billion a year.
Add together the needed increases in the procurement budget called for by the Joint Chiefs
of Staff and the justifiable increases in funding for existing forces to make up the shortfalls
identified by the GAO and the CBO, and it becomes obvious that an increase in defense spending
by $60 billion to $80 billion is not a radical proposal. It is simply what the United States
will require to keep the peace and defend its interests over the coming decades.
If this number sounds like a budget-buster, it should not. Today, defense spending is less
than 20 percent of the total federal budget. In 1962, before the Vietnam War, defense spending
ran at almost 50 percent of the overall budget. In 1978, before the Carter-Reagan defense buildup,
it was about 23 percent. Increases of the size required to pursue a neo-Reaganite foreign policy
today would require returning to about that level of defense spending -- still less than one-quarter
of the federal budget.
These days, some critics complain about the fact that the United States spends more on defense
than the next six major powers combined. But the enormous disparity between U.S. military strength
and that of any potential challenger is a good thing for America and the world. After all,
America's world role is entirely different from that of the other powers. The more Washington
is able to make clear that it is futile to compete with American power, either in size of forces
or in technological capabilities, the less chance there is that countries like China or Iran
will entertain ambitions of upsetting the present world order. And that means the United States
will be able to save money in the long run, for it is much cheaper to deter a war than to fight
one. Americans should be glad that their defense capabilities are as great as the next six
powers combined. Indeed, they may even want to enshrine this disparity in U.S. defense strategy.
Great Britain in the late 19th century maintained a two-power standard for its navy, insisting
that at all times the British navy should be as large as the next two naval powers combined,
whoever they might be. Perhaps the United States should inaugurate such a two- (or three-,
or four-) power standard of its own, which would preserve its military supremacy regardless
of the near-term global threats.
Citizen involvement. A gap is growing, meanwhile, between America's professional military,
uncomfortable with some of the missions that the new American role requires, and a civilian
population increasingly unaware of or indifferent to the importance of its military's efforts
abroad. U.S. military leaders harbor justifiable suspicions that while they serve as a kind
of foreign legion, doing the hard work of American-style empire management, American civilians
at home, preoccupied with the distribution of tax breaks and government benefits, will not
come to their support when the going gets tough. Weak political leadership and a poor job of
educating the citizenry to the responsibilities of global hegemony have created an increasingly
distinct and alienated military culture. Ask any mechanic or mess boy on an aircraft carrier
why he is patrolling the oceans, and he can give a more sophisticated explanation of power
projection than 99 percent of American college graduates. It is foolish to imagine that the
United States can lead the world effectively while the overwhelming majority of the population
neither understands nor is involved, in any real way, with its international mission.
The president and other political leaders can take steps to close the growing separation
of civilian and military cultures in our society. They can remind civilians of the sacrifices
being made by U.S. forces overseas and explain what those sacrifices are for. A clear statement
of America's global mission can help the public understand why U.S. troops are deployed overseas
and can help reassure military leaders of public support in difficult circumstances. It could
also lay the groundwork for reasserting more comprehensive civilian control over the military.
There could be further efforts to involve more citizens in military service. Perhaps the
United States has reached the point where a return to the draft is not feasible because of
the high degree of professionalization of the military services. But there are other ways to
lower the barriers between civilian and military life. Expanded forms of reserve service could
give many more Americans experience of the military and an appreciation of military virtues.
Conservatives preach that citizenship is not only about rights but also about responsibilities.
There is no more profound responsibility than the defense of the nation and its principles.
Moral clarity. Finally, American foreign policy should be informed with a clear moral purpose,
based on the understanding that its moral goals and its fundamental national interests are
almost always in harmony. The United States achieved its present position of strength not by
practicing a foreign policy of live and let live, nor by passively waiting for threats to arise,
but by actively promoting American principles of governance abroad -- democracy, free markets,
respect for liberty. During the Reagan years, the United States pressed for changes in right-wing
and left-wing dictatorships alike, among both friends and foes -- in the Philippines, South
Korea, Eastern Europe and even the Soviet Union. The purpose was not Wilsonian idealistic whimsy.
