Thursday, October 29, 2015

Hyperbole alert.

The US military may be staggering around the planet like a drunken, bloated colossus. Yet [Matthew] Continetti [editor of The Washington Free Beacon] still dutifully trots out all the [Irving] Kristolian tropes about the need for military assertiveness (more drunken belligerence), massive defense spending (more bloating), and “a new American century.” Reaganism is needed now just as much as in 1996, he avers: in fact, doubly so, for Russia has reemerged as:
“…the greatest military and ideological threat to the United States and to the world order it has built over decades as guarantor of international security.”[1]
Last I heard the people actually pulling triggers on rifles and IEDs on American troops these days are sunni jihadis, not Russian Christians, though that could change soon enough if we continue to throw our weight around in service to the jihadi cause in the Middle East.

I am also at a loss to know what Russian ideas are spreading across the world that are such a danger to the U.S. Their undoubted position that we are acting like a bunch of overbearing, entitled, deluded jerks might be unpleasant for some people to deal with but it's hardly what I'd call an "ideological threat."

And such Russian troops as are outside Russia pale in significance beside the numbers of U.S. troops outside U.S. borders, but I suppose we get a pass because the world knows that we are a benevolent power. The late Mr. Gaddafi is probably saying to himself, "Who knew?"

The United States could do some good if it would persuade Merkel and the Europeans to stop committing suicide on the matter of mass immigration but that would highlight a much more sinister agenda there and here. So Russians are "it" -- the locus of all earthly satanic activity in a neocon worldview that's quite oblivious to the ongoing Western suicide at home.

It's odd that the neocon Mr. Continetti doesn't see the U.S. infatuation with Saudi salafism and support for ISIS and al Qaida in Syria as possibly threatening to the world order, made in U.S.A. or otherwise. Or that the neocon agenda of laying waste to various nation states here and there is reckless and destablilizing by itself. In a world where the Western powers have embraced suicide by immigrant invader it's like swatting at mosquitoes with a baseball bat to try to find any kind of a common sense in the clouds of this kind of intellectual flapdoodle.

Notes
[1] "Embracing The Dark Side: A Short History Of The Pathological Neocon Quest For Empire." By Dan Sanchez, David Stockman's Contra Corner, 10/27/15 (emphasis added).

2 comments:

  1. To a certain extent, I believe Putin may be doing what _we_ should be doing in Syria.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think he's doing exactly what we should have been doing all along. I presume aerial bombardment is even more accurate than, what, ten years ago. However, without ground observers, especially against dug-in troops, it's hard to take advantage of that precision. Tank and other vehicles are less dependent on ground observers, of course.

    If we hadn't fixated on the stupid goal of removing Assad we'd have all kinds of opportunities for coordination with multiple ground units. Putin isn't hampered by that foolishness.

    We're schizophrenic there wanting to fight ISIS (though I'm skeptical of that) and Assad, but Assad would be a valuable asset in defeating ISIS. ISIS is by far the most bestial force on the planet (possibly) but we've set ourselves up to fail by having this odd dual policy.

    And it's a yet-more-odd policy since any junior strategic analyst knows what a mess resulted with the undeniable stability provided by Gaddafi was removed.

    And the migrant/asylum seeker/jihadi invasion crisis in Europe is 100% made in USA.

    This must be what "leading from behind" means. It's expensive and we deserve any ridicule that is heaped on us.

    ReplyDelete

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