You may have noticed…
…that I haven’t made many specific predictions about what will happen in the war in Ukraine, or about details such as bombings and casualties and the like. I leave that to others, and there’s plenty of it to go around on both sides. The fog of war is a real thing. Propaganda is also a real thing.
I certainly read about what’s going on in the conflict, but I choose to write about the why and its meaning.
In the meantime, I want to call your attention to something that’s been flying under the radar but which we knew was coming – another Iran deal, this time even worse. Like most of what Joe Biden does, it follows in Obama’s footsteps but ups the ante considerably and will almost certainly have even more disastrous consequences:
In talks with Iran informally being run by a Russian diplomat named Mikhail Ulyanov, the Biden Administration is on the verge of giving Iran what it wants – a world stage and normalizing terrorism by removing, among others, the Revolutionary Guard from the list of terrorist organizations.
A former US State Department diplomat with expertise in Iran is sounding the alarm. He isn’t the only one. Present State Department officials in Vienna aren’t just concerned — they are frightened. Gabriel Noronha is the former diplomat. He wrote about his concerns six months ago – that the US was giving in to the Iranians’ demands. Now, present officials have contacted Noronha and are worried. Very worried.
Please read the whole thing. If the report there is true, it is more evidence that the Biden administration wants to destroy America and damage what’s left of the free world. Without solid and consistent American leadership – which does not exist anymore – other power coalitions will vie with each other for the spoils, and more of them will be armed with nuclear weapons.
One way or another Biden will get a nuclear war started somewhere, somehow. And the Greens will then get their wish of a much lower number of humans alive, all, except the sociopathic elite, living at a subsistence level.
There are lots of people who think that all the “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” talk is just rhetoric, or tactical, or for the people back home and that the government of Iran is basically rational and motivated by the same kinds of things similar governments would be. I’m pretty sure the Obama and Biden administrations are largely staffed by such people.
But there are others who have been urging that we consider the possibility that what the Iranians say is what they believe and it is a guide to how they may act. And that anything we do with them, or against them, we need to consider the possibility that they don’t think like we do, not in a way we consider to be rational, and we need to plan for the eventuality that they will act in accordance with this thinking–even though we disagree with it and reject it as irrational, it is irresponsible not to consider that they may act this way in formulating our own strategy.
I’m not seeing that our current government is taking this concern at all seriously. I don’t believe that the Biden Administration actually wants to destroy their own country, but I do have to wonder what benefit they think they are getting, if not for America then at least for themselves and their cronies.
“I’m not seeing that our current government is taking this concern at all seriously.”
That’s because it’s not a “concern” for “Biden”.
The reason why it’s not a “concern” for “Biden” because “Biden” is an ally of the Mullahs.
SURPRISE! (But hey, didn’t we already know that when Obama was president? Like the rabbi said, “If everyone remembered everything I ever said, I’d be out of a job…”)
Here’s a “concern”, though; here’s the TRUE enemy:
“J6 Committee Accuses Trump Of Committing Federal Crime”
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/j6-committee-accuses-trump-committing-federal-crime
…along with those who support him.
In short, an enemy of “Biden” is ANYONE who supports, cares for and wishes to assist the USA, its institutions and its people. And defend the country from those who are wrecking it.
(Soon, that definition will be broadened to ‘ANYONE who does NOT support “Biden”‘)
It’s not that complicated.
And with all those ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE out there, why SHOULD there be elections this November?
Neo, the link for the Iran section is the same as the link for the Ukraine casualties reference.
Mr. Obama is dedicated to the destruction of the United States, and I sometimes suspect, judging by the company he keeps, ethnic cleansing of Caucasians would not bother him in the least. Especially Jewish ones. So support for Iran is clearly a Good Thing, in his world view.
Joe Biden is a corrupt, very stupid man, who only cares about what he can profit by. He does not see, nor care about anything else.
Two evil men, that an evil political party has allowed to reach the pinnacle of world power.
Wesson:
Thanks. Will fix.
