For the second time in a decade, the US foreign policy apparatus has conducted a successful coup against Viktor Yanukovych, the democratically elected president of Ukraine. According to Victoria Nuland, the State Department bureaucrat who appears to be in charge of this effort, we have spent $5 billion on this. Our goals, according to her, are to get Ukraine into Western Europe and away from Russia and to get her into debt with the IMF as quickly as possible. She calls this “democracy.”
An interesting thing about this second episode is the gross incompetence of its execution. As events have unfolded, it is apparent to anyone paying attention that Yanukovych and Putin hold the moral high ground—the moral high ground by the ostensible morality of the liberals, I mean. Yanukovych and Putin have steadily and throughout managed to side with democracy, the rule of law, and negotiated settlements, whereas the US has sided with a violent coup carried out by neo-Nazis, the abrogation of democratic elections, and the abrogation of the negotiated settlement of the rebellion. The brighter precincts of neocondom are aware of this problem and are beavering away manufacturing excuses.
The same pattern is now asserting itself in Crimea. Russia has, throughout this phase of the confrontation, sided with the rule of law and democracy. The “invasion” it is allegedly carrying out is authorized by its treaty with Ukraine—it is permitted to have 25K troops in Crimea. Today, the Crimean parliament voted to join Russia, but not until this decision is confirmed by a referendum. What possible principled objection can the West mount to this plan? What it will do, undoubtedly, is blabber about democracy, treaties, and the rule of law. This in the teeth of the facts that Russia is respecting these things while the US is not.
The dishonesty and hypocrisy of the US and of its servile press are virtually impossible to miss. Events in Ukraine as recounted in retrospect by US officials and US press organs bear only fleeting resemblance to those events as reported at the time. By contrast, events as recounted by, say, Vladimir Putin, bear a much closer resemblance to those events as reported at the time.
Aside from the question of competence, this episode raises the question of goals. Allegedly, US foreign policy is directed at democracy promotion. Since this is obviously false, we can ask what US foreign policy actually is directed at. The answer is not so clear, at least to me. US interests in Ukraine seem pretty non-existent while its interests in not provoking a war with Russia seem self-evident. If we are neither promoting democracy nor serving US interests, then what are we doing?
The Orthosphere 
Maybe the neocons are in thrall to outdated Russophobia while the left is exploiting that Russophobia to get back at them (Russia) for abandoning communism.
Naturally, The myth of Jewish persecution in Tsarist Russia has been assiduously cultivated in America. It is the Political Correctness of the Right that has forbidden English translations of 200 Years Together and further volumes of the Red Knot.
Just one example: Stolypin was assassinated by a Jewish revolutionary in 1911 but there were absolutely no reprisals against the Jewish community.
John Quincy Adams spoke the wisdom of an earlier generation when he said:
Spreading liberty.
Maybe the perverted leftist men among our elites are afraid that their pipeline of topless Ukrainian women hired by Femen for political protests will dry up if America doesn’t intervene? Just a thought. /kidding
Too bad they (Femen) haven’t learned that those are for babies.
The leftist perverts can see those on the internet anytime they want.
Yeah, Satan is competent, but not exactly in the way we want.
It is disturbing for an American to realize that his government and the “free media” are together bold faced liars. We should be used to it by now, but I still find it surprising when I read the White House press statements and the journalistic reports and feel somewhat like Winston Smith. Recently, the president, cabinet officials, and Congressional leaders have stated how shocked and dismayed they are at Russia’s lack of respect for Ukrainian sovereignty, at the breach of international law, and at Russia’s meddling in another country’s affairs. Chutzpah is not an adequate word for it. I’d say that Khadifi would surely agree with American leadership about respecting other countries’ sovereignty. Ditto for how many other countries whose leadership we have helped to overthrow in the last twenty years — including the Ukraine?! I know that politicians lie, but such lies are so outrageous, it makes my head spin.
Moreover, Kerry recently stated that there is _no_ evidence that the coup folks have neo-Nazi affiliations. Svoboda and Right Sector do not hide their agenda. If such men campaigned in America, all the legions of the political elite would annihilate them within hours. However, our masters have found ethno-nationalists useful for the moment — and so they are freedom fighters who deserve our sympathy. So what if they wish to ban the Russian language, make Russians (and other foreigners) second class citizens (or worse). Meh when they firebomb synagogues, beat up Jews, and plan ethnic cleansing. Simply amazing.
