Category Archives: Foreign Policy

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

It’s Biblical: A Leader Who Doesn’t Plead For The Lives Of His People Is A Failed Leader (And A Neocon)

America, Democracy, Foreign Policy, Hebrew Testament, Homeland Security, Individual Rights, Neoconservatism, Propaganda, Russia, War

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A prediction: You heard it first here. This is my opinion and I could very well be wrong—but I postulate the following based on deductive faculties that have served me thus far in observing The Empire’s workings:

Based on observing The Empire’s workings over decades, I’d hazard that President Volodymyr Zelensky is probably being fiercely guarded by Americans, possibly by a private, paramilitary security company. Something like Sean McFate’s DynCorp outfit, or Russia’s Wagner Group. Or even perhaps  Ukraine’s own Einsatzgruppen (Hitler’s death squads) the Azov regiment.

MORE in support of my assumption, for that is all it is, is a revelation of some of the plans his American puppet-masters’ have for Zelensky, via NBC:

WASHINGTON — Biden administration officials have discussed plans with the Ukrainian government for President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to leave Kyiv in the event of a Russian invasion, according to two people familiar with the discussions.
Under a plan that’s been discussed, Zelenskyy would relocate to Lviv in western Ukraine, about 50 miles from the Polish border, the people familiar with the discussions said.

My opinion—it’s so far merely a solid guess—is bolstered by Zelensky’s relaxed, cocky  showman’s state-of-mind—bolstered as it is by wild Western reinforcement of the Ukrainian leader’s bloody bravado.

“Bloody” because of the inverted values with which the Empire has blanketed the Russia-Ukraine conflict:

To normies, a leader who doesn’t plead for the lives of his people is a failed leader. Diplomacy, negotiations, cease fire: that’s the nomenclature clear-thinking people wish instinctively to hear when they see the immiseration of Ukrainians and their cities.

And, no. So far, Zelensky has arrogantly and publicly told a military superpower, Russia, to, “hold peace talks now or suffer for generations.” That is not diplomacy, but provocation.

Why, the Hebrew Testament (while “Old,” it’s never out-of-date; hence “Hebrew”) is festooned with examples of leaders pleading—even bargaining with God, as Abraham did so ingeniously over Sodom and Gomorrah—for the lives of their people. Queen Esther did the same before King Ahasuerus (or Xerxes); Moses petitioned Pharaoh for his people, and so on. That’s what real leadership is about—uphold and fight for the people’s natural right to FUCKING LIVE.

By these criteria, Zelensky and Biden are failed leaders.

To the American Jacobins and their Ukrainian Zelenskyite puppets, TALKING ‘OUR VALUES’ is all it takes to make a good leader. Talk the neocon talk.

BY ©2022 ILANA MERCER

UPDATED (3/12/022): NEW COLUMN: True Story: Russia Finds WMD In Ukraine!

America, China, Democracy, Europe, Foreign Policy, Neoconservatism, Propaganda, Russia, War, WMD

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NEW COLUMN IS “True Story: Russia Finds WMD In Ukraine!” It is on WND.COM, The Unz Review and The New American.

Excerpt:

… I had framed the duty of diplomacy and statesmanship at which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has failed so miserably and with such grave consequences for his countrymen as realpolitik.

Realpolitik is practical politics, the art of getting along, differences and all, in a real world in which reality, especially power differentials, is accepted and dealt with. The onus was on the Ukrainian president to practice realpolitik with his powerful neighbors, the Russians, I argued. Zelensky ought to have shown Putin respect and negotiated an agreement with him, one that would have appeased Russia with respect to Ukraine’s outsized, idiotic NATO and EU aspirations. Promise the Russians “a non-aligned, neutral Ukraine,” is how Col. Doug McGregor put it.

What I call realpolitik, political scientist John Mearsheimer terms “great-power politics.”

“When you’re a country like Ukraine and you live next door to a great power like Russia,” he posits, “you have to pay careful attention to what the Russians think, because if you take a stick and you poke them in the eye, they’re going to retaliate. … States in the Western hemisphere understand [great-power politics] full well with regard to the United States.”

With his fatigues, simplistic jingoism and facility with TV optics and social media—Zelensky certainly appeals to the war channel females (Fox News) and to distaff worldwide. But he has been worse than useless in the grander scheme of things. As Mearsheimer points out, matter-of-fact, Ukraine is going to lose more territory, its economy has been wrecked as are its cities and infrastructure in ruins. Eastern Europe is becoming more unstable. China and Russia have been thrust into each other’s arms.

The West claims the blame lies solely with Putin, to whom are attributed assorted phantasmagoric expansionist programs and projects. According to this angels-and-demons Disneyfied storyline, Putin plans on claiming the Baltic states of Eastern Europe “out of a longstanding desire to resuscitate the Soviet Empire,” even though the Russian president has disavowed the creation of a greater Russia and certainly doesn’t have the economic wherewithal to mount protracted invasions and occupations. …

… READ THE REST. NEW COLUMN, “True Story: Russia Finds WMD In Ukraine!,” is on WND.COM and The Unz Review for now.

UPDATED (3/11/022): Curiously, Ukraine the “free” and “democratic” had mounted, a la the USA, its own January 6 kind of offensive on its opposition, whom the Zelensky state had placed under house arrest. Check it out.

Coverage of Ukraine before the war is also instructive. Of course, nothing justifies a war of aggression, but a lot explains it.

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UPDATE (3/12/022):  Once a banal neocon; always one. Douglas Murray, ConInc darling of FoxNews, offers, on Fox News, not a balanced analysis of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, only the rah-rah, Zelensky’s sexy; Putin’s a commie nonsense. Murray’s fan boys continue to claim magnificence and originality for their boy. Nothing Douglas Murray says is magnificent or original or particularly inspiring. You could say that about, say, the late Christopher Hitchens. But this guy? What’s wrong with people! He always manages to miss the very important point. Like here: https://www.ilanamercer.com/2020/10/wake-systemic-anti-whiteness-deadly-witness-south-africa/

David and I were right about shallow Murray:
WATCH/READ:

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Musil Protege summed Douglas Murray up truly originally. Put it this way: Murray could not summon such prose as this:

A real poseur, no? Another soi disant Oakeshott heir who hasn’t yet heard that he was never in the will. A Mute-button pundit. His hectoring style has all the suavity of the schoolmarm of distant memory. 80 years ago he would have been teaching Silas Marner to 5th Graders.