By Jordan Url, June 20, 2022
https://popularresistance.org/congress-lets-school-lunch-program-expire-as-it-ratchets-up-military-spending/
If we cannot take steps to ensure disadvantaged children have enough to eat, what good are we! MICIMATT profiteering on war in Ukraine and on tension with China amounts to THE MOTHER OF ALL OPPORTUNITY COSTS. And our earth is suffering, along with our children. (Yes, poor children ARE our children.)
Podcast and Transcript; Intro & Highlights (Below) By Ray McGovern
by Robert Scheer, May 20, 2022
Introduction
Younger readers/listeners may ask, who is Robert Scheer? He certainly deserves a full introduction, but I will keep it short. A fearless journalist in the tradition of I.F. Stone and Sy Hersh, Scheer was one of the earliest and boldest to see Vietnam as tragic fiasco, and to call it like it was. He poured his considerable energy and gifts into reporting on Vietnam (and similar U.S. policy fiascos) in Ramparts magazine and other media. He was one of the deepest, most painful thorns in the side of an Establishment that, though Neck Deep in the Big Muddy, kept pushing on, leaving millions dead.
Later, Scheer wrote for The Los Angeles Times and taught at UCLA. He was also a Fellow in Arms Control at Stanford. He is the son of immigrants, who worked in the garment industry. Scheer was born and raised in The Bronx (two miles from where I grew up). He has written nine books and now runs “Scheer Intelligence”.
Robert Scheer asked to interview John Kiriakou and me to hear us comment on our personal experiences working alongside “scoundrels”. It should go without saying that not all of our former co-workers were scoundrels. There were enough of them in senior posts, though, to grease the skids for things like wars of aggression and what Nuremberg called the “accumulated evil” flowing from such wars — think torture, for example. None of the torturers were held to account. One was made CIA director. John Kiriakou resisted being trained in torture techniques, and eventually blew the whistle on torture. He was “rewarded” by being sent off to prison for two years (a long but compelling story).
Kiriakou
Discussing operational intelligence relations with Russia after the USSR fell apart, John Kiriakou reminded us that there were extremely promising prospects for bilateral cooperation in key areas — counter-terrorism and counter-narcotics, to mention just two. According to John, several initiatives toward that kind of cooperation ran aground on U.S, intelligence’s insistence on treating the Russians as mentees — not as equals. In wider perspective, John reminded us that both Yeltsin and Putin asked to join NATO and were rebuffed. U.S. arms manufacturers and dealers need an enemy to “justify” obscene expenditures on weapons (and sharing a slice of their profiteering with congressional candidates, who then can be counted on to appropriate still more money for “defense”).
Commenting on the culture at CIA, John expressed some wonderment at hearing gratuitous comments regarding “our most evil enemy, Russia”, long after the Soviet Union disintegrated and its successor posed little, if any, strategic threat. (The CIA is in no less need of a credible threat than the rest of the MICIMATT — the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence–Media-Academia-Think-Tank complex, of which the U.S. intelligence establishment has become an integral part. Not to mention the pivotal role played by the corporate media — the acronym’s middle “M’ — which is owned and operated by co-conspirators to its left and right on MICIMATT.)
At Scheer’s request, John Kiriakou provided examples of the trouble he has encountered trying to get his books (he’s just completed his 8th) cleared by agency censors for publication. It is a little like Kafka.
McGovern
I didn’t take notes on what I said. I do remember trying to explain that what the Soviets used to call “the world correlation of forces” had markedly changed — actually, a tectonic change caused by the surprisingly close alliance between Russia and China. (It is not possible to exaggerate its importance.) Biden’s benighted advisers still don’t seem to “get it”, even after the embarrassingly incompetent misstep last June, when Biden apparently commiserated with Putin over Russia being “squeezed” by China (sic)!
RIP, Unipolar World. Amid all the talk of an emerging “multipolar” world, I suggested it might be more instructive to use “bipolar” — in both senses of the word! In the political sense, what is emerging is (1) a lily-white West against (2) people of color (the great majority). Russia has been painted so thoroughly black over recent years (with Russia-gate and all the rest), that even a hot soapy bath would fail to remove all the paint. So it can fit in nicely alongside people of color — in China, India, Pakistan, South Africa, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, for example.
Indeed, it should be clear by now that rhetorical points about how isolated Russia has become after the invasion of Ukraine are illusory. Moreover, as economic sanctions begin to bite harder and harder, most of the world seems likely to assign primary blame to lily-white NATO, not Russia. (Since Biden took office, I have grown more and more convinced that his economic advisers are on a par with those who advise on foreign policy. This is not a compliment.)
I also talked a bit about the increasing danger of nuclear war and the nonchalance — and surrealism — with which that existential issue is being addressed by policy makers and pseudo-savants in Washington. Take this syllogism, for example:
1 — The U.S. does not want nuclear war.
2 — Putin might resort to nukes to stave off defeat in Ukraine.
3 — Ergo: The U.S. must defeat Putin in Ukraine.
Smart?
I hope you find the interview informative. I was a pleasure being on with John and Robert.
Neither Putin nor Biden Can Afford to ‘Lose’; Houston, We Have a Problem
By Ray McGovern
An interview with The Critical Hour today afforded a chance to expand on “Mearsheimer: Russia Sees ‘Existential Threat’, Must Win” of April 11. https://original.antiwar.com/mcgovern/2022/04/10/mearsheimer-russia-sees-existential-threat-must-win/
Putin is likely to press on with his armed campaign to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine; he seems already to have the wherewithal to achieve that aim. Better still from Putin’s point of view, he possesses an important insurance policy that he has been paying premiums on for two decades — Big Brother President Xi Jin-ping of China is the insurance.
