Tag Archives: Neocons

Putin: Destined to Hang or Drown? By Tom Luongo

Posted on March 18, 2022 | Leave a comment

Putin has a way of highlighting the hypocrisies of Western leaders that infuriates them. Thus the nonstop hate. From Tom Luongo at tomluongo.me:

As we end this third week of World War III it’s becoming clear that the West’s end-game strategy is now regime change in Russia. As the money and weapons pour into Ukraine the Ukrainian Flag further morphs into the 21st century’s version of ‘Old Shoe,’ all around the Twittersphere.

Zelenskyy’s even been invited to the Oscar’s for pity’s sake.

If you were ever in doubt about this, just watch Senator Lindsey Graham (Neocon – SC) triple-down on assassinating a world leader.

Speaking at a press conference, Graham said “I hope he will be taken out, one way or the other,” adding “I don’t care how they take him out. I don’t care if we send him to The Hague and try him. I just want him to go.”

“It’s time for him to go,” Graham further said of Putin, echoing Joe Biden’s blurted remarks that “He’s a war criminal.”

“I wish somebody had taken Hitler out in the ’30s. So yes, Vladimir Putin is not a legitimate leader. He is a war criminal.” Graham declared.

Graham further proclaimed that Russia is “going to have zero future” under Putin, adding “I think the world is better off without Putin – the sooner the better, and I don’t care how we do it.”

This is called Saying the Quiet Parts Out Loud.

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Why Die for Biden? By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

Posted on March 14, 2022 | Leave a comment

Should NATO be taking on Russia over Ukraine? Should NATO exist at all? From Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. at lewrockwell.com:

As you would expect from brain-dead Biden and the people controlling him, American policy has been moving in the wrong direction. Whatever you think about the situation in the Ukraine, one thing is obvious. It’s a crisis. Shouldn’t we try to stay out of danger? Instead, the US has led the way in imposing drastic economic sanctions on Russia, backing Putin to the wall. What if he gets desperate and uses atomic weapons? This could result in the end of civilized life on our planet. Is this what Americans want?

The danger isn’t just something I and other critics of American policy have conjured up.  “President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday [March 5] that Western sanctions on Russia were akin to a declaration of war and warned that any attempt to impose a no-fly zone in Ukraine would lead to catastrophic consequences for the world. . . ‘These sanctions that are being imposed are akin to a declaration of war but thank God it has not come to that,’ Putin said, speaking to a group of flight attendants at an Aeroflot training centre near Moscow. He said any attempt by another power to impose a no-fly zone in Ukraine would be considered by Russia to be a step into the military conflict.”

The neocon warmongers brush this danger aside. They say that “we” have to do something to defend the Ukraine from an unprovoked Russian attack. But this totally distorts what is happening there. The Ukrainian government started things by moving against Donbass, a territory that declared independence and is allied with Russia. According to the Ukrainian government, the Ukrainians can secede from Russia but people can’t secede from the Ukraine. As Rick Rozoff pointed out in an article on February 2, “Two-thirds of Ukrainian army servicemen have been amassed along the Donbas contact line, Eduard Basurin, spokesman for the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) militia, said on Thursday.

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Is the Confrontation Over Ukraine Joe Biden’s “Wag the Dog” Moment? by Andrew J. Bacevich

Posted on February 19, 2022 | Leave a comment

Would a war against Russia have any better outcome than U.S. interventions elsewhere?  The question almost answers itself. From Andrew J. Bacevich at thenation.com:

The people now gunning for a showdown with Putin were gunning for a showdown with Saddam Hussein two decades ago—with the same promises of a happy outcome.

Putin and Kerry

Russian President Vladimir Putin meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry in Moscow. (Alexei Druzhinin / AP Photo)

While some wars may be necessary and unavoidable, a war pitting Russia against Ukraine—and potentially involving the United States—doesn’t make the cut. Yet, should such a war occur, some members of the American commentariat will cheer. They have yearned for a showdown with Vladimir Putin. The depth of their animus toward Putin and the hyperbole it inspires is a bit of a puzzle that deserves examination.

