Say It Loud: We're Bananas And We're Proud; Heart Of A Neocon

I’ve had an unusually busy day, so I’ll have to wrap things up at the end.

It seems pointless to comment on the latest indictment of Trump. A once proud nation that believed in itself seems now to be circling the toilet, and the political establishment, far from being concerned, is complicit in destroying out constitutional order. Legal scholars who know better pretend that the jihad against Trump can be legitimately discussed as a legal matter. It’s not.

Kim Dotcom

@KimDotcom

The desperation of the Democrats and their deep state partners to send Trump to jail reveals how worried they are. The Democrats and their shady partners turned the US into a cesspool of corruption, propaganda and censorship. They will do anything to prevent Trump or RFK Jr.

11:35 PM · Aug 14, 2023

Well, but it’s not just the Dems. It’s the Uniparty. It’s the political establishment. By the way, Turtle McConnell said yesterday that there’s no time limit to our aid to Ukraine.

Joel Pollak

@joelpollak

Interesting how Hillary Clinton was never prosecuted for the Russia collusion hoax, which was an attempt to reverse a democratic election, and undermined national security and domestic order. She’s smug because the entire system protects her and her party.

Hillary Clinton: GOP Needs to Be Held Accountable For Supporting Trump's 'Lies and Divisiveness'

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Monday on MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show" that she hoped the Republican Party was held accountable for supporting former President Donald Trump's "lies...

9:52 PM · Aug 14, 2023

Michael Tracy, who I presume is a liberal, is on fire:

So the DA of Fulton County, Georgia has appointed herself official state arbiter of political truth vs. political falsity, and is criminalizing public utterances of political figures deemed to be in violation, but it's somehow "far-right" to raise First Amendment issues with this

No doubt the mafia-like conduct that the original drafters of the RICO statute sought to criminalize included "soliciting the Vice President of the United States" to take certain procedural action during a legislative proceeding. This is looney tunes stuff

The aggressively anti-Trump legal blogger and troll formerly known as @Popehat used to mock anyone who raised the prospect of RICO charges being brought in a political context as just another petulant foot-stomping jackass on the internet with an opinion and a mood disorder

It’s a good thing Democrats never made any “false statements” about Russian involvement in the 2016 election, otherwise they might have risked prosecution as an organized crime syndicate

But these two tweets by Tracy are entirely fair:

So is the idea that House Republicans are going to move to impeach Biden for stuff he allegedly did as Vice President 8 or 9 years ago? Thus deflecting the focus even *more* decisively away from stuff he's actually doing *now* as President? Wow, cool plan. True accountability.

House Republicans continue their dogged investigation of what Ukraine-related stuff Biden may or may not have been involved with during the Obama Administration eight years ago, while strangely declining to perform any comparable oversight of Biden's current war policy in Ukraine.

The point is that the corruption has been in plain sight for a decade or more. Where was the outrage.

---

Now we have a somewhat enhanced transcript from Alexander Mercouris, who deconstructs the mad gibbering of John Bolton. His real point is that a still prestigious media outlet like the WSJ should publish Bolton’s rantings:

Russia Reaches Kupiansk Suburb, Denies Ukr Urozhaynoye; Bolton Escalation, Rus Unfazed Ruble Fall

31:44

Now, one person has understood this [the impossibility of the current war trajectory] and is prepared to take that on--head on. That person is Donald Trump's former Nat'l Security Adviser, Geo Dubya Bush's ambassador to the United Nations, ...

[Bolton] openly admits that Ukraine is losing the war. He says that the Biden administration's policies are only delaying Ukraine's eventual defeat. ... But of course Bolton looks at this from a radically different perspective than I do. He is essentially talking about a Ukrainian defeat which is the result of the allegedly timorous policies of the Biden administration. Bolton makes comments like this:

"Ukraine's offensive failures and Russia's defensive successes share a common cause--the slow, faltering non-strategic supply of military systems by the West. The serial debates over whether to supply this or that weapon system, the perpetual fear that Russia will escalate the war against NATO, and occasional Kremlin saber rattling, have instilled a paralyzing caution in Western capitals. Although the UK under Boris Johnson wasn't deterred, NATO has seemed unwilling to fulfill its commitment to restore Ukraine's full sovereignty and territorial integrity. The hesitancy is the result of successful deterrence by the Kremlin--not American strategic necessity. Far from being inevitable, Ukraine's inability to achieve major advances is the natural result of a US strategy aimed only at staving off Russian conquest."

And then he also says that the West needs to rethink its sanctions strategy. He says:

"The West, particularly Washington, also needs to rethink sanctions policy radically. Theories about price caps on Russian oil have failed. Western sanctions generally remain piecemeal and seriously unenforced. These defects aren't confined to the Ukrainian conflict and should prompt NATO institutionally to review how it conducts enforcement. Proclaiming sanctions is great PR but enforcement is hard, tedious, and necessarily done clandestinely where possible. The US and its allies need a massive overhaul and upgrade of our sanctions enforcement instruments, procedure, and personnel."

