Tag: neo-cons

Ukraine – Endless Death

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I’ve probably said too much already about the Ukraine War but it’s one of those horrible things that can’t just go away.  So, ignoring it is just denial.  At this point there are no longer any good options.  Both sides have lost so many men that they feel they must win in order not to appear to have sacrificed a generation of young men for nothing.  But one of them will have to.  And if I were to guess I’d say it’s the Ukrainians that will lose.  But I think it will take another year for them to get to the point of collapse.    By then, the Russians will have lost a million men and the Ukrainians will have lost two million.  At that point the Russians will be so enraged that they’ll inflict crippling conditions and may increase the ceded territory beyond the four provinces they’re currently claiming as theirs.

And most of the blame for this should be laid at the feet of the neo-cons who put together this whole war during the Obama and Biden administrations.  They organized and sponsored the color revolution and armed the Ukrainians and told them that with the aid of the United States and Europe they would not only beat Russia but they would become a part of NATO.  The neo-cons saw this as an opportunity to test out all of their weaponry on a battlefield against the Russians without having to risk many of their own troops or nuclear war.  And they figured it would bleed the Russians dry and then humiliate them in the eyes of their own people and thereby destroy Putin.

Well, they were half right.  We have managed to cause the Russians great harm.  But from where I stand what we’ve accomplished is making them our implacable foes for the next hundred years.  And we’ve thrown them into the arms of China and hastened the end of the US dollar as the global reserve currency.  Well done, neo-cons.

But now Donald Trump is stuck with this mess.  That sideshow he put on with Zelensky in the oval office is part of some plan to get the Ukrainians receptive to a peace treaty.  I assume what he’s setting up is a take it or leave it deal where he negotiates with Putin, and then Zelensky gets his side to accept.  Well, Trump likes to negotiate but I’m not sure how much give there is on the Russian side.  I think the things that are written in stone are:

  • No NATO membership ever.
  • Permanent Ukrainian neutrality.
  • Substantial reduction in Ukraine’s military.
  • Some proviso against the Azov leadership ever holding power again.
  • Complete protection of Russian ethnic institutions (language, religion, etc.) in Ukraine.
  • Substantial territorial transfers to Russia.

I think there is probably some give on exactly how much land will have to be ceded to Russia.  I think the Russians are very tired of the meat grinder that transfers Ukrainian territory to Russia at a rate that translates to just a few square feet per hour but also can be measured in hundreds of deaths per week on each side.  It’s a sickening spectacle.

I don’t envy Trump’s job in trying to negotiate a peace treaty.  Not only does he have Putin and Zelensky to reckon with but he also has that pack of idiots in Europe.  The clown car filled with all the globalist “leaders” from Britain, France, Germany and all the rest of those useless countries will be howling and shrieking and demanding that we provide enough arms and money to continue the war until the last Ukrainian is dead.  If he does manage to negotiate an end to the war, he shouldn’t just get a Nobel Peace Prize they should also take back the one they gave to Obama.

But I’m not so certain anything but time will end this war.  If (when) the Ukrainians are forced to capitulate the outrage they will experience because of the brutal conditions of surrender will probably result in a witch hunt for the leaders who were responsible for this debacle.  I’m guessing that if Zelensky doesn’t have a bunker in a friendly nation that won’t extradite him he’s not going to live much beyond the end of the war.

And there will be other consequences of this brutal war.  What’s left of Ukraine will be destabilized and there are hints of Hungary, Poland and Romania looking to make territorial claims based on ethnic enclaves that were long ago added to Ukraine.  All in all, the fallout from this brilliant geopolitical catastrophe threatens to haunt the world long after we’re all dead.  Once again, well done, neo-cons.

Policy Foreign

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Our foreign policy is run by people whose plan seems to be destabilizing the whole world.  They have simultaneously provoked crises in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Far East and now South America.  That is impressive by any standard.  They haven’t managed to piss off the Pope but only because he happens to be an atheistic pedo-protecting commie like them.

Maybe the most interesting thing about this situation is that they don’t seem at all alarmed that a lot of it is going badly for the sides they allegedly support.  Ukraine seems to be failing in its war with Russia.  The West African nations that revolted against the Western approved leaders have seemingly triumphed over the response from France and the United States.  The United States has given such mixed signals in the Gaza war that both the Israelis and the Arabs are angry at Dementia Joe.  China has basically shrugged its shoulders and walked away from any negotiations about Taiwan.  And now Venezuela has sized up the United States’ depleted military condition and decided to annex the oil-rich two thirds of its neighbor Guyana.