Biden is a useful idiot for those who wish to “cut America down to size.” They (the communists) want to destroy our economic and legal institutions – to put us on a par with less successful countries. They call this equity. Buit it’s really about a communist takeover. Useful idiots don’t see the real goal. They think they’re on high moral ground. Obama convinced Biden that cutting America down to size was a good and noble endeavor. Biden is surrounded and advised by Obama retreads. If they can get their national voting “reform” law passed, they see the nation falling into their hands. It’s then that they will begin to outlaw private property, beginning with the corporations. It’s clear to me what their end game is. We’re getting closer. The awful thing is that you can vote b yourself into Communism but have to shoot your way out.
When the orginal Iran deal was achieved, there was a debate whether it was a treaty requiring ratification by the Senate. The debate was never resolved; the Senate agreed not to pursue the matter. The new agreement presents an opportunity to renew the debate and resolve it, in the courts if necessary. I bet on the Senate having to ratify.
The Iranians are “ Twelvers”. So they do not think like secular Westerners at all, and they are playing for a different team than Western Christians and religious Jews.
“Biden administration”, or, third Obama Administration?
As per: http://abuyehuda.com/2022/03/obamas-third-term/.
Alas.
J.J.,
“It’s clear to me what their end game is. We’re getting closer. The awful thing is that you can vote b yourself into Communism but have to shoot your way out.”
It is indeed clear what their end game is but what is also clear is that they have no idea of the fire they are playing with… if they get too close to their end game, they’re going to find out that they’ve chosen… poorly.
You can only push people so far before they push back and the harder you push them, the harder they push back. Look for some pushing by the authorities with the US trucker convoy.
They think that they’d be bringing a gun to a knife fight and that’s a perfect example of Mark Twain’s insight; “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure… that just ain’t so.” Mark Twain
neo – I see two distinct positions related to NATO and the Ukraine war. There are some, including Putin, who argue that the Ukraine war is the fault of the US and the west because we expanded NATO too near the Russian border. The other position is that, although the Ukraine war is the fault of Putin and Putin alone, it might have been prevented had the US and the west handled NATO expansion differently.
The first position is silly. The second has some merit.
Yep, the war on Ukraine might have been prevented if ….. Vlad wasn’t Vlad.
Aggressive despots don’t change their spots, and lessons of the last century unlearned. Gods of the Copybook Headings.
And WW2 might have been prevented if … Hitler wasn’t Hitler.
How about if Chamberlain wasn’t Chamberlain?
If he’d been Churchill.
If Biden had been Trump?
It looks like the Biden entity is devoted to giving away the whole store to the Iranians – likely a deliberate follow-up of the Obama caper. Our local paper hasn’t got a whisper of this item, apparently they’re disinterested.
Insufficiently Sensitive : “Our local paper hasn’t got a whisper of this item, apparently they’re disinterested.”
Of course. Their job is to cover the important stories – with a pillow, until they stop moving. (HT – Iowahawk.)
My local rag covered it, just barely. Few would get the importance from the way it was reported. And that’s the way the game is played.
Anyone know where Valerie Jarrett is these days? Hint -Who is President of the Obama Foundation?
I believe it when Iran says it is out to destroy Israel.
Blaming NATO is like blaming you for the bully that is hitting you.
No one seems to have taken the bait and made a prediction. I’ll go. Zelensky will be dead soon. Or perhaps I should say either Putin or Zelensky will be dead soon. So, Zelensky. Even if Ukraine “wins” by prolonging this war Putin has to make this a top priority even if he has to send in suicide bombers.
Mike Plaiss:
Vlad does have some Chechens fighting for Roosia. So it is possible.
Mike Plaiss:
I think Zelensky said at the start of this that they would be trying to kill him as a very high priority. I don’t think anyone doubts it.
There’s also this report, for what it’s worth. Who knows whether it’s true.
As far as Putin goes, there’s this report.
The longer Ukraine doesn’t surrender the more of their people they are getting killed. The whole thing breaks my heart. The narrative “plucky Ukrainians stand up to big bully” is a great story, but to what end at this point other than allow Westerners to feel good about rooting for the good guys:
– No one is coming to Ukraine’s rescue, not NATO, not the US
– Sanctions will not stop Russia
– Putin being removed is remote, and if he is no guarantee of anything improving.
