Tag: warmongers

Patriot Games: The Ideologies of American Warmongers

Just how stupid do they think we are?

The balance of evidence provided by the public statements of senior Biden administration officials would suggest, very.

Take the following vignette from US undersecretary of state Victoria Nuland’s speech on February 22nd in Washington:

…I visited a center in Kyiv, that the U.S. supports, which helps Ukrainian children that have been displaced by the war. There I met a young boy from Kharkiv, with bright eyes and a sweet smile, who had just lost his home to Putin’s barbarity.

As part of a therapy session, he and a handful of other kids his age were making little knit dolls out of yellow and blue yarn.

Before leaving I asked him if I could keep one.

“Da,” he said.

I then asked what the doll’s name was.

“Patriot,” he answered.

It was quiet [sic] a moment – a child making a doll, who just lost his home, thinking about patriotism.

That’s what war brings. To Ukraine and around the world.

I now keep Patriot on my desk as a reminder that the support that the United States provides is not abstract. It’s often the difference between life and death for Ukrainians on the front lines of this fight for Ukraine, and for the future of the free world.”

Walter Lippmann’s observation that “we must remember that in time of war what is said on the enemy’s side of the front is always propaganda, and what is said on our side of the front is truth and righteousness, the cause of humanity and a crusade for peace” applies here with full force.

Within this sickly sweet tale of Nuland and her doll are the usual hypocrisies, after all, at no point should we expect to hear from her or any other administration official about children (11,500 as of early February according to Haaretz) with “bright eyes and  sweet smiles” starved, crushed or blown to bits by American-made ordnance in Gaza.

How do figures such as Nuland and her superiors, including Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, and Jeff Zients justify an approach to the world that privileges, above all, violence?

To get to the bottom of why things are the way they are we need to think about ideology. And the first thing that needs to be said is that the two leading foreign policy ideologies, neoconservatism and liberal internationalism, are in many respects alien to the American tradition. These ideologies serve as a cover (Hannah Arendt defined ideology as “the knowledgeable dismissal of what is visible”) and are themselves a root cause of the current madness.

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Warmongers 101 – Who Is the Institute for the Study of War?

Attention Students! Before we begin, that’s not a typographical error in the title.

Whenever one investigates a “think tank,” “study group,” “not-for-profit,” “non-governmental organization,” or other such meddlesome troublemakers it needs to start with who rather than what.

The people involved make the difference betwixt a mere charity and a nefarious character.

As will be seen below, the folks at The “Institute” For The Study Of War are about as sinister as they get.

Why Does the Establishment Sound Familiar…

If you have any interest in the Ukraine Conflict at all – or even if you are actively trying to avoid news on the topic – your senses have no doubt been assailed by a report, recommendation or review of matters breathlessly covered by the local news…brought helpfully to you courtesy of The Institute For The Study Of War.

This collective, which nobody – including most policy experts – had ever heard of until a few months ago now seems to be everywhere throughout every day.

Since the moniker sounds so very anodyne the casual viewer receiving these nightly (or hourly) dispatches might be lulled into believing the “Institute” is some leafy green Collegiate establishment where doddering old bespeckled professors hum and haw their way through lectures while wearing dusky black robes a la Mr. Chips.

Unfortunately, no.

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CNN Recruits Washington’s Worst Warmonger The Instant He Leaves Congress

CNN has shattered the speed of light in its haste to recruit former representative Adam Kinzinger to its punditry lineup the millisecond he left congress.

Kinzinger, who prior to being redistricted out of his House seat received handsome campaign contributions from arms manufacturers Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman, was arguably the most egregious warmonger on Capitol Hill.

Nobody in congress lobbied as aggressively to start World War Three as Kinzinger did last year; he tried to advance a bill authorizing hot war against Russia if Moscow crossed specified red lines in Ukraine but couldn’t get cosponsors because even his fellow congressional hawks thought it was too insane. He was the loudest voice in the US government publicly advocating a no-fly zone over Ukraine in the early weeks of the war, an idea that was slammed by the mass media as it would necessarily have entailed the US military shooting down Russian war planes and aggressively tempted nuclear war.