Venezuela is most probably causing trouble at the suggestion of Russia.  Putin is looking to punish the United States for forcing the Ukraine war.  While Donald Trump was in office the world mostly got a break from the color revolution Neo-Con skullduggery that was the order of the day during the Obama years.  Relations with our adversaries was respectful and quiet.  But now that Biden has allowed the Kagans and their allies to once again destabilize an unsuspecting world, we can expect all our enemies like Iran, North Korea, Syria, Yemen, Venezuela, Cuba and the rest of them to align with Russia and China and cause us grief wherever they can.  And they are.

But worse, the actions of this administration have even driven India, Turkey and Saudi Arabia into the Russians’ arms too.  Now this takes a very special kind of stupid.  The only thing they haven’t done yet is radicalize the Canadians.  But the year isn’t quite over yet so who knows.

You know, it’s hard to understand if there is some method to this madness.  They legitimately seem more interested in the public relations victories around LGBTQ inclusion in places like Afghanistan than in the legitimate priorities of the American people.  The only thread that seems to connect all of the radical foreign policy adventures is that the Neo-Cons assume that the United States is still the unipolar hegemon over the whole planet and no other power can resist any of our actions at all.  So, Russia and China are playthings for us to swat around with no consequences to fear.  And smaller countries like Iran and Venezuela don’t even merit military consideration and can be controlled by economic sanctions.

Of course, the fact that we’ve just finished with twenty years of failed nation building in the Middle East and no longer can get enough recruits to keep our armed forces at full strength doesn’t even register with the adventurers in the State Department and the CIA.  They’re raring to go at other borders of the Russian sphere of influence in Central Asia and beyond.  It’s hard to imagine that these people are really as blind as they seem to be.  They don’t seem to care that they may unleash a war that will have very serious consequences for the citizens of this country.  Even a major nuclear exchange is hardly an impossibility in the brinksmanship environment that they’ve created.

Now, I understand that this is a dangerous world and the United States must play hardball with countries that are ideologically committed to destroying us.  Iran has been such a state for over forty years and China and Russia are major global adversaries of ours for many reasons.

But I almost feel that the Neo-Cons that have been in charge of our foreign policy for the last couple of decades are more dangerous to this country than all of the rest of the world put together.  I don’t know if it’s practical or even possible to clean house at the CIA and the State Department but if I were Donald Trump, I’d clean out those two viper’s nests as one of the first orders of business.  Well maybe right after the FBI.  But definitely pretty soon after.

The Truth Leaks Out of Kiev

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Up until this summer the audience in the West heard from their leaders and the media that

  • Ukraine was inflicting enormous casualties on Russia while suffering very light losses to their own troops.
  • Russia’s population was dead set against the war and only prisoners were fighting on the Russian side.
  • The Russian troops and officers were incompetent and had rock bottom morale.
  • That with the provision of advanced western weapons and training Ukraine would sweep away the Russians and recapture all of the Eastern provinces including Crimea.

During the summer and into the fall word started getting out that the Ukrainian counter-offensive, bolstered by Western tanks and other armored vehicles was suffering tens of thousands of casualties and wasn’t able to punch through the defensive lines that the Russians had prepared in Zaporizhzhia to protect Crimea from assault.  Now with the onset of winter many in America and Europe are starting to question whether the tens of billions of dollars in weapons and aid have accomplished anything more than facilitating a slaughter of Ukrainians and Russians without accomplishing anything worthwhile.

Finally, word is now leaking out of Ukraine that the leaders surrounding President Zelensky no longer share his almost religious belief that Ukraine can win the war they are engaged in.  And the news first broke in the periodical that had declared Zelensky “Man of the Year” in 2022, Time.

In an interview with Ukrainian leaders many parts of the real story come out.

“But his (Zelensky’s) convictions haven’t changed. Despite the recent setbacks on the battlefield, he does not intend to give up fighting or to sue for any kind of peace. On the contrary, his belief in Ukraine’s ultimate victory over Russia has hardened into a form that worries some of his advisers. It is immovable, verging on the messianic. “He deludes himself,” one of his closest aides tells me in frustration. “We’re out of options. We’re not winning. But try telling him that.”

…

When I raised these claims with a senior military officer, he said that some commanders have little choice in second-guessing orders from the top. At one point in early October, he said, the political leadership in Kyiv demanded an operation to “retake” the city of Horlivka, a strategic outpost in eastern Ukraine that the Russians have held and fiercely defended for nearly a decade. The answer came back in the form of a question: With what? “They don’t have the men or the weapons,” says the officer. “Where are the weapons? Where is the artillery? Where are the new recruits?”

