More Ukraine

[David Morris]

Assholes are so comfortable quoting assholes.

On Wed, Jan 26, 2022 at 11:10 PM Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

>
> Fun exerpts from Matt Taibbi on Ukraine.   He was a correspondent in
> Russia and may well have defected,  but since Moscow started paying me the
> big bucks I’m with hima all the Way. Taibbi starts off mentiong Biden's
> recent wavering on the war talk, after which he assumes electodes were
> attached to Biden’s testicles to keep him more alert and on message.  He
> does look extra wary since then. Anyway...
>
> …….Obama looked at the big, muddy stretch of land atop the Black Sea
> called Ukraine and asked if its strategic importance was worth war.
> Meaning, real war, with an enemy that can fight back, not third-world
> pushovers in Iraq or Libya who offer as much resistance as the British
> colonial enemies Blackadder’s officers once described as being “two feet
> tall and armed with dried grass.” His answer was an obvious no. Ukraine has
> less strategic importance to the United States than Iraq, Afghanistan, even
> Kuwait for that matter.
>    No one will say it out loud, but the greatest argument against U.S.
> support for military action of any kind in Ukraine is the inerrant
> incompetence of our missions and the consistent record of destabilizing
> areas of strategic interest through our involvement, including in these two
> specific countries. At the moment the Berlin Wall fell the United States
> had almost limitless political capital with these soon-to-be ex-Soviet
> territories. We blew it all within a few years. Now that we’re really in
> trouble in Ukraine, why would we keep to the same playbook that got us
> here?……
>
> ….We started selling drones to “allies” under Obama <
> https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-cracks-open-door-to-the-export-of-armed-drones-to-allied-nations/2015/02/17/c5595988-b6b2-11e4-9423-f3d0a1ec335c_story.html>
> and escalated the practice under Trump with billions in sales to peaceful
> democratic havens like the UAE <
> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-emirates-drones-exclusive/exclusive-trump-administration-advances-2-9-billion-drone-sale-to-uae-sources-idUSKBN27M06L>,
> who had already used them to massacre civilian populations, children
> included, in Yemen. We continued escalating such sales under Biden, adding
> countries like Qatar <
> https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/pentagon-favors-u-s-sale-more-500-million-worth-armed-n1282413>
> to our list of excellent customers in part with the idea of using the
> country as a base for “over-the-horizon” strikes in an Afghanistan bereft
> of “boots on the ground.” Even after our disastrous wars finish, we find
> ways to continue them.
>
> This is relevant to Russia and Ukraine because we’ve cycled through at
> least half of the usual failure process with both countries. Just a couple
> of decades ago we essentially controlled the Kremlin, but so completely
> mismanaged that situation with aggressive backing of a notoriously corrupt
> Yeltsin regime that Vladimir Putin was able to consolidate power with
> widespread backing of a public initially much disposed to us. Ukraine we
> treated as a pawn nation from the start, backing a series of leaders who
> shamelessly looted the country before forcing them into a miserable
> Sophie’s Choice, about which the American public still knows little.
>
> In 2013, Ukraine was proceeding down a path of integration into the E.U.
> Paul Manafort client Viktor Yanukovich, always described in America as an
> outright puppet of Moscow, was actually a proponent of Euro-integration at
> this point. “Yanukovich cajoled and bullied anyone who pushed for Ukraine
> to have closer ties to Russia <
> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-russia-deal-special-report/special-report-why-ukraine-spurned-the-eu-and-embraced-russia-idUSBRE9BI0DZ20131219>”
> is how Reuters correspondent Liz Piper described his attitude, quoting him
> as saying to those wanting to go back to Russia’s arms, “Forget about it..
> forever!” But Putin’s ferocious tactics, including intense economic and
> military threats, pushed Yanukovich to back out of the EU deal, and take
> instead an economic trade package with Russia that included $15 billion and
> the lowering by a third the price the country paid for natural gas from
> Russia.
>
> This, in turn, spurred a Western response via the “Maidan revolution,”
> really a U.S.-backed coup, in which Yanukovich was replaced with someone
> more suitable to our foreign policy geniuses. “Yats is our guy <
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2XNN0Yt6D8>” is how our current
> undersecretary for political affairs Victoria Nuland put it, insisting that
> Arseniy Yatsenuk be Ukraine’s next leader, even though Ukrainians might
> have preferred former boxer Vitaly Klitschko. When apprised some of the
> E.U. countries were uncomfortable with a coup, Nuland famously said, “Fuck
> the E.U.” Forget gunboats, here was F-bomb diplomacy!……
>
> …..There are people who will read this and cry, “Where’s your outrage
> against Vladimir Putin? Why don’t you denounce him?” To which I say, fine,
> I denounce him. Then what? When you’re done wailing, you’re still faced
> with deciding whether or not to go to war with Russia, which is not a real
> choice, unless you’re an idiot or General Jack Ripper-insane.
> Unfortunately, the Nulands and Blinkens who’ll be making this call just may
> fit those descriptions.
>
> The ostentatious incompetence of the foreign policy establishment, which
> America got to examine in technicolor during the War on Terror, was one of
> the first triggers for the revolt against “experts” that led to the
> election of Donald Trump. Once, these were drawling Republican golfers who
> got hot reading Francis Fukuyama, thought they could turn Baghdad into
> Geneva, and instead squandered trillions and hundreds of thousands of lives
> pushing Iraq back to the eighth century……
>
>
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