Perspectives: Crooke, Jatras

This morning I quoted Alastair Crooke, who provided context on Russia hatred—context that I have regularly presented to some skepticism from some readers. Crooke was being questioned by Judge Nap regarding the US led attack on Russian airbases, and at a certain point this exchange occurred:

Finally, Judge Nap asks about Mossad involvement (it’s interesting to note that Zelensky spoke of turning Ukraine into “Big Israel”). It’s all connected:

Judge: Why would Mossad be involved? Doesn't Mossad have enough to do with what's going on in the Middle East and with all their spying over here in the US?

Crooke: There's a long history going back to the Tsarist period of [Jewish] antagonism for supposed anti-semitism in Russia. We saw that with the Troskyites in the United States, who formed the backbone of the Neocon movement in in the US [and were adamantly hostile to Russia/USSR]. They have also a common alignment with the Deep State and its objectives of destroying Russia, because they want to see American hegemony continue. Israel depends on American hegemony, and if Trump is going to disrupt it by having a relationship with Russia, that is going to change many things. That is ultimately going to affect Israel, because it is America that backstops the hegemony of Israel across the Middle East.

Hold that thought about Trotskyites (largely of East European Jewish background) forming the backbone of the Neocon movement in the US, which came to national prominence in the 1980s. The Reagan years. This afternoon, along comes Jim Jatras (a controversial figure) to chat with Danny Davis. And at a certain point Jatras—I believe referring to the USDS—states:

You know I served at the Soviet desk in the early 1980s, under the Reagan administration, and I was one of the few really diehard anti-Communists in the whole damn building in those days. There were a lot of people that were anti-Soviet, but not because they were anti-Communists. It was because they were anti-Russian. For them Communism was, frankly, one of the good things about Russia. It was was secular. It was godless. It was progressive. It was all of those things that the ruling circles in all the Western countries are. And when Russia was revived again as a national state—when the red flag came down and the white, blue, and red flag went back up and Russia emerged as a country with a national and even somewhat orthodox Christian ethos—these same people who had been mildly anti-Soviet became vociferously anti-Russia.

So this is not just a Cold War hangover from the first Cold War with the Soviet Union. This is something qualitatively different, where the United States—in the aftermath of the first Cold War—saw it had an opportunity to become the hegemonic power over the whole world. Countries like Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, whoever—these are obstacles that have to be crushed. Frankly, I don't see any change in that mentality in Washington.

Maybe Trump has a somewhat different idea but, as you know, Trump tends to have more like impulses than strategy. So, so much of what we could describe as strategy and the idea that somehow we're going to have an agreement on spheres of influence with the Russians and Chinese and so forth—that we're going to come come to a true accommodation with Moscow—I just don't think that's in the cards at all.

Yes, he’s talking about the Neocons. The war on Russia, the wars in the Middle East—it’s all connected.

Jatras continues by arguing that he doesn’t believe that Trump ever really had a clear idea of where he wanted to go with regard to Russia, and so now he’s getting “roped in” by people like Lindsey! What Jatras sees happening is the trillion dollar defense budget being used to build weapons to be sold to the Euros to be given to Ukraine. To me, that doesn’t count as “walking away”, but I always regarded that as a fiction.