The growing closeness of the Russia-China strategic relationship had become clear well before the invasion of Ukraine, when — to the surprise of many — Xi decided to give Putin a waiver on Westphalia, so to speak. ( See: https://original.antiwar.com/mcgovern/2021/12/20/putin-has-a-big-brother-in-xi/ ). Xi’s strong support for Russia speaks volumes.
Indeed, in a worst-case scenario sparked by the war in Ukraine, the U.S./NATO might well find themselves facing the possibility of a two-front war with both Russia and China. The most unsettling thing of all is that there is little sign that Biden’s junior-varsity advisers are aware that — partly because of their own misfeasance — the U.S./Russia/China triangular relationship has become pronouncedly isosceles, with the U.S. on the short end.
Tectonic Shift
It is a tectonic shift; an uptick in China saber-rattling off its coast can hardly be ruled out. It may not come to actual military clashes, but — depending on the circumstances — the temptation may grow strong to “do something” to support Russia and warn the U.S. It’s not just a personal Xi-Putin thing (although I do think this plays a role). Rather, there is ample evidence that Beijing believes that if Russia ‘loses’ to “the West” in Ukraine, China (already the U.S.’s official #1 designated enemy) will be Washington’s next target.
Blinken, Sullivan et al., however, do not seem able to see reality through their benighted lenses colored with the once valid view of the U.S. as THE exceptional, indispensable mover and shaker. This kind of hubris and ignorance can lead to what the Chinese used to call “a no-good end”.
Cracks in NATO
Cracks in NATO and the rest of “the West” are already appearing and will become wider crevices — perhaps canyons — before the Ukraine adventure dies down. I pointed, in particular at the growing misgivings in Germany in the wake of Chancellor Scholz’s snap decision to turn his back on decades of government discretion, which has prevented Berlin from supplying heavy weaponry to other countries at war. Need I remind that there are a host of important reasons why the Germans need Russia more than their NATO partners do. (It’s the economy, stupid!)
In its continuing effort to show U.S. toughness, President Biden announces almost daily that hundreds of millions of dollars more will go to weapons to shore up Ukraine’s ability to fight. But the Russians can be expected to destroy such weapons as soon as they cross the border into Ukraine. How tough will that look at that point?
Cui Bono? The MICIMATT
Is there a winner here, no matter how the situation in Ukraine evolves? Well, the Lockheed Martins and Raytheons of this world will manufacture and sell still more weapons. Profits will zoom. It’s the familiar gravy train of the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank (MICIMATT) complex.
By Ray McGovern, March 12, 2022
Toward the end of a March 8 interview on The Critical Hour, I opted to address an important issue that has not been given the attention it deserves; namely, the reality that the pervasive attention given to the violence in Ukraine carries a huge “Opportunity Cost”.
Economists use the term to refer to missed opportunities — like earmarking millions of dollars for don’t-care weapons, when the dollars could be used for health-care or day-care — what Dr. King called “programs of social uplift”. Recall that a year before he was murdered, King warned that “a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death”.
The Mother of All Opportunity Costs
Spiritual death is bad enough. What about physical death? Most human beings would deplore any agonizing physical death — by starvation, for example. And most humans care about what’s in store for children and grandchildren. An exceedingly selfish minority may care only about THEIR children and grandchildren. Sorry, folks; on climate change we are all in this together — that is, unless you are above 70 and don’t give a rat’s patootie about ANY children.
By the “Mother of All Opportunity Costs” I refer, of course, to the abject failure of us adults to stave off or even substantially attenuate the faster-than-anyone-expected doom of global warming, while we go on blithely filling the pockets of war profiteers with our taxes. That’s what ALL coming generations (including the one-percenters who live in gated communities) are doomed to experience, if we continue to let our attention be focused almost exclusively on things like the East-West power struggle centering on Ukraine. (This assumes that nuclear war/nuclear winter, by design or miscalculation, does not come first.)
Lightening Flashes of Trust
The day of my interview with The Critical Hour (March 8) happened to be the day on which the Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines, presented the intelligence community’s annual threat briefing.
https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/ATA-2022-Unclassified-Report.pdf
Fresh in my mind was the priority attention she sensibly gave to the existential issue of climate change a year ago. Several days after she oversaw last year’s threat briefing, Haines showed she was capable of broader thinking. Here’s what she said in a major speech on April 22:
“Climate change knows no boundaries, respects no national borders, and cannot be addressed by any one nation on its own. We must work together on the challenge before us. … working with my colleagues across every department and agency in the United States, including state, local and tribal authorities, we intend to make this a whole-of-government effort – working not just to protect American national security but to protect human security around the world.”
The following day, eager for the slightest sign that some senior official had her/his head screwed on right, I sent this tweet:
Sadly, even if Haines had the courage of her convictions and brought her concerns to the White House, there is virtually no chance they would have any impact on Pentagon decisions. The Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank (MICIMATT) complex rules.
This Year
This year we saw no such outspokenness from National Intelligence Director Haines or her minions. The 2022 threat briefing relegates this quintessential issue to page 21 (of 30), on which this tepid “insight” sums things up:
“The combination of environmental degradation, rising temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, and other climate effects is likely to lead to an array of human challenges such as food and water insecurity and threats to human health.”
Pope Francis Gives It a Try
Most Popes are reluctant to call a spade a spade. Pope Francis is different. But, alas, to quote Josef Stalin’s famous question — “How many divisions does the Pope have?” — the answer is fewer even than Avril Haines has. (Besides, the Vatican is often excellent with rhetoric, but woefully deficient in getting the faithful to implement it.)
Francis did give it his best shot in a speech before both houses of Congress on Sept. 24, 2015, when he made bold to say:
“The main problem is the blood-soaked arms traders.”
