Ian Swanson thinks the decision to have a special House committee devoted to investigating the administration’s reaction to the Benghazi attacks is part of a midterm strategy. He actually thinks the issue has the power to hurt Democrats with independent voters, which is laughable. If there is a strategy behind the move at all, it is clearly aimed at tarnishing the reputation of Hillary Clinton in the hope that her approval numbers will come back to Earth. But I kind of doubt that we can explain this decision rationally at all.
After all, the real issues involved (security for embassies and consulates, the decision to get militarily involved in Libya, the CIA’s role in Benghazi) aren’t even under discussion. The Republicans are upset that the administration said that an anti-Muslim video was responsible for creating a spontaneous riot that led to the attacks in Benghazi. That turned out to be only partially true. So, is the problem that the administration was wrong?
No, that’s not it. The presumption is that they lied. Okay, so what if they lied? Did they lie about something that mattered? Have there been any follow-on attacks on our government officials in Libya? Did they misdiagnose the problem? Have there been any negative consequences for anyone from this alleged lie?
It’s hard to understand why the Republicans think that anyone beside themselves cares in the slightest about their version of the Benghazi controversy.
The latest iteration of outrage is that the Obama administration released an email to the public that the Republicans feel should have been released to Congress last year. Okay, perhaps the email should have been released to Congress last year. What is the appropriate penalty for failing to promptly and fully comply with a congressional subpoena? Is impeachment the proper penalty? And, for whom? It’s not as if President Obama was in charge of combing through White House emails to see what was germane to the Benghazi attacks. Should he fire his legal counsel?
What is actually going to be investigated? Not how better to protect our CIA officers in the field. Not how better to protect our consulates. Not who is responsible for the crime. So, what, then?
Are they seeking to prove that the administration knowingly misled people and then impeded a congressional investigation about it? Because they’ll never prove that. The people that are convinced of it don’t even know why it is supposed to matter. They know next to nothing about Libya or the militant groups that menace Benghazians. They don’t admire the State Department or care much about the safety of its workforce. They have offered nothing in the way of policy advice for Libya. And they were acting strangely deranged about this issue long before this latest email came up, so that can’t explain their seeming dementia.
It’s almost as if they think that the president was only reelected because he lied about Benghazi, and that proving that would somehow make Mitt Romney the president.
The Left blogosphere’s blackout on Ukraine continues.
what would you like me to say about Ukraine?
I don’t know what the fuck is going on there, nor do I have any magic wand to fix the problem.
There are some inside-the-Beltway politics related to Ukraine that you might shed some light on.
It’s kind of hard for those of us who see the slippery slope coming up on President Obama’s watch to figure out how he went so quickly from the possibility of dramatic breakthroughs for peace to the brink of war with Russia. (That’s if you have the media’s understanding.)
It smells of some faction wanting to hang a “Who lost Ukraine?” sign around President Obama’s foreign policy record. And the people involved are suspiciously the sort of people who would be involved in something like that.
That’s what I wondered too. At first I figured it was Merkel’s grand scheme to dump the US now that the Cold War is over and Germany sits on top of Europe. And it still might be German interests, except that eventually if the sanctions attack the Russian energy sector and the natural gas is cut off it will put Europe (and the world) into a depression.
I think the whole rigamarole about supplying Europe with American fracked natural gas is just bull. Something that might be available after five or ten years, maybe, if various trade bills are passed, will not help Europe this winter.
So I’ve settled in on the “Obama lost Ukraine” story to emerge during the campaign season. Since the right is losing the war on numbers, the best way to win would be to depress the vote. Voting restrictions work, but better is getting the left half of the Democratic Party to stay home. A really messy Ukraine would do it. Unfortunately, people die.
I suspect that Nuland is a glimpse into Hillary’s soul. Remember how she was ready to make Iran glow during the 2008 primaries? Bill had no problems following the neocon script in Yugoslavia and Mad Albright had no problem starving a half million kids in Iraq.
To my original point: It seems that most lefty blogs I read avoid the topic of Ukraine like the plague. Other places like Slate seem to be stenographers for someone in the State Department. The NY Times has been deplorable. The bright spot is Robert Parry’s consortium news, but that’s about it.
Having read things like Christopher Simpson’s BLOWBACK which details America’s relationship with European fascists and their importation into the US, this latest adventure I find particularly disgusting, especially when the street fighters are roasting people alive on my dime.
Most of that disquieting stuff seems to be the result of an institution put into place by Allen Dulles and some global bankers in the 1940s, which has ever since then been metastasizing and sucking off resources. Even as its powers of classification and compartmentalized organization hide it from actual accountability to Congress.
And it has failed once again at its mission of keeping us safe because it is high on its own supply of 24.