Then, again, maybe we should be happy that the leftist-neocon-globalist alliance can bring themselves to support rightwing white Christian for once. Ha — these folks see the whole world as their disposable useful idiots. Chutzpah . . . doesn’t hold a candle to these chaps.
The Banderites have a proud history of resistance to Stalinist tyranny. They were the only group that actually controlled territory in Soviet Union in 40’s. Solzhenitsyn speaks highly of them. Naturally the Communists called them bandits but there is no reason for others to agree with them.
As usual, when it comes to Putin (and Russia) this website continues to get it wrong:
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/mar/01/ukraine-haze-propaganda/
American foreign policy should protect American interests. Putin has done nothing but attack American interests around the world (see e.g. Iran, Syria, etc.)
What on earth is America’s interest in Syria?
Same as Russia’s, actually: keeping oil-rich countries out of the hands of jihadists. Russia wants production dominance and the US wants to stop terrorists.
Okay, having read that article, I’m relieved that the mob rebellion against Ukraine’s elected government wasn’t a Nazi mob. It was a Nazi-gay-Muslim-Jewish mob. That’s a relief. Not that it matters who it was. The ascendency of Europe is the ascendency of sodomo-tyranny.
I wanted to say something about America’s “interests” in Iran and Syria, but Ita Scripta Est beat me to it.
You’re the world’s only reactionary neocon 🙂
I think you answered your own question when you said, “…to get her into debt with the IMF as quickly as possible.”
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/mar/01/ukraine-haze-propaganda/
I can haze propaganda?
Apparently, this is the rebuttal talking point that is making the rounds.
That article is pure projection, and is, in fact, the kind of thing I was talking about above. The narrative vaguely follows the stream of events, but at every point wildly distorts particulars.
Look at the picture it comes packaged with. Are those really “protestors?” Look at the date on it. By Feb 19, the “protestors” were Nazi street fighters armed with firearms and repeatedly attacking police. It was in the news and everything. Or this, talking about November:
When riot police were sent to beat the students,
There seems to be little evidence of this actually happening. A more plausible reading is that the protestors ineffectually attacked the police and lost. There’s plenty of evidence of the restraint shown by the police. The ineffectualness of the students’ attacks was followed pretty quickly by the mobilization of the Nazis.
Or this:
Then [Feb 18] came the mass killings by the regime. . . . the riot police were unleashed in Kiev, this time armed not only with tear gas, stun grenades, and rubber bullets, but also with live ammunition.
The “protestors” were armed with guns by Feb 18 and had been immolating police with molotov cocktails for some time. No mention of this in the article.
And what was the effect of these “mass killings” by the police? The casualty counts in this article. say fourteen “protestors” and ten police dead. That’s a pretty strange casualty ratio for a fight between protestors and riot police bent on killing them. Unless, of course, the riot police are under orders not to, you know, kill people, and the “protestors” are well-armed.
Or this:
On February 20, an EU delegation was supposed to arrive to negotiate a truce. Instead, the regime orchestrated a bloodbath. The riot police fell back from some of the Maidan. When protesters followed,
“Followed?” So, the riot police were ordered to retreat (again), and the (armed with guns and molotov cocktails) Nazis pressed the attack. But, the gun battle that resulted was somehow the fault of the police. Notice also the casual equivocation later between “killed by a sniper” and “killed by the regime.”
The whole article is like that. Completely tendentious.
The “protestors” were not particularly militarily competent. First, they were students. Then they were Nazi street fighters. The riot police or military could have cleared the square any time they wanted to. This is an important fact from which you have to make inferences. Applebaum, in the link I gave above, understands that this means something and that, as a result, nobody with functioning critical thinking skills is buying the West’s story. She suggests shifting to a conspiracy theory which fits the easily observed facts better.
Even Snyder notices, in a backhanded way, what seems actually to have happened:
[Yanukovych] signed an agreement in which he promised not to use violence. His policemen understood, perhaps better than he, what this meant: the end of the regime. They melted away,
This makes no sense exoterically. If “use violence” is read to mean “defend themselves from Nazis,” then it makes sense. The police, after two months of Yanukovych preventing them from defending themselves effectively against the street fighters, saw that his solution was to add even more limitations on what they were going to be permitted to do. So they quit, apparently. If this agreement amounted to Yanukovych giving up his evil schemes to indiscriminately kill protestors, why would the police have reacted as they did?