A veteran New York Times correspondent charges that Putin “has put a gun to the head of the West.” In an op-ed recently published in the Times, a former US national security official accuses President Biden of “sending the message that the United States is afraid of confronting Russia militarily.” “In an era when fascism is on the march,” a Boston Globe columnist warns, “much more may hang in the balance” than simply the security of a single country on the far eastern fringe of Europe.

A sense of impending doom punctuates the taunts: With unnamed fascists gathering outside the city gates and the very survival of the West at risk, the sitting president succumbs to cowardice. Whence does such overheated language come? What does it signify?

One obvious explanation is the unvarnished Russophobia pervading the ranks of the American political elite. With roots going at least as far back as the Bolshevik Revolution, disdain for Russia only deepened across several decades of Cold War. Although the Cold War ended a generation ago, this habitual animus survives fully intact, nowhere more so than in Washington. Demonizing Russia is an easy sell.

In international politics, most crimes, no matter how heinous, are forgivable. Even those perpetrated by the Nazi regime do not figure in day-to-day US relations with the Federal Republic of Germany. Nor, as it turns out, does the United States hold Ukraine’s collaboration with the Third Reich against it.

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Bipartisan Congressional War Drums Are Beating Again, by Ted Galen Carpenter

Posted on February 1, 2022 | Leave a comment

There’s nothing that makes the defense contractors happier and the campaign contributions flowing more freely than the prospect of a fresh war. From Ted Galen Carpenter at antiwar.com:

The fastest, most reliable way to foster bipartisanship in Congress (as well as the media, and the foreign policy blob) is to demonize the foreign threat du jour and then advocate a very hardline policy toward that alleged existential threat to the American republic. The latest example is how establishment types in both the Republican and Democratic congressional delegations are uniting to push the Biden administration into adopting an uncompromising stance toward Russia over the Ukraine issue, even at the risk of war with a country that possesses more than 2,000 nuclear weapons.

In mid-January, a bipartisan group of seven senators traveled to Ukraine to meet with that country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and assure him of Washington’s strong commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of Russia’s increased military deployments. The group consisted of Rob Portman (R-OH) Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Chris Murphy (D-CT), Kevin Cramer (R-ND), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Roger Wicker (R-MS) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT). Shaheen said in a tweet that the meeting should have made clear to the Kremlin that “Putin will not be allowed to target our Eastern European partners and allies w/o consequences.” Shaheen had already introduced legislation, along with her colleagues John Cornyn (R-TX), Ben Cardin (D-MD), and the ultra-hawkish Wicker, to “expedite” U.S. military aid to Kyiv. During the delegation’s trip to Ukraine, Sen. Murphy told reporters that his goal was to convey the message that despite division in Washington politics, Republicans and Democrats are united in support for “serious, unprecedented crushing sanctions on Russia” if it moved against Ukraine.

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Stop the Neocons From Starting a War, by Eric S. Margolis

Posted on January 26, 2022 | Leave a comment

There is still time to stop the many idiots within the U.S. foreign policy establishment from doing something incredibly stupid in Ukraine. From Eric Margolis at lewrockwell.com:

Amid surging tensions over Ukraine, the head of Germany’s navy had the courage to voice Europe’s fears over this totally unnecessary, contrived crisis.

In a speech to an Indian think tank, Vice-admiral Kay-Achim Schonbach proposed the Western powers ‘respect’ Russian leader Vladimir Putin and accept that Crimea would remain in Moscow’s hands.

The German admiral’s remarks produced a major uproar in Washington and tut tuts in Europe where hatred of Russia has become a state fetish.  Most aggrieved were the British and Americans who deeply fear an alliance or at least entente between Germany and Russia that might undermine US domination of the continent.

Germany, Europe’s leading military force and mainstay of NATO, has hollowed out its military power.  Thanks to unqualified female defense ministers, Germany’s armed forces have degenerated into parade troops.  Armor and aircraft, once hallmarks of German military power, have become feeble toys, lacking in munitions, spare parts and capable crews.

Polls show Germans have very little interest in confronting Russia.  Memories of World War II are still raw.  Today’s Germans live in a nation that was 50% destroyed by US and British bombing.  Millions of Germans come from families driven out of eastern Europe. 

There is not a lot of sympathy for Ukraine’s current government that was installed by a US-financed and stage-managed coup in 2013-2014.  Germany’s US-dominated media and government support Washington’s hard line on Ukraine but many ordinary Germans and French don’t agree. 