“…but better is getting the left half of the Democratic Party to stay home.”
And you’re going to try and make it happen, one blog at a time, by throwing around phrases like “fascist sympathizer!”
Nice work if you can get it, I suppose.
You think too much of yourself.
If you think I have the power to overcome five hundred appearances on TV by John McCain and the rest between now and November, then thanks but you still are unclear on the concept.
Pointing out what is happening in front of you isn’t the same thing as doing it. Or letting it happen.
These are crazy questions.
The integration of Ukraine into the E.U. has been in negotiations for six years or more. It isn’t some secret nefarious plot. It’s part of a more general effort to integrate several former Soviet Socialist Republics into the E.U.
Ukraine isn’t going to be integrated into NATO, although that looked like a possibility for a while. In 2008, both McCain and Obama supported the idea. That it was a bad idea can be seen right now.
Victoria Nuland may be married to a PNAC founder and she may have worked for Dick Cheney, but she’s also a career diplomat who needed a next-rung-on-the-ladder position. As chief of staff to Strobe Talbott, she had a very high position in the Clinton administration, which is probably why Hillary trusted her.
As for the “who lost Ukraine” bit, the Republicans will obviously make hay about it. But that’s after the fact. What’s going on here is fairly simple. Ukraine was being intimidated by Russia into delaying and finally canceling their integration with the E.U. A lot of Ukrainians were outraged by that decision and decided to throw their government out. Putin was outraged and decided to carve up Ukraine and make it impossible for it to integrate.
The integration of Ukraine into the E.U. has been in negotiations for six years or more. It isn’t some secret nefarious plot. It’s part of a more general effort to integrate several former Soviet Socialist Republics into the E.U.
Why did they need to be in the EU? Would they put it to a vote in the Ukraine, or where ever? Why do we need to meddle in other countries? Shouldn’t we get our own house in order first?
If you care, start here.
You assume that this meddling isn’t basically the West trying expand trade and promote the rule of law and international norms.
There may be an attempt by the US to allow Europe to be dependent on us instead of Russia for their energy needs, but unless the US is planning to break Russia this is a pipe dream.
The US-sponsored coup (ref. Nuland) occurred after Yanukovich decided to go with Russia’s deal, so this might have been the US’s fallback plan. But as far as Ukraine becoming part of the EU, no way. The east is where the industry and resources are, even Odessa is opposed to the coup regime, and by ratcheting up the fighting, using the fascist national guard units against the people of the east, they are guaranteeing that ethnic Russians will not go along with a western-leaning regime.
What about the rump state of Ukraine? Well, there’s farmland. There’s also a huge debt. The IMF can put chains on those people, making conditions ripe for fascism to double down there, but aside from what they can grow, and if there is any natural gas to frack, the rump Ukraine would be pretty useless to the EU, and would probably interfere with their gas from Russia.
I find your comment incomprehensible.
For starters, the main thing that happened that caused the current crisis is that the Ukrainian government backed out of an expected deal with the E.U. under immense pressure from Putin.
That angered a lot of Ukrainians. It wasn’t a U.S.-sponsored coup. It was a coup that the U.S. sought to manage so that the result would be a government that would stand up to Putin and join the EU.
Then Putin acted with real aggression and carved out the Crimean Peninsula and began sending people into the East to cause problems. He got the authority to use force in Ukraine and amassed divisions on the border.
So, how is this in any way what the United States wanted? It isn’t.
What we wanted was for the EU-Ukraine deal to go through. And we didn’t even really care about it nearly as much as the Europeans did.
The bottom line is that Putin is willing to see a bunch of people killed rather than let Ukraine do what it wants to do.
The bottom line is that Putin is willing to see a bunch of people killed rather than let Ukraine do what it wants to do.
So Ukraine wants to become like Greece? You’ve heard what the IMF and Co. want, right?
Rather than become like Greece, they should become like Belarus?
You find me incomprehensible because you get your world view from the New York Times.
The Russian deal was actually a better deal than the IMF/EU deal. Many of the fascists in the west of Ukraine want to be part of what they call “white Europe”.
We can argue about Crimea. Crimea is Russian-speaking and mostly Russian ethnically, was given to Ukraine in the fifties in order to even the demographics between Russian and western Ukrainian populations. I presume the Kremlin thought that that would keep a lid on things, but it didn’t, and with the fascists in the government Putin saw the writing on the wall. The seizure of Crimea was peaceful and thousands of Ukrainian military switched allegiance to Russia and their salaries have quadrupled. Would it have been nice for a proper election for secession observed by neutral international observers? Sure, but the UN is pretty much in the US’s pocket now, like many of the international orgs, and the coup government wouldn’t allow one anyway. So Russia essentially did what the US/UN did in Kosovo without the two months of bombing.
