Category Archives: War

Sorry, Tucker Carlson: We like Victor Davis Hanson (VDH) as a person–but his record, put charitably, is that of playing catch-up. Only recently and slowly has he loosened the grip the neoconservative worldview has had on his thinking. And unconvincingly so.

VDH has been avidly cheering for the Ukrainian project—and seems unable to quiet his rhetoric about American foreign-policy Manifest Destiny. His first instinct was to support the Ukrainian endeavor and he holds the most mundane neoconservative views on Russia.

How predictive is VDH’s analysis in this, our latest, foreign-policy debacle? Not at all. In March of 2022, VDH celebrated “the muscular response of a West supposedly in decline,” when the West is manifestly in decline and Russia is winning by attrition. See “Russia Admits Weaponization Of Gas, Halts NS1 Shipments ‘Until Sanctions Lifted,’ As EU Prepares Response To Energy Crisis.” “[I]n response to the west’s weaponization of currencies and capital flows—Russia has halted gas supplies through Nord Stream 1.”

UPDATE 9/7/022: Putin: “We’ve Lost Nothing” – Putin Warns Western Elites’ “Sanctions Fever” Will See European People “Freeze”

…the blowback from EU and US-led sanctions and attempts at decoupling from Russian fossil fuels is wrecking lives in the West. “Now we are seeing how production and jobs in Europe are closing one after another,” Putin said, stressing that this is happening as “Western elites, who would not, or even cannot acknowledge objective facts.”

While against its war of aggression—those of us who see Russia as a natural ally of traditionalism (expressed in “America’s Radical, Foreign-Policy Alinskyites Destroyed South Africa!“) offered a solid distillation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Not VDH. He celebrated the puppet Zelensky, who, early in my analysis (March 24, 2022), betrayed his people for war and western aggrandizement.

When VDH, in March 2022, was getting hot for war (the mildest neocon finds war a turn-on), proclaiming a western revival—which is EXACTLY how neocons see war; a rejuvenator of sorts—aggrandizing its horrors ; I wrote this, March 3, 2022:

Good old realpolitik is what Zelensky should have been practicing with his powerful neighbors and historic brethren, the Russians.

Realpolitik is practical politics, the art of getting along, differences and all, in a real world in which reality, including the differences between people and their political systems, is accepted and dealt with.

VDH absolutely loved the war on Iraq (we railed against it from 2002 onward) and admits to NOT supporting Trump in the primaries. We were Orange from day one. (Trump book was published in June, 2016.)

Here we were for Trump from the get-go; against the Iraq war; hold a realistic position on Russia as friend of conservatives (the rest is the business of Russians, not Americans).

Still, readers have become angry with me, and not with the famous, rich, sinecured fools who led them astray and have proven wrong all the time (including in their current pursuits of the Ukraine production).

That kind of schedule of reinforcement and preference in public intellectuals and politicians explains the quality of cognoscenti Americans get. I’ve always said the government and culture don’t stand apart from us; they are us.

The more you reward those who are frequently and reliably wrong in public life—the more flourishing wrongdoers you’ll get and the more likely you are to keep going wrong.

Those who are right and principled get maligned for having foresight and principles. Those who were wrong are redeemed and forgiven, for they reflect the masses.

“PUNDITS, HEAL THYSELVES!”

* Image credit, screen pic

Lousy Lithuania Blockading Kaliningrad Could Be A Catalyst For World War Three

EU, Europe, Foreign Policy, Russia, The West, War

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Russia will have to intrude into NATO territory to feed its people in Kaliningrad. NATO, doing Uncle Sam’s bidding, could then invoke its Article 5 obligation to, one and all, galvanize against Russia.

On July 28, 1914, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia pursuant to the killing of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo, thus effectively starting the First World War.

Americans, aside some asses who may rot in Russian jails as prisoners of war, have not gotten as worked up about Ukraine as the neoconservative, neoliberal and the ConOink laptop bombardiers have wanted them to.

But Lithuania’s partial blockade of Kaliningrad—“a Russian sovereign territory on the Baltic Sea, sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland,” and thus reliant on these EU neighbors, also NATO members, for overland shipping of essential supplies—might just constitute a provocation like the one that ignited WWI.

