Catching Up On Wars, Foreign And Domestic

Yesterday we featured a relatively brief transcript from the concluding minutes of a video discussion between Michael Vlahos and Douglas Macgregor: Wars Foreign And Domestic--What Is To Be Done? I’ll start today’s post by pasting in the core of that transcript—which describes the dangerously unrepresentative nature of politics in Imperial America, featuring an out of touch elite that’s in it for themselves:

VLAHOS: Now, increasingly, you have these separate, mostly Blue and some Red, elite communities that essentially own the process. From start to finish. They own the universities, they own the media, they own all of the non-profits that are so important--and they have the money. And they have the two parties, and the organizational structure and the institutional authority of the two parties. So they're building what amounts to a hermetic, separate political system--something far less sensitive to the people, even, that British society in the mid-18th century, which no one would argue was a democracy. But that elite still had the capacity for upward social mobility, and it still took the pulse of the people.

Now, increasingly, you have a stern and unforgiving--what Orwell would call the Inner Party and the Outer Party. They are the thing that owns our political system, and so you ask the question: Where do we get our leaders? That leads you back to the conundrum that I posed about ever being able to see things, because the entire prime directive of this elite is to preserve and extend its power and control. And it is engaged in doing that. We saw that during the pandemic and we see it now in the conduct of the war, which is a wholly owned franchise of the Washington elite. And so I worry about this--and you're totally right when you say that the war of decision is at home--because you can't permanently marginalize and reduce to a kind of serfdom the majority of Americans. And I include there all of the Blue constituencies who have essentially been marginalized already. They form the majority of Americans and there is no pathway for the voice of this majority to be heard in America today.

MacG: Unless the current elites are replaced by a different elite. That emerges from a different milieu. And that's all tied up with 'What happens next?'

VLAHOS: Revolution.

So, keep that in mind as we proceed.

Next, I’d like to draw attention to Larry Johnson’s two most recent blog posts. They’re not earth shaking news, but they may shed light on the workings of the imperial Deep State and provide perspective on MSM reporting. The first post deals with the prisoner swap with Russia. Obviously I can’t vouch for everything Larry says, but I certainly find his overall argument persuasive—that the Russian arms dealer, Viktor Bout, was in fact an intelligence officer for the Russian Federation and was engaged in much the same activities that the American Empire is routinely involved in:

THERE IS MORE TO THE VIKTOR BOUT TRADE THAN MEETS THE EYE

The real story lies behind the Western meme that portrays Bout as the spawn of Satan intent on creating mayhem and slaughter around the globe. I have a different take.

I believe Viktor Bout was a Russian intelligence officer operating under cover as an arms dealer. In this capacity he could identify key players in revolutionary and criminal movements around the world. It is the United States that has created the Merchant of Death tale.

Let us start with the fact that Bout previously sold weapons to the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. That kind of sale would have been monitored and known to Russian intelligence. Important to recall that the Northern Alliance played a key role in helping the United States oust the Taliban in the wake of the 9-11 attacks. Although some reports claim Bout also sold to the Taliban, I’ve seen no credible evidence supporting that. However, I cannot discount him doing so with the support of Russia’s Government as a means of identifying and developing potential intelligence sources with the Taliban.

...

Bout’s work as a Russian intel operative working under the cover of arms trafficking gave him incredible access to sources and activities not normally available to a Russian intelligence officer working under diplomatic or military cover. It is a smart way for the Russians to collect intel and recruit human sources on a variety of active insurgent groups and criminal organizations. If you think the United States has not tried something like this, think again.

Johnson’s second post, this morning, uses an email from a reader to present what Douglas Macgregor has been saying for a long time—and expanded on at some length in his discussions with Michael Vlahos: That the US military has been transformed since the Iraq war and is now geared toward Light Infantry operations—the glorification of a Super Swat mentality—and is totally unprepared for the type of industrial scale conventional warfare that Russia is engaged in in Ukraine:

THE WAR IN UKRAINE HAS EXPOSED THE WEAKNESS OF THE U.S. MILITARY

Quoting from the email:

What Trump calls the “forever wars” (and I call the wars of sheer imperialism), after the fall of the USSR the Pentagon shifted planning and operations to what had been the stepchild of DOD for years — “Special Operations.” The Special Operations Command (aka SOCOM) came into being and the battle doctrine became dominated by Rangers, Special Forces, SEALS, etc and our military arsenal shrunk accordingly to support light operations with air control and total domination of the battle field. War by XVIII Airborne Corps.

Fielding of weapons became a lost art. Even paying attention to the Air Defense leapfrog by the Russians and Chinese, which we are seeing chew up Ukraine and NATO support weapons, became too much trouble. Now the Russians are exposing the paper tiger of American and NATO military power as they “demilaratize” us as well as Ukraine. Our response to the huge new challenge to carrier groups and old fashioned manned bombers is the Idiotic B 21. We are strangled by past legends, an arrogant assumption of continued postwar hegemony, and are sliding towards becoming a 2nd rate power.

Whatever US staff planned the support operation for Ukraine should be shot. We sent them the wrong armaments (lacking the right ones) and sat by while they ran through all the warehoused support we had like a drunken teenager. Now we can no longer support them. And they are hanging on the ropes.