The policy of putting pressure on authoritarian and totalitarian regimes had practical aims
and, in the end, delivered strategic benefits. Support for American principles around the world
can be sustained only by continuing exertion of American influence. Some of that influence
comes from the aid provided to friendly regimes that are trying to carry out democratic and
free-market reforms. However strong the case for reform of foreign aid programs, they deserve
to be maintained as a useful way of exerting American influence abroad. And sometimes exerting
that influence means not just supporting U.S. friends and gently pressuring other nations,
but actively pursuing policies -- in Iran, Cuba, or China, for instance -- intended ultimately
to bring about a change of regime. In any case, the United States should not blindly do business
with every nation, no matter its regime. Armand Hammerism should not be a tenet of conservative
foreign policy.
FROM NSC-68 TO 1996
This sweeping, neo-Reaganite foreign policy agenda may seem ambitious for these tepid times.
Politicians in both parties will protest that the American people will not support the burdens
of such a policy. There are two answers to this criticism.
First, it is already clear that, on the present course, Washington will find it increasingly
impossible to fulfill even the less ambitious foreign policies of the realists, including the
defense of so-called vital interests in Europe and Asia. Without a broad, sustaining foreign
policy vision, the American people will be inclined to withdraw from the world and will lose
sight of their abiding interest in vigorous world leadership. Without a sense of mission, they
will seek deeper and deeper cuts in the defense and foreign affairs budgets and gradually decimate
the tools of U.S. hegemony.
Consider what has happened in only the past few years. Ronald Reagan's exceptionalist appeal
did not survive the presidency of George Bush, where self-proclaimed pragmatists like James
Baker found it easier to justify the Gulf War to the American people in terms of jobs than
as a defense of a world order shaped to suit American interests and principles. Then, having
discarded the overarching Reaganite vision that had sustained a globally active foreign policy
through the last decade of the Cold War, the Bush administration in 1992 saw its own prodigious
foreign policy successes swept into the dustbin by Clinton political adviser James Carville's
campaign logic: It's the economy, stupid. By the time conservatives took their seats as the
congressional opposition in 1993, they had abandoned not only Reaganism but to some degree
foreign policy itself.
Now the common wisdom holds that Dole's solid victory over Buchanan in the primaries constituted
a triumphant reassertion of conservative internationalism over neoisolationism. But the common
wisdom may prove wrong. On the stump during the Republican primaries this year, what little
passion and energy there was on foreign policy issues came from Buchanan and his followers.
Over the past four years Buchanan's fiery America First rhetoric has filled the vacuum among
conservatives created by the abandonment of Reagan's very different kind of patriotic mission.
It is now an open question how long the beleaguered conservative realists will be able to resist
the combined assault of Buchanan's isolationism of the heart and the Republican budget hawks
on Capitol Hill.
History also shows, however, that the American people can be summoned to meet the challenges
of global leadership if statesmen make the case loudly, cogently, and persistently. As troubles
arise and the need to act becomes clear, those who have laid the foundation for a necessary
shift in policy have a chance to lead Americans onto a new course. In 1950, Paul Nitze and
other Truman administration officials drafted the famous planning document NSC-68, a call for
an all-out effort to meet the Soviet challenge that included a full-scale ideological confrontation
and massive increases in defense spending. At first, their proposals languished. President
Truman, worried about angering a hostile, budget-conscious Congress and an American public
which was enjoying an era of peace and prosperity, for months refused to approve the defense
spending proposals. It took the North Korean invasion of South Korea to allow the administration
to rally support for the prescriptions of NSC-68. Before the Korean War, American politicians
were fighting over whether the defense budget ought to be $15 billion or $16 billion; most
believed more defense spending would bankrupt the nation. The next year, the defense budget
was over $50 billion.
A similar sequence of events unfolded in the 1970s. When Reagan and the Scoop Jackson Democrats
began sounding the alarm about the Soviet danger, the American public was not ready to listen.
Then came the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the seizure of American hostages in Iran.
By the time Jimmy Carter professed to have learned more about the Soviet Union than he had
ever known before, Reagan and his fellow conservatives in both parties had laid the intellectual
foundation for the military buildup of the 1980s.
AN ELEVATED PATRIOTISM
In theory, either party could lay the groundwork for a neo-Reaganite foreign policy over
the next decade. The Democrats, after all, led the nation to assume its new global responsibilities
in the late 1940s and early 1950s under President Truman and Secretary of State Dean Acheson.