…

In some branches of the military, the shortage of personnel has become even more dire than the deficit in arms and ammunition. One of Zelensky’s close aides tells me that even if the U.S. and its allies come through with all the weapons they have pledged, “we don’t have the men to use them.”

Since the start of the invasion, Ukraine has refused to release official counts of dead and wounded. But according to U.S. and European estimates, the toll has long surpassed 100,000 on each side of the war. It has eroded the ranks of Ukraine’s armed forces so badly that draft offices have been forced to call up ever older personnel, raising the average age of a soldier in Ukraine to around 43 years. “They’re grown men now, and they aren’t that healthy to begin with,” says the close aide to Zelensky. “This is Ukraine. Not Scandinavia.””

And this is a Biden Administration cheerleader saying this.  If you read other sources they’re even more dire.

“Alone among his team, Zelensky seems not to understand how circumstances have changed. Shuster and TIME try their best to portray him as the last stalwart of the Ukrainian cause, but the fact that his own inner circle is the source of the torrent of revelations and complaints suggests that his immovability owes not to Churchillian resolve but rather to an impervious bunker mentality.”

What seems to be the case is the neo-cons have decided that bleeding Russia by genociding the Ukraine is a sensible policy.  Even people who despise Vladimir Putin and desire the United States to dominate in Eastern European politics should have enough basic humanity to recoil from what’s going on in Eastern Ukraine.  It’s just an update of 1914.  Meatgrinders in Bakhmut and Avdiivka are just senseless wars of attrition that kill and maim tens of thousands of men while yielding up only bombed out moonscapes to the victor.

Russia is bleeding but Ukraine is bleeding out.  Hopefully House Speaker Mike Johnson will have the good sense to put an end to this nightmarish quagmire of death.  If we stop sending them billions of dollars in “aid” the only ones who will lose will be the oligarchs that won’t be able to steal their chunk of the loot.  The rest of the Ukrainians can go back home and pick up what’s left of their lives and their future.

Statics and Dynamics

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Every chemical engineering student in my college had to take a smattering of other engineering courses to get his degree.  We took an EE (electrical engineering) course and an ME (mechanical engineering) course or two were equivalent to some of ours like thermodynamics and heat transfer (although usually our sections had some additional requirements that were specific to chemically reactive systems.  And we had to take a CE (Civil Engineering) course.  I think the text I used for the CE course was called “Statics and Dynamics.”  Here we talked about stress and strain and the different forces that needed to be calculated in order to specify the required strengths of materials used to design and construct a structure like a bridge or a dam.  And it was always stressed that a safety factor was always needed.  Even for the most cut and dry application that had been cookie cut for generations.  You always wanted the strengths of the components to be greater than any possible forces that could be credibly imagined, by some generous factor.  And the less well defined the risks the bigger the factor should be.  So, if you’re building a nuclear power plant, something that didn’t even exist within the living memory of people still alive today and which has enormous inherent risks, you don’t skimp on the materials of construction.  Ask the guy who designed the damping rods for the Chernobyl reactors.

Now as complicated as a bridge or a nuclear power plant design is imagine designing a global nuclear deterrence system based on mutually assured destruction with something like ten nuclear nation states all of which are in various uneasy states of enmity and competition with each other and three of which possess very large stockpiles of nuclear ICBMs.  The policies needed to maintain this balanced system mostly requires that the major players do not willingly attempt to destabilize the status quo through direct confrontation with each other.  And unbelievably we got through about seventy-five years of this without a single nuclear exchange between the nuclear armed states.  A miracle.

And probably the reason it all worked was because, for the most part, the system was a defensive crouch that provided a nuclear tripwire that the Soviets were afraid to cross and at the time we were still too smart to try.  But then the Soviet Union fell and we all stopped worrying about nuclear war and both sides thought to let things lay.  And that got us to 2000.  But then 9/11 happened and the neo-cons became politically important and ever since they’ve been wondering what would happen if we could leverage those wonderful relics of the last century, the ICBMs.  So, color revolutions became the thing to do and now arming former Soviet republics is the new game.

Well, here’s the thing.  Nuclear weapons as a defensive weapon is one thing.  Nukes as a tactical offensive threat, even one that you just talk about, is a totally different animal.  In fact, instead of being a stabilizing factor it’s a powerful destabilizing one

The analogy that is the basis of this whole essay is the difference between the strength of concrete in compression as opposed to against a shearing force.  You can take a concrete pier and load it vertically with the weight of a building.  This compressive force can be enormous and the pier is completely stable and far below the maximum loading it is designed for.  But take that same pier and mount it sideways and try to use it as a beam with the same weight cantilevered and it will fail.  That material does not have the same strength laterally as it has in compression.  It will fail catastrophically.  So, the engineer designing a structure has to know the strength of a component but also the correct circumstance in which to use it.