Members of House and Senate rose as one to applaud. To those who know how the system works, the enthusiasm of those congress-people, who profiteer on tension and war, was giving hypocrisy itself a bad name. In my mind’s eye, I could see them checking their pockets to make sure the most recent checks from Lockheed and Raytheon had not slipped out with all the clapping. It was the “C” in MICIMATT on display.
Add a Lack of Trust to Avarice
If we are to meet the challenge of climate change identified by Director Haines, it cannot be addressed by any one nation on its own. As she noted, “we must work together not just to protect American national security but to protect human security around the world.” The sad news today is this requires a modicum of trust.
After the Biden-Putin summit in last June I wrote a piece entitled “Will the MICIMATT Douse ‘Lightening Flashes of Trust’?” (See: https://original.antiwar.com/mcgovern/2021/06/18/will-the-micimatt-douse-lightening-flashes-of-trust/ and https://original.antiwar.com/mcgovern/2021/06/16/trust-lacking-at-blah-summit/ )
It was a given that the MICIMATT would do all it could to thwart anything that might jeopardize its ability to profiteer on tension and war. But what about the “lightening flashes of trust”?
At Putin’s press conference immediately following the June 16 summit, he was asked if he had reached “a new level of trust with the U.S. president”. In answer, Putin quoted Leo Tolstoy:
“Tolstoy once said, there is no happiness in life, only lightening flashes (зарницы) of it — cherish them. I believe that in this situation some kind of family trust is not possible. However, it seems to me we have seen “lightening flashes” of it (“зарницы” промелькнули).
Two weeks earlier, Putin had pointed to the political pressures any U.S. president faces in trying to carve out a less acrimonious relationship with Russia. He asserted that “to a certain extent, Russian-American relations have become hostage to internal political processes in the United States itself.” (Emphasis added.)
Putin added:
“I hope it ends someday. I mean the fundamental interests in the field of at least security, strategic stability and the reduction of weapons dangerous for the whole world are still more important than the current domestic political situation in the United States itself.”
Trust is Gone; Are Chemicals Ahead?
Clearly, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the economic sanctions imposed on it have begun a new chapter in East-West relations (with its most significant feature so far being China’s support for Putin). We now should report signs of the worst — from both sides — if only in an asttempt to head it off.
Gilbert Doctorow, and astute analyst of Russia, warned on his blog today that it is “highly likely” the United States is about to carry out a ‘false flag’ operation in Ukraine in which it will accuse the Russians of using chemical weapons. (See:
https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2022/03/13/false-flag-chemical-attack-in-ukraine-a-coming-attraction/ ). This, of course, is a terrifying prospect, but Establishment media in the West do seem to be laying the groundwork for it.
At the UN this week, not all were convinced — notably China — by the U.S. delegate’s attempt to rebut Russian claims of more nefarious activities at the “biological research facilities” in Ukraine mentioned by Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland Tuesday. What better way to detract attention from those labs, and in the process perhaps even thwart any investigation of the evidence Moscow says is possesses? With Establishment media buy-in (a given) the diversion would be a slam dunk, so to speak.
And so, if you hear reports of a Russian chemical attack in or near Ukraine, well, kick the tires.
Of interest in this regard is the unusually detailed warning/prediction that Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu included in his formal State of the Armed Forces speech to Putin and senior generals/admirals on Dec. 21, 2021 (See: http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/67402 )
“ … The presence of over 120 members of US private military companies in Avdeyevka and Priazovskoye, Donetsk Region, has been proved reliably. They are setting up firing positions in residential houses and social facilities and are preparing the Ukrainian special operations forces and far-right armed groups for active hostilities. Unidentified chemical warfare agents have been delivered to Avdeyevka and Krasny Liman for the purpose of provocations. …” [Emphasis added.]
Fasten your seatbelts.
The Critical Hour Interview, Feb. 16
By Ray McGovern
Yesterday’s discussion took off from my Ukraine Invasion Scheduled for Wednesday [Feb. 16] Canceled (See: https://original.antiwar.com/mcgovern/2022/02/15/ukraine-invasion-scheduled-for-wednesday-canceled/). We focused initially on what emerged from German Chancellor Scholz’s discussions with President Putin Tuesday (as well as some of the “anomalies” in Western media coverage of that summit meeting).
HERE IS THE LINK TO CRITICAL HOUR
After talking with Putin on Feb. 15, Scholz described the prospect of a “possible military conflict” over the question of Ukraine membership in NATO as “absurd”. Ukraine membership is “not on the agenda,” the German Chancellor pointed out, because there is zero likelihood in the foreseeable future of Ukraine meeting the entry qualifications. Scholz appealed to all those involved to “step back a bit” and “take stock”.
Mirabile dictu, the NY Times took a step in that direction on the 16th, assuming one has the patience to read all the way down to paragraph 19 (of 22). (See https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/16/world/europe/ukraine-russia-putin-nato.html? )
Here’s the Times:
Mr. Putin appeared to dial down tensions this week in part because he had already made important early gains in a diplomatic effort that could still last for months. The United States, for instance, said it was prepared to revive talks on the placement of short- and intermediate-range missiles in Europe. Some dialogue had already begun last year.
Not a Bad Idea
The Chinese, Germans, and others have said this would be a great idea. So who is feeding the feckless frenzy this morning, and why? The MICIMATT is, understandably, the usual suspect, but so is politics in a narrower sense. Indeed, from the political side, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may have given that part of the game away when she said a bit too much to George ‘Is-Biden-a-Killer?’ Stephanopoulos on Sunday:
Spilling the Beans?
STEPHANOPOULOS: The White House is warning of an imminent invasion of Ukraine. The Ukrainians seem to think that that’s all hype. Are — do you believe that Putin is poised to invade?