Now we have a country on the verge of civil war, and while the neo-Nazis were a fertile ground to sow the seeds of hatred, US’s involvement is clear and unforgivable. Kiev does not have the military manpower to maintain control over the east (who don’t want to be in Russia, but in a Ukrainian federation where their rights are protected) and the busloads of fascists with baseball bats, molotov cocktails and guns are not going to win the hearts and minds of the people. The last week has probably ensured that if the people don’t have a chance to vote on a federation then Ukraine will break apart.
There is a distinct possibility that the military, or parts of it, will rebel against Kiev (not the newly formed neo-Nazi composed national guard units). They are not happy with what they are supposed to be doing in the east.
However, if Russia is drawn into this expect a quick and decisive war with lots of fascists dead very quickly. There may still be a federation, or the country will be split, but expect the current coup leaders to be spending next Christmas in some millionaire’s mansion on Long Island.
And Obama will have the flaming bag of shite on his front steps.
You seem to believe every bit of nonsense that RT spews into the ether.
You are particularly obsessed with this neo-Nazi angle. It explains a lot less than you think it does.
Putin wants us to think the opposition is fascist while he invades other sovereign nations and carves up their territory. While he brutally harasses gays and rallies around Russian ethnicity, explaining his foreign adventures in the exact same way that Hitler justified his invasions of Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland.
And all of this is for one simple reason. Putin didn’t want Ukraine to integrate with the E.U.
I’ve been reading about post-war fascism for about thirty years.
America supported death squads in El Salvador. You might not call them that, but they were indeed fascists. Chile? The generals in Argentina? The Savak in Iran? The School of the Americas?
How about when the US (er, UN) dismantled Yugoslavia? Tudjman. Isbegovich. There were fascists there from WWII.
Forget what Putin wants us to think. When the US includes people in their coup who celebrate Stepan Bandera, the 14th Waffen SS and others who ethnically cleansed Jews, Poles and ethnic Russians. These people have racial beliefs that would make a klansman blush.
I don’t pay taxes to the Kremlin. I pay taxes to the US government.
In the last election Yanukovich won. Crimea, a Party of Regions stronghold, is now not a part of the country so they won’t be voting in the May election. There is no possibility of the eastern and southern regions to have a fair vote, and the only candidate representing them withdrew after he was severely beaten by a gang of fascists in Kiev. The winner will no doubt be Ukraine’s version of Willie Wonka.
I’m not sure how you lay the blame for all this at Putin’s feet, or that you can even deign to know what Ukrainians want. The east has consistently polled that over half want a federation to protect their rights, about a quarter want to reunite with Russia. There are rumblings of Poles in the northwest now talking about secession themselves. After Friday’s massacre in Odessa there is no guarantee that Kiev can maintain control, much less win an honest election, there. People are calling for the prosecution of the police chief who was apparently beholden to the coup government.
This is the side we are on:
One man in his early 20’s, who was leading a Ukrainian nationalist rally stated, “We want the Europe that the crusaders fought for, the Europe that the European nationalists fought for, the Europe of white people. Muslims humiliate native people now and they take away our lands. We will stand for a white Europe, a traditional Europe!”
You know who they don’t consider white? Poles, Jews, Russians, Tatars.
BooMan, foreigners don’t have agency. They can’t do anything. It all has to be done to them, or for them, or both, by shadowy three-letter organizations based in suburban DC. Or Zurich. Or Berlin.
But on their own, no.
The Libyans, couldn’t, hell, shouldn’t have overthrown Gadaffi – he was the only thing standing between them and the oil companies and the IMF and the Zionists and Uncle Tom Cobley and all.
The Syrians can’t, hell, shouldn’t, be trying to boot the Assad government, for the same reasons.
We’ll tell them how to revolt, and whether to revolt, dammit.
BTW, was continuing the Shock Treatment to de-Sovietize Russia Strobe Talbott’s idea as well?
This dismissal of my questions as crazy is about the most depressing news of US foreign policy I’ve gotten recently. It’s time that we in the US don’t get high on our own supply when it comes to foreign policy. We are about to squander opportunities to wind down conflicts by rhetorically and militarily escalating the chaos in the Ukraine.
The upcoming election in Ukraine will give the wheel another spin. It’s good to hear Biden rhetorically trying to calm things down for that after weeks of chest-beating by the President.
Is there any foreign policy advisor in the Obama administration who isn’t a neo-con?
You appear to be hopelessly confused about Nuland.
Strobe Talbott was Deputy Secretary of State from 1994 until the end of the Clinton administration. Victoria Nuland, as his chief of staff, was one of the highest-ranking members of the State Department. She is a career member of the Foreign Service, not some random appointee rewarded for their campaign donations.