This is the case because Russia will have to intrude into NATO territory to feed its people in Kaliningrad. NATO members, doing Uncle Sam’s bidding, could then invoke their Article 5 obligation to, one and all, galvanize against Russia.

Via ZeroHedge:

Ahead of the new Lithuanian transit ban taking effect, the state railways service was reportedly awaiting final word from the European Commission on enforcing it:

The cargo unit of Lithuania’s state railways service set out details of the ban in a letter to clients following “clarification” from the European Commission on the mechanism for applying the sanctions.

Previously, Lithuanian Deputy Foreign Minister Mantas Adomenas said the ministry was waiting for “clarification from the European Commission on applying European sanctions to Kaliningrad cargo transit.”

Brussels then ruled that “sanctioned goods and cargo should still be prohibited even if they travel from one part of Russia to another but through EU territory,” according to Rueters/Rferl.

In Moscow’s eyes, this is tantamount to laying economic siege to part of Russia’s sovereign territory and one million of its citizens. When the EU first proposed the blockage of goods as part of the last major sanctions package in early April, Kremlin officials warned of war given Moscow would have to “break the blockade” for the sake if its citizens.

MORE.

Dying For Nothing Day

America, Globalism, Government, Hillary Clinton, Military, Neoconservatism, The State, War

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A brave nation fights because it must; a cowardly one fights because it can ~ ilana (2003)

It is the habit on the Memorial Day weekend to thank uniformed men for their sacrifice. My sympathies go out to Americans who fight phantoms in far-flung destinations. I’m sorry they’ve been snookered into living, dying and killing for a lie. But I cannot honor that lie, or those who give their lives for it, and take the lives of others in America’s many recreational wars. I mourn for them, as I have from day one, but I can’t honor them.

I am sorry for those who’ve enlisted thinking they’d fight for their countrymen and were subjected to one backdoor draft after another in the cause of illegal, unjust wars and assorted informal attacks. My heart hurts for you, but I won’t worship at Moloch’s feet to make you feel better.

I honor those sad, sad draftees to Vietnam and to WW II. The first valiant batch had no option; the same goes for the last, which fought a just war. I grew up in Israel, so I honor those men who stopped Arab armies from overrunning our homes. In 1973, we came especially close to annihilation.

I can legitimately claim to know of flesh-and-blood heroes who fought so that I could emerge from the bomb shelter (in the wars of 67 and 73) and proceed with my kid life. I always stood in their honor and wept when the sirens wailed once a year. Every Israeli stops on that day, wherever he is, and stands still in remembrance. We would have died or been overrun by Arabs if not for those brave men who defended the homeland, and not some far-away imperial project.

But can we Americans, in 2013, make such a claim? Can we truly claim that members of the American military killed Iraqis or Afghanis or Libyans so that we may … do what? Remind me?

“What I learned growing up in a war-torn region is that a brave nation fights because it must; a cowardly one fights because it can.”

Ultimately, it is “for the love of a brother-in-arms, and ‘Big Brother’ be damned,” explained Robert Glisson. This is why they of the “Patriot Guard Riders,” his band of brothers, truly fought. Men fight for one another and not for the causes imputed to them by the cowards who send them to battle.

The military is still a government job; a career path with huge risks. How fast the so-called small government types forget this immutable truth. From the appropriately titled “Your Government’s Jihadi Protection Program“ (which the military has become):

“When Republicans and conservatives cavil about the gargantuan growth of government, they target the state’s welfare apparatus and spare its war machine. Unbeknown to these factions, the military is government. The military works like government; is financed like government, and sports many of the same inherent malignancies of government. Like government, it must be kept small. Conservative can’t coherently preach against the evils of big government, while excluding the military mammoth.”—ILANA (“Your Government’s Jihadi Protection Program.“)

AND, from “Classical Liberalism And State Schemes “:

We have a solemn [negative] duty not to violate the rights of foreigners everywhere to life, liberty, and property. But we have no duty to uphold their rights. Why? Because (supposedly) upholding the negative rights of the world’s citizens involves compromising the negative liberties of Americans—their lives, liberties, and livelihoods. The classical liberal government’s duty is to its own citizens, first.
“philanthropic” wars are transfer programs—the quintessential big-government projects, if you will. The warfare state, like the welfare state, is thus inimical to the classical liberal creed. Therefore, government’s duties in the classical liberal tradition are negative, not positive; to protect freedoms, not to plan projects. As I’ve written, “In a free society, the ‘vision thing’ is left to private individuals; civil servants are kept on a tight leash, because free people understand that a ‘visionary’ bureaucrat is a voracious one and that the grander the government (‘great purposes’ in Bush Babble), the poorer and less free the people.”

