Tucker Carlson on Trump and the Iraq War
Commenter “huxley” observes:
Tucker Carlson [said]:
___________________________________It’s been inevitable since February 16 2016. that’s the day Donald Trump made a blood enemy of the largest and most powerful organization in human history which would be the federal government.
…we can point to the precise moment that permanent Washington decided to send Donald Trump to prison. here it is it’s from the Republican candidates debate in Greenville South Carolina:
“we should have never been in Iraq; we have destabilized the Middle East. They lied, okay. They said there were weapons of mass destruction there were none and they knew there were none there were no weapons of mass destruction.”
___________________________________[huxley adds] I agree with Tucker much of the time. But this sounds like a terrible oversimplification.
Within two years of the Iraq War’s beginning Democrats were thoroughly opposed to the Iraq War and Obama rode that horse all the way to the White House. The Deep State was more than OK with Obama.
The federal government’s problem with Trump was his populist threat to their power.
I’m in complete agreement with huxley here.
But I want to add that, in my opinion, although Tucker is good on some things he is bad on others. This time what he says is not only a “terrible oversimplification,” it’s also factually incorrect or at least very incomplete because actually Trump had been speaking out consistently against the war in Iraq long before he was running for president and long before that debate.
I know this because I wrote about it in October of 2015 for the Weekly Standard, in an article which now can be found at this link in the Washington Examiner. My piece was about Trump’s animus towards George W. Bush, whom he started excoriating for the Iraq War back in 2007 and 2008. Here’s a quote [emphasis added]:
But the sharpest of Trump’s attacks on George W. had occurred much earlier, in a series of interviews in 2007 and 2008, when neither Trump nor Jeb Bush were candidates. For example, in a 2008 interview with Wolf Blitzer, Trump advocated Bush’s impeachment, while adding how much he likes Nancy Pelosi:
“TRUMP:…It was almost — it just seemed like [Pelosi] was going to really look to impeach Bush and get him out of office, which, personally, I think would have been a wonderful thing. BLITZER: Impeaching him? TRUMP: Absolutely, for the war, for the war.”
In the same interview, Trump repeated the familiar “Bush lied about WMDs” mantra, and when Blitzer questioned whether he actually believed that, Trump repeated it:
“TRUMP:…Bush got us into this horrible war with lies, by lying, by saying they had weapons of mass destruction, by saying all sorts of things that turned out not to be true. BLITZER: Their argument is, they weren’t lying, that that was the intelligence that he was presented, and it was not as if he was just lying about it. TRUMP: I don’t believe that. BLITZER: You believe that it was a deliberate lie? TRUMP: I don’t believe it…The fact is that he lied.”
Later in the interview, Trump said that Bush “is probably the worst president in the history of the United States.” It wasn’t the first time Trump had evaluated Bush that way, either; in 2007 he had made the same charge when he agreed that Bush was the worst president in U.S. history.
But perhaps the most negative ad hominem attack Trump had ever launched against George W. Bush was in a 2008 interview in which he called Bush “evil.” In the same interview, he also criticized Bush for not talking to Iran, and praised Obama in contrast, saying that he believes Obama will lead through consensus as president, and “not be a bull run, like Bush—he just did whatever the hell he wanted.”
So the Feburary 16, 2016 debate that Tucker seems to think was some turning point or watershed moment was no such thing.
It is hard to argue against the idea that perpetual war (in the Middle East and elsewhere) is beloved by the Deep State, the MIC, Foggy Bottom (both liberal interventionists of the Neo-Wilsonian variety and “regime-change, nation-building” Neo-cons), and that it massively benefits many of the denizens of the District of Corruption, as a distraction from their failed domestic policies, as well as financially from donors, lobbyists, and stock-trading. Leftists were always accusing Trump of being on the verge of starting WW3, yet it is the destructive administration of the senile buffoon which is running some risk of such a conflict with its insane policy regarding its Ukrainian partner in corruption.
I know that austin and milley and a host of other modern day colonel blimps seems to have done very well, what do rank and file soldiers have to show for the effort in fallujah in the west, to basra in the south,
I would go with the power of “and”
Conservative treehouse posits globalization is what drives the hatred of Trump by the uniparty.
The big 3 opposition to Trump concerns:
1. Globalization / dollar reserve currency/ financialization (Tom Luongo) used to grow rich, and impoverish everyone else. Davis / Wef agenda.
2. US Global Empire / big government / deepstate
3. America First / nationalist/ focus on voters. Vs rule by technocratic so called elite.
It’s all inter related. Making sure the right people get elected. I don’t understand why so many eGOP hate Trump and his supporters, and are will to go to great costs to defeat them by means fair and foul.
take liz cheney, her dad put her in charge of the middle east desk, as such she rubberstamped gen suleimanis picks for prime minister, and seemed to let them kill americans at will (for 16 years he was not touched, no matter what blood price he exacted) when trump finally had suleimani dispatched, she acted like her favorite uncle had died
This is a great post. Gets straight to the heart of what is dividing conservatives. This blog is really good at that. Tucker has a screw loose. One can have a screw loose and still get a lot of things right (kind of like Trump).
While one could not say Putin would be “rewarded” by victory in Ukraine, considering the costs versus his resources, a victory is a victory.