PELOSI: Well, I think we have to be prepared for it. … But if we were not threatening the sanctions and the rest, it would guarantee that Putin would invade. … And the president’s made it very clear. There’s a big price to pay for Russia to go there. So if Russia doesn’t invade, it’s not that he never intended to. It’s just that the sanctions worked. ( See: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/week-transcript-13-22-speaker-nancy-pelosi-sen/story?id=82849151 ) [Emphasis added.]
So it is hardly a surprise that this morning President Biden replayed, well, let’s call it a ‘broken record’ to the media: “The threat of an invasion is very high…my sense is this will happen in the next several days,” warned Biden as he left the White House for a trip to Ohio. (One wag asked whether underground bunkers in Ohio have an extra layer of concrete. (See: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden-expects-putin-ukraine-invasion-days/story?id=82954609 )
Putin and U.S. Presidents
President Putin is no stranger to the reality that U.S. presidents are beset by domestic political pressures — like, in this case, having the opposing party take complete control of Congress next year. So, on the Ukraine imbroglio, when he tells the media, that everything is going according to plan (по плану), that plan must take into account the vicissitudes and disarray of current politics in the U.S. While Putin attempts to exude confidence in dealing with this, this is largely pretense, given the immensity and complicated nature of the problem.
Putin acknowledged this last June in a keynote speech to the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum:
“I am sure that it [US policy towards Russia] is primarily impacted by domestic political processes. Russia-US relations have to a certain extent become hostage to the internal political processes that are taking place in the United States.” ( See: https://tass.com/politics/1298867 )
As if yet another complicating factor were needed, Putin is painfully aware that at key junctures in the past when a U.S. president gave his word, well, it turned out not to be “the last word”, so to speak. In Oct. 2016, for example, Putin spoke of the “feverish” state of international relations at the time and lamented: “My personal agreements with the President of the United States have not produced results.” Putin complained about “people in Washington ready to do everything possible to prevent these agreements from being implemented in practice.”
For those with short memories, ten days before Putin said this, the U.S. Air Force had just scuttled a cease-fire in Syria that had required 11 months of intense diplomacy and included personal approval by both Obama and Putin. I wrote about it at the time: https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/op-ed/bs-ed-putin-obama-20161030-story.html
Blinken: Incomprehensibly Clever – or Dense?
Back to Ukraine and to what Secretary of State Antony Blinken might be thinkin’: when asked early this morning “What would be the upside for Putin by invading Ukraine?”, he could not think of any. Blinken actually suggested we should “ask Putin” (No, really!). (See No Thinkin’ Blinken: https://raymcgovern.com/2022/02/17/no-thinkin-blinken/ )
And so it goes.
Interview of Ray McGovern on Russian TV
Back Story/Comments (by Ray McGovern)
Most Americans have no idea that in September 2013, Presidents Putin and Obama (the latter without his Russophobic advisers) trusted each other enough to head off a major war in Syria. Moscow persuaded Syria to agree to have its chemical weapons destroyed under UN supervision, removing the ostensible casus belli. In an op-ed in The NY Times on Sept. 11, 2013 Putin wrote, “My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust.” Neither Putin nor Obama wanted wider war in Syria. The deal was very much in Obama’a interest, taking the wind out of the sails of most of Obama’s advisers, including then-Secretary of State John Kerry, who did nothing to disguise their lust for an open U.S. attack on Syria. **More about Kerry below.
Trust
Just before he died at age 100, former Secretary of State George Shultz, the most sophisticated and savvy statesman I was privileged to brief for four years with The President’s Daily Brief, had this to say about trust (See: https://www.afsa.org/on-trust ):
Trust is a complex factor in life between communities and nations, but it is critical in determining whether cooperation or conflict—or even war or peace—will dominate the relationship.
Trust between Washington and Moscow, however, was the last thing that senior advisers to Presidents Obama — and, later, advisers to Trump or Biden wanted/want. Trust was smothered in the cradle – first and foremost — by what has been appropriately called “the most blatant coup in history” — the U.S. orchestrated coup in Kiev on February 22, 2014 on Moscow’s doorstep (which had been advertised on YouTube three weeks before it was carried out.
What most Americans think they know about all this is that Russia “invaded” Ukraine and Crimea. The Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank complex (MICIMATT) is what accounts for this widespread misunderstanding, with the corporate media playing a pivotal role. There is no way the corporate media will allow the likes of me on air or in print to spread a little truth around.
Why Are You Not Dead or in Prison?
Thus, there was considerable irony in an unusual, unsolicited question I received last summer from someone whose identity I did not — and still do not — know, asking me why I have not been put in jail for candidly addressing controversial issues — like which country sabotaged any chance for still more growth in the “growing trust” between Moscow and Washington. Here’s a gist of his/her message:
I am a Russian who emigrated to the West a couple of decades ago. I just saw this video of a program that ran on one of Russia’s main channels, ‘Rossiya 24’, in late July 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJubAhRiMvY
I was very surprised by how frank you are in addressing Russia-USA relations. My question is this. How can it be that you are still alive and not in prison? Does the American government allow such candor? I do not really expect a reply from you, but I really would like to have one.
I responded to the writer (let’s call her/him “X”), saying that I thought there was little chance that I be put in prison since very few Americans understand Russian and fewer still tune into Russian TV. I explained that I have given many a similar talk — and written many an article — on why U.S.-Russia relations went sharply down hill after the high-water mark of September 2013, when Putin applauded the “growing trust’ between Obama and himself. (As alluded to above, they had just solved a very thorny problem about Syria without the kind of armed attack that virtually all of Obama’s advisers AND key Congressional leaders were lusting for. The problem was/is that the media component of the MICIMATT has been able to suppress my views — or, if they happen to slip out into the open, accuse me of being in “Putin’s pocket”.