*Image credit

NEW COLUMN: Ukraine’s Azov Battalion: Nazis Or Just Nationalists?

Argument, Nationalism, Race, Racism, War

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NEW COLUMN, “Ukraine’s Azov Battalion: Nazis Or Just Nationalists?”, is currency featured on WND.COM, the Unz Review, CNSNews and The New American.

Excerpt:

Let us be clear on what free speech truly is. The words people speak, write, tweet; the beliefs they are known to hold, the flags they fly, the symbolic, non-violent ceremonies and rituals they enact, the insignia, paraphernalia, the goose-stepping, Hitler salutes they dick around with—all that is protected speech, licit in natural law.

So long as these oddities and idiosyncrasies, whether performed alone or in groups, thoughts harbored or shared in public—so long as no violence accompanies such speech or behavior (prohibited here is violence visited on animals as well); so long as mitts stop at the next man’s face: SPEECH. It’s all speech. It should be free, unfettered and as wild and as wanton as it can be.

Spoken, written, preached: Impolite and impolitic thoughts are nothing more than thought crimes which ought to be ferociously protected by a free people. By logical extension, any accusations of Naziism—if leveled at a belief system, rather than at palpable violent actions—is suspect.

Thoughts and words spoken or written that are not politically polite—for example, racism; Naziism—ought to retain protected status as speech beyond the adjudication of law-makers, bureaucrats, mediacrats, educrats and technocrats.

In fact, “In the current climate,” I had suggested—and considering the inherently paranoid style of American politics—it’s worth contemplating special protections for politically impolite, racist speech.”

“In 1978, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) ‘took a controversial stand for free speech by defending a neo-Nazi group that wanted to march through the Chicago suburb of Skokie, where many Holocaust survivors lived.” As a free-speech absolutist, a term Elon Musk has revived, I long for the return of what I shall term here the Skokie Standard of free speech and thinking.

In 2022, the once-grand ACLU, however, no longer vigorously defends marginalized speakers and thinkers. Instead, the ACLU defrauds the public about its mission, devoting its resources to the well-popularized causes of the Left’s privileged populations: LGBTQ demands, illegal immigrant claims-making, seekers of abortion-on-tap, looters of property and destroyers of peace and prosperity (in Orwellian speak, “peaceful protesters”).

Thus, other than that the Azov Battalion, a special unit in the Ukrainian military, is oriented toward the ethnic, white Ukrainian nation; other than that Azov insignia and iconography are rooted in national socialism or Naziism—I did not immediately detect evidence in Nebojsa Malic’s well-researched RT piece, “Western media clubs together to white-wash Ukrainian Neo-Nazis,” that the Azov are currently, actively and violently expunging groups such as, say Jews or Roma, based on typically Nazi eugenic ideation.

Azov’s symbols appear to be Nazi, but their actions appear to be merely nationalist, namely a quest to keep Ukraine Ukrainian.

I therefore questioned, during the Hard Truth broadcast, the Nazi designation attached to the Azov Brigade, suggesting that, if Azov are not engaged in acts of violence against the traditional Nazi victims and other ethnics, and are merely a military battalion fighting in the Russia-Ukraine military theater—then the Nazi insignia and paraphernalia are irrelevant. These symbols then fall into the category of ritualistic, offensive speech—thought crimes—the kind for which the Left criminalizes the Right. …

…THE REST…NEW COLUMN, “Ukraine’s Azov Battalion: Nazis Or Just Nationalists?”, is currency featured on WND.COM, the Unz Review, CNSNews and The New American.