If I am to grant Bill Kristol his thesis that “power, like nature, abhors a vacuum,” and that a war-weary America has opened the door for Putin to step into the breach, who then should I blame for the war-weariness other than Bill Kristol himself?
Is it not he, and his merry band of neoconservative hawks, who so convincingly urged on our foreign policy establishment to ever-greater thirst for Iraqi blood? Have they not opposed any cessation of violence (on America’s part) in Afghanistan? The country followed Bill Kristol’s advice, and here we are.
He is very confident that the right kind of conservative leader can quickly repair our war-weariness. “Will no brave leader step forward to honorably awaken us from our unworthy sleep?” he says.
Putin’s actions in Ukraine do pose a challenge to progressives, who must begin to think carefully about America’s proper posture in the world. Where we move back, other powers may move in, and often with unfortunate and destabilizing results.
Yet, while it is true that the world is more brutish than we might like, and that American power is more essential than we might wish, it’s Bill Kristol and his cohorts who have done the most damage to both American legitimacy and Americans’ appetite for playing the Great Game.
We ought to be able to stand up for Ukraine without sounding like the rankest hypocrites, but that isn’t possible because we followed Kristol’s advice. We ought to be able to condemn al-Assad in Syria with some real moral authority, but we can’t because of Gitmo, and Abu Ghraib, and waterboarding.
So, Bill Kristol should remove the beam from his own eye, and then he can remove the mote from ours.
This is of a piece with your earlier post about the Pirates of the Mediterranean vs the US Navy. Most nations long ago learned Hobbes’s lesson that a state that cannot protect its people loses legitimacy. And so to varying degrees, even Russia and China make a nod towards the rule of law, even if a schmuck like Putin calls it the Dictatorship of Law.
But in international affairs, we are still in a Hobbesian state of nature in some ways. Proto-pan-state organizations like the UN and EU seek to create a sort of social contract between states, and interstate warfare is at historical lows.
But the powerful will always be more able to break the social contract more easily than the weak. Whether it’s dumping coal slurry in a river, wrecking the global economy or invading a small country, the powerful are different. Steal a car, go to jail; steal a billion, endow a university. Kill someone, go to jail; kill thousands, you become a legend.
We can make a moral point, and we can work to change the social contract in our own backyard. But we can’t change this basic fact in our lifetimes.
“So, Bill Kristol should remove the beam from his own eye, and then he can remove the mote from ours.”
WOW!!!
That them thar’s some real powerful ‘ritin’!!!!!!!
Kristol never met a war that he didn’t love – as long as he and his didn’t have to fight in it.
And John “America’s Sh*ttiest Fighter Pilot” McCain (R – AlZheimers) never met a war he didn’t want to crash a jet into.
You leave Johnny McCain alone!
He hasn’t gotten to vote for a war in years! Imagine the insecurity he feels in his heart right now!
“Putin’s actions in Ukraine do pose a challenge to progressives, who must begin to think carefully about America’s proper posture in the world.”
Step #1 is to put George W Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, John Yoo, Bill Kristol, and a host of enablers on trial for war crimes, crimes against humanity (e.g., torture), and crimes against peace.
Then, after the public executions, we can move onward with a bit more moral authority.
When we were stuck in Iraq, I used to say that BushCo never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity. When they found Saddam, when they killed al Zarqawi… any of those moments could have been a moment to leave.
I worry Obama is missing a real opportunity with the Feinstein/CIA rift. He could use the CIA’s obstruction of justice and spying on Congress to reopen the torture cases. Now is the moment for a “Truth and Reconciliation” style hearing for the low level CIA people. Then hang Cheney, Addington, Yoo and others out to dry.
He’d lose no neo-con votes, since they hate him anyway. He’d win some “base” votes, though.
That seems like pure fantasy-land to me.
I think it would require Obama actually wanting to do something about those scum. He doesn’t. Whether because of fear, he honestly isn’t bothered by their actions, CIA has something on him, or it’s so much worse than we suspected he doesn’t dare dig up the past.
I think he came to DC expecting to win everyone over. He’s pretty clearly failed at that, and understands that he’s failed at that. The reason not to prosecute is not to appear vindictive in victory, so that he could legislate.
He’s finally realized there is not going to be a governing partner in the GOP, so why bother with ruffling feathers?
And almost everyone told him that was a fool’s view. And they were right.
I would assume you’d ruffle feathers because it is a heinous crime that resulted in tremendous suffering. They can’t hate him anymore and it means the intelligence services continue to be completely unchecked.
He had to try. At the very least, he had to appear to try, and the simplest way to do that was to try.
By trying, he has passed a health care law and gained some moral authority that he is now free to use. I would like to see him use it.
After Bush and Co for torture. It is simply the lessons he and everyone learned from the Clinton impeachment mess coupled with the economy being in full fledged meltdown when he took office. If he spent his political capital on going after Bush and company rather than trying to get a stimulus and trying to pass some form of healthcare nothing would have gotten done and it is VERY likely the blowback would have hit the D’s even harder than the debacle of the 2010 elections.
Maybe he should try now. I can’t answer that but I do get why he didn’t go down that road in 2009.
I wonder if it was a power vacuum that sucked us into Vietnam. And Iraq and Afghanistan.
Do you get the feeling that this latest shitstorm in Ukraine has encouraged grown men to go into their closets and get out their GI Joes or Risk games?
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ARGeezer @EuroTrib – LQD: More Context for the Ukraine Mess:
The Assurances made by George H.W. Bush to Mikhail Gorbachev were broken by William J. Clinton.