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The Neocons’ Primary War Tactic: Branding Opponents of U.S. Intervention as Traitors, by Glenn Greenwald

Posted on January 25, 2022 | Leave a comment

The group primarily responsible for America’s decline the last thirty years calls anyone opposed to their disastrous designs traitors. It’s the pot calling the kettle black. From Glenn Greenwald at greenwald.substack.com:

By rehabilitating neocons and elevating them as thought leaders, liberals live in their framework. Thus are opponents of U.S. involvement in Ukraine deemed treasonous.

Former Bush White House speechwriter David Frum speaks to MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough about Russia, Nov. 30, 2021

One of the most bizarre but important dynamics of Trump-era U.S. politics is that the most fanatical war-hungry neocons, who shaped Bush/Cheney militarism, have become the most popular pundits and thought leaders in American liberalism. They have not changed in the slightest — they are employing the same tactics they have always invoked, and for the same causes — but they have correctly perceived that their agenda is better served by migrating back to the Democratic Party which originally spawned their bloodthirsty ideology.

The excuse offered by Democrats for their embrace of neocons — we did it only as a temporary coalition of convenience to oppose Trump — is false for many reasons. This unholy alliance pre-dated Trump. In 2014 — long before anyone envisioned Trump descending down an escalator on his path to the White House — the journalist Jacob Heilbrunn wrote a New York Times op-ed entitled “The Next Act of the Neocons.” He predicted, correctly as it turned out, that “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.”

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The Globalist American Empire Would Rather Risk Nuclear War Than Admit Its Own Arrogance, by Revolver

Posted on January 25, 2022 | 1 comment

Unfortunately we have to turn our attention to a slithering group of invertebrates known as neocons, because they may pitch us all into nuclear Armageddon. They dream grand dreams of global domination and love sending other people’s kids off to wars, although most of them have never fought in one. From Revolver at revolver.news:

The United States is on the brink of a war in Ukraine, and most of the country hasn’t even noticed.

WASHINGTON — President Biden is considering deploying several thousand U.S. troops, as well as warships and aircraft, to NATO allies in the Baltics and Eastern Europe, an expansion of American military involvement amid mounting fears of a Russian incursion into Ukraine, according to administration officials.

The move would signal a major pivot for the Biden administration, which up until recently was taking a restrained stance on Ukraine, out of fear of provoking Russia into invading. But as President Vladimir V. Putin has ramped up his threatening actions toward Ukraine, and talks between American and Russian officials have failed to discourage him, the administration is now moving away from its do-not-provoke strategy.

…

The discussions came as the State Department ordered all family members of U.S. embassy personnel in Kyiv to leave Ukraine, citing the threat of Russian military action, and authorized some embassy employees to depart as well, according to senior State Department officials who briefed reporters on Sunday. [NYT]

Sounds very serious. Yet right now, this is the New York Times front page.

The NYT squeezed the story into the bottom left, below perpetually-unchanging narratives about COVID and stories about Joan Didion and the latest prestige TV show.

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The dangerous rise of a new stab-in-the-back myth, by Joe Cirincione

Posted on September 27, 2021 | Leave a comment

After every lost war, the cheerleaders for it always come up with some stab-in-the-back myth about why the war was lost (these myths are never called “conspiracy theories”). The cheerleaders go on to the next war and those who questioned the war from the get-go generally end up writing articles for obscure websites (like SLL). From Joe Cirincione at responsiblestatecraft.org:

The foreign policy elite are focused on defending their reputations and privileges, not in confronting failure in Afghanistan.

When the Nazi Party consolidated power in Germany in 1933, they enshrined into their version of history the myth that the German Army had not lost in the Great War but had been “stabbed in the back” by cowardly civilian politicians, Jews, communists and socialists.

After maneuvering to get Socialist political leaders to sign the armistice (and, thus, take the blame for it), German General Erich Ludendorff popularized the Dolchstoss Legende. “The lie that German democracy, not the earlier authoritarian regime, was responsible for the disaster of World War I,” writes historian Jeffrey Herf, “figured prominently in the right-wing propaganda assault on the Weimar Republic.” The Nazis then used the lie to paint fascism as a restoration of Germany’s honor and justify persecution of their domestic opponents.