Would that promote the possibility of another aggression? After all, giving up Czechoslovakia in 1938 quieted Hitler. Oh, wait. Still, the diff is Hitler didn’t have to pay a dime for it. Might have been more encouraging than the numbers Putin would face after taking Ukraine.
But, still. Can we back up fast enough to keep Putin from being mad at us and having many westerners justifying his paranoia because…we’re not backing up fast enough?
Finland might be asking.
As to WMD. When I was in, if going into nerve gas country, we’d be issued a pak of Atropine syrettes. Might help. It’s also the antidote for various bug sprays. So if you have a bug spray factory, with some fussing, you can make crude nerve gas munitions. Be tough to transport them and load them into artillery rounds, but you could use some as crude IED. After which every soldier in theater is in his hazmat and moving like a particularly lethargic sloth.
One of the combustion products of the East Palestine–remember them?–burn off is phosgene. Who’d have thought. Lung irritant. Killed 65k in WW I with no doubt a horrid multiple of those whose lives were miserable and short. Some folks in East Palestine are reporting lung issues. So if you have some kind of industry making whatever was in those railroad cars…you can have phosgene.
Took a while, but the Gulf War Syndrome has been laid to nerve gas exposure in the Gulf War.
I think it was 2004 when the Jordanian police, bless them, busted a terrorist attempt. A number of heavy trucks carrying, between them, twenty tons of high explosive and nerve gas. Going to ram embassies in Amman. Never could find any reference to the origin of the nerve gas. Those convoys out of Baghdad west to Syria and the Bekaa Valley just before we moved in, perhaps?
And the inspectors were played…hide and seek. Not the thing to have a mob in front of a facility and trucks loading out the back. Even if it’s all theater, what was the point but to get people to believe? Ran a con…just…a little too good.
As the Kay and Duelfer reports said, while large stocks of prepared munitions were not found, the industrial base, human (engineers and techs) and money (sanctions effort was “crumbling” and going to end shortly anyway) for WMD did exist.
Not like that Covid thing from bat piss, right?
But, anyway, is there any guarantee we have no substantial number in the west who would blame us for Putin’s annoyance at our failure to back up fast enough?
The debate might still be considered a turning point in that nobody was paying attention to Trump before his candidacy. Trump saying the Iraq war was based on lies in front of God and everybody gave license to anybody to question the preexisting narrative and perhaps to agree with Trump. And the State couldn’t have that.
That Obama rode his lies about the ME war to victory is not contradictory to his love of the ME war. Remember that the Iraq War was a Bad War but the Afghanistan War was a Good War. There is also no doubt that War is good for the back pockets of the Ruling Elite and Trump absolutely threatened that pipeline.
The lies about WMD were to assist Blair in his arguments with Parliament. I remember it well. Then Powell had to testify at the UN. I was OK with Gulf War One. Saddam could not be allowed to take over the Saudi oil fields. Had he taken Kuwait, he could have drilled into the Saudis fields just across the border. One of Trump’s great accomplishments was energy independence. No more would the Saudis have power over our economy. The Iraq War destabilized the Middle East.
yes it was a common denominator conclusion, democracy is not something that really would get a hearing in the un, and half the warlords are terrorists, so wmds were the choice, the dark humor is the one ‘slam dunk’ was rafi alwan who was a german secret service source, who could never be interrogated by the Americans,
despite the dubiousness of his information, he sued the german courts to retain the money he had been paid for sources, not unlike christopher steele’s beer gossip and won,
‘
In my opinion, which is relatively humble, Carlson has mouthed enough Conservative talking points to win over a lot of people. That includes key elements in my own home. On the other hand, I think in many ways he is full of “baloney”. I have not been interested in what he says for quite some time now.
Strangely, many who criticize the war in Iraq also criticized G.H.W. Bush for not killing the Saddam regime when he freed Kuwait, and saved the Saudi oil fields.
In the ensuing years Saddam’s behavior did not improve; although his capability for external mischief was temporarily decimated, He had to be taken down sooner or later.
George W’s mistake was squandering the brilliant military victory by turning the peace over to Colin Powell and Richard Armitage. Rumsfeld’s Defense Department planned to bring in the ex-Pat group who understood the issues and let them sort out Iraq. Bush bought Powell’s argument that managing the Peace was State Department’s purview. They froze out the ex-Pat group and turned the post war period into a purely American venture. They put an American face on all of the problems.
Ironically, the State Department, with media assistance, has tried to blame the chaos on Rumsfeld and Defense, even though they lobbied for control.
Sadly, I think similar mistakes were made in Afghanistan; although I am not certain that Afghanistan could not have been rehabilitated. That is a wild hunch; as there is little evidence other than that there was at least a semi-functional middle class in the cities during the monarchy.
I think that Trump beat the anti-Iraq drum hard –and belatedly—because he hated the GOP establishment as represented by the Bush family. As we know, 2007 and 2008 were among the worst years; but the situation improved fairly dramatically after G.W. initiated the surge.
At another level, both Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrate the obstacles that tribalism imposes on national identity and societal cohesiveness. Unfortunately, America seems intent on moving in the direction of a form of tribalism based on race, political affiliation, religion (or lack), sexual orientation/identification; and we are not far–at least in California– from a form of tribalism based on language.
state wanted the dinosaurs like pachachi, who were in exile in the uae, defense wanted the exiles, the cia wanted the old baathist general, so this thing, called the cpa was the compromise, there were few officials of worth in that crew, except for the late hume horan,
It’s important to remember that Tucker Carlson is not just some guy with opinions, and he has not been for a long time. He’s the mouthpiece for a media organization. That organization, for a long time, was Fox News, and whatever organization he represents now may be one he has a lot more say in, but in both cases there are people with money riding on what he says publicly and he is never in a position to just say whatever he thinks or wants to say.