As for my interview on ‘Rossiya 24’ two and a half years ago, we deliberated on whether it might be worth trying to make it possible for English-speakers to watch my little rundown of how the sprout of trust eight years ago was nipped in the bud. I did seem worth a try. X told me he was capable, even though an amateur, of inserting English subtitles into the video. X’s English is quite good, so we agreed. I was given the opportunity to review the English subtitles for accuracy. It was intense work. I believe it came out well, all things considered.
Why Post Video/Interview With Subtitles Now?
In this one discrete interview, which I gave shortly after we slithered out of the Washington Swamp and moved auf das Land, as the Germans would put it (or into a ‘dacha’ in the hinterland as Russians might say), I found myself with interviewers who gave me enough time to address serious issues on which I had been specializing for several decades. Most important, I can readily document my observations and conclusions with facts. And what could be more important than understanding how it came to be that the “growing trust” Putin mentioned hit a brick wall? And why.
One key lesson Putin learned was that the American president does not call the shots. Needless to say, this has immense significance. I had documented that key point a few years earlier in a chronological listing of relevant events: See, for example; U.S.-RUSSIAN RELATIONS – 1989 TO 2016: KEY JUNCTURES (A DRAFT “TIMELINE” REQUESTED BY GERMAN BUNDESTAG MEMBERS) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Jzz-yabLl-F36aMqdmbNhOF0ACCeSGkcFmaoSR7UXBo/edit
Excerpts:
-Oct 1, 2015 to Sept 9, 2016: Kerry and Lavrov labor hard to introduce ceasefire in Syria and some kind of political settlement. Finally, a limited ceasefire is signed Sept 9, 2016.
++++++++++++++++++
-Sept 12, 2016: The limited ceasefire goes into effect; provisions include SEPARATING THE SO-CALLED “MODERATE” REBELS FROM THE, WELL, “IMMODERATE ONES.” Kerry had earlier claimed that he had “refined” ways to accomplish the separation, but it did not happen…
++++++++++++++++++
-Sept 17, 2016: U.S. Air Force aircraft bomb long established Syrian Army positions killing between 64 and 84 Syrian army troops; about 100 others wounded — evidence enough to convince the Russians that the Pentagon was intent on scuttling meaningful cooperation with Russia AND FELT FREE TO DO SO AND THEN MERELY SAY OOPS, WITH NO ONE BEING HELD ACCOUNTABLE!
++++++++++++++++++
-Sept 26, 2016: Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov on Russian TV:
“My good friend John Kerry … is under fierce criticism from the US military machine. Despite the fact that, as always, [they] made assurances that the US Commander in Chief, President Barack Obama, supported him in his contacts with Russia (he confirmed that during his meeting with President Vladimir Putin), apparently the military does not really listen to the Commander in Chief.” Lavrov specifically criticized JCS Chairman Joseph Dunford for telling Congress that he opposed sharing intelligence with Russia, “after the agreements concluded on direct orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Barack Obama stipulated that they would share intelligence. … It is difficult to work with such partners. …”
++++++++++++++++++
-Oct 27, 2016: Putin speaks at the Valdai International Discussion Club
(See my Baltimore Sun Op-Ed of October 30, 2016 for more detail): http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-putin-obama-20161030-story.html
[So how did the “growing trust” that Russian President Vladimir Putin once claimed (in the Sept. 11, 2013 NY Times op-ed) marked his “working and personal relationship with President Obama” change into today’s deep distrust and saber-rattling? See the following remarks of Putin:]
Putin: “My personal agreements with the President of the United States have not produced results.” Putin complained about “people in Washington ready to do everything possible to prevent these agreements from being implemented in practice” and, referring to Syria, decried the lack of a “common front against terrorism after such lengthy negotiations, enormous effort, and difficult compromises.”
+++++++++++++++++
Those interested in additional information on this key period and the (often treacherous) key players, some of whom I had a chance to observe up close and personal, may find the following of interest:
How War on Syria Lost Its Way
(When Putin Made Obama an Offer He Could Not Turn Down)
US-Russia Ties: From Heyday to MayDay
**Kerry’s Poor Record for Veracity
**In my view, John Kerry merits special (dis)honorable mention. On August 30, 2013 he falsely accused the Syrian government of launching sarin chemical attacks outside Damascus. And during that crucial first week of early Sept. he was still agitating for open war on Syria days after Obama and Putin were successful in working out a plan to head it off. Below is an excerpt of something I wrote earlier about the truly extraordinary sequence of events involving Obama and Kerry during early September 2013:
Kerry: Giving It the College Try
When an attack on Syria was under active consideration, Kerry gave a bravura performance in his Sept. 3, 2013 testimony to a Senate Foreign Affairs Committee whose leaders showed by their own remarks the degree to which they, too, were lusting for an attack on Syria. Kerry’s testimony on Syria included a transparent attempt to play down the effectiveness of al-Qaeda affiliates in gaining control of the armed opposition to Assad. [The U.S. did not want to admit that many of the “moderate” Syrian rebels it supported were affiliated with al-Qaeda.]
Kerry’s testimony drew highly unusual personal criticism from Russian President Vladimir Putin. In a televised meeting of the Russian Presidential Human Rights Council on Sept. 4, Putin said, “He [Kerry] is lying, and he knows he is lying. It is sad.” [Putin made that remark on the day before Obama arrived for a summit in St. Petersburg, without Kerry. Obama later told Jeffrey Goldberg that this was one occasion on which he refused to adhere to the “Washington Playbook” (virtually all his advisers having urged open war on Syria).
