Straight Talk From Gilbert Doctorow

Gilbert Doctorow is typically a soft spoken guy, not prone to harsh assessments. Recent events in the American war on Russia have clearly disturbed and even angered him. In his conversation with Judge Nap today (highly recommended) he lets loose on a number of topics, including personalities. I offer here a few excerpts:

Dr. Gilbert Doctorow: Russian Politics and the Ukraine War

Doctorow first addresses the situation in Kursk. He states that the Ukrainian and NATO forces that remain are surrounded, cut off from supply lines back into the Sy region of Ukrain, and are being systematically decimated.

Next, the Judge plays a clip of the head of MI6 and the CIA Director Bill Burns addressing the Kursk situation (in glowing terms). Doctorow is appalled:

I think they are really disgraceful. When Burns came in there were many people in the center of American politics or leaning slightly to the Democratic side who were very much encouraged a person with this experience, with this intelligence, who knew Russia as an ambassador, who had the courage to send back to Washington the bad news that 'Nyet means nyet,' and extension of NATO into Georgia or Ukraine was a redline Russians intended to defend. This is the man who today is lying through his teeth and who is being the good loyal servant of the Biden Administration at the expense of his own credibility and his own sense of honor.

Skipping over a lengthy discussion the provision of various types of Western missiles to Ukraine to Doctorow's view on how the Russians will respond—and in which Doctorow posits a shocking degree of cynicism on the part of the American ruling class:

I had a very interesting exchange of emails with Ray McGovern yesterday in which he insisted that Mr Putin is not going to react in a dramatic way or in a manner that could cause a further escalation before November 5th. On reflection I think Ray is right. What we have been saying among ourselves--that the Americans are trying to bait the Russians to get them to do something drastic and dire that would justify an American counterattack of devastating nature against Russia before the elections or that would effectively have a war going before the elections to make sure that Kamala gets over the top and wins. I think the Russians have equally capable analysts who are saying the same thing and for that very reason will not carry out their attack on the United States or in Western Europe before November 5th.

The operative words: before November 5th.

Regarding Blinken:

The Judge: What do you think of this? What is the value of America's chief diplomat poking the Bear with a statement like that?

Doctorow: I think it would be very kind to Mr Blinken to say he's delusional. Down right stupid. He doesn't get it. I want to emphasize what I mean by stupid. People with very high IQs can be dramatically stupid, and he is a case. I'm sure that he did very well on his SATs and performed very well in his college years and the rest of it. It's irrelevant. His level of judgment is so far off base that it is astonishing that this man occupies the position that he does.

The Russian elites, and I think the occupant of the Kremlin is among the Russian elites, they have a very low regard for their counterparts in Washington--the intellectual level, the educational level, the experiential level--they discount it very highly. They see a degradation in American political culture which comes out in [Russian] talk shows but certainly is a common currency among among the Russian elites.

The Judge: And what do they expect from Kamala Harris?

Doctorow: They see her as Annalena Baerbock 2.0.

The Judge next mentions the recent interview in which Victoria Nuland confirmed the US role in preventing a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia in April, 2022. He goes on to also mention that Nuland, along with Hillary, is now a professor at Columbia U. The Judge wonders whether the Russians were' surprised at this "revelation".

I don't think there's any sense of surprise. They knew who Victoria Nuland is from years ago. She's been in this game for a long time. What I would just like to add as a comment on this whole situation is that, Nuland being in Colombia and her fellow faculty member [Hillary] Clinton, they are a demonstration that in the United States there are no consequences. This was the one good area of the debates that we had a couple of days ago, when Trump said that he fired people who didn't perform well. Firing is one thing. The the greater issue is that no one has been fired, no one has paid any consequences in the Neocon camp that has dominated Washington for the last 30 years for the series of disasters that they engendered, that they supervised. She is one of those people, she and her husband, who was a cheerleader for all the Neocon programs from the start of the Iraq War. They never have paid a price, they never have been called to justice, and that is why we have this continuing disastrous foreign policy in the US.

What Doctorow is saying when he references the Neocon takeover of US foreign policy for the last 30 years is what I’ve repeatedly asserted. The takeover was the payoff the Clintons made to the Jewish Americans of the Israel Lobby, who threw their influece and money behind the Clintons in 1992 to oust HWBush and, above all, their bête noire Jim Baker.

In the final segment Doctorow comments on the "dramatic showing of the Russians both on the front line in Donbas in the last week or two and still more their achievement in Poltava and in Lwiw." The Poltava strike blew right through the Patriot air defense system and three other European provided defense systems and smashed up a train carrying equipment that just arrived from Poland. In Poltava 700 officers and advanced technicians in the use of electronic warfare and reconnaissance drones were killed. He ties these Russian successes to further American escalations. He finishes by stating that once Pokrovsk falls, which it will, the Ukrainian hold on Donbas will be completely broken. This, he asserts, will be decisive.