There is no way that any broadcast or cable network lets its anchors just say whatever they want, or that what they say doesn’t get reviewed* and approved by the network.
He’s not part of one of those big networks now, but unless he’s gone the Mark Steyn route, there are people behind him with money who have to be okay with the things that he says, because they expect the things he says to generate some kind of return on their money, which may not even be financial.
And so parsing through what might or not be in Tucker Carlson’s mind is kind of barking up the wrong tree, until we know for a fact that he’s doing all this himself with his own money.
Even then, people don’t always say what they mean, especially in business, politics, and entertainment: Tucker Carlson is in the intersection of all three.
For some reason, people put a high value on being able to believe that what they see in media is really true–not just news, think of all the books and movies that say “based on a true story”, or think of “reality shows” that are obviously scripted.
As George Burns said about sincerity, “if you can fake that, you’ve got it made”. Tucker Carlson has always been part of that system. He may have decided to break out of it, or he may have decided to stay in it under another brand. Too early to say yet.
*I don’t mean “reviewed for factual accuracy”. I mean “reviewed for consistency with the goals of the organization’s leadership”.
Jerry:
People were paying attention to Trump since the day he came down that escalator, combing his past interviews for nuggets with which to boost him or hurt him, depending on their motives.
I wrote my article in October of 2015, long before that debate. Plenty of people were paying attention, including his enemies.
Neo,
You got me!
Trump’s declaration of his candidacy is sorta when people started to pay attention, although for some time after he was not thought to have a snowball’s chance of winning so maybe not quite back to the escalator ride.
What he had said before was seen more like one of those late night commercials for “The Best of Red Skelton” videos for many. I sincerely congratulate you for having dug into his past comments seriously and commenting on them.
But most people I talked with back then thought running was a lark for him so who cared what he said in a Howard Stern interview.
But then in a Republican Primary Debate he told the Republican Party that the last Republican president lied us into an unnecessary war. That’s some balls. His poll numbers went up, he won the nomination and the general election and he became a target of the deep state and Both parties.
Maybe turning point is putting too sharp a point on it. And maybe that wasn’t the pivotal moment, but his campaign and victory was a turning point for our country. And that debate was a significant step along the way.
Obama kept the war machine going, think Libya.
Trump humiliated Jeb, and made Jeb! Into a joke.
Trump ran against the establishment, including both party establishments, and showed they were out of touch, incompetent, and corrupt.
A lot if the hatred of Trump is about class. It’s a cultural issue. The Iraq War WMD is just a symbol.
Because of this Trump must be destroyed. He is too dangerous to the establishment.
Tucker knows a lot of the players in the Swamp. I think he’s concluded that most of the people there are out of touch with the average voter. Many in the establishment still cling to the idea of globalism as described in Thomas P. M. Barnett’s book, “The Pentagon’s New map.” Published in 2004.
Barnett’s key idea was that: “The world can be roughly divided into two groups: the Functioning Core, characterized by economic interdependence, and the Non-Integrated Gap.” He advocated the use of statecraft, military ops, and economic plans to integrate the Gap nations into the Core. His idea was that Gap nations were a risk for instability and war. Jihadi attacks on civilized nations were a prime example at the time.
For more about the book and Barnett see this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon%27s_New_Map
Many people, and I was one of them, believed his ideas made sense. At thew time, I was just beginning to understand Islam and its various iterations. What is clear to me today is that most Muslim countries do not want to be integrated into the Core (Western Civ.), and they will put up a tremendous fight to avoid that fate. A bit like the feelings of the Ukrainians toward being a part of Russia’s spere. Tribalism still runs deep in many parts of the world. The Pentagon’s New Map doesn’t offer much in the way of coming to grips with that.
But there are still many people in DC that think the U.S. can eventually create a “rules based” global economy where everyone follows the rules – the ones we make.
The people who favor this are ready to use military, economic, and diplomatic forces as needed to achieve their goals. I believe it’s these people that Tucker is opposed to, and he believes that they oppose Trump because Trump is also basically against these ideas. Trump sees the tribalism. He sees the way other countries play us. He sees how we’ve weakened ourselves by shipping our manufacturing to other countries. He sees the one-way trade deals that hurt us. Trump wants to stand up for our interests and let other nations stand up for theirs. All ideas foreign to believers in “The Pentagon’s New Map.”
There is money to be made in globalism and a rules based global village sounds great. But you have to get buy in from a lot of differing cultures, religions, and economies. Trump and Tucker believe it’s not the best policy for America.
On top of that Trump is not one of the elite. He’s a self-made businessman who talks like a New York cabbie, likes to be hyper-masculine, and is very competitive. By elite standards he’s uncouth. They liked his money when he donated to Democrats, but they never considered him an equal. So, IMO, the hatred of Trump is twofold – both class and policy based.