It is unlikely, however, that they are prepared to pursue such a course today. Republicans
may have lost their way in the last few years, but the Democrats are still recovering from
their post-Vietnam trauma of two decades ago. President Clinton has proved a better manager
of foreign policy than many expected, but he has not been up to the larger task of preparing
and inspiring the nation to embrace the role of global leadership. He, too, has tailored his
internationalist activism to fit the constraints of a popular mood that White House pollsters
believe is disinclined to sacrifice blood and treasure in the name of overseas commitments.
His Pentagon officials talk more about exit strategies than about national objectives. His
administration has promised global leadership on the cheap, refusing to seek the levels of
defense spending needed to meet the broad goals it claims to want to achieve in the world.
Even Clinton's boldest overseas adventures, in Bosnia and Haiti, have come only after strenuous
and prolonged efforts to avoid intervention.
Republicans are surely the genuine heirs to the Reagan tradition. The 1994 election is often
said to have represented one last victory for Ronald Reagan's domestic agenda. But Reagan's
earlier successes rested as much on foreign as on domestic policy. Over the long term, victory
for American conservatives depends on recapturing the spirit of Reagan's foreign policy as
well.
Indeed, American conservatism cannot govern by domestic policy alone. In the 1990s conservatives
have built their agenda on two pillars of Reaganism: relimiting government to curtail the most
intrusive and counterproductive aspects of the modern welfare state, and reversing the widespread
collapse of morals and standards in American society. But it is hard to imagine conservatives
achieving a lasting political realignment in this country without the third pillar: a coherent
set of foreign policy principles that at least bear some resemblance to those propounded by
Reagan. The remoralization of America at home ultimately requires the remoralization of American
foreign policy. For both follow from Americans belief that the principles of the Declaration
of Independence are not merely the choices of a particular culture but are universal, enduring,
self-evident truths. That has been, after all, the main point of the conservatives war against
a relativistic multiculturalism. For conservatives to preach the importance of upholding the
core elements of the Western tradition at home, but to profess indifference to the fate of
American principles abroad, is an inconsistency that cannot help but gnaw at the heart of conservatism.
Conservatives these days succumb easily to the charming old metaphor of the United States
as a city on a hill. They hark back, as George Kennan did in these pages not long ago, to the
admonition of John Quincy Adams that America ought not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.
But why not? The alternative is to leave monsters on the loose, ravaging and pillaging to their
hearts' content, as Americans stand by and watch. What may have been wise counsel in 1823,
when America was a small, isolated power in a world of European giants, is no longer so, when
America is the giant. Because America has the capacity to contain or destroy many of the world's
monsters, most of which can be found without much searching, and because the responsibility
for the peace and security of the international order rests so heavily on America's shoulders,
a policy of sitting atop a hill and leading by example becomes in practice a policy of cowardice
and dishonor.
And more is at stake than honor. Without a broader, more enlightened understanding of America's
interests, conservatism will too easily degenerate into the pinched nationalism of Buchanan's
America First, where the appeal to narrow self-interest masks a deeper form of self-loathing.
A true conservatism of the heart ought to emphasize both personal and national responsibility,
relish the opportunity for national engagement, embrace the possibility of national greatness,
and restore a sense of the heroic, which has been sorely lacking from American foreign policy
-- and from American conservatism -- in recent years. George Kennan was right 50 years ago
in his famous X article: the American people ought to feel a certain gratitude to a Providence,
which by providing [them] with this implacable challenge, has made their entire security as
a nation dependent on pulling themselves together and accepting the responsibilities of moral
and political leadership that history plainly intended them to bear. This is as true today
-- if less obviously so -- as it was at the beginning of the Cold War.
A neo-Reaganite foreign policy would be good for conservatives, good for America, and good
for the world. It is worth recalling that the most successful Republican presidents of this
century, Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, both inspired Americans to assume cheerfully
the new international responsibilities that went with increased power and influence. Both celebrated
American exceptionalism. Both made Americans proud of their leading role in world affairs.
Deprived of the support of an elevated patriotism, bereft of the ability to appeal to national
honor, conservatives will ultimately fail in their effort to govern America. And Americans
will fail in their responsibility to lead the world.
Neocons like the historian Robert Kagan may be connecting with Hillary Clinton to try to regain
influence in foreign policy. Credit Left, Stephanie Sinclair/VII via Corbis; right, Colin McPherson/Corbis
The Last but not LeastTechnology is dominated by
two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt.
Ph.D
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