It may be that she’s sympathetic to neo-conservatism. Cheney must have thought so, since he put her on his advisory staff. Bush must have thought so, since he made her the NATO ambassador. But, under Obama she was sent to Europe to deal with CFE issues and then made spokeswoman for the State Department. I don’t know what you would have done with her, but it’s not clear to me that she’d done anything to warrant ending her career at State. She has risen to the highest echelons there, so you either have her handle policy at a high level or you keep her as spokesman. But her experience is in Europe, she speaks Russian, etc.
In any case, it sounds like you are still fighting the NATO expansion into Warsaw Pact states. That’s not neo-conservatism, although it’s consistent with it.
Not random, but she was appointed to the position of State Dept Spokesperson. However, as her current position required nomination by the President and Senate confirmation, she’s serving at the pleasure of the President.
Are we to believe that there aren’t any competent career FSO at State that weren’t promoted by and worked closely with Bush/Cheney? Maybe President Hillary Clinton can draft Condi Rice for another tour of duty.
The President does not have a high enough GS grade to make foreign policy. That was taken away from the White House on November 22, 1963. The only difference is that Repubs get to strut in front of the troops more and Dems starve a half million children with a heavy heart. And even those differences are fading.
I’m just concluding from how easily Bush policies became Clinton policies became Bush policies became Obama policies on Soviet Union —> Russia that Nuland has been in the thick of this for some time. And has absorbed the punitive attitudes of the “victors of the Cold War”. And that Talbott did not materially alter those policies, which continued through the Cheney era of abrogating the ABM to today.
The US foreign policy establishment created a bit of a success out of World War II. But has created a disaster out of the “victory in the Cold War” that left the US the “sole superpower”.
NATO expansion as Eurasian integration into Europe is different from NATO expansion as creating a new dividing line of conflict with Russia. In 2012, after reviewing stuff for the NATO summit, I came to the conclusion that NATO was an organization looking for a military mission. The Bush administration’s decision to deliberately bait the bear by moving forward ABM systems into Eastern Europe, contrary to assurances made with the denuclearization of Ukraine, has not helped US-Russia relations. Nuland had some hand in that policy from Cheneyland.
…but she speaks Russian…
Neo-conservatism is about punishing Russia for having a revolution and creating the Soviet Union. And the first generation of neo-conservatives often had personal issues with the Soviet Union that wanted the exaction of revenge against the Russian people. In the 1990s, they got that revenge.
I Love this thread. I’m learning a lot from the give and take, both factually and philosophically.
To me I think it comes down to this– what can be perceived as a left/center split comes down to willingness to use power– economically or militarily, and a willingness (if not wisdom) to see things in terms of right or wrong.
One could see this as the banks against the remnants of the Soviet Union, or one could see this as western ideals against chaos and oppression. Good guys can come from both the left and the right. Wars can be fought against the leadership of a bad guy rather than any particular ideology, and noble conflicts can be manipulated by nefarious entities.
It was possible during the cold war to be an economic leftist and still be against the Soviet Union– not because you saw the folly of absolutism but because you were against cruelty. Likewise you can be on the left OR right and find something to dislike about Putin. His ideology is Putinism. What kind of world resources need to be used to control an outbreak of zealous Putinites? It’s the real question the West (not the left or right) must answer.
The whole world may know certain regimes are murderous or violent, but to what ends are nations or groups of nations willing to go to stop evil? When is it wise to act, when is it not? How important is it to make a point? Those questions are not so much ethical as political. A desire for stability is a common unifying political principle. People like to manage change. This is why there is so little perceived change in diplomatic policy between the Democrats and the Republicans. The devil is in the details.
Morality is seeing things in terms of black and white. Diplomacy is presenting things in shades of grey. Wisdom is stepping back to better see the whole picture. Philosophy is how you interpret what you see.
Which is why I keep asking for discussions on the war about to break out in Ukraine.
The past few days I have been writing about the sources of US foreign policy n the Obama administration.
Once again, just like Vietnam War and the Rand Corporation, there are high level think-tanks who advocate policy of national security, international relations, NATO, defence in Europe and people involved with the Atlantic Council.
In a brief summary:
○ DNI Publication ‘Global Trends 2030’
○ US NATO ambassador Ivo Daalder on containment of Russia making it a pariah state
○ NATO Declares Russia Nr. 1 Adversary, Starts Troops Buildup In Central Europe
○ Kerry Preaching Russia Policy @Atlantic Council
○ US pivots towards Asia, leaving old allies to fend for themselves
As a matter of fact, State Department advisers are still spokespersons for neocon think-tanks. This is simply making sense because of the revolving door policy. President Obama made early concessions on his appointments which defined his legacy. The appointment of big donors to ambassador posts is another blemish on the quality of US diplomacy. Corporations and money set the US blueprint.