Trump will never be forgiven for defeating the Bush family and then the Clinton family in 2016. Before that, though, was his doubting Obama’s birth location. The Democrats thought they had knocked him down and out with the birth certificate copy, but then Trump went and won the 2016 election. They thought they had him with the Russian Collusion, and he went and was proven innocent by Mueller himself, though Mueller went to great lengths to not actually state that. They thought they had him at both impeachment proceedings, but those failed. Then they thought they had him down and out after mail-in-ballot fraud cost him the election in 2020. What will they be pulling their hair out over this time next year?
I and one other are personal witnesses to the fact that the Iraq war was not about weapons of mass destruction–it was verifiably about OIL! An agreement made between multiple countries to invade Iraq based upon OIL.
anonymous:
Oh, so you’re a secret anonymous source with special inside info on it all?
Let me add that if they did it for oil, they certainly didn’t try to get much of it for their pains. I have always found the “oil” argument an exceptionally weak one.
See this.
Ray, I am simply do not buy what you are selling.
About class? You think the billionaire with a Prep school and Ivy League education is a class warrior? I grant that he apparently fooled a lot of people because he talked the talk. Although he often behaves as if he has no class he was born with a silver spoon just as much as the Bushes; and he lives a lifestyle that dwarfs theirs and most other GOP establishment types for excess.
Yeh, Trump trashed Jeb Bush rhetorically. along with numerous other accomplished people. He proved that Jeb was not the political back alley fighter that Trump was. He did not change the fact that Jeb was a very effective Governor. I don’t know how much he hurt Jeb. Life goes on. I do know he burned a lot of bridges there and elsewhere. Some of those may be on the path he wants to follow, and some may be on the path on which he eventually needs to retreat. In any case he will not get much help from anyone with clout.
I have said before I don’t even know where he could turn for a credible running mate considering how he has trashed everyone who worked for or with him. Hannity maybe?
Trump has a loyal, I could say fanatical, following. They are not sufficient in number to elect him to anything. Their numbers are at least matched by the “never Trumpers” and dwarfed by the “moderates” who are just tired of him; and know that there are better alternatives.
If he is ever elected to anything again, I will eat my crow raw (metaphorically). My great fear is that he will poison the well, and open the door for some Democrat like–horror of horrors–Gavin (Gruesome) Newsom. Trump is a ticking bomb (again metaphorically). If he is not nominated, the “Trumpsters” may pout and stay home. On the other hand if he is the nominee do you really believe that the GOP establishment will bust their fannies to do the all important nitty gritty ground game for the guy who has repeatedly insulted them, and actually runs against them? Good luck with that.
I grudgingly admire the level of nastiness and cleverness of the game the Democrats are playing. They fan the Trump sympathy flames enough to keep him at the forefront of the GOP, while sinking more and more harpoons into the flesh of the whale (metaphorically for the last time).
Yancey Ward:
One thing I think people forget is that Jeb Bush was never going to win the primary in 2016. He simply wasn’t popular, even before Trump sunk his teeth into him. Look at when I wrote this post – April 2014. In it, I said:
Salena Zito’s famous headline from 2016 is often helpful:
Taking Trump Seriously, Not Literally
There’s class and there’s money. The two are not synonymous.
Various people have various combinations.
“Crude” and certain kinds of class are not necessarily in conflict.
Old flyer- I agree with you on Trumps Silver Spoon.
It’s really strange Trumps voters that the credentialed and Rich classes despise him. Perhaps they see him as tacky?
Stealing the election from the anointed, highly credentialed, first Woman President is part of it. And the Clinton’s are famous on their revenge.
And Obama’s supporters also have a grudge and have gone full Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals, Saul D. Alinsky rules for radicals against Trump.
Hmm…
Clinton wrote her thesis in Atkinsky.
Obama is a disciple of Atlinsky.
And Trump used Atlinsky rules against his opponents.
I’m don’t understand Tuckers comments on Obama’s sexuality, and how nobody was allowed to explore it.
From the moment that Trump announced he would run for president in 2016, the long daggers were out to get him.
When you think about it, this makes no sense whatsoever because just about nobody within our solar system thought he would have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting elected.
Even on election day just about everybody believed he would lose in a massive landslide to Hillary ( I did too).
So why the efforts – spying on his campaign, concocting the elaborate Russia scam – to destroy a candidate that everybody thought had zero chance of becoming president??
This is akin to trying to rig a US presidential election by manipulating the voting machines in American Somoa; it’s pointless.
There had to be something else going on that prompted the “deep state,” and the Hillary campaign to wage a nuclear war against a candidate that had zero chance of winning.
Never in American history have greater efforts been expended to destroy a presidential candidate that everybody believed could never be president.
I am still trying to figure out why the most powerful and influential figures in govt. jumped thru their ass to destroy who everybody just “knew” was going to lose really badly.
Before that, though, was his doubting Obama’s birth location.
==
He challenged Obama to release his long-form certificate. Gov. Abercrombie also made remarks to the effect that Obama should do that, albeit carrying somewhat different motives. Obama and his people seemed to use the birth certificate controversy to divert people’s attention from the information that BO actually did want kept secret. Of course, there was nothing remarkable in the content of his long-form certificate; Gov. Lingle’s health commissioner and the registrar of vital statistics had located it in the archives just where it was supposed to be and had indicated as much. It amazed me to discover in fora like this that there were, half a dozen years later, partisan Democrats enraged with Trump for having goosed Obama in this way. The same idiots were claiming in 2020 that Trump advised people to eat fish tank cleaner.
