Category Archives: Military

Uncle Sam Aggression Is The Only ‘Good’ Kind Of Aggression

Foreign Policy, Media, Military, Neoconservatism, Russia, War

Unless you are the United States of America, “… you just don’t invade another country on phony pretext in order to assert your interests,” said Secretary of State John Kerry to the chronically incurious David Gregory, on Meet The Press.

OK, Kerry did not disgorge the first 8 words not in quotation marks. But they are implied, given the historical facts. So I added them.

Another correction: Unlike the Russian government, the US government does not do anything that is in the interest of its people—although the think tank industry and the media-military-congressional complex would argue otherwise.

Agree or disagree with him; like it or not, Putin’s goal is “to protect Russian-speaking people in Crimea or other parts of Ukraine.” Which American community was Genghis Bush and B. Hussein protecting when they decimated Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and the droned-upon countries?

To reiterate the question asked and answered in “The Warmongers: Not Looking Out For Us,” “More than anyone, who benefits when America goes to war? Those who ‘function within the nimbus of great power’ in D.C. and around it—the media-military-congressional-industrial complex.”

You see, the chattering and political classes cannot conceive of greatness outside the state because they are part of the state apparatus and depend on it for status and income. Conversely, individual Americans—who have nothing to gain and only losses to sustain from war—should never conflate their interests with those of the government and its emissaries, who have everything to gain from the great theatre that is war.

UPDATED: The Empire’s ‘Mad Meddlers’ And Even Madder Heroes

Democracy, Foreign Aid, Foreign Policy, Military, Neoconservatism

Our friend, historian Nebojsa Malic, updates us as to the status of the “the supposedly ‘independent’ and ‘popular’ leaders of the Maydan rebellion,” in the Ukraine:

Not two weeks after Imperial diplomats were caught in flagranti trying to order them around, the supposedly “independent” and “popular” leaders of the Maydan rebellion have responded to a general amnesty by the government with – armed rebellion. A number of government buildings were stormed by “peaceful protesters”, including an armory in Lvov (Lwow, Lviv, Lemberg) near the Polish border.

So, according to the Empire, armed neo-Nazis, soccer hooligans, a variety of militant separatists, looters, arsonists and cop-killers are “peaceful protesters”, whose demands for the government’s unconditional surrender and a rewriting of the Constitution are a desire for more “democracy.” Meanwhile, the president who has tried every form of appeasement towards the protesters, including a general amnesty, is a “despot… abolishing democracy.”

This is absurd. There is not a shred of logic in any of it, aside from the “who-whom” relativistic logic, according to which the designated villain can do no right, while the designated victim can do no wrong.

Malevolent Spite

The simmering resentment of the Imperial press against Russia over the past decade or so has flat-out exploded in 2014. As Chronicles’ Eugene Girin dared notice, the US media (though the Brits and the Canadians haven’t been far behind) have begun to write about Russia with hate:

“As if on cue from the White House, the American media started an anti-Russian campaign the sheer malevolence of which was only rivaled by the orgy of Serbophobia in the 1990s.”

In a follow-up article, he noted that, “unlike the old Soviet Union, which was treated respectfully, if not reverently by the mainstream networks, Russia is portrayed as an object of scorn and ridicule: a failed, menacing, disagreeably exotic country.”

Menacing to whom? Georgia, which attacked first? Ukraine, which Russia bailed out and subsidizes with cheap gas? Latvia, where SS veterans march proudly every year? The globalist banksters, who lost the ability to loot Russia they had under Yeltsin? …

MORE.

UPDATE: “Ukraine, Crimea, and Washington’s Pointless Geo-Political Contest With Russia” by John Glaser:

… telling Russia to behave itself has about zero chance of helping the situation. “Russian leaders believe, rightly or wrongly, that the West drove events in Ukraine to the brink of collapse to secure geopolitical advantage over Moscow,” Trenin and Weiss say. “Thus, Western appeals for Russian restraint in the event of a crisis over Crimea are unlikely to resonate.”

But the eagerness in Washington to steer events in Ukraine and beat out Russia in some pointless geopolitical game has not yielded. In this Daily Beast report, Republican leaders Buck McKeon and James Inhofe berate Obama for being too soft on Russia; they both express a deep longing for the Cold War era when it was easier to justify any reckless military action abroad on the grounds of opposing Soviet designs.

David Rhodes, a Reuters columnist, quoted former Romney adviser Nile Gardiner as reiterating Romney’s 2012 line that Russia is America’s greatest geo-political foe and arguing that “an ‘ideological war’ was underway and Putin is winning.”

Gardiner then worries that Washington’s inability to force Russia to lay prostrate at the feet of American power is encouraging other countries to defy their American master: “Putin is viewed by American adversaries and competitors as someone who has stood up to American influence and gotten away with outflanking the United States. Adversaries take note of this and they sense weakness and that’s dangerous. Dissidents also take note. …”

Continued.

Snowden: When A Government Contractor Gets It Right

Ethics, Homeland Security, Military, Morality, The State

I heard it said by Gretchen Carlson, another studiously dumb chick on Fox News, that the private, Virginia-based company that vetted former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden did a poor job.

Talk about inverted morals and ethics—Carlson’s.

In this instance, USIS (which lazy reporters fail to name in full) did a spectacular job.

In Snowden, USIS selected an intelligent, eloquent individual, with the highest moral character, who proved willing to put his life on the line—not for Uncle Sam, but for his countrymen.

Sometimes even a government contractor does a stellar job.

Are America’s Democracy Alinskyites In Russia’s Backyard?

Economy, John McCain, Military, Neoconservatism, Russia

In absolute numbers, Russia’s military spending is dwarfed by that of the United States. This spending, moreover, is a smidgen of what it was during its “tortured past.” As a percentage of GDP, however, Wikipedia shows the latter parameter to be 4.4 percent in both countries. Thus in need of checking is Forbes’ Mark Adomanis’ assertion that Russia’s military spending as a percentage of GDP is more modest than ours.

Ironclad, however, is the fact that America’s Democracy Alinskyites—blessed and backed by baby Bush and his non-identical, evil ideological twin, Barack Obama—are behind many of the “color-coded,” plant-based revolutions across the world.

Witness Sam LaHood, son of Ray LaHood, in his attempts to shape the Lotus Revolution in Egypt.

And to get his jollies, John McCain has to be talking US intervention around the world. Ukraine has been his target of late—and, seemingly, a State-Department floozy is already talking dirty on that front.

So, the Russians probably have reason to fear the US. Hence the military expenditure.

Adomanis departs from the menagerie of media morons when it comes to prognosticating about Russia, reporting that, “Life expectancy is going up, wages are going up, the birth rate is going up, and the death rate, the suicide rate, the murder rate, and the poverty rate are all going down”:

1) “While Russia is hardly an economic hegemon, its overall economic performance over the past decade has actually been pretty decent, especially when you compare its performance to the horrible post-crisis performances of many formerly communist countries in Eastern Europe.”

2) “Russia’s population was declining rapidly during the late 1990s and early 2000s, but this decline has leveled off and the population has stabilized.”