After Napoleon, the Russians are the best artillerymen in the world. This war was always going to come down to artillery. And we sent them a air deliverable special operations design basic howitzer M777 that wasn’t tough enough for the job and easily disabled from excessive use and then ran out of ammo.

We should have seen all this coming up front. We not only proceeded on an arrogant basis without proper study, We knew we were in an industrial war and that was a game we couldn’t play for long. This was a military catastrophe from the beginning. Any planner worth his salt would recommend against it. Looks like DOD is scared now and is going to resist Biden Administration neocon pressure to “escalate.” The muttering about Crimea indicates the Administration is beginning to think about the end game.

Woops! Latest reporting is that the US is giving a green light to Ukraine to use long range missiles to strike inside Russia. Possible problem—there is reporting “out there” that British SAS groups are actually operating inside Russia, conducting sabotage. Could end very badly.

I hope readers are seeing the connection to Vlahos/Macgregor and their discussion of an out of touch imperial elite leading the US into a real danger zone. The next article I’ll cite offers a very direct connection, citing Friedrich Hayek:

Why The Left Must Destroy Free Speech... Or Be Destroyed

Hayek’s insights are very relevant to what we’re currently learning about the war on dissent that the US Deep State and political establishment has been waging—including against President Trump--and show Hayek to have been eerily prescient:

The eleventh chapter of The Road to Serfdom is entitled “The End of Truth,” about the historical imperative in all totalitarian states throughout history to destroy freedom of speech so that the only true belief is “the social plan” imposed by the state, whatever that may be.  This is achieved by relentless institutionalized lying and propaganda, coupled with harsh censorship of all contrary ideas or even questions about the propriety of forcefully imposing one single “social plan.” This is American society today, in other words, in case you haven’t noticed.  (Socialism, Hayek said, has always been about substituting the plans of politicians for the plans that all of the citizens make for themselves.  It’s not a matter of planning versus no planning, but who is to do the planning).

…

Academe must also be thoroughly corrupted, said Hayek, for “the disinterested search for truth cannot be allowed in a totalitarian system.”  American universities have gone almost all the way down to the end of the road to serfdom in this regard.  Many have fallen off the cliff completely.  This is especially true, said Hayek, of the disciplines of history, law, and economics.  They must be compromised in a way that supports the state rather than criticizes it, …

In totalitarian societies, wrote Hayek, truth is not something that is discovered by learning, education, self-study, research, and debate and discussion.  Instead, it is “something to be laid down by authority . . .”  In today’s world, for example, global warming hysteria is “settled science,” the most un-scientific phrase ever uttered.  ...

Medical science is not science, we have been told; Anthony Fauci is medical science. 

…

“[I]ntolerance, too, is openly extolled,” in totalitarian societies said Hayek, anticipating by decades the 1960s-era “New Left” hero, the totalitarian intellectual Herbert Marcuse, who authored a widely-celebrated paper on “repressive tolerance,” the idea that only “the oppressed classes” deserve free speech.  In the world of the 60s “New Left,” whose students and political descendants now control almost all of academe, television, the media in general, much of government, “woke” corporations, and other institutions, the “oppressor class” is comprised essentially of all white heterosexual males, especially ones of European descent.  ...

Hayek based these ideas on his years of study of world history and of the totalitarian regimes of the early twentieth century.  “Wokeness” did not just suddenly appear and proceed to take over almost the entire Western world.  It is just the latest manifestation of totalitarianism that has been marching through the institutions for several generations.  …  Their treatment of Musk will eventually make their treatment of Donald Trump seem like a love fest in comparison.

Their hatred for Trump, by the way, is derived from the same source as their hatred for Elon Musk:  Like Musk, Trump called out and publicized many of the official lies and official liars of the Washington establishment, especially those in the “fake news” business.  The Left considers the fight over free speech to be a political death struggle, and they are right about that.  If anything deserves to be strangled in its crib it is the Left’s current assault on the First Amendment.

Finally, The Duran offers today a provocative discussion of another major failure by our elites: China & Saudi Arabia, massive realignment. A new power rises in the Middle East. Among other lines of discussion in the 25 minute video, I’ll highlight and summarize some key points that Alexander Mercouris advances:

Saudi Arabia has been, for generations, the linchpin of US policy in the Arab world. That is all ended now—that’s the clear takeaway from the three day visit of China’s Xi to Saudi Arabia for talks with MBS. Let me repeat that: Three days of talks—that wasn’t about the weather in China v. Arabia. This confirms that Saudi Arabia—which was there at the establishment of King Dollar, the Petro Dollar, as the world’s reserve currency—is turning away from the US toward Russia and China. There is little doubt that where Saudi Arabia goes, the rest of the Arab world will follow. This is a geopolitical earthquake in the making, and must also be coupled with the strong cooperation of Iran with Russia, Egypt’s and Turkey’s increasing orientation toward Russia, and even Pakistan’s developing ties to Russia. The US could get away with bullying and lecturing the Arab and Central/South Asian countries when the US was the only game in town. It no longer is. The world has alternatives now—the Eurasian Bloc (and beyond) led by Russia and China. The US is isolating itself through its refusal to conduct diplomacy, and appears to be imminently losing a significant part of its clout—dollar hegemony.