==
The actually embarrassing information I’d wager is to be found in the archives of Occidental College and Columbia University, likely on microfiche at this point. John Kerry, Albert Gore, and George W. Bush all suffered embarrassments when moles at various institutions leaked their transcripts. The institutions were quite careful with Obama’s records (or the media was careful not to investigate).
One thing I think people forget is that Jeb Bush was never going to win the primary in 2016. He simply wasn’t popular, even before Trump sunk his teeth into him.
==
Disagree. Bush was the frontrunner in opinion surveys ‘ere Trump entered, then imploded.
I and one other are personal witnesses to the fact that the Iraq war was not about weapons of mass destruction–it was verifiably about OIL! An agreement made between multiple countries to invade Iraq based upon OIL.
==
You could never make a business case to invade Iraq for that reason.
At heart, Tucker Carlson is an isolationist in the mode of Charles Lindbergh, Robert Taft, and Pat Buchanan (who has said exculpatory things about Adolf Hitler and derogatory things about Winston Churchill). His admiration for Vladimir Putin and other totalitatians is therefore no suprise to me. The same goes for Donald Trump. Carlson I noticed during his time on Fox never even during war time said anything aobut Israel, he completely avoided the topic and I believe that is because he knows that Fox viewers are very pro Israel and he did not want to antagonize them. My guess is that his views on the Jewish nation mirrors those of the paleocons.
The only reason why Jeb Bush was leading in early 2016 was his name recognition. At heart, few people wanted the continuation of the Bush Dyansty (like the Kennedy Dynasty, it was a medicore one).
Tucker doesn’t seem like an isolationist to me. He seems more like a non-interventionalist. True isolationaists tend to oppose pretty much all interactions with foreign countries including more mundane things like trade agreements.
Ask the CIA to find evidence of WMD and they’ll find it, even if there are no WMDs.
Ask the DOJ to find indictable crimes, and they’ll find it, even if there were no crimes. Bureacracies function by meeting their quotas. If next year’s budget requires winning wars or fighting poverty, bureaucrats will find new wars and new poverty, even if they have to pull them out of a hat.
There was some criticism of Trump to the effect that he didn’t come out against the war in 2003 when it might have mattered. He was a Democrat when he first came out against the war and may have been following the party line. I note the criticism, but I’m not inclined to attack him. I thought the Iraq War was a bad idea but wasn’t as vocal in my criticisms as I could have been. The country and the Congress were convinced that the war was justified and necessary. It can be tough going for a doubter to take on such an entrenched and convinced consensus.
he was initially for the iraq war, so was trump, he was at the weekly standard, as was lee smith, who is one of the most sensible analysts on the board, did the war improve our pursuit of anti jihadists causes, thats debatable, did it supercharge the jihad, i doubt that too, in foreign policy one should try to do as little harm as possible, I think we failed on that score,
many of these same figures were all in on the arab spring, as if they had learned no lessons on what had transpired, it turned to be a more cost effective to topple Western Allies, the al hijra out of Syria and North Africa was the result,
1930s isolationists argued that the country hadn’t been involved earlier in European wars, and when it had — during the Wilson Administration — it hadn’t done any good. People who are called “isolationists” today have had to deal with a more complicated history, and often recognize that on the whole we were right in getting involved in WWII and the Cold War.
Paleocons weren’t as pro-Israel as others in the political world, but they weren’t all completely anti-Israel. Trump was very pro-Israel, and his view of Putin as someone we did’t want to needlessly antagonize looks to have been the right one. The political landscape has changed so much that the old categories like neocon and paleocon, isolationist and internationalist seem outdated.
Trump would lose to Newsom, but the way the country is now, could any Republcan win against Newsom? Something like majority will vote for the Democrats if the party puts forward what they consider to be a halfway attractive face, and if that doesn’t pull Newsom across the finish line there’s always the fraud way. Not to be defeatist, but looking at what’s happened to DeSantis lately gives an indication of what could happen next year.
you look at the long lense of the iraq war,
what did we accomplish, with all the blood and treasure spent, some saudi jihadists did suffer losses, but prince salman has done much to cripple their recruitment and financing infrastructure, at great personal risk to himself,
the mandarin class is very eager to throw him to the wolves, then…profit
Neo: It’s not what the “oil” outcome became, but rather the decision-making process itself that we witnessed!
Nonapod on June 15, 2023 at 10:25 am said:
Tucker doesn’t seem like an isolationist to me. He seems more like a non-interventionalist. True isolationaists tend to oppose pretty much all interactions with foreign countries including more mundane things like trade agreements.
I agree. Tucker wants to concentrate on the US. So does (did) Trump. As for Buchanan, I tend to agree that we and the Brits should have stayed out of WWI. Buchanan blames Churchill and Edward Grey. I disagree about Churchill but Grey and Edward VII were probably responsible for the switch from allies with Germany to allies with France, the traditional enemy.
“Isolationist” is just a smear nowadays*, the way the Left uses its go-to smears of “racist”, “fascist”, “white supremacist”.
