Category Archives: Foreign Policy

BREAKING: NEW COLUMN: It’s Biblical, Zelensky: A Leader Who Fails To Haggle For The Lives Of His People Has Failed

Ethics, EU, Europe, Foreign Policy, Hebrew Testament, Reason, Republicans, War

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Critical thinking is not in the American bone marrow. A decade or two must first pass, during which only the “mute-button pundits” get to mouth received lies. We’re currently suspended in that phase with respect to Ukraine and its mythical leader. But in the unlikely case that my readers suddenly doubt my instincts—I’m pleased to report that in Ukraine, there are already  rumblings against lionized leader Volodymyr Zelensky.

This from the impeccable reporters of the leftist Economist: “… she and her colleagues were lulled into a false sense of security by Volodymyr Zelensky’s urging that life should carry on as normal, and by the inaction of the Ministry of Culture. ‘It was all, ‘Don’t mention the war’, says another art historian; ‘basically, they screwed up.’”

That’s in the spirit of my NEW COLUMN, “It’s Biblical, Zelensky Is A Failed Leader,” which appeared on WND.COM, The Unz Review and The New American.

Excerpt:

… To normies, a leader who doesn’t plead for the lives of his people is a failed leader. Diplomacy, negotiations, a cease fire: that’s the nomenclature clear-thinking people ought to wish instinctively to hear when they see the immiseration of Ukrainians and their cities. To my knowledge, not before the war and not now has Zelensky initiated, or partaken in, or been urged to pursue serious, high-level talks with Putin.

And while there is some indication that Zelensky might be inching closer to acceding  “neutrality for Kyiv and security guarantees for Moscow,” publicly, Zelensky has done nothing but snarl his contempt for Russia, roaring at the Kremlin to “hold peace talks now or suffer for generations.” This is not diplomacy, but yet more political posturing and provocation. (But then Zelensky, an actor, could be prepping to appear before the central, universal seat of asininity: Hollywood’s Oscars.)

The Hebrew Testament (though “Old,” it’s never out-of-date) is bedecked with examples of leaders pleading, even bargaining, for the lives of the Stiff-Necked People. Abraham haggled ingeniously with The Almighty over Sodom and Gomorrah. Queen Esther petitioned mighty King Xerxes (Ahasuerus) on behalf of Persian Jews, and Moses did the same for his enslaved people before Pharaoh. Another Hebrew has written that “he who saves you from war is better than he who sends you to war.” That’s what real leadership is about—uphold and fight for the people’s natural right to live peacefully. …

… MORE on WND.COM, The Unz Review and The New American.

BREAKING: Finally, the cocky little guy, Zelensky, is scrambling to make diplomacy noises—could it be to cover his sorry ass at the eleventh hour? Via a source called NTD:

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says a meeting between him and Russian President Vladimir Putin is needed to negotiate an end to the war, and that any compromise needs to be approved by a referendum. Meanwhile, people have started to evacuate from the Black Sea port of Odessa as Russian forces loom.

Note how Zelensky’s first instinct is to create a media record of his belated impulse to move in the right direction. Very slick. You’d think that after weeks of hell for Ukrainians—we’d learn that the president had already set up an open line to Putin. But no.

Zelensky’s diplomacy is still aspirational.

Oh, and in case you didn’t know where his heart lies: Over to Zelensky: “Justin Trudeau was one of those leaders who inspired me to join politics.”

The European Parliament’s Christine Anderson has some fighting words for Zelensky’s political muse: Trudeau, “You are a disgrace to any democracy. Please spare us your presence”. Watch. Listen.
What an eloquent, and powerful lady she is. If only the Deplorables of America had such representation.

WATCH: It’s Biblical, Zelensky: The Little Guy Must Deal With Reality; Not Bolster Hero Bona Fides

America, Argument, Ethics, EU, Foreign Policy, Morality, Natural Law

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I never though I’d say this, but, if one is wedded to reality as I am—there is a place for Benthamite utilitarianism, however much natural-rights sorts like me dislike Jeremy Bentham’s reasoning.