– there is a real probability of a WWIII creating accident or massive WW economic breakdown every day this thing goes on
– Every day more Ukrainians die and Russia will just keep brute-forcing their way across the country, and like a terminator will keep coming no matter how much you maim them.
Ukraine needs to tap out and negotiate while they still have something to negotiate for. Maybe in their shoes I would say fight until we and everyone we love are all dead, but as an outsider I don’t see what they are achieving at this point.
I am being practical, but western propaganda is being romantic, and in my opinion making things worse for the Ukrainians by not being realistic about the situation.
whatever:
I think the Ukrainians are fighting right now for their own reasons and not because Western propaganda is egging them on. They do not want to surrender to the Russians. I believe that Ukrainians have bad memories of what the Russians have done to them in the past. Ukraine is very flawed and the Ukrainians know it, but to most of them it is still a country they want to run rather than being run by Russia.
In addition, I have read very few (actually I haven’t read any) people saying they think the Ukrainians will win this war. The hope of most is that the Ukrainians will hold out long enough for the Russian people or those around Putin to turn against Putin and stop him in some way, and even that hope is a very distant one.
Ukraine had 43 million people before the war. If only 5% were armed and willing to fight , that would be 2,150,000 . If the west will actually supply Ukraine with weapons, they could conceivable wear the Russians down.
“The narrative “plucky Ukrainians stand up to big bully” is a great story,”
And in the fog of war the propaganda exist on both sides. Interesting article on the propo ( term from The Hunger Games) being put out by the Ukrainians and western media:
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/03/be_skeptical_about_media_coverage_of_ukraine.html
Of course, be skeptical of even that article. The only facts I even have a 51% belief they might be real are those I see across numerous outlets starting with the Daily Mail. But even there a day or so ago I saw 2 articles side-by-side where the first one quoted a military expert that Ukraine is being obliterated, and then the second showing a road blocked by numerous burned out Russian tanks and how the Ukrainians were dealing terrible blows to the invaders.
There is a lot of fatalism in this thread. Putin is Putin and there’s nothing that could have been done to prevent it? But the Soviets were the Soviets too. And Mao was Mao. The list goes on. And most of the despots of the latter half of the 20th century had ideological commitments much deeper and more destructive than Putin, who is little more than the archetypal tin pot strong man. Yet there was no conflagration.
Geopolitical realism won the cold war. If Kennedy hadn’t pulled our missles out of Turkey, if Kissinger hadn’t buddied up to the butchers in Beijing, if the US hadn’t supported a bunch of despicable anti-communist dictators around the world, there would have been no opportunity for a Reagan. We’d be referring to one another as “comrade,” if we and our parents had even survived the nuclear fallout.
One of the things that amazes me about Obama and post-Obama-era Democrats is that, despite having perfectly exploited Bush’s misadventures in Iraq, they don’t seem to understand what Bush did wrong. I recall that when Obama was asked to outline his foreign policy, his response was “don’t do stupid s***.” Well yes, Obama’s problem was Bush wasn’t strategic, it was tactical. (It amazes me that Obama’s is considered such a genius in some circles — sending in the full might of the US military to implement regime change in Iraq didn’t work. The lesson Obama took from this is that it was better to knock over regimes without boots on the ground and then watch from afar while the the target countries turned into bloody infernos. Until he ran into Putin in Syria, then he skipped the regime change part and cut straight to the bloody inferno.)
What scares me most about the Ukraine is the tendency that I see on both sides of the US political divide to risk everything on principle, or more accurately to underestimate costs versus benefits. I see more 1914 here than 1938. We had never had a modern mechanized war before 1914. The decision makers at the time failed to recognize how horrific that would be and failed to properly weigh the costs. We’ve never had a modern nuclear war now. When we were talking about NATO expansion in the 90’s and 00’s and when we talk about stopping Putin now, I fear that we’re not properly weighing the costs of nuclear war.