And that’s what we’re doing.  We’re trying to use nuclear deterrence as an offensive weapon.  It’s the shield we hide behind as we snipe at the Russians behind proxies, like the Ukrainians, the Poles and maybe the Balts.  We’re playing nuclear brinksmanship and we’re playing it badly.  We’ve just given the Russians the excuse to call in proxies of their own.  Possibly Hamas is the first of these.  Maybe after them come some Lebanese or other Iranian proxies only this time inside our border.  And maybe that’s what the neo-cons are hoping for.  But it’s a stupid play.  We did the Middle East invasion game after 9/11.  It was a disaster.  If we do it again with Russia and Iran and China as our enemies it will be a bigger disaster.  The nuclear deterrence won’t deter the conventional wars.  But if we push this whole rivalry too far it might just get us the nuclear war we thought could never happen.  Brilliant political malpractice.

So, the moral of the story is, make sure you hire a competent engineer when you’re building something that your life depends on.  In our case don’t hire Anthony Blinken and Joe Biden.  They’ve got collapse written all over them.

As the Neocons Blunder Their Way to Armageddon

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It’s almost as if they would prefer to spark a world war rather than admit that the world would be infinitely better without them.

 

Who Will Fight Joe Biden’s Wars?

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The Neo-Cons want to fight Russia and China.  Well, that’s a bold ambition.  The question I have is fight them with what?  Or should I say with whom?  Because despite all the gear and munitions we’ve handed over to the Ukraine I’m sure we could ratchet up domestic production of weapons and munitions if we decided we want to.  But I don’t think we have an army to use those weapons.

Recruiting doesn’t seem to be going well.  The demographic that the military has always depended on to fill their ranks has been declared the enemy.  Straight white men are white supremacists and not to be trusted or promoted in the ranks.  So, it looks like minorities, women and sexual deviants will have to take up the slack.

But will they?  I’m guessing they won’t.  And if war seems imminent, I think the shortfall will get much, much worse.  And that’s as it should be.  Fighting for your country is a duty.  But when you’ve been told it’s no longer your country then it goes without saying that you must step aside and let the new owners bear the burden and make Joe Biden proud.

And I think it’s important that the new country use its new flag.  I think the rainbow flag should be hoisted high over the ranks of the high heeled drag queen warriors.  Why, if the Russians and Chinese even hear that these fierce soldiers are going to be the tip of the spear, I doubt they even show up.  They’ll surrender unconditionally and allow the victorious army to sashay through downtown Moskow and Beijing to the marshal beat of that proud anthem, “It’s Raining Men.”

Seriously, I think Washington is hoping to get the Poles and Baltic nations to attack Russia for us.  The question is whether we’re willing to start chucking nukes when the Russians start using them on these NATO partners.  I can’t make up my mind.  But chances seem good I may find out.

As far as the Chinese, I don’t think it will get beyond a war of words.  I don’t believe the US navy still commands the respect that it used to.  The Chinese won’t even have to call our bluff.  Taiwan does not want to be drawn into a confrontation with China.  They want the status quo to go on for as long as it can.  And in fact, I believe that the Koreans and Japanese probably feel the same way.

But as I said, I think it’s extremely likely that Biden’s neo-con military and state department may manage to trigger World War III.  How exactly it starts; Ukraine or Kaliningrad or the Baltics or Poland is unclear.  But the options are all there and it doesn’t look like there’s anyone smart enough or sane enough to prevent it.

It’s sort of ironic that while madmen like Stalin and Mao were in charge of Russia and China guys like Eisenhower and Nixon were smart and sane enough to prevent the situation from boiling over into nuclear war.  But now fate has given us Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.  I guess I should be able to see the humor in this.  And I guess I do.  But the laughter is a little like hysteria and the smile is more like a grimace.

Well, hail to the chief.  Go get them Joe and good luck, you’ll need it.

Guest Contributor – ArthurinCali – 23MAR2023 – NeoCon Redux

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The same people have apparently gotten lazy in the justifications for NeoCon adventures. The new(old) reasoning for escalating involvement in the Ukraine-Russia conflict is so we can ‘fight’ them over there instead of in the USA. Sound familiar? This convoluted logic was used for Iraq after the WMD business ended up being nothing but smoke. They actually think we should believe that the Russian flag will be planted in Paris if we do not accede to their warmonger whims.