Kinzinger was such a demented omnicidal maniac in 2022 that while still in office he became an official member of the empire-backed online troll farm known as “NAFO”, which was founded by an actual neo-Nazi whom Kinzinger openly supported both before and after revelations emerged of the founder’s expressions of hatred for Jews and fondness for Hitler. While still a sitting congressman he was flagging trolls with hashtags inviting them to swarm the social media comments of critics of US foreign policy who opposed his psychopathic warmongering.

Before the war in Ukraine Kinzinger was calling for the re-invasion of Afghanistan immediately following the US troop withdrawal and raging about public opposition to “endless war.” Before that he was cheerleading Trump’s assassination of Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani, calling for US interventionism in Venezuela, defending the US-backed war on Yemen, calling for the invasion of Syria, and just generally pushing for more war and militarism at every opportunity. Before that, he was helping the empire kill Iraqis as a member of the US Air Force.

Kinzinger is such an obnoxious warmonger online that I myself have called him “the single worst Twitter account that has ever existed,” long before his CNN gig was a twinkle in his eye.

So it’s no wonder a warmongering propaganda network snapped him up the instant he became available, ensuring that his warmongering receives as large a platform as possible. As Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp quipped regarding CNN’s hire, “All those calls for WWIII must have landed him this gig.”

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‘Destroy Russia Together’: Jim Inhofe Calls for Even More Aid to Ukraine

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), the ranking member of the Senate Armed Forces Committee, on Tuesday called for even more aid to Ukraine as he urges the West to “Destroy Russia Together.”

“Many of our @NATO allies on the front lines with Russia give more aid to Ukraine pound-for-pound than the U.S. That’s why we need to ramp up industrial capacity to refill our own weapons stocks, sell to allies to refill their own and sustain Ukraine victories,” Inhofe wrote on Tuesday. 

Inhofe shared a graphic detailing allegedly how Latvia gives more than other wealthier countries to Ukraine as a percent of its military budget. 

The graphic, however, ignores that the United States has already given far more in financial, humanitarian, and military aid than most other European countries combined, including Latvia. Many countries have also given far more in military aid than Latvia, Estonia, or Lithuania compared to the graphic’s decision to measure ratios of a country’s military budget to military aid to Ukraine. 

According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, the United States has given roughly $27.29 billion in military aid to Ukraine, the European Union (EU) has given roughly $2.47 billion in military aid, and the United Kingdom (UK) has given roughly $3.69 billion in military Ukraine.

In contrast, Latvia has only given roughly $290 million in military aid to Ukraine, Estonia has only given $250 million in military aid, and Lithuania has only given roughly $187 million in aid to Ukraine. 

The Kiel Institute shows that the United States has provided far beyond the most military aid, with most European countries paling in comparison.

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John Bolton Calls For Putin Assassination, Regime Change

Former White House national security adviser John Bolton is now taking to the networks to call for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s assassination. “I think we should make it clear publicly so that not just Putin but that all the top Russian leadership… that if Putin authorizes the use of a nuclear weapon he’s signing his own suicide note,” the well-known neocon hawk said to CBS in a Friday appearance.

Describing that Putin is head of command and control for all Russian – including nuclear – forces, Bolton continued by stating what he says should be official US policy: “He’s a legitimate military target… he needs to know that he’s on our target list at this point.” Bolton essentially called for the US to assassinate the Russian leader if the opportunity ever arises.

Bolton went on the discuss an op-ed he penned days prior in the online military journal 1945 wherein effecting regime change in Russia was the focus.

“There is no long-term prospect for peace and security in Europe without regime change in Russia. Russians are already discussing it, quietly, for obvious reasons. For the United States and others pretending that the issue is not before will do far more harm than good,” Bolton spelled out in that op-ed. 

“To avoid the war simply grinding along indefinitely, we must alter today’s calculus. Carefully assisting Russian dissidents to pursue regime change might just be the answer, he continued. “Russia is, obviously, a nuclear power, but that is no more an argument against seeking regime change than against assisting Ukrainian self-defense.”

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Modern US Warmongering Is Scaring Henry Kissinger

In a new interview with The Wall Street Journal, immortal Hague fugitive Henry Kissinger says the US is acting in a crazy and irrational way that has brought it to the edge of war with Russia and China:

Mr. Kissinger sees today’s world as verging on a dangerous disequilibrium. “We are at the edge of war with Russia and China on issues which we partly created, without any concept of how this is going to end or what it’s supposed to lead to,” he says. Could the U.S. manage the two adversaries by triangulating between them, as during the Nixon years? He offers no simple prescription. “You can’t just now say we’re going to split them off and turn them against each other. All you can do is not to accelerate the tensions and to create options, and for that you have to have some purpose.”