Really biases your analysis. By couching her as this all powerful boogeyman who you claim orchestrated all of the events in the Ukraine you not only dismiss that there are a lot of forces at play here you also assume that the Ukrainians are too stupid and naive to have any agency of their own. Basically it is the same view of US influence that the very neo-cons who claim to hate have, that the US alone has the power to influence what goes on in troubled areas of the world. The only difference is that the neo-cons wants us to go in with guns blazing to stop this coup while you assume that we already secretly did so.
Here’s a thought – sometime there is unrest in the world that we didn’t instigate and that we can’t fix with a military invasion. That doesn’t mean we should completely dis-engage but it does mean we should stop assuming that everything is about us.
The US CIA did not do anything but materially support Right Sector and Svoboda in attacking the Ukrainian security services, the same security services by the way that have been seen to Eastern Ukraine to out pro-Russian federalist partisans from public buildings.
The US State Department did not do anything but encourage the EU to issue an ultimatum and link the timing of Svoboda-Right Sector partisan actions to the EU diplomacy so as to frame the legitimacy of the coup. In return the US got to name the interim President, who was more centrist than the bloc of parties that took power.
I am not asserting that the US was all-powerful in this situation but that (1_ the national security establishment: had long-standing unsavory allies in Ukraine with whom they collaborated in a coup; (2) that the coup co-opted and militarized what was a non-violent demonstration against corruption; (3) that the US was not acting as an honest broker in anything that it claimed it was doing to defuse the tension in Ukraine; (4) that the actions taken by someone with close ties to PNAC intended to fulfill the PNAC goals of extending US power and humiliating Russia once again. (5) that the decision-makers brought and are still bringing us close to war with Russia, which despite Russia’s decline is not a trivial matter.
The US has imprudently supported the wrong people, pushed a crisis with the EU ulitmatum at a time that is disruptive to efforts to normalize relations with Iran and broker a settlement in the civil war in Syria. Syria is an example of a situation we did not instigate. Likely when the history is written of Syria we will find that what started out as solidarity between Libyan militias and Syrian soldiers who had mutinied because of government attacks on their relatives, Qatar the supplier of arms to Libya transhipped spare arms to Syria as the Libyan revolution wound down. And the Saudi Arabia started supplying arms. And the US administration started supplying non-lethal aid because of pressure from Republicans and Israel-supporters in Congress.
But Ukraine has been a long-term objective for the US likely dating back to Strobe Talbott or even beyond into the Bush administration. And the brinksmanship over Sebastapol should have been anticipated; that base is a key Russian asset.
Ukrainians aren’t stupid, but they do lack the institutions at the moment (so does the US) that will allow them to come to a solution. And they certainly are not stupid about what EU membership will mean. And they know what federation with Russia will mean. But those people are the ones who are making the decisions; they are not being allowed to make the decisions either by the Russian federalists or Svoboda and Right Sector. The extent to which May 25 allows them to makes some decisions will begin to unwind this crisis. Until Biden’s statement the US has concentrated on sanctions (excepting Exxon-Mobil, so they really are a sham and Putin has ridiculed them as such by imposing his own sanctions).
Unfortunately, there are too many policy makers in DC (and neither Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan) have broken them of it, who think that when you can’t fix it with an invasion, there are always covert operations.
US power is in decline because Congress is starving the infrastructure and prosperity that is the source of that power and continuing boondoggle military projects. George W. Bush broke US moral standing and soft power forever; you see this in the inability of the current administration to break with Bush’s policies. The continuity of personnel between the Bush and Obama administrations are at the root of US foreign policy crises. Where they have been absent, US policy has gone better.
I agree with your fundamental policy posture: international but prudent. It’s prudence we continue to lack, and in my estimation its how the diplomatic chain of information reports events to the President. He is not being served well by his State Department direct reports to John Kerry. He is not being served well at all by his intelligence community direct reports. He is not being served well by his National Security Council. About the only person in the national security apparatus that seems to be giving the President good and timely advice is Gen. Dempsey. There is a structural problem here and not just a policy or philosophical problem. And that structure says that the US is prepared and will intervene in any geographical region of the world, in space, or in cyberspace and it will intervene both defensively and offensively. In each of those regional commands, there are brass and near-brass itching to get those ribbons, that combat experience, and those promotions. That biases everything to military action and recklessness.
That’s what happens when the incentives are not for keeping the peace but just showing up and being in a war. No wonder it’s the largest employer in the world, has almost half of the budget, and can’t seem to stay out of conflict.