There’s absolutely nothing unpatriotic about thinking the US is too quick to commit troops to foreign countries. There is nothing unpatriotic about thinking that the European Union is more than capable of defending itself without free-riding on us. There is absolutely nothing unpatriotic about recognizing that nations have interests and not friends. There is nothing unpatriotic about expecting American foreign policy to focus foremost on what’s best for Americans in America and being slow to involve ourselves in other peoples’ problems. There’s nothing unpatriotic in recognizing the moral hazard and unhealthy dependence fostered by American interventionism, that in the long run it’s bad for us and it’s bad for the people supposedly helped by it.
But it’s good for enriching the connected at home and abroad with American taxpayers’ money, so there’s that.
*Arguably it was a smear at the time.
The fact that Trump lost a son in Iraq May play a part in this!!! Or was it Biden?
anonymous:
Excuse me, but why would anyone take your word for this? And in addition, your assertion makes no sense, since we were already getting plenty of oil from them before the war, and since we don’t even really need their oil and can get it from other sources (including ourselves), and also since we did not get more oil from them after the war.
Brooklyn Boy:
Bush led in 2015, but with a very small percentage of the total because there were so many candidates. By the time the primaries happened, he never came in any higher than fourth. Complete dud.
There’s absolutely nothing unpatriotic
==
Notionally, there isn’t. The modal discourse of palaeo / alt-right types has much in common with that of red haze types. They just despise different segments of the population. There are exceptions.
no china ended up with the largest concessions in iraq, almost back the oil for food scam, the norwegians thanks to peter galbraith, got the kurdish concession,
The first Iraq war started with Bush Sr., was sustained under Clinton, and ended with Bush Jr. The second Iraq war followed from Obama’s disastrous exit from Iraq, and paying the Iranian regime through funds set aside for counterclaims. Then, of course, the Obama/Biden [ethnic] World Spring series in progress. All’s fair in lust, abortion, and war… Spring.
Col MacGregor wrote a plan rejected by the tutus leaching higher ups in which we’d be in and out of Iraq in weeks.
Bush lied, but it was cheney who changed the plan and disbanded the Iraqi Army which led to a trillion dollar twenty year quagmire. Lizzie- you and your dad are war profiteers
of course the officer corps were sunni, the rank and file were shia, the former which had large numbers of sufis, formed the resistance, socalled
I agree with “Frederick” above. Tucker gets a bit beyond me at times, such as with UFOs, but I largely agree. Without the Democrat lies we might have had a useful relationship with Russia. I assume the Bidens are bought and paid for by China. Maybe the entire Democrat Party is bought and paid for. Certainly the Democrats supported the Confederacy with few exceptions. That was ideology but the CCP connection seems to be more commercial.
avi:
This MacGregor?
Iraq was a broken country, the baathists had a quarter century to smash it and loot it, after quasim and the fall of nuri al said, the population is largely shia, but they were driven out of public life, they ended up in the dawa and the sciri, the kurds were more secular, so they went more left into communist ranks, thats where hitchens found some sympathies, other countries in the region, as we found in the so called Arab Spring, were nearly as fragile, Egypt somewhat, Libya spectacularly so, nationalism wasn’t really an answer, but islamism isn’t either,
Poor Roosia, if only for leftist lies we could be besties.
Otay, whatever, and Vlad is just “man whose intentions are good, please Lord, don’t let” Vlad ” be misunderstood!” Heard it on the radio …
neo
I think “Bush fatigue” was too powerful a force for Jeb to overcome. Barbara Bush (who I think was the smartest Bush) told him that and urged him not to run saying (paraphrasing) “You will inherit all of your brother’s enemies without picking up any new friends”. My belief is that GHWB was so intent on creating a long lasting poltiical dynasty that he pushed Jeb into running and the family later tried to get George P. Bush (Jeb’s son) to be the heir, but Bush fatigue kicked in and although he won the inocuous job of Texas Land Commissioner he lost in the primary for Texas State Attoreny General. In a sense I feel bad for Jeb Bush. By all accounts he is a genuinely nice man and was a good governor of Florida but America’s increasing disdain for dynasties and the medicore legacies that his brother and father left gave him no chance.
om – Didn’t George W. Bush look into Putin’s soul and saw a good man? McCain said he looked into Putin’s eyes and saw “KGB”.
miguel cervantes
The best and most logical would have been if both Iraq and Syria had broken up into more ethnically homogenous nations. Kurdistan (for one), as well as Alawite (the area around Latakia in Syria), Druze, Sunni, and Shiite. The Sykes-Picot Agreement after World War I created artificial nations with built in troubles. For example although Alawites make up 12% of Syria, they have dominated the military (particularly the Air Force as well as the government (the Assad crime family has been in power since 1970). That was one of the reasons for ISIS in Syria (resentment of minority Alawite rule).
The best and most logical would have been if both Iraq and Syria had broken up into more ethnically homogenous nations.
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Syria has a modest Kurdish population, < 5% of the total. It's internal fissures of note have never been ethnic. Confession has been a fissure. If I'm not mistaken, all Arab countries have to mediate and adjudicate conflicts between lineages and localities as well. Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan might have fewer problems if confessional, lingustic, and biogeographic zones been more precisely adhered to and had Britain and France coerced various parties into relinquishing their Kurdish territories. Might have.
By all accounts he is a genuinely nice man and was a good governor of Florida but America’s increasing disdain for dynasties and the medicore legacies that his brother and father left gave him no chance.