 

On the question of Taiwan, Mr. Kissinger worries that the U.S. and China are maneuvering toward a crisis, and he counsels steadiness on Washington’s part. “The policy that was carried out by both parties has produced and allowed the progress of Taiwan into an autonomous democratic entity and has preserved peace between China and the U.S. for 50 years,” he says. “One should be very careful, therefore, in measures that seem to change the basic structure.”

 

Mr. Kissinger courted controversy earlier this year by suggesting that incautious policies on the part of the U.S. and NATO may have touched off the crisis in Ukraine. He sees no choice but to take Vladimir Putin’s stated security concerns seriously and believes that it was a mistake for NATO to signal to Ukraine that it might eventually join the alliance: “I thought that Poland—all the traditional Western countries that have been part of Western history—were logical members of NATO,” he says. But Ukraine, in his view, is a collection of territories once appended to Russia, which Russians see as their own, even though “some Ukrainians” do not. Stability would be better served by its acting as a buffer between Russia and the West: “I was in favor of the full independence of Ukraine, but I thought its best role was something like Finland.”

Kissinger: “We are at the edge of war with Russia and China on issues which we partly created, without any concept of how this is going to end or what it’s supposed to lead to.” https://t.co/mytxSajU6Q

— Gal Luft (@GalLuft) August 13, 2022

I don’t know about you, but to me this warning is much, much more ominous coming from a bloodsoaked swamp monster than it would be from some anti-imperialist peace activist who was speaking from outside the belly of the imperial machine. This man is a literal war criminal who, as a leading empire manager, helped to unleash unfathomable horrors all around the world the consequences of which are still being felt today.

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Henry Kissinger: A Warmonger’s Lying Continues

In his 99th year and with his 19th book, Henry A. Kissinger repeats the same deceitful accounts regarding his dangerous use of military power, including nuclear threats. In the 1970s as the national security adviser and secretary of state for presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, Kissinger occupied an unusually powerful position in the national security arena.  His  newest book, “Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy,” is valuable because of his experiences in the political and academic communities, but it must be read carefully in view of the self-aggrandizing nature of his self-promotion.

Kissinger, who believed in the possibility of limited nuclear war in the 1950s, favored the use of a nuclear card in the war between India and Pakistan in 1971, and the October War in the Middle East in 1973.  On an earlier occasion, in 1970, when the Nixon administration was faced with a threat about the Soviet construction of a submarine repair facility in Cuba, Kissinger wanted to send a strong military signal to the Soviets.  Nixon wisely said, “I think we can resolve this with diplomacy.”  Nixon was right.

The following year, during the Indian-Pakistan War, Kissinger feared that the Soviet Union would use the war to “move against” the Chinese and that if “we don’t do anything, we’ll be finished.”  Nixon wanted to know if Kissinger meant that we should “start lobbing nuclear weapons in, is that what you mean?”  Kissinger made it clear that he meant must just that, referring to it as the “final showdown.”  (I was an intelligence analyst at the Department of State in the early 1970s, a period when Kissinger and his director of the Bureau of Intelligence, William Hyland, were convinced that the Soviets were prepared to go to war against China.  There was no intelligence to support their obsession.)

The White House tapes reveal both Nixon and Kissinger at their worst during the crisis in South Asia.  In addition to Nixon’s typical vulgarity and his contempt for Indian President Indira Gandhi, the president told Kissinger that the Indians needed a “mass famine.”  Kissinger sneered at people who “bleed” for the Bengalis of East Pakistan.  Nixon and Kissinger moved to gratuitously deploy an aircraft carrier into the Bay of Bengal, which angered the Pentagon because of the danger of escalation and caused a great deal of nervousness throughout the military chain of command. They also approved a covert supply of sophisticated U.S. fighter aircraft via Jordan and Iran, despite explicit warnings from the Department of State and the Department of Defense that such arms transfers to Pakistan were illegal under U.S. law.