But Kerry continued to press for war on Syria. He was asked at the end of a Sept. 9 press conference in London whether there was anything Assad could do to prevent a U.S. attack. Kerry answered (quite dismissively — and embarrassingly in view of subsequent events) that Assad could give up every one of his chemical weapons, but “he isn’t about to do that; it can’t be done.” [Apparently, Obama had kept Kerry in the dark about the seriousness of the deal the president had already worked out with Putin.]
Self-anointed Captain of American “Exceptionalists”
It is worth noting that right after Putin’s remark about “growing trust” in his Sept. 2013 NY Times oped, Putin added specific criticism of what he called “American exceptionalism, [which supposedly] makes America different — exceptional.” (I have been informed by a trusted source that President Putin himself penned the words on “growing trust” and the warning of the pitfalls that can stem from the concept of “exceptionalism” — aka hubris.)
Here’s how Putin ended that (final) paragraph: “It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.” (See: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/opinion/putin-plea-for-caution-from-russia-on-syria.html )
Turning again to Syria and the aborted ceasefire mentioned above, that had been approved by both Obama and Putin, it seems highly instructive that Kerry expressed (rather naive) dismay and deep disappointment that, not only the U.S. Air Force, but many other factors in play made it difficult for even the exceptional United States to “align forces”. Here is Kerry lamenting that the Syrian situation was so complicated as to not be susceptible of U.S. “alignment”; the words are drawn from an interview on Sept. 29, 2016 with Steve Clemons of the Atlantic:
SECRETARY KERRY: — but Syria is as complicated as anything I’ve ever seen in public life, in the sense that there are probably about six wars or so going on at the same time – Kurd against Kurd, Kurd against Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sunni, Shia, everybody against ISIL, people against Assad, Nusrah. This is as mixed-up sectarian and civil war and strategic and proxies, so it’s very, very difficult to be able to align forces. So it’s —
MR CLEMONS: So in the middle of that, why did you think you could get a ceasefire?
KERRY: (no answer)
The Vocabulary of Neoliberal Diplomacy in Today’s New Cold Art of War
By Michael Hudson, Sept. 13, 2021
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/09/13/the-vocabulary-of-neoliberal-diplomacy-in-todays-new-cold-war/
An instructive article by an economist who dissects, explains, and forecasts clearly. Hudson also refers to the key role of the MICIMATT. A primer for non-economists.
By Edward Lozansky – Monday, August 30, 2021
If one scans this week’s headlines they are all gloom and doom, running from despair and humiliation to disaster and debacle. But rarely do you see calls for a fundamental reset of the failed U.S. foreign policy of perpetual wars and a rethink the global leadership paradigm.
This is not surprising, since the mainstream media are, with rare exceptions, an essential part of the powerful lobby MICIMATT (the term coined by the former CIA analyst Raymond McGovern, who was responsible for Ronald Reagan’s morning briefs) that is actually in charge of this policy.
MICIMATT means “Military-Industrial-Congress-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank” complex. Here are some results of its activity for the last 20 years.
According to the Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs of Brown University: over 801,000 people have died in the post-9/11 wars due to direct war violence, and several times as many due to the reverberating effects of war; over 335,000 civilians have been killed as a result of the fighting; 38 million — the number of war refugees and displaced persons. These horrific numbers do not include wounded but they are usually several times higher than those who are killed. According to Newsweek, “in 20 years of fighting, there have been almost 11,000 American deaths (including contractors) and more than 53,000 have been physically broken, while countless others suffer from traumatic brain injuries and other post-traumatic disorders.”
These numbers account only for American victims. Imagine their magnitude on the world scale. The author of this story, William Arkin, concludes that “after two decades of fighting, in fact, not one country in the Middle East—not one country in the world—can argue that it is safer than it was before 9/11. Every country that is now a part of the expanding battlefield of perpetual war is an even greater disaster zone than it was two decades ago.”
When I repeat Ronald Reagan’s famous “you ain’t seen nothing yet” I have in mind today’s visit of the Ukrainian delegation to Washington, where they will beg for more money and arms as well as doubling their efforts to drag America into yet another war, this time with nuclear Russia.
Needless to say, the MICIMATT will do everything possible to accommodate the visitors. The Ukrainian project was theirs in the first place. The same political technology that was used in Afghanistan to create, arm, and finance the Taliban against the Soviets is being now used to turn Ukraine against Russia. It started from the first day after collapse of the USSR 30 years ago. This time it is even more cynical than in Afghanistan, since we are talking about attempts to turn into enemies two Christian countries closely linked by centuries-long family, religious, economic, and cultural ties. I placed “family” in the first place, since it has always been my belief that it is one of the most precious western values, but it looks like it is not so for MICIMATT.
Russia is accused of annexing the Crimean peninsula and fomenting rebellion in the Donbas area, but besides being historically Russian territories with an ethnic Russian majority population it was a Western-backed coup in February 2014 that provoked Moscow into these actions. There are endless analyses from people in the know who present a clear picture of what happened at that time.
Just a few examples: “It’s not Russia that’s pushed Ukraine to the brink of war”, – says Seumas Milne in the Guardian, – “The reality is that, after two decades of eastward NATO expansion, this crisis was triggered by the west’s attempt to pull Ukraine decisively into its orbit and defense structure, via an explicitly anti-Moscow EU association agreement. No Russian government could have acquiesced in such a threat from the territory that was at the heart of both Russia and the Soviet Union. Putin’s absorption of Crimea and support for the rebellion in eastern Ukraine is clearly defensive, and the red line is now drawn: the east of Ukraine, at least, is not going to be swallowed up by NATO or the EU.”
