Wednesday, June 24, 2015

A scary story about Hillary and her friend...

Why is the media going after Sidney Blumenthal? Of all the "Friends of Hillary" we've heard about, he's the only one who doesn't give me the heebie-jeebies.

Here's one who really is creepy: Robert Kagan, sometimes known as Mr. Victoria Nuland. Yes, this is the guy that "Toria" fucks when she's not fucking the EU.

(Did I cross some kind of boundary of good taste just now? I don't care. When Toria apologizes for staging a coup in Ukraine, I'll start worrying about whether my words offend her.)

The above link goes to a NYT story published a year ago. The following excerpt should frighten you more than a visit from Slenderman:
But Exhibit A for what Robert Kagan describes as his “mainstream” view of American force is his relationship with former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who remains the vessel into which many interventionists are pouring their hopes. Mr. Kagan pointed out that he had recently attended a dinner of foreign-policy experts at which Mrs. Clinton was the guest of honor, and that he had served on her bipartisan group of foreign-policy heavy hitters at the State Department, where his wife worked as her spokeswoman.

“I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy,” Mr. Kagan said, adding that the next step after Mr. Obama’s more realist approach “could theoretically be whatever Hillary brings to the table” if elected president. “If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue,” he added, “it’s something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else.”
Scared yet?

If you want more shivers -- along with some morbid laffs -- read the rest of that story. Kagan seems genuinely peeved at Obama because the current occupant of the White House has been insufficiently bellicose.
Instead, he believes that the widespread frustration over Mr. Obama’s disengagement despite the resurgence of organized terrorist groups in the region has created the climate to again make the case for interventionism.
What he won't tell you is that "the west" and its regional allies -- Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey -- are the ones who created ISIS and the Nusra Front (the "organized terrorist groups" referenced above).

So our first question is: Did the creation of ISIS happen without Obama's knowledge? I'm really starting to wonder. There have been precedents for this sort of thing -- occasions when our intelligence agencies created "facts on the ground" designed to force a President into taking certain actions. Is Obama the mastermind of recent events, or is he simply reacting to events? I know that some of you despise Obama passionately and want to assign all blame to him, but take a good look at what Kagan has to say about the guy. The acrimony seems real. To us, Obama looks like the great enabler of the neocons -- yet to the neocons, Obama is the guy who has kept them leashed and caged. How, I wonder, will he look to history?

Second question: How the hell can neocons like Kagan continue to get away with using ISIS as a justification for intervention when ISIS itself was the result of a neocon conspiracy to topple Syria?

Third (and this is the tough one): At what point does Hillary's neoconservatism become a deal-breaker? If the election is a matchup between Jeb and Hillary, both parties will be controlled by Friends of Kagan. Best, I would say, to hold your nose and vote for the Friend of Kagan who is less likely to replace Scalia with Even-Worse-Than-Scalia.

That said, the situation we're in is infuriating. If we want a completely de-Kaganized and un-neoconned foreign policy, what the hell are we gonna do?

The Blumenthal factor has me wondering if there isn't some reason to find a faint, shimmering hint of hope in the prospect of a Hillary Clinton presidency. Maybe she has some secret plan to go the "Putney Swope" route. In other words, maybe she is doing whatever she has to do and saying whatever she has to say in order to get elected, but once she attains power -- WHAM-BOM! We see the Hillary that no-one ever expected.

A thin hope? Oh yes. Gossamer thin. But it may be our only hope.

Did my little tale of Hillary and her friend scare you? Heh heh heh. Sweet dreams!

5 comments:

Stephen Morgan said...

Chomsky doesn't believe a conspiracy killed JFK, because why would They want to kill someone as right-wing and reactionary as him? Obviously it's because, while he might be right-wing compared to me, he wasn't far enough out for the mad bastards who killed him. Obama is in a similar position, although considerably further to the right.

Joseph Cannon said...

I was tempted to include that very point in my post, Stephen. But I decided to keep it uncharacteristically simple.

Chomsky is a great man, but he has a blind spot when it comes to JFK. A lot of lefties back in his day thought of Kennedy as right-wing cold-warrior Democrat. But, as Michael Parenti once said (during a lecture I once attended), the real question is: Did THEY see it that way? When Parenti said 'THEY,' he meant the people who killed JFK.

The work of John Newman, David Talbot, Jim DiEugenio, Jim Douglass and others has revised the way we see the Kennedy presidency. But Chomsky will never go along with it.

I wonder if we will ever have to revise the way we see Obama or Hillary?

Stephen Morgan said...

There is insufficient evidence to reach a conclusion on that matter at this time.

moshe said...

Thanks Stephen Morgan, for compelling me to re-read http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html

Stephen Morgan said...

I prefer the Jokester. I always thought it would have been better if the computer's conclusion had turned out to be a joke.