This Red Dawn mindset continues to convince people that these political factions actually care about them. Meanwhile, as we fund pensions and salaries in Ukraine so Zelensky can buy another exotic car and send his wife on Paris shopping trips, the CBO has recommended means-testing for VA disability. To help balance the federal budget of course.

These folks are evil to the core.

ArthurinCali Has a Post on NeoCon Madness

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Arthur has a post on what the endless NeoCon wars meant to him on the receiving side:

“If a young enlisted kid could recognize the futility of trying to establish the concept of liberal democracy amongst the former nomadic Bedouin tribes that now, playact as “nations”, surely the men and women at the highest positions of US political power and advisement knew this as well. To believe otherwise is a sure indication of their lack of sanity.”

America’s Pandora’s Box – The Ukraine War

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In 2001 when the United States was preparing to invade Afghanistan Vladimir Putin reached out to George W. Bush and agreed to provide logistical aid and political clout to convince the Uzbeks to let their country be a staging ground for the invasion of Afghanistan.  Bush made some statement about looking into Putin’s soul.  Whatever that meant there has never been any indication that we ever considered a way to have a positive relationship with Russia.  And after the numerous CIA color revolutions in the former Soviet lands and now with the existential threat that we have handed the Russians in Ukraine I think we must consider we’ve made them permanent implacable enemies.  And that’s not a good thing.  The Russians are not the Iraqis or even the Iranians.  In addition to a nuclear arsenal, they are intelligent, resourceful and highly vindictive.  That’s not a good combination in an enemy.

I’m not thinking ahead to nuclear Armageddon.  Let’s leave that scenario for another day.  But what Russia might do is make us pay a price at home.  What occurs to me is our porous southern border.  And come to think of it, all of Europe’s borders.  The United States and Western Europe have spent the last two decades saying that the world is welcome to traipse into their countries at will.  Well, what if the Russians start sending some of our middle eastern “friends” with some munitions they provide and direct them to those borders.  That would be a very frightening thing.  Or how about men who claim to be Ukrainian refugees?  Could we really know that they weren’t Russians?  I kind of doubt it.

There hasn’t been much in the news lately about Al Qaeda or any of the other crazies that used to be in the news 24/7.  But I believe they’re all mostly still there and now we’ve left them several billions of dollars’ worth of war materiel in Afghanistan and all that’s lacking is a little seed money and plans.  And let’s not forget the Mexican Drug Cartels.  They aren’t our friends.  They have already set up shop in the border states and elsewhere and certainly wouldn’t object to some arms smuggling if the price was right.  Things like infrastructure sabotage and downing airliners seem like no-brainers.  How exactly would we find a needle of determined saboteurs when they’ll be hiding inside of a haystack of millions of illegal aliens that we’ve allowed to flood our country.  I think the answer is we can’t.

We’re providing the Ukrainians with top-of-the-line American arms and we are assuming that the Russians won’t pay us back.  Somehow that seems absurd.  We’ve attempted to starve the Russians out with sanctions and we give the Ukrainians real time location of the Russian senior staff for missile targeting and we think they’ll just sit back and take it.  That seems incredibly naïve.

In fact, I really wouldn’t want to be Joe Biden, Lloyd Austin or General Mark Milley.  They’ve made this very personal for Vladimir Putin and his government.  I don’t think they’re the kind who think of it as impersonal and just “business.”  I remember reading about the prosecution of the Chechen war.  It was a dirty, nasty slog where vendettas and revenge were an integral part of winning.  I would not be surprised to hear that kidnapping and torture became a part of this war.  The Ukrainians have already declared a blacklist of American civilians that they consider targets for assassination.  It would surprise me not at all that the Russians have something similar.

So, the neocons have their war.  They hate the Russians viscerally and now the Russians hate us too.  Brilliant.

H/T to the Conservative Treehouse for Primer on Ukraine Politics

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Sundance at the conservative Treehouse has many great links.  I never thought I’d be linking to a documentary made by Oliver Stone, the grandfather of the conspiracy theorists but I found this long (90 minutes) video very informative. Now without a doubt we are getting the Russian take on what happened in Ukraine but it looks like it describes pretty closely what happened in a “color revolution” staged by the CIA and the State Department.

And of course, the neocons and Joe Biden make their appearances.  I think Vladimir Putin is now my favorite evil dictator.  Maybe I looked into his eyes and saw his soul (or something).