This is from Ted Carpenter of the CATO Institute: “The extent of the Obama administration’s meddling in Ukraine’s politics was breathtaking… it was startling to have diplomatic representatives of a foreign country—and a country that routinely touts the need to respect democratic processes and the sovereignty of other nations—to be scheming about removing an elected government and replacing it with officials meriting U.S. approval…It was a grotesque distortion to portray the events in Ukraine as a purely indigenous, popular uprising. The Nuland‐Pyatt telephone conversation and other actions confirm that the United States was considerably more than a passive observer to the turbulence. Instead, U.S. officials were blatantly meddling in Ukraine. Such conduct was utterly improper. The United States had no right to try to orchestrate political outcomes in another country—especially one on the border of another great power.”
As Peter Kuznick from American University noted: “The U.S.-backed Ukrainian coup was the product of decades of U.S. maneuvering in its ill-fated quest for unipolarity. Zbigniew Brzezinski had written in his 1997 book Grand Chessboard that “Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.” Other neocons like Wolfowitz, Libby, and Hadley shared this view. So when Bush called for NATO expansion to Ukraine and Georgia in 2008, the game was over so far as Putin was concerned. U.S. Ambassador to Russia William Burns, the current CIA director, sent Washington a confidential cable with the subject line “Nyet mean nyet: Russia’s NATO enlargement redlines.”
John Mearsheimer from the University of Chicago wrote this in the Foreign Affairs:
“The United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility for the Ukrainian crisis. The taproot of the trouble is NATO enlargement, the central element of a larger strategy to move Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit…For Putin, the illegal overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected and pro-Russian president—which he rightly labeled a ‘coup’—was the final straw. He responded by taking Crimea, a peninsula he feared would host a NATO naval base.”
Finally, here is the opinion of the former U.S. Ambassador to USSR Jack Matlock in Time magazine titled: “Let Russia Take Crimea.”
“The fact is, like it or not, Ukraine is almost certainly better off without Crimea than with it. Nothing weakens a nation more than holding territory whose residents prefer to belong to another country. Though they may be difficult for all relevant parties to accept, the premises of a solution to the Ukrainian mess are clear: 1) The new constitution should provide for a federal structure of government giving at least as many rights to its provinces as American states have; 2) The Russian language must be given equal status with Ukrainian; and 3) There must be guarantees that Ukraine will not become a member of NATO, or any other military alliance that excludes Russia.”
Apparently, none of the participants of the pathetic “Crimean Platform” that met on August 23 in Kyiv to discuss how to return Crimea to Ukraine paid any attention to the opinion of the wise American diplomat. Instead of talking to ordinary folks in Crimea they preferred to engage in a fruitless discussion organized by the comic actor-turned President Zelensky – who is desperately trying to appease radical nationalists and the neo-Nazis who strikingly resemble their Afghan Taliban prototypes. Not a single Crimean Platform participant, or for that matter any Washington official, has criticized Zelensky for his water blockade to Crimea to the people that he claims belong to Ukraine.
Depriving people from drinking water is an international crime but it looks like they preferred to ignore it. No one raised alarm when the head of the “Servant of the People” pro-presidential faction David Arahamiya and Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany Andriy Melnyk warned Kyiv may be forced to acquire nuclear weapons to safeguard the country’s security if NATO does not accede to its membership demand.
Biden has a choice: build on the strategic stability talks with Putin that would be beneficial for both nations and mankind or listen to MICIMATT, and jump from Afghan to Ukrainian debacle, this time threatening Armageddon.
ANALYSIS/OPINION
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/aug/30/afghanistan-debacle-you-aint-seen-nothing-yet/
Edward Lozansky is president of American University in Moscow.
Ray McGovern interview, August 23
On Monday I gave a 54-minute interview ( See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyrDTwbX1Tg to Joanne Leon and Kelley Lane of Around the Empire. They had asked me to elaborate on my article Hold the Generals Accountable This Time, which I had written ten days earlier. (See: https://original.antiwar.com/mcgovern/2021/08/13/hold-the-generals-accountable-this-time/ )
What Marine Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller posted on Facebook a couple of days after my interview put flesh on my observations regarding senior U.S. military officers — whether they are just dumb or insubordinate or both. (See: https://raymcgovern.com/2021/08/27/rot-at-the-top/ )
The courageous Scheller should be at Dover AFB today to speak the grim truth — there is no escaping it — that his fellow Marines and the others died in vain, and that no one is likely to be held accountable. AND that it is all foreordained to happen again, if the media put the inevitable “patriotic” gloss on the return of the bodies in the “transfer cases” known, back in the day, as coffins or caskets.
During Monday’s interview, we were able to discuss grim truths about military leadership at the top (or the lack thereof) and name some names as to who should be held to account. We talked about the vestigial organ called “National Intelligence Estimates” NIEs, and why they have fallen into disuse (more on that later); about how the prostitution of intelligence on Vietnam, which my colleague Sam Adams and I observed up close and personal and which ALWAYS happens when the U.S. Army is at war; about how you defeat terrorism (hint: it’s like eliminating malaria); about how Obama let himself be pushed around by the likes of Petraeus and Gates (and Biden, by the likes of McKenzie, Austin, and Milley); about how Daniel Hale is a fitting recipient of the 20th award by Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence; and about the key role played by the corporate media in defending culprit corporate-generals — media and generals both key parts of the MICIMATT — Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank complex.
The discussion seemed to be bordering on hopeless, so I closed with a word of encouragement, citing I. F. Stone and his dismal-sounding, but nonetheless uplifting words. Perhaps they can inspire those of us dedicated to spreading truth around for as long as we can:
“The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you’re going to lose, because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins.”
Meanwhile, we have to try to keep some balance — and even some sense of humor, as we continue to keep on keepin’ on. Required most of all, I believe, is solidarity. I recall a large banner at the Catholic Worker’s Jonah House in Baltimore. “The first duty of authentic discipleship is to support one another.” Let’s do that.