Bauxite:
It was G.W.Bush that invaded Iraq. BHO “sole” responsibility was to throw it all away.
om – One of the best things to come of the Iraq invasion was Gaddafi giving up his nuke program, which was supposedly far more advanced than anyone in the west had suspected. Obama certainly threw that away by toppling Gaddafi. Worse than throwing away an advantage, what fool would give up nukes today seeing what happened to Gaddafi and now to Ukraine?
I also fault Obama for cutting and running in Iraq. We broke it, we bought it, and we had an obligation to leave something stable. We didn’t keep that obligation. Afghanistan too.
But you can’t excuse Bush either. At best, he grossly underestimated the cost and feasibility of trying to remake Iraq as a western style democracy. Our country wasn’t ready to bear that cost and wasn’t ready for what was actually possible in Iraq in a reasonable timeframe. That unreadiness led directly to Bush’s political downfall and to the disastrous Obama presidency. The world would be considerably different now if Bush had taken a realist approach by deposing Saddam, installing another Baathist into power and working to make sure that Baathist remained our Baathist.
Bush had the same problem that I fear now – a commitment to principle based on a mistaken estimate of cost.
Bauxite:
I’m just surprised that Bunge hasn’t jumped all over you yet. You know that Iraq and GWB thing he has. 🙂
I also fault Obama for cutting and running in Iraq. We broke it, we bought it, and we had an obligation to leave something stable. We didn’t keep that obligation.
Disagree. I think our presence in Iraq had served its purpose at that point. Obama did not anticipate ISIS, but who did? Note, after the Iraqi state forces with help from western countries managed to break the back of ISIS in 2017, the quantum of political violence in Iraq went into rapid decline. Between the success of the Surge and the rise of ISIS (2008-12), civilian deaths from political violence were running at about 350 a month. In the last 12 months they’ve been running at just over 50 per month. If what I’ve read is true, foreigners should avoid Iraq due to the frequency of kidnapping for ransom, but Iraqis are a great deal safer from lethal political violence than they were five years ago (much less at the peak of ISIS in 2014 or the peak of the original insurgency in 2006, when you were looking at civilian death tolls > 1,600 per month). They’re no longer suffering from an insurgency, just security problems. (Rather like Ulster between 1977 and 1999).
Geopolitical realism won the cold war.
It didn’t. Military power and an economic and technological base to generate and deploy it (along with satisfactory if imperfect decision-making) created the mise-en-scene. The collapse of morale among the East Bloc political class did the rest. I think actual geopolitical realists (e.g. George Liska) tended to be critical of American policy, especially during the Reagan era. Realists not invested in geopolitical perspectives were less so.
if the US hadn’t supported a bunch of despicable anti-communist dictators around the world,
Please define ‘support’.
At best, he grossly underestimated the cost and feasibility of trying to remake Iraq as a western style democracy.
A deficit of democracy has not been Iraq’s problem since 2005. The problem has been a deficit of public order, i.e. civil peace. See Stanley Kurtz (a lapsed social anthropologist) on how problematic public life is in the context of the tribal society which results from the common practice of parallel cousin marriage.
(It amazes me that Obama’s is considered such a genius in some circles —
The problem with Obama is not that he is not a genius – few people are and those who are are often best left to themselves in their laboratories – but that his general intelligence has never in his life been applied to a disciplined task apart from finishing law school and passing the bar exam. One of the students who worked on the Harvard Law Review when he was its ‘president’ later said that as far as he could see, Obama was interested in being the President of the Harvard Law Review, not doing anything with the job. He did not land a position with a firm until two years after graduation. AFAICT, he was a 60% time associate who lapsed to ‘of counsel’ status when he was elected to the legislature in 1996; he allowed his law license to lapse in 2002. He landed a position as a 40% time lecturer at the University of Chicago in 1992, taught no core courses, and, over a period of 12 years, published nothing. He sat in legislatures for 12 years, but established himself as a maven in no area of policy. By age 44, he had written two memoirs, Screams at My Father and The Audacity of Mope. Ava Gardner once said “Deep down, I’m pretty superficial”. I don’t think Obama has her talent for irony.