Wanna bet Dr. Bill? The average cable viewer/American will miss them. You’re assuming most people are thoughtful like the contributors here.
“What on earth is America’s interest in Syria?”
Our first interest is in stopping Syria from supporting terror and attacking our allies (like Israel and Iraq). I know, I know, we should haven’t been in Iraq…but once we were there it would have been nice if we actually went after the governments that were aiding and abetting the enemy.
I agree with what I’m sure will be your broader critique — we should stay out of the Middle-East’s wars and let our ally Israel fight its own battles. I agree, but that doesn’t mean we can’t support our ally or call our thugs or terrorists when we see them in action. In addition, for all of Assad’s efforts to project himself as Syria’s defender of that country’s ancient Christian communities, he has also been doing his best to support Hezbollah and the Shia in Lebannon, leading to less than salutary outcomes for that country’s ancient Christian communities. So what he gives with one hand, he takes with another.
As for Iran, they only have a 30+ year history of attacking U.S. and Western interests — why should we worry about what their country is up to?! I get it — we shouldn’t be invading these countries and imposing corrupt “liberal democracies”. Fair enough. But there are a lot of (hawkish) policy options between invasion and ‘don’t worry, Iran isn’t a problem’. In my book, radical Islam is always a problem.
Incidentally, the above is why we should eventually be friends with Russia (the country, not the Putin government). Our two countries share a wonderful Christian heritage and Russia could teach the West and thing or two about dealing with fanatical Muslims. I pray for the day when the Russians take back their country from their current corrupt leadership and we can work together to fight our true enemies.
That’s crazy. We are not stopping terror by supporting jihadis in Syria. Rather, we are supporting genocide against Christians (yet again). Iran hasn’t started a war, let alone a war against us, in a long, long time. Our problem with Iran is like our problem with Syria. We support the jihadis who want to kill them (and us).
Perhaps it is simply because Putin’s Russia is the closest thing we have to a force for counter-revolution in the world, and America is just taking the opportunity to damage it (with the added bonus of bringing Ukraine into the fold of the EU).
Perhaps it is. But is Putin’s Russia a counter-revolutionary force or at least anything close to it? He certainly stabilized situation in Russia, built up the state anew but I would not call old-fashioned nationalism a counter-revolution. That’s what I see rising in the East. Orthodox church is national church and as such she has Putin’s support. Russian national greatness could be quickly followed by Russian imperialism and that’s not something I as inhabitant of Central Europe (target area of Russian influence since Stalin) would like to see.
Of course, today it might be called self-defence against American expansion but tomorrow?
–> –> http://isteve.blogspot.com/2012/07/forbes-400-by-ethnicity.html
–> http://isteve.blogspot.com/2013/05/who-has-mentioned-forbes-israels-cover.html
About 40% of the Forbes 400 is Jewish-American (or simply secular Jewish). Meaning, Billionaire Jewish Americans are about 40% of billionaires. Secular Jews have a paranoid fear of Russia (and the rest of Eastern Europe) and it’s pretty much a psychotic thing on their part.
While I have sympathy for the long-suffering people of the Ukraine, I seriously question the competence of our government. To start with, I can’t understand why Victoria Nuland still has her job after her vulgar insult to the EU. See http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/07/angela-merkel-victoria-nuland-eu-unacceptable I have more confidence in Angela Merkel than in Victoria Nuland and her superiors.
More worrisome, if we can’t figure out our government’s policies, how can we expect Russia to do so? This is not good.
I would echo Peter Blood with his remark that Satan is competent at his work of destruction.
If Western policy is evaluated in terms of deniable infliction of maximum destruction for minimum benefit – it looks competent.
If it is, in particular, evaluated for its success in eradicating Christianity it looks even better.
In a mere decade since the invasion of Iraq, Western policy in the Middle East has expensively failed to achieve anything good; but it has triumphantly succeeded in (all-but) removing millions of extremely devout Christians from a region which they have inhabited for 2000 years, despite the seismic fall-and-rise-of-Empire upheavals of those millennia.
Was this deliberate? Of course it was! Or else the facts would at least have been reported, or regretted, or repented and learned-from – maybe even ameliorated or repaired? None of which has happened.
Not to notice this world historical transformation beggars belief. It has been noticed: it is approved.
But if deliberate and approved, whose deliberation was it? The human leaders are psychotic fools, dwelling wholly inside media constructs, and clearly incapable of sustained strategy.