Like his earlier memoirs, Kissinger says almost nothing about the slaughter of Bengalis in East Pakistan, insisting that Pakistan’s atrocities were “clearly under its domestic jurisdiction.”  He also sanitizes Nixon’s racial animus toward Indians, and makes no mention of the unusual “dissent cable” that was signed by 20 foreign service officers who condemned Kissinger’s willingness to ignore the “selective genocide” that was taking place in East Pakistan.   Kissinger mocked the cable’s author, Archer Blood, the U.S. Consul General in Dacca, as a “coward.”

It is noteworthy that in a conversation with Nixon regarding Soviet Jews, Kissinger displayed a similar lack of concern about the plight of Soviet Jews and remarked that “if the Soviets put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern.  Maybe a humanitarian concern.”  Nixon agreed: “I know.  We can’t blow up the world because of it.”  Nixon and Kissinger catered to the world’s dictators in Brazil, Greece, Portugal, Indonesia, Iran, Spain, and South Korea, and in the case of Pakistan, they catered to that country’s murderous generals.

The October War found Kissinger essentially in charge of national security policy.  These were the worst days of the Watergate crisis for Richard Nixon, and his use of anti-depressants and alcohol often placed him hors de combatin the fall of 1973.  This was certainly true on the evening of October 24, when Kissinger illegally called a meeting of the National Security Council (NSC) and elevated the nuclear alert system to DefCon III, signifying a serious crisis short of preparing for nuclear war.  The National Security Act of 1947 explicitly states that only the president or the vice president could run an NSC meeting, although the president could provide written authorization for another individual to chair the meeting.  Nixon was not at the meeting just before midnight, and General Al Haig refused Kissinger’s request to awaken the president.  Gerald Ford had not been confirmed as vice president; he was not at the meeting.  There is no record of any written authorization.

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Warmongering Republicans Have Throbbing Hard-Ons For Pelosi’s Taiwan Trip

Octogenarian House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has decided to spend her final years on this mortal coil trying to start World War Three, pushing the Biden administration to designate Russia an official “state sponsor of terrorism” and planning a freakishly incendiary trip to Taiwan just in the last few days.

Beijing has made it clear that the first visit to Taiwan by a major US official in decades would be seen as an aggressive escalation and an egregious transgression of Washington’s official one-China policy.

“The U.S. side is wrong to believe that it can continue to flagrantly disregard the feelings of the Chinese side on Taiwan without more serious consequences,” a Chinese official told the Washington Post in response to the news of Pelosi’s planned trip in August, adding that “actors like Nancy Pelosi are committed to destabilizing China under the guise of morality” and that Pelosi has “openly threatened China’s development.”

Chinese state media put it even more bluntly, stating, “Pelosi’s Taiwan visit is a blatant provocation which will surely be met with a forceful response from China, including unprecedented military pressure. She is creating a dangerous moment, placing us on the brink of war. Nobody can guarantee there will be no mishaps.”

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The return of Vindman, clamoring to start World War III

Among the most fervent war hawks in America today is Alexander Vindman, a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army and a former member of the NSC, who now works at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies Foreign Policy Institute.  His previous claim to fame was as a witness who testified about former president Donald Trump’s call to Ukrainian officials in the second impeachment trial of Trump.  He became an instant hero to the crowd at MSNBC and other anti-Trump major media (is there any other kind?).  Vindman also reportedly claimed that Trump “bears an enormous burden of responsibility” for the Russia-Ukraine war, even though Russia’s aggression against Ukraine has occurred during the Obama and Biden administrations.  There was no Russian aggression against Ukraine on Trump’s watch.

 Vindman has now taken to the pages of Foreign Affairs to urge U.S. policymakers to “embrace the goal of Ukrainian victory” against Russia by throwing caution to the wind.  The United States, he writes, is not doing enough to help Ukraine win this war.  We should forget about building a stable relationship with Russia and instead provide Ukrainian forces with sufficient military weaponry to take the war to Russia’s territory, Vindman counsels.  We need to “discard the desire” to seek a compromise with Russia for a negotiated peace.

Vindman writes that our aid thus far has been too “incremental.”  Too many of our policymakers, he says, are acting based on a “flawed assessment of the risk of escalation and the potential consequences of a Russian defeat.”  The United States should provide Ukraine with weapons that can reach far inside Russia to destroy “militarily relevant targets” there.  “There can be no return to business as usual with Russia,” according to Vindman, “as long as Putin rules from the Kremlin.”  In other words, our policy toward Russia should be regime change.

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