So here is Bolton's solution to the problem. Go on escalating. Ignore the threat that the Russians aren't bluffing, and the possibility that nuclear war might result if the Russian nuclear arsenal isn't a bluff. Escalate--escalate to an unlimited extent. Provide Ukraine with every type of weapon that Ukraine wants. Aim for nothing short of total victory over Russia and do so in a scenario of total economic war against Russia--an economic war that might involve the entire world. China as well--sanctions on the Chinese, stopping of Russian ships presumably across the world's oceans. Every conceivable thing short of a direct attack by NATO on Moscow itself.

This is the only way that John Bolton can see the West and Ukraine achieving victory over the Russians. The alternative, he asserts, is accepting a Ukrainian defeat. At no point does Bolton take a more realistic and less risky approach--one that involves less gambling. An approach of negotiations, of serious talks with the Russians to try to find some way out of this colossal impasse that we have been led into, which has brought not just war to Europe but tensions in Europe to a point that I simply cannot remember and is undermining the very foundations of the European economy. And perhaps, ultimately, of the economy of the entire West.

So, don't negotiate, even if you recognize that the present policy of support to Ukraine is failing, is only delaying Ukraine's eventual defeat. Go for broke--fears of nuclear war, Armageddon, economic collapse, whatever, be damned.

I don't think that's an entirely unfair summary of Mr. Bolton's position. It's extraordinary to my mind that these sort of all-or-nothing sentiments are so freely expressed in the Western media nowadays. During the Cold War itself [such sentiments] would have elicited strong responses within Western political systems, but they no longer do. Bolton is able to make these astonishing demands for what the West should do and he hardly gets answered.

Of course, there is another way. I've already pointed out that there are alternative options to Bolton's gambling, not only with the future of the West but arguably with all of humanity that people like Bolton are urging on us. There is the far more realistic and coherent and rational options proposed by George Beebe and Jim Webb in their article in Time magazine. Call off the offensive; it's weaking Ukraine, not strengthening it; go over to the defense, buy yourself time--and talk. Talk with the Russians. Try, however hard it is, however angry the Russians are--and by now they're very angry--try to find some means to get the West and the United States and what's left of Ukraine out of the hole that the West and the United States and Ukraine have collectively dug themselves into.

But that's not what people like Bolton want to see and, I have to say, for the moment it's people like Bolton who continue to set the pattern of action. Not, so far, people like Webb and Beebe.

I also have to point out one fundamental fallacy in John Bolton's entire line of argument. It's one that's very typical of Neocon thinking and Neocon writing, though in Bolton's case I think he's perhaps not so much an ideological Neocon but rather an American Ueber-Exceptionalist--even though he does share many Neocon perspectives, positions. Note what he says about it's all down to dithering.

"We're not providing Ukraine with the weapons that it needs. Ukraine's offensives failures and Russia's defensive successes share a common cause--the slow faltering non-strategic supply of military assistance by the West."

The serial debates about whether to supply this or that weapon system are entirely, as far as Bolton is concerned, a product of Western cowardice. Fear of provoking the Kremlin.

Well, it is not so. I don't see that the West has been deterred. At least this Administration has not been deterred up to now by the Kremlin in terms of any weapon system that they've supplied to Ukraine. This in fact is a widespread criticism made in Russia of the Kremlin's policies. You often hear people within the Russian commentariate say, 'Look, we're letting the West do whatever it wants. They're willing to cross their own red lines, they're prepared to supply Ukraine with heavy weapons, with missiles, with rockets, with every kind of weapon system that the West wants to supply to Ukraine. We never respond, and all that is doing is that it's emboldening the West to go on supplying more and more and more.

There are also commentators in the west, like Colonel Douglas McGregor, who think the same way, essentially. The over-caution on Vladimir Putin's part--it always comes down to Vladimir Putin--the over caution on Vladimir Putin's part is in fact almost inviting the West to escalate. The Kremlin needs to take a harder line in order to deter escalation. So we could see how, again, Bolton is not really talking about it as it is. I cannot recall a single instance when the Russians have actually come out and said that they object to any particular weapon being supplied to Ukraine and that objection has prevented that particular weapon from eventually being supplied.

To proceed, the limiting factor is not fear of the Kremlin's reaction. It is Western capabilities to supply these weapons. Bolton, like Neocons generally, simply refuses to acknowledge this. I’ve often said that one of the characteristic features of neocon thinking is that they do not acknowledge any limits to what the United States is able to do. A culture, over decades, took a conception of the United States as an unlimited power, one with unmatched resources. They assume that all the United States needs to do is to will an outcome for that outcome to be achieved; to will the means to that outcome, and the means will appear. The logistics, industrial production, industrial organization, training of work forces, supply chains, economic limitations--that sort of thing doesn’t enter into their discussions at all.

And you have it here with John Bolton. The real reason why the West doesn't send unlimited supplies of tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, shells, drones, aircraft or what have you to Ukraine is because it doesn't have them or, if it does have them, it has them in relatively short supply or, if they do exist and are available in some quantity, it takes time--a LOT of time--to train Ukrainians to use these systems. That isn't part of the thinking of Bolton and people like him have at all.