AT ANY RATE, A LETTER IN RESPONSE TO THE YOUTUBE VIDEO I RECORDED TODAY elicited this rather utilitarian reaction from me. (I lost the letter in the posting-and-replying activity, so perhaps the viewer and writer, a critic, will be kind enough to repost it here at YouTube.)

Having covered and commented on this crisis since 2014, I will repeat the plain reality the commentary was supposed to convey and elucidate:

Ukraine is the little guy. As those Biblical examples offered were meant to vividly illustrate; the Little Weak Guy must deal with reality; not bolster his hero bona fides. For Volodymyr Zelensky, dealing with reality and discharging his duties as a leader ought to have meant engaging with Putin personally and respectfully long before the invasion.

HE CATEGORICALLY DID NOT. Instead, he played footsie with fickle America and kept baiting the Russian Bear. Now his people suffer. That’s a FAIL. The End.

WATCH THE VIDEO & SUBSCRIBE:

“It’s Biblical, Zelensky: A Leader Who Fails To Negotiate For The Lives Of His People Has Failed”

Columns on Ukraine:

https://www.ilanamercer.com/2022/03/true-story-russia-finds-wmd-ukraine/
https://www.ilanamercer.com/2022/03/uncle-sam-still-king-invaders-ukraine-realpolitik-wests-failure/
https://www.ilanamercer.com/2022/01/neocons-neolibs-nato-inch-us-closer-nuclear-war-russia/
https://www.ilanamercer.com/2014/02/presstitute-cultivated-ignorance-on-ukraine/

Please Subscribe to the “Hard Truth” Video Podcast, where Ukraine has been covered (and which I enjoy much more than “speaking solo to the camera“):

https://rumble.com/c/HardTruthPodcast
https://rumble.com/vx058f-true-story-russia-finds-wmd-in-ukraine.html
https://rumble.com/vw897h-russia-to-us-on-ukraine-pot.-kettle.-black..html
https://rumble.com/vtea18-neocons-neolibs-and-nato-inch-us-closer-to-nuclear-war-with-russia.html

Peace to all—especially to the poor Ukrainians, failed by the US and by their US-co-opted leaders.

UPDATED (3/23/022): Tucker Carlson’s Producers Rewarding Retread Reformed Neocon Tools Like Sohrab Ahmari

Argument, Foreign Policy, Iran, Iraq, Media, Neoconservatism, Old Right, Paleoconservatism, Paleolibertarianism, Political Philosophy, War

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On the one hand, Tucker Carlson and his oft-worthy guests make the case that America’s catastrophic institutional rot (MY EXTENSIVELY DEVELOPED TERM, no theirs) is a consequence of there being no adverse consequences attached to being dead-wrong all the time.

On the other hand, the show has a tendency to reward reformed neocons such as newcomer Sohrab Ahmari, who peddles retread banalities (or stuff the Old Right—myself included—had espoused decades ago, and from the get-go, in the case of the Globe and Mail commentary below: September 19, 2002).

Rewarding conveniently reformed, politically pleasing mediocrities makes the practitioner part of the institutional rot.

“PUNDITS, HEAL THYSELVES!” (Ilana Mercer, May 29, 2004) spoke to this repulsive specter:

… So why are insightful commentators whose observations have predictive power generally barred from the national discourse, while false neoconservative prophets are called back for encores?

I got to thinking about the neoconservative talking twits. They’ve been wrong all along about the invasion of Iraq. They’ve consistently dished out dollops of ahistoric, unintuitive, and reckless verbiage. Yet they’ve retained their status as philosopher-kings.
Thomas Friedman, Christopher Hitchens (undeniably a writer of considerable flair and originality), George Will and Tucker Carlson (both of whom seem to have conveniently recanted at the eleventh hour), Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol, Mark Steyn, Max Boot, John Podhoretz, Andrew Sullivan – they all grabbed the administration’s bluff and ran with it. Like the good Trotskyites many of them were, once they tasted blood, they writhed like sharks. Compounding their scent-impaired bloodhound act was their utter ignorance of geopolitical realities – they insisted our soldiers would be greeted with blooms and bonbons and that an Iraqi democracy would rise from the torrid sands of Mesopotamia.
Their innumerable errors and flagrant hubris did not prevent the neoconservatives from managing to marginalize their competitors on the Right: the intrepid Pat Buchanan and his American Conservative; the quixotic Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. of LewRockwell.com, and Antiwar.com. (Plus this column, of course). Unfortunately for America, there hasn’t been a horror in Iraq that these prescients did not foretell well in advance.