Bauxite
IMO, the talk of “remaking” or “nation building” is overdone.
Conceptually, see two accounts, Military and Nation-building.
If you want a military presence in a tough neighborhood, you’re going to be spending from the–metaphorical–Military account. An outpost requires supplies from the nearest airport. The road, if it exists, is crumbly and subject to washouts. So you fix the road. From the Military account. Without the need to supply the outpost, you wouldn’t break out a single shovel.
However, barring the occasional checkpoint, the indiges can use the road and their lives are incrementally improved. But that’s all from the MIlitary account.
We’d like some stability behind us so we spend some resources on training and cleaning up the local constabulary. Fewer bandits to worry about in our trucks from the airport. Military account. And fewer bandits so that the locals we hire to do a bit of digging and so forth around the outpost aren’t impeded in showing up for work.. You could make the case that’s all from the Military account. But it’s good for the locals.
We didn’t get run out of Astan because the locals wouldn’t pose for a Norman Rockwell calendar. We’re out because you can’t win a war when the other guy has an inviolate sanctuary. See the Taliban and Pakistan.
Remaking the country might be, for example, building a school out in the toolies. So you have six teachers, one principal, two janitors. All of whose income depends on the good will of the Americans. Except for the janitors, the educators come from the more urbanized parts of the country. And say we have seventy kids from forty families. This opportunity depends on the Americans, or at least the central government which is generally understood to be supported by the Americans. So when would-be jihadi wants to get some folks together to destroy the school, somebody turns him in.
Military account or Nation-Building? Both?
N-B comes when the kids get a fifteen minute audio-visual break between math and history.
The world’s film libraries are full of shorts. A cruise up the Amazon complete with odd chirps. The American space shuttle, including the Challenger. Show the crew including Chrysta McCaullif (sp?). A woman. But don’t make a big deal about it because, in America, it’s not a big deal. And that’s a big deal, especially for the girls in the class.
Best ten minutes of the last World Cup.
High school lacrosse in the US. Ten minutes of men’s lax, ten of women’s.
Scottish castles.
That’s from the N-B budget, but it also helps wean the locals away from, if it takes a generation, some primitive customs. Which might mean a help on the Military side.
But this is, financially speaking, chump change. Even having locals use local materials and labor to build the thing.
More education means more opportunity for mobility and the increased mobility, the girls might see their marital prospects have expanded beyond an unwashed, illiterate, sheep-shagging offspring of third cousins.
But some Military account expenditures are, for a bit of good PR, shown as the warm, fuzzy Nation-Building. IMO, the whole N-B thing is overstated.
Astan had a parliament and elections. Iraq does. That’s pretty well Nation-Built.
when the weasel goes pop, the dems control and own it all..
unless they are perceived as the people with the pin…
This would have gone in the NATO box, but its full and no one will read it now we moved on..
‘The Gorbachev Prospect’: An Exchange
Josef Skvorecky, reply by George F. Kennan
what counts much more than his summit bon mots are his [Gorbachev] Party speeches, and in the latest important one of November 2, 1987, he reiterated his commitment to world revolution, i.e. to worldwide “class struggle,” when he said: “We are moving toward a new world, the world of Communism. We shall never turn off that road.”
I said what to read, and more to know…
and you guys still discuss it as if you have no idea…
well… read party speeches and papers and so on, and what is unknown becomes clear..
ergo all the rapes now going on..
the civillians being attacked.
etc
whats changed other than the clothing the leopard wears to hide its spots?
hiding them isnt hard… the people looking want the spots to change or go away
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1988/03/17/the-gorbachev-prospect-an-exchange/
Bauxite:
I find it a little ironic that Putin wants to have a buffer between NATO and his territory, but he is invading Ukraine in order to take it over. And if (when) he accomplishes that, what will he have? Several NATO members on his new border — Poland, Moldova and Romania.
Just wait until Japan and South Korea apply for NATO membership! (Joke, but I don’t know how to embed emojis.)