By Ray McGovern, August 24, 2021
John Rizzo, the CIA’s top lawyer, who gave the green light for torture, is dead. My former CIA colleague, John Kiriakou, who knew him well, has written a fitting “encomium” ( See: https://consortiumnews.com/2021/08/23/john-kiriakou-the-world-is-rid-of-rizzo/ ).
Kiriakou knew Rizzo well and describes him as “the unapologetic godfather of the CIA’s torture program, a monstrous crime against humanity that he defended unabashedly until his death”. Kiriakou found himself atop the CIA’s WANTED list when he confirmed publicly that the CIA had been carrying out a White House-approved torture program, using techniques virtually identical to those in the Gestapo Handbuch. He (Kiriakou, not Rizzo) ended up having to do two years in prison.
So, why did Fordham Law School honor John Rizzo by inviting him to discuss, on Jan. 30, 2014, his book-length unapologetic apologia for the role he played in “dark-side” crimes like torture — including his passing along the Bush Justice Department “legal” opinions approving waterboarding, for example. Rizzo’s performance at Fordham was … well, it might be described as an “extraordinary rendition” – a shameless, ethically vacuous defense of the indefensible. The video of that event (sans a question I asked of Rizzo) can be seen at: http://www.centeronnationalsecurity.org/node/1049 .
Artful Editing
In https://raymcgovern.com/2014/03/12/is-torture-now-a-gray-area-at-fordham-ray-talks-cia-whistleblowing-memories-at-fordham-law/ I wrote about that extraordinary event and included the question that some later-day “Rose Mary Woods” had deleted:
Mr. Rizzo, I imagine you are feeling quite affirmed at being invited to Fordham, ‘The Jesuit University of New York City.’ I imagine President Rev. Joseph McShane, SJ had a hand in bringing you here, and in your book you make it clear that you share an admiration for Fordham alumnus John Brennan, now Director of the CIA. As for Brennan, though, not all were happy when McShane gave Brennan the honor of giving the university Commencement address in May 2012.”
“A graduating senior expressed his qualms to McShane, in the presence of others, about Brennan’s role in torture and in drone killings. McShane’s response was not what I learned in Fordham College 55 years ago. I had learned that torture inhabited the same moral category as rape and slavery – intrinsically evil, always wrong. Fordham’s president told the graduating senior, ‘Well, we don’t live in a black and white world, we live in a gray world.’
“Mr. Rizzo, am I right in thinking you must feel affirmed at being invited here, and at sharing President McShane’s views on torture as a gray area?”
It is generally frowned upon to speak ill of the dead. So, let’s turn our attention to today. Rizzo is gone, but so many of his accomplices are still at large, populating the media, as well as academia.
The MICIMATT
To designate what the Military-Industrial Complex (MIC), about which President Eisenhower warned us, has now become, I coined MICIMATT — the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence- Media-Academia-Think-Tank complex (an acronym endorsed by the likes of the late Stephen F. Cohen and Pepe Escobar). A few friends have advised me to drop the “M” for Media (no way will I do that! A controlled media is a sine quo non), and to cut “…Academia-Think-Tank …” from the end of the acronym. (Again, no way!)
Here’s just one example of how it works these days: “journalist” Ken Dilanian, when he was writing for the Los Angeles Times, regularly solicited reaction and comment on his draft articles from the CIA BEFORE publishing them. (Thanks to an FOIA request, we have exchanges of emails between Dilanian and John Brennan’s PR friends at CIA.)
At Fordham Law School’s think tank “Center on National Security”, Dilanian appears in the above photo with his nihil-obstat “fact-checker” Brennan, putting visual flesh on the “…Media-Academia-Think-Tank” part of the MICIMATT.
“Moral Decline and Political Servitude”
It is not as though the Jesuits who run Fordham had not been warned by one of their own prophets. In To Dwell in Peace, published 34 years ago, Daniel Berrigan, SJ, wrote of “the fall of a great enterprise,” the Jesuit university. He recorded his “hunch” that the university would end up “among those structures whose moral decline and political servitude signalize a larger falling away of the culture itself.”
Berrigan lamented that “highly placed” churchmen [violated] “the Christian tradition of nonviolence, as well as the secular boast of disinterested pursuit of truth. These are reduced to bombast, hauled out for formal occasions, believed by no one, practiced by no one.”
And Dan wrote his book well before Fordham gave a platform to aficionados of torture and “extraordinary rendition” and before Fordham awarded CIA Director John Brennan an honorary “Doctorate in Humane Letters” (sic) and named him “Distinguished Fellow for Global Security” at the Law School. The values of Rizzo and Brennan were not the same as the ones I learned at Fordham College, from which I graduated in 1961. The ethics drummed into me had not yet become “quaint” or “obsolete”.
I did not have to compromise those values while working as a CIA analyst working on Soviet foreign policy. But after retirement, and watch the on-steroids corruption of the entire agency under Cheney, Bush, and go-along-to-get-along directors, I had to find some symbolic way to dissociate from the CIA.
As an act of conscience, on March 2, 2006 I returned the Intelligence Commendation Medallion given me at retirement for “especially meritorious service”. I explained, “I do not want to be associated, however remotely, with an agency engaged in torture.”
Neither am I a fan of “regime change”. More then 12 years ago, when President Obama let himself be persuaded to “surge” in Afghanistan, I tried to warn him of the inevitable consequences in “Welcome to Vietnam, Mr. President” ( See:
https://consortiumnews.com/2018/04/07/welcome-to-vietnam-mr-president-3/ )
Come to think of it, I might make one exception. “Regime change” is precisely what is needed at Fordham, lest Dan Berrigan’s “hunch” see complete fulfillment.