….the opportunity costs associated with consumption of toxic punditry are low or non-existent.

If you didn’t have the cerebral wherewithal to be against the war on Iraq in 2002, you don’t have anything original to contribute on foreign policy and anti-war or Just War thinking now.

Younger offenders can be found agitating against Iran, or scribbling inanities for the War Street Journal and other neoconservative outlets such as Commentary, the Weekly Standard, and Foreign Policy, where Sohrab Ahmari would put out irredeemable and unforgivable content such as “The Costs of Containment.”

It’s one thing to have made a mistake as Tucker Carlson had done regarding the Iraq war of aggression. Carlson apologized profusely and humbly about his Iraq error. Moreover, Carlson had never been the consummate philosophical neocon; which Sohrab Ahmari is. According to the Militarist Monitor,

“the neocons’ favorite Iranian,” Sohrab Ahmari has been a vocal advocate of U.S.-imposed regime change in his native Iran, which he left as a teenager. Rosenberg likened Ahmari to Ahmed Chalabi, the formerly exiled Iraqi politician who curried favor with U.S. neoconservatives ahead of the Iraq War and lent an Iraqi name to the list of those supporting the U.S. invasion.[3]

I’ve watched the likes of Sohrab Ahmari work their magic in the malfunctioning media for decades. I also understand fully that Tucker Carlson has a producer, for he himself cannot research each such well-promoted phony who is resurrecting a career on the solid anti-war arguments of the dissident Old, paleolibertarian and paleoconservative Right.

* Image: Truth-teller on Twitter.

And in defense of The Tuck against mediocrity Claire Lehmann, who generated the non sequitur below: Tucker Carlson doesn’t support the Russian invasion! From the fact he argues unpopular truths–it doesn’t follow that Tucker is not a populist. Most immutable truth is unpopular. Popularity does not equal populism. This woman can’t even define the terms of debate.

The Z-Man (Zelensky) Is America’s Perfect Prototype Neocon Puppet, Down To Our National Cliches

America, Conservatism, Democracy, Egalitarianism, Foreign Policy, Globalism, Neoconservatism, Russia, War

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In his cameo appearance before the US Congress, the Z-Man deftly drew on all the cliches of American life in the shallow end:

Volodymyr Zelensky vaporized about democracy [“it made us dumb“], our values [“in the classical conservative and libertarian traditions, values are private things, to be left to civil society—the individual, family and church—to practice and police“], and MLK (Martin Luther King), offering his incoherent, bizarre twist on the “I have a dream” U.S. ubiquity:

“I have a dream. I have a need. I need to protect our skies. I need your help, which means the same you feel when you hear the words I have a dream.”

Translated: When the Z-Man tells you he needs your help, you should feel the same as when you hear MLK’s “I have a dream.” Or, something.

I have a dream. I have a need, too, Mr. Z. Some quid pro quo, perhaps? The following is as true as when I wrote it in 2011, during the Egyptian Lotus Revolution. This from “Frankly, My Dear Egyptians …“:

‘I know nothing so miserable as a democracy without liberty,’ wrote Alexis de Tocqueville in the mid-1800s. He speaks for me. I find myself unable to get lathered-up about democracy for others, while I live in the democratic despotism that contemporary America has become. …

…More often than not, Americans who yearn for the freedoms their forbears bequeathed to them are labeled demented and dangerous. I’ve yet to hear liberty deprived peoples the world over stand-up for the tea-party patriots. When they do — I’ll gladly galvanize on their behalf.

Zelensky is America’s perfect, prototype Jacobin puppet.

Put it this way, if the American people (an inchoate meaningless phrase I countenance here for the sake of argument) were threatened by an invasion—American leaders would hold court from their safe rooms and underground luxury bunkers and give cheery addresses (in syntax as fractured and similarly studded with non sequiturs), while the bombs fell ON US.

Churchillian they’d rate themselves.

BY ©2022 ILANA MERCER