But Satan is competent, and strategic, and clever, and has many servants (demonic and human). And he quite willingly uses servants who deny his reality and do his will unconsciously – they are even rewarded for this work; for a while.
So our leaders are utterly incompetent, are not-even-trying to be competent; but they are faithful servants and can follow simple orders in the form of urges, promptings, feelings (and which they are rewarded for yielding to; for a while).
All-round destruction is not difficult, after all – in fact it is very easy indeed.
Bruce,
This is a sobering and thoughtful comment. I have generally believed that stupidity explains more of history than conspiracy, but current events have me reconsidering that. In the Peter Principle a student is quoted as asking his professor, “Tell me, are the people at the top idiots, or are they geniuses who are just putting us on?”
Stupidity is not fatal so long as people are honest and well-motivated – because honest and well-motivated people can perceive and learn from obvious errors; and avoid repeating them.
Stupidity does not explain denial of harmful outcomes or persistence in actions which are failing in supposed objective and instead causing all-round bad outcomes.
Human conspiracies are very common, universal, but usually broken up by short termist selfishness among the conspirators.
But conspiracy is NOT the proper concept to understand these phenomena – the pursuit of a long term strategy is what we are talking about. People who share a long term strategy have no need to conspire in order to cooperate.
Bruce,
We have surely reached the point where the cultural elites are frankly anti-Christian, which may explain a lot. The diagnosis is found in the thirteenth chapter of Matthew, verses twenty-five and twenty-eight.
‘Scuse me while I go all Screwtape, but… Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner. You must be the first person I have ever encountered to finally grasp the all encompassing aspect of the (real) enemy’s plan. You are smart cookie. Feminism, leftism, secularism, abortion, sexual immorality: all these are not for a war against men or Western Civilization (although they are collateral damage). They are weapons for the war against the Saints. They are the hammer, wielded in the left hand of the enemy. His right hand rests upon the anvil of Islamism, an immovable force that has been present for centuries, an Iron beast with toes of clay. Even after the hammer fatigues and breaks, the anvil will remain.
The ‘Asian Pivot’ is just one more weapon to be used against the Saints, specifically in this case to contain those ‘Red Commie’ Chinese who are converting to Christianity like zerg breed. So powerful is the Lord’s work there that even the godless ruling party is succumbing to the Truth of the Gospel. What if Christianity renders the work of feminism (brought about here by the consequences of the one-child policy, but possibly reversed by the new two-child policy) and mammonism/materialism there moot? Of course there is still the gravitation towards cult-like behaviour and rampant superstition to rely on. Even so, best enact them external containment strategies. The godless Japanese whose decadent culture has rendered them infertile squeeze one more golden egg before their ultimate suicide.
Dr. Bill@ I’m sorry to lower the tone of this thread, but you’ve coined a great term. “Neocondom.” Could this be defined as something a man slips on when wishes to safely bugger someone else? Its obvious synonym is “scumbaggery.”
😉
“Are Our Masters Competent?”
If you are in a Democracy, no.
Is it acceptable to post a link to a related entry from a different blog?
Yes.
Billionaire Jewish Americans hate, hate, despise Russia (and no this isn’t projection on my part, it’s their own behaviors that I have witnessed).
Secular Jewish-Americans (ethnic) make about 40% of the Forbes 400, meaning roughly 40% of Billionaires in the USA are Jewish-American, and include Bloomberg, Soros and others among them. Even the more “typically” upper-middle class Jewish boys such as Rahm Emanuel, Woody Allen (Jewish director) and Bernanke (Chairman of US Federal Reserve) are dangerous.
–> http://isteve.blogspot.com/2012/07/forbes-400-by-ethnicity.html
–> http://isteve.blogspot.com/2013/05/who-has-mentioned-forbes-israels-cover.html
I have seen that these secular Jewish Ashkenazi men dominate and rule USA academia, finance, media, entertainment (Hollywood), politics and pretty much are radical modern, social liberals on steroids. Those guys need to go (and no this isn’t the vapid charge of “anti-Semitism”) since they are part of the decadent upper.
Just look what these Billionaire Ukrainian Jews are doing to Ukraine. Here are Billionaire Ukrainian Jews who now control Ukraine –> http://irishsavant.blogspot.com/2014/03/ukraine-mist-begins-to-clear.html
Keep in mind, that this post was flagged by Google for its crime thoughts, so just click on yes to enter and read the page fully.
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