No, there isn’t. It’s all run from Langley, and Wall Street. All of it.
Since Wild Bill Donovan ran the OSS. Also the Nazis of Operation Gehlen.
And all of our elections.
P.S. I am not a crank.
Not sure who you’re directing this at, but here’s my answer:
Nuland mentions the five billion spent towards the coup, but you need to be aware of the 70 years that our country has been fomenting trouble in Ukraine, first with the US Army through Reinhard Gehlen’s Org which kept anti-Soviet, Nazi allied Ukrainians continuing a guerrilla war against the Soviet Union until the fifties. The continuity was maintained by the CIA. Unfortunately, we don’t have access to what they spent, what they did, and who got what. Certainly the NED was probably developing Ukrainian politicians for decades. Radio Free Europe has been broadcasting anti-Soviet, then anti-Russian propaganda since the fifties. Some of it has been laced with anti-Semitic propaganda, which is red meat for the Nazis of the west. And most despicably, under the Congress For Freedom the CIA imported lots of fascists and collaborators from eastern Europe and resettled them here in the US, where, as the CIA hoped, they would push immigrant communities to the right.
All of this is on record and can be found easily, if you look it up.
Many Ukrainians hate Russia because Stalin’s collectivization of the farms probably resulted in the starvation of seven million or so in the thirties. They got back by joining the 14th Waffen SS and killing Poles, Russians and Jews during the war. The US has nurtured this hatred for this very day. That’s why no one should be surprised that the street thugs came into Odessa on buses and burned forty people to death in the trade union building. There is now video evidence that some of the fascists were shooting people who were trying to get air or jump from the windows.
So Nuland, Kagan et al are just cogs in the machine. But why Nuland is in Obama’s State Department is the big question, and as I’ve maintained for decades, the foreign policy of the US is directed by someone with a higher GS grade than the President.
Yes, Tarheel!!!
And the fix takes shape.
An anti-DemRat…anti-HRC, really…fix.Who knows what has gone down over the years in the secret world of PermaGov backrooms? Who knows how an untested young Senator suddenly grabbed the ball right out of HRC’s hands the first time around, or why the media cooperated in the “Obama is Superman!!!” scam?
The PermaGov doesn’t seem to like HRC in a position of executive power. Can’t imagine why, but there it is. Maybe it was that “vast right-wing conspiracy” reference. They do like the Bush boys, though.
Watch.
I think that they are running an anti-HRC game now, myself. Thus the Benghazi brouhaha. Thus the “slippery slope” on which Superman has been busily slipping down since he was re-(
s)elected.Tough boys, these Deep State backroom hustlers.
Tough boys.
Watch.
AG
what would you like me to say about Ukraine?
I don’t know what the fuck is going on there, nor do I have any magic wand to fix the problem.
I’ll confess that due to an intense work schedule I haven’t had time to understand Ukraine properly so I’ve just completely ignored it. I’m surprised how happy I’ve been with this decision. I see Ukraine being talked about on Sky News or CNN in the airports and, unlike with other issues, I have zero context so nothing they say bothers me in the slightest.
I’m obviously very sympathetic to the people suffering due to the events there, though I can’t even say how many or how badly any suffering is. But that’s true of tens of thousands of bad situations all over the world.
There was an Italian movie called “The Conformist”.
you obviously haven’t looked at dKos, where much of the discussion of Ukraine has been so bad that a blackout would be preferable.
Adventures of Deep State
Well, they see things like this and they know that, lacking any monumental scandal between now and 2016, that they have NOTHING with which to damage Clinton’s stature if they can’t convince voters at large that Benghazi is equal to Watergate.
If this trajectory is not drastically changed, then Republicans know they are toast.
The GOP spent $60 million (1992 thru 2000) and never proved that Bill or Hillary had anything to do with Whitewater. It took 6 yrs for the GOP to move from the Select Com. to a Special Pros…Ken Starr. Wash, Rinse, Repeat?
But he’ll be responsible for the neo-Nazis burning people alive in Ukraine. Fortunately, John McCain is tied to the fascists too.
If you put pictures in like that, we’ll all assume it’s an Arthur Gilroy post and just keep scrolling…
Well, at least he didn’t add a bunch of single sentences with full returns between each one.
Oh, but think of what you might be missing!!!
AG
I think that you are right about there being a shift to Hillary being the target. But the strategy relative to the 2014 election is to create noise that drives relevant issues off the media landscape and allows more of their local political ad drivel to take hold.
There will be not events short of World War III (which they are working on) or the Apocalypse (which they are praying for) that will disrupt the 24-7 battering of the consciousness of American voters with noisy drivel about the Benghazi investigation.
In the committee drama, there will be lots of “Answer the question, Secretary” moments, warranted or not.