Richard Aubrey – I see your point about military presence being entangled with nation building, but it’s tough to justify the cost of deposing Saddam just to have a military presence in a tough neighborhood. We already had a military presence in that particular tough neighborhood – in Saudi Arabia and right next door in Kuwait. In 2003, the public was told that we were deposing Saddam to get rid of his weapons of mass destruction and address the root causes of 9/11. At the time, the overwhelming majority of the public supported that. If the Iraq war had been sold as being for the purpose of gaining a military presence in a tough neighborhood, the public wouldn’t have supported for it.
Once the die was was cast in 2003 with the WMD and 9/11 rationales, it was politically difficult to switch and say that the costs were really just to keep to military presence in a tough neighborhood.
F – For all the Russian talk about Ukrainians being their brothers or part of Russian civilization, Russians have never really treated the Ukranians as brothers. 30 million Ukranians may be a perfectly acceptable buffer for Putin.
Bauxite:
Well, there’s brothers and then there’s brothers.
Cain and Abel come to mind.
Art Deco
re: “support” – selling weapons, supporting coups, funding insurgencies, and the like.
re: Geopolitical realism – I agree that economics were a huge factor in the Cold War and its true that many realists were opposed to Reagan’s policies, which were the right policies. It’s far from certain, though, that American economic strength would have ultimately prevailed had Kissinger not driven a wedge between the USSR and China, or had a string of communist coups/revolutions had swept across south and central Americal or Asia in the 1960s or 70s.
re: Iraq: Iraq may be stable now almost two decades after the invasion, but it wasn’t stable when we left (the first time). I suppose Afghanistan is stable now too under the Taliban, but did we really spend all of that blood and treasure to leave the place just as we found it in the hands of the Taliban?
Bauxite. I was referring to Astan as an example or hypothetical.
Iraq was far more westernized than Astan with the exception of being run by a dictator. They got a parliamentary arrangement going pretty fast. The world is full of incompetent parliaments. Not a big deal.
Still, the ethnics are pretty ethnic. Talked to a guy who was an MP watching a POW camp after Gulf One. The Shia and Sunni had to be separated. Otherwise murderous riots.
The officers–separate as is military practice–were given materials not necessarily by Ikea to build their quarters but did not deign to do so.
Had a relation in the Cav. When the iirc, Sunni set off some truck bombs in a market, killing about eight hundred, his unit was first to respond. Knee deep in parts. Thing was, a Yazidi girl decided to go Sunni. The elders recaptured her and stoned her to death, putting the whole thing on the net so you didn’t have to be there to enjoy it. So the Sunni responded.
Thing is, we don’t need to fix that to maintain a presence in some place like, say, Astan.
This is not the kind of nation building anybody can do except for maybe James Napier.
As regards leaving Astan, we left a theater in a 1400 year old war and will likely regret it.
But as spending blood and treasure….it was said that serving in Gulf One was safer than being home for the troops. In the first place, there are training accidents. And there’s drunk driving. So how much, net, did we spend over twenty years in Astan?
Shouldn’t have left. Should simply have kept killing Taliban as the opportunity presented itself.
When I was in, 69-71, Infantry, we figured our tactics were equivalent to a boxer restricted to punching the opponents’ forearms when he strikes out. Crazy. No win there. But…is it necessary? Yes? No?
And the Cold War killed a lot of people without actually being a war. In October of 70, a bunch of Air Force guys including my brother were leaving Taipei International for a US base–something about “CCK” on Taiwan from which they would either TDY to VN and surroundings or participate in the various keeping-an-eye-on-China ops which had been going on and are still. Crashed on takeoff killing 43 guys.
The Second Infantry Division on the DMZ in Korea had a division specific award for “forty missions into the zone”. It was later allowed to be a Combat Infantryman’s Badge. This is the big one, you get for being in real Infantry combat. Sits on top of all the other fruit salad except for the MoH. Nobody knew what was going on. Just guarding the approaches to Seoul was all.
Casualties….maybe rolled a jeep or something.
Being on the front page doesn’t mean it’s the only thing happening.