President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger created a similar myth to claim that the United States could have won the wars in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos had they not been undermined by the antiwar movement, liberals and the press. “The stab-in-the-back theme developed into a full-fledged explanation for American defeat after the war ended,” wrote historian Jeffrey Kimball in 1988, “and as another, related debate unfolded over the causes of failure and the future of policy.”

Years before becoming former President Donald Trump’s national security advisor, H.R. McMaster, wrote an entire book, Dereliction of Duty, using a variant of the concept. He claimed we lost the Indochina wars because weak generals did not stand up to civilian leaders. The “war was lost in Washington, D.C.,” he claimed, barely acknowledging the tenacity and strategy of the Vietnamese.

As Kimball notes, this is not just an effort by the losers of wars to find scapegoats for their defeat. It is part of the struggle to shape future policy. After 9/11, the myth was used to counter the so-called “Vietnam Syndrome” — the twenty years when America turned away from launching major wars — and manipulate a fearful American public into waging a series of new wars in the Middle East.

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Inside the Blob’s dangerous anti-Russia echo chamber, by Daniel Larison

Posted on May 8, 2021 | Leave a comment

It might be a good idea to quit demonizing a country whose nuclear arsenal is as good as or better than ours. It’s a dangerous radical idea, but we might even try to improve relations with Russia. From Daniel Larison at responsiblestatecraft.org:

The groupthink is leading to the marginalization of ideas and people who call for a new approach to Moscow. And it’s getting ugly.

Ten years after the Obama administration’s somewhat successful “reset” with Russia ended, the debate over Russia policy in Washington is warped by reflexive hawkishness and intolerance for dissenting views. 

The anti-Russia hysteria of the Trump years has created an atmosphere where Russia hawks feel free to denounce even the mildest proposals for constructive engagement with Moscow, and to launch smear campaigns against eminently qualified scholars to intimidate them and to impose narrow boundaries on the discussion of U.S. policy towards Russia. This poisons the debate, and it makes it harder to craft the smartest policies that serve U.S. and allied interests. 

The Biden administration is the first in the post-Cold War to take office without even paying lip service to the idea of trying to improve U.S.-Russian relations. Except for the Biden administration’s extension of New START earlier this year, U.S.-Russian relations are as bad as they have ever been in the last thirty years, and in the wake of the latest round of misguided U.S. sanctions the relationship is all but guaranteed to deteriorate further. 

The U.S. desperately needs a more balanced and reasonable Russia policy debate, but the foreign policy establishment’s worst tendencies of groupthink and exclusion are making that difficult if not impossible. There are few policies more in need of fresh thinking and different perspectives than Russia policy, but Russia hawks in the “Blob” are determined to stop that.

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Washington War Party Creates Another Organization to Promote Endless Wars, by Doug Bandow

Posted on May 3, 2021 | Leave a comment

If you love to schmooze and you’re looking for a high-pay, low-work position, consider applying at one of Washington’s many pro-war think tanks or foundations. The script never changes and you’ll be spending most of your time sucking up to bureaucrats and politicians. From Doug Bandow at antiwar.com:

After 20 years of U.S. nation-building in Afghanistan, President Joe Biden ordered a withdrawal. Most Americans backed his decision to stop at least one endless war, but the bipartisan War Party in Washington is horrified. It believes that Americans should be deployed wherever and whenever people are killing one another around the world.

Elliott Abrams last week penned an op-ed celebrating creation of the Vandenberg Coalition, “a new network committed to advancing a strong and proud American foreign policy.” Abrams is a noted Neoconservative who famously participated in the Iran-Contra scandal and bizarrely served Donald Trump after claiming to be a Never-Trumper.

The Neocons already dominate Washington – Republican Party, think tanks, and media, such as the Wall Street Journal, which published Abrams’ piece. Neocon influence also reaches well into the Democratic Party. What was Hillary Clinton other than a Neocon in liberal drag? Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez appears to be as committed to promiscuous intervention as any Republican. Samantha Power famously expressed irritation that popular anger over the Iraq disaster – imagine that! – prevented war-happy policymakers like her from launching bloody new foreign crusades. So many countries to bomb, so little time!

But in the Neocons’ view even this dominance isn’t nearly enough.

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