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The Bush clan has no interest in enforcing the immigration laws and George W. Bush since he departed office has – passively and then actively – let the people who voted for him know that they were marks and he doesn’t give a rip about their interests.
Paleocons weren’t as pro-Israel as others in the political world, but they weren’t all completely anti-Israel.
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The range of opinion in the alt-right / palaeo sector runs from indifference to madcap hostility. John Derbyshire and Rod Dreher might be exceptions.
By my view Trump crossed the Rubicon when he asked (facetiously I believe) if maybe the Russians could find Hillary’s missing 30,000 emails. I think that zapped the national security community bigtime.
Tucker dropped out from civilized discourse when he called Zelensky a “rat”, and somewhere in hell Goebbels smiled.
Iraq War I, the Gulf War, was in the Nineties under Bush I.
Iraq War II was in the new century under Bush II.
The other war that came later was the war against ISIS.
we spent 150 billion and didn’t get a t shirt, with kuwait we got oil (sort of) and the gratitude of khalid sheikh mohammed, and other nationals that bombed the wtc the first time
Tucker is a polemicist. I watched his show to be exposed to his views (and stories completely ignored by other media, including Fox), but expecting “the other side” from him is a waste of time. If I had familiarity with the subject he was covering, I almost always found myself noticing the gray areas he was ignoring. Depending on TC for a somewhat balanced outlook was like expecting the same from The View about abortion.
Don’t get me wrong, I still like him, think that he is largely correct, and think he performs Yeoman’s service for America. I just don’t take his word as gospel.
The first Iraq war was paused under a ceasefire, sustained during the Clinton administration, and concluded with an invasion during the Bush II administration. The second Iraq war started with a disastrous exit from Iraq during the Obama administration, funding the Iranian regime, the progress of Islamic State, and Obama/Biden’s ethnic Spring series from Libya to Ukraine. The catastrophic anthropogenic immigration reform during Iraq II was merely collateral damage with “benefits” (e.g. democratic gerrymandering).
I go along with what Yancey Ward wrote. The animous of the Deep State towards Trump is more a personal vendetta than an opposition to policy. For as POTUS Trump gave intelligence and DOD plenty of money.
(1) Trump publicly questioned the competence and integrity of the CIA. Not just with WMDs but also the JFK assassination.
(2) Trump successfully attacked the Bush & Cheney families and they are Deep State royalty. Why did Liz Cheney sacrifice her political career to attack Trump? Pure loathing of how Trump smeared her father.
(3) Trump prevented Hillary from winning the presidency, but in the process of losing Hillary got the Deep State headed down the rabbit hole of Trump / Russian collusion. Rather than hating Hillary for setting them up, they doubled down on hatred for Trump because he refused to quit, resulting in the FBI and political insiders looking very bad.
Alas, with Covid the Deep State finally trapped Trump and secured his exit from the White House. But Trump still won’t quit!
To remark about the Iraq issue and whether it was a mistake to dismiss the defeated Iraqi army:
The iron law of military counterfactuals is that whatever wasn’t tried would have worked–no argument, no possibility of failure, can’t possibly not succeed.
This is the army–not referring to the party military like the Republican Guard–which could barely get out of its own way in either Gulf 1 or the Bush post 9-11 op.
Talked to a couple guys in Gulf 1 who were MP in the POW business. Unlike their training, they discovered they had to keep the Sunni and the Shia soldiers apart or they’d be trying to kill each other in riots in the POW camps.
Depending on this rabble to arrange things all nice and neat would be really, really stupid but…since it wasn’t tried, it couldn’t possibly fail.
“The iron law of military counterfactuals is that whatever wasn’t tried would have worked–no argument, no possibility of failure, can’t possibly not succeed.”
Richard, this is one of the best statements I have ever read in neo’s comments. Not just military, historical “what ifs” are always dicey. Furthermore people using them tend to project today’s politics back decades if not centuries.
FOAF
Thanks. Given the company, that’s a substantial compliment.
Politics is downstream from culture and presuming ancient cultures were the same as ours–which nobody actually does but as you point out expects their politics to be as if they are. I think that’s a sentence.
Thanks again.
“The debate might still be considered a turning point in that nobody was paying attention to Trump before his candidacy. Trump saying the Iraq war was based on lies in front of God and everybody gave license to anybody to question the preexisting narrative and perhaps to agree with Trump. And the State couldn’t have that.” — Jerry
The Democrats were openly chanting “Bush Lied!” from about 2002 on. There was nothing new about that. The problem was that Bush II refused to fight back. That was the GOP SOP from 1994 on, whenever the Dems would lie about them, they would just try to ‘rise above it’, or ignore it. Eventually, people start to assume the allegation must be true, since the GOP never fought back. Today, a lot of Republicans believe Bush lied about the WMDs, precisely because he kept silent when he should have spoken up. He finally tried to defend himself when Trump accused him of lying, and he was telling the truth, but it was ten years too late.
One of the things Trump and DeSantis have in common is that they _do_ fight back.
“George W’s mistake was squandering the brilliant military victory by turning the peace over to Colin Powell and Richard Armitage. Rumsfeld’s Defense Department planned to bring in the ex-Pat group who understood the issues and let them sort out Iraq. Bush bought Powell’s argument that managing the Peace was State Department’s purview. They froze out the ex-Pat group and turned the post war period into a purely American venture. They put an American face on all of the problems.