Cross-posted from today’s diary – Good Morning America! Crimea Is Integrated In Russian Federation.
Kristol is a bit player when it comes to American hypocrisy. Washington approves or deplores coups depending on how they benefit factions within the foreign policy apparatus, certainly not based on any abstract notion of “legality” or “democracy”.
I would assume neo-cons are over the moon about the prospect of renewed hostilities with Russia. Because that imperils diplomatic initiatives in the Middle East, where they really want to get their war on.
Don’t you just love it when physics metaphors creep into politics as if it is not a matter of the choices that individual leaders make. It’s the high-level garbage that keeps us from dealing with reality.
There is no vacuum of power in Ukraine. Besides that’s a dumb mixed physics metaphor. There is a an absence of consensus about the fundamental organization of government. There is sufficient division to wonder about cohesive opposition to external movement of armed forces into Ukraine. There is a troubling instability in the Ukraine government that could threaten Russia’s base at Sevastapol. From Kristol’s perspective, there is a dangerous absence of US bases for US armed forces. And a competition for who sells weapons to Ukraine.
And it is Kristol’s Kagan sidekicks who have created the situation on Ukraine. In his unfortunate metaphor, Victoria Nuland deliberately created a vacuum of power in Ukraine to force President Obama to (most likely for neo-cons) close down Russia’s Black Sea fleet as a military asset and replace it with a US base. Remember these are the folks who make the reality that others have to respond to. And they have now proven they can do it even in an administration that might be moving policy in a different direction. Or an administration that is so unfocused on its foreign policy as to sign on for a ridiculous move.
The Obama administration needs to wise up about all of Kristol’s friends. Instead it peddle the same neo-Cold War rhetoric. And gains zero political points for doing it.
It’s nothing Orwell hasn’t written about, extensively.
Break the language of a society. Confuse people and then mislead with incorrect terminology. Euphemisms! Euphemisms everywhere!
Anyone that says “Nature abhors a vacuum” and means it is ignorant.
99.999% of the Universe is very high quality vacuum, better than can be made in a lab.
Nature just luuuuuuves a vacuum.
Here is a simple, two-step argument for pacifism:
Bill Kristol urges war in every possible situation.
Bill Kristol is always wrong.
Of course, you can substitute McCain, Cheney, or any of our other armchair hawks and the same logic applies. One of the reasons people on the right love to invoke World War II, even though the US has committed overt or covert acts of war against literally scores of countries since then, is that the US entry into WWII was the last of these – scores of conflicts ago – to have unambiguous moral authority. And those were different days – the US entered the fray only after its military was directly attacked at Pearl Harbor, and only after Europe had already been at war against Hitler for over two years. But then, in 1940 there was no permanent standing army – let alone a hugely wealthy military-industrial complex and a bipartisan pay-to-play political system.
The US had by far the greatest moral authority of any country in the world in 1945, even in the wake of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and assorted other large-scale Allied atrocities in the war. Given the threat, the world forgave us much. Over time, as we’ve continued our genocidal ways absent such an immediate threat as Nazi Germany – absent, for the last 25 years, even the Soviet Menace – more and more of the world has stopped forgiving us. Our loss of moral authority is not just because of Iraq and the Bush cabal, but it is because of the influence of Kristol and countless other sociopaths like him over the past 70 years.
I was born in 1959, and there literally has not been one of the scores of wars or acts of war the US has engaged in during my lifetime that I was at best not deeply ambivalent about, and, much more often, adamantly opposed to. During that period, the death toll directly attributable to US foreign policy is, conservatively, in eight digits. At some point that matters.
In theory I’m not a pacifist. But in practice, given America’s consistently terrible record in my lifetime and the enormous damage the US has caused over that period, when considering what the US should do in any given situation absolute pacifism is not a bad premise from which to start.
The Nuclear Security Summit (NSS) will be held in my hometown – The Hague – this weekend. A special session of the G8-1 will be scheduled and Obama plus world leaders will then move to Brussels, EU headquarters.
An immense security operation is underway for months and two miles of barriers have been placed to shut down the sea resort of Scheveningen. AWACS will be in the air and some US naval vessels will be nearby. Of course, Patriot missiles will be positioned along the former German Atlantikwall in the dunes. During scheduled parts of the day, complete routes/highways will be exclusively designated for transport of leaders of top 50 nations in the world. Putin will not be present, but Sergei Lavrov will lead the delegation of the Russian Federation.
○ Xi, Obama to Meet on Sidelines of Nuclear Summit: WSJ China
○ Nuclear security to be India’s focus at NSS
○ South Korea scrambles to pass nuclear security-related bill
Ah little Billy and all of his neoconservatives want another war. I say let them all have it, but it is their war! No one else but the war loving neoconservatives are to go fight init, pay for it and supply all needed supplies for it.
Let them be on the front lines instead of looking from afar at their bottom lines and profits gained. Let them thrill in the heat of battle as the bullets fly and the ground rumbles from the artillery blasts. Let them hug the ground so hard that they eat dirt and shake. Maybe just maybe if all of these neoconservatives have to worry about their own bottoms in real combat. They might decide that all of their profits gained from wars is just not a bargain.
let’s face it:
does Kristol work DIRECTLY or indirectly for defense industries? in other words the war-profiteers?
Nah, the benjamins in the war-profiteers pockets is just a side benefit.
Kristol is pushing for deaths, lots of deaths. He’s a meatsuit wrapped around a core of weaponized evil.