Issa seems to specialize in flogging dead horse in hopes they will come back to life.
“Ian Swanson thinks, the Republicans think”
This sums up the real flaw in your logic here. You are giving the above mentioned people credit for having the ability to reason sanely.
May I ask if you can show one example of any GOP members showing this ability in the last 6 years? If so please list them to support your hypothesis. Just playing
This is pretty much my thinking. We’re trying to find a rationale to make sense of something that makes no sense. No sense logically, politically, ethically, morally. I call it Benghazi Derangement Syndrome (BDS), a close cousin to ODS, Obamacare Derangement Syndrome.
Isn’t this just “base coddling”? Isn’t this red meat for Red State?
More than a few of them are enraptured by their own bullshit and probably believe – via psychological projection – that Obama is guilty of all the shit they WOULD have done.
But this feels like keeping the Wurlitzer humming until Novemeber.
My guess is that they just got tired of waiting for a better excuse. As Donald Rumsfeld might say, you go to a witch hunt with the phony scandal you have, not the phony scandal you might wish you had. The important thing is to start the hearings. Sooner or later something impeachable is bound to turn up, right? It worked with Clinton, anyway.
I think it’s amusing that they think this issue resonates with voters who exist outside their bubble. And for the people who care about it, they were going to vote GOP anyway.
While it inverses the order in how you’ve titled this Booman, …and adds another ‘?’ – the question I imagine you’re asking is a little more philosophical (but that could just be me):
“Are they really crazy? (not a particularly satisfying conclusion, so…) Why are they doing this?”
I am always seduced to believe that Logic and Competent Rational Analysis (CRA), will necessarily lead to the understanding of someone’s reasoning, their behavior, their conclusions (even if the Logic and CRA leads me to an understanding of the reasoning, behavior, etc. which the ‘someone’ disagrees with, or can not comprehend; the latter, for instance, my cat’s pavlovian response to the sound of a can opener. (I suppose this seduction is my crutch for contending with this particular damn incarnation I find myself in)).
So I often wonder – what perspective, what fundamental belief, am I not able imagine? – when I just can’t figure out the How, the Why of someone’s thinking.
To settle for ‘they’re crazy’ is just not satisfying. But, in a case like this I see no alternative but to conclude, for them:
Benghazi = Bacon.
If it is the manic dog in that TV ad, or Homer Simpson, or me – some things, for some folks just are inherently attractive. That there is nothing more to understand than that.
Sure, we can try to apply Logic and CRA, reach the conclusion that it’s the salt and fat that underlie what compels the dog, and Homer, and me. But I just don’t think that really explains it.
I believe there is a certain je ne sais wha!? inherent in the bacon that currently defies our knowing. That leaves us only being able to grasp; Edible and Ineffable.
Consume and Be Ecstatic, Bacon Is.
Just like some people can not taste Saffron, just like some of us find cilantro bitter, alkaline and no more a food product than bleach cleanser is, I have to conclude that yes, for those that are compelled to the manic and rapturous seizure-like behavior of the audience at the Beatles Shea stadium performance, I just can’t understand their enthusiasm and dedication in any other way than to see, for them;
Benghazi is Bacon.
…or maybe it’s just exactly what TarheelDem said up above.
(but simply agreeing with that would not have been anywhere near as much fun for me – thanks for the place to play Booman).
There’s nothing crazy about banging the drum and simply allowing the festering pool that is the American Psyche reach its own conclusions, much like Cheney did so well inferring the “mushroom cloud” meme without any basis in fact, much like Cheney did so well inferring Al Qaeda was associated with Iraq: I NEVER said that!
All the public hears is “something something STAND DOWN ORDER something something AMBASSADOR KILLED” and it doesn’t have to be anything connected to reality. It sinks in and becomes a meme.
There is a method to their madness. It’s marketing.
Except that eventually you cry wolf too many times. More and more people are realizing the Republicans are completely full of crap. They’re playing to an ever-shrinking audience.
Cry wolf? I’m not sure GOP has heard of that one…
It’s not good marketing, though.
There isn’t one swing voter in the country who gives a fuck about Benghazi. But there are plenty who care about the dysfunction and endless bickering in Washington.
They aren’t going to win votes with this. They are going to lose votes.
And, if Hillary Clinton becomes our nominee in two years, people will so goddamned sick of hearing the word Benghazi that she’ll have total immunity from any association with that tragedy.
“It’s not good marketing, though.”
I’m not sure GOP knows any form of marketing it doesn’t think is good…
That’s where I think that they think you’re wrong.
Nobody cared about Kerry and the Swift Boats until all of a sudden everyone did. You’re thinking about this like an intelligent person: ‘why are these Republicans raising issues that nobody gives a shit about, and that aren’t even that negative?’