Ironically, the State Department, with media assistance, has tried to blame the chaos on Rumsfeld and Defense, even though they lobbied for control.
Sadly, I think similar mistakes were made in Afghanistan; although I am not certain that Afghanistan could not have been rehabilitated. That is a wild hunch; as there is little evidence other than that there was at least a semi-functional middle class in the cities during the monarchy.” — Oldflyer
One of the mistakes American made, in both Iraq and Afghanistan, is to assume that what would replace the outgoing regimes would be a Western-style liberal democracy, which was fundamentally _impossible_ in both places. But a functioning, at least semi-civilized _state_ was probably possible. Not necessarily a democracy, though it would be nice if it had the possibility to move in that direction later. But a state, that could keep some kind of order. Something simple. America has done similar things in the past, though admittedly that was before our current feckless ruling class was running things.
Furthermore, our ruling elite (both parties) are hyper-secular. They desperately wanted to avoid engaging with the religious aspects of the wars, and that was fatal. There is no escape from religion in this world. Thus we had the ridiculous spectacle of the American embassy in Kabul loudly celebrating ‘pride month’ in a fundamentalist Islamic land, apparently blissfully unaware of the natural effect of that.
But the problem was not just in Iraq and Afghanistan. All the way back in 1991, when the USSR collapsed, the ‘help’ the West sent was worse than nothing. They tried to export Western economic theory and social policy, and the result was the rise of the oligarchs.
We see this same pattern over and over. We saw in South Sudan, where Western ‘advisers’ tried to implement classic economic liberalism and sometimes Randianism. We see it in Africa with the gay agenda. Generally, the right wing half of the ruling elite wants to export Ayn Rand, the left wing wants to export John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’. Neither works, and the failure modes are boringly repetitive.
One of the reasons there is such revulsion at both Trump and DeSantis is that the logical implication of the popular revolt against the current policies is that the current ruling class gets marginalized, and they don’t want to be marginalized.
“In a sense I feel bad for Jeb Bush. By all accounts he is a genuinely nice man and was a good governor of Florida but America’s increasing disdain for dynasties and the medicore legacies that his brother and father left gave him no chance.”
The Inevitable Jeb had a bunch of problems, most of them self-inflicted. The first thing to remember is that the Establishment always preferred Jeb. But W was the better politician in practice, and of the three Bush men (Bush Sr., Jeb, and Bush Jr.), Dubya is the best/least bad. If you have to have a Bush, W is the one to take (which is not to excuse his failings).
But Jeb in 2016 also gave the distinct impression that he was running out of some sense of family duty, he never seemed enthusiastic…EXCEPT…when addressing Spanish-speaking crowds in Spanish. Then he came across as lively and engaged! Which was an absolutely terrible optic after the multiple attempts at Comprehensive Amnesty in previous years. The GOP base was in a fury about immigration and he wanted more of it (immigration, not fury).
His lack of enthusiasm made Trump’s ‘low energy Jeb’ hit devastatingly effective.
He also made his infamous ‘lose the primary to win the general’ comment, and that played right into the precise things the GOP base did not want to hear. Obviously he didn’t mean it literally, but it was the old ‘the socons are losing it for us!’ nonsense. It was a promise of ‘economic conservative/social liberal’. It was _precisely_ what the GOP voters wanted less of.
Jeb tried to distance himself from W’s legacy…on precisely the points where the voters agreed with W. He embraced W’s legacy on the very things that had alienated the voters. It was almost a master class in how not to do it.
Trump, whatever his other failings, served his country by blocking Hillary and Jeb from power at the same time.
“One thing I think people forget is that Jeb Bush was never going to win the primary in 2016. He simply wasn’t popular, even before Trump sunk his teeth into him.” — neo
I have to disagree. Absent Trump, Jeb probably would have had the nomination, and then gone on to lose to Hillary…badly.
I say that because the Establishment wanted Jeb, badly. He was their vehicle to finally get that immigration amnesty passed. They had tried and failed in 2006, 2007, and 2013, and 2013 cost the GOP majority leader his Congressional seat. But by 2016 they had Paul Ryan in the Speaker’s chair, the GOP in the Senate were always on board, and if they had Jeb, done deal.
The GOP leadership knew perfectly well that the GOP rank and file voters wanted Jeb like they wanted a root canal. But they tried to set it up so that they would get Jeb anyway. The plan was that Jeb would come in second or third to different opponents in the earlier contests, many of which were proportional. A lot of the big later States were winner take all.
So Jeb builds up a critical mass of delegates even if he doesn’t outright win many contests in the earlier season. The other candidates just win one or two here or there, and their money dries up. Then a relatively uncontested Jeb vacuums up those winner take all States and boom: nominated.
BOTH parties tried to do something like this in 2016. The Dems set it up so that this time it was Hillary, Dammit, no more nonsense. The GOP wanted it set up so that all roads led to Jeb. The Dems succeeded, the GOP failed spectacularly.
HC68:
People keep saying and saying and saying that Jeb was going to win – but I was nearly 100% sure it would never happen, I wrote that several times BEFORE Trump entered the race, and I think I was correct. Obviously, since Trump did enter the race, I can’t prove it, but you cannot prove your thesis either and I think you are absolutely wrong.
Jeb didn’t just lose to Trump. He came in no higher than fourth in every race he entered. He never would have won, even without Trump.