So in the next two years, when a friend says, ‘I dunno, Clinton looks pretty good, I’m ashamed to admit,’ they can say, ‘Clinton?? Holy crap! What about Benghazi? Do you even know what down there?’ And the friend will say, having no clue, ‘yeah, good point. Maybe I won’t vote for her.’
It’s something to say, instead of an argument, that is an unadulterated and unanswerable (because wtf?) negative.
Except that the Swift Boat thing jumped out at everyone, and was perceived as a direct response to Kerry’s “reporting for duty” speech. In fact I think the first TV ad came out within a week of the Democratic convention. It was an ambush, in a sense.
By the time even the primary campaign officially begins for Hillary, Benghazi will be old, old news. That’s what Boo means by her being inoculated against it. It’ll be about as useful a political attack as trying to resurrect Whitewater to use against her.
“…trying to resurrect Whitewater to use against her.”
As the saying goes, it ain’t over ’til the fat lady sings. I fully expect every scandal of the Clinton Administration will be trotted out.
It may have been “perceived as a direct response” but the planning started in December 2003 before Rove knew who the Democratic nominee was. The reason for that “perception” was that the media made it that way – after the shady group that was indirectly funded via Rove had a small ad buy (maybe $150k IIRC), every news channel spent all of August covering the topic as major news, including PBS. If they’d been real reporters at least half of the reporting would have been about how Rove planned it and the quasi-legal methods he used to get around campaign finance laws.
And that is going to be the test this time around.
Will the media basically be moderately pro-GOP, as they have been since 2007 or so, or will they go back to being totally in the tank for the GOP as they were from 1993 until 2006? I’ve been concerned that we’ll go back to the days of Whitewater and Commander Codpiece after the media collectively forgets just how badly the GOP fucked things up when they got all three branches of the govt.
If this were 1993 the NY Times would be running front page novellas on Benghazi weekly, as they did with Whitewater and every other scandal that American Spectator vomited up.
Exactly, and good example to illustrate. While “swing voters” (which I am not convinced are a thing) may not be aware of it, that serves all the more purpose to remind them of it. I think it’s called gaining “Market Penetration”.
These folks worship the free market. From a market point of view, product advertising wouldn’t be done if it wasn’t effective.
Not only that, now GOP has a taxpayer funded marketing plan, in the form of committee hearings. Whoopie!
Maybe, but there are all kinds of differences. Kerry never had the kinds of polls that Clinton does, for instance, and 2004 was still close enough that a lot of people aren’t convinced that Kerry actually lost. So it’s not at all clear that the Swift Boats thing did him in.
And of course the War on Terror was a much hotter topic then as well. Not to mention, it’s hard to imagine how any potential Republican candidate could turn this to his advantage. If they want to start poking into the whole terrorism issue, they’re forgetting something pretty important.
That’s where I think that they think you’re wrong.
Nobody cared about Kerry and the Swift Boats until all of a sudden everyone did. You’re thinking about this like an intelligent person: ‘why are these Republicans raising issues that nobody gives a shit about, and that aren’t even that negative?’
So in the next two years, when a friend says, ‘I dunno, Clinton looks pretty good, I’m ashamed to admit,’ they can say, ‘Clinton?? Holy crap! What about Benghazi? Do you even know what down there?’ And the friend will say, having no clue, ‘yeah, good point. Maybe I won’t vote for her.’
It’s something to say, instead of an argument, that is an unadulterated and unanswerable (because wtf?) negative.
The problem is that an ideologically-based political movement will promote the most committed of ideologues into leadership. Then the tea party in the Republican case has established itself as the protectors of the orthodoxy.
The result is that when the orthodoxy fails, there is no way to back away from it, so the only acceptable reason why the orthodoxy could fail is that those who implemented it did so with inadequate zeal.
That’s Boehner’s position now. Benghazi as an issue has failed to damage either Obama or most important, Hillary Clinton, so Boehner’s choices are to back away (Unacceptable!) or to double down on what Issa has been doing.
Everything would certainly be turned on its head if the ‘Remember Bengahzi’ crowd does indeed come up with the negative goods that can stick. Maybe there’s a Cuba connection. You might also just say they’re working on instinct, emotions, whatever you want to call it and stop looking for so-called rational explanations. But you can’t rule out that it won’t work. Just consider the cruel, illegal war on Iraq and the Powell show-and-tell skit at the U.N.
As for Ms Kagan (aka Ms Nuland) she spilled the beans and now she and her friends in DC need to clean up the mess. Or are they planning to make the mess worse? The lawfully elected president of Ukraine turned his back on the E.U. when Putin gave him a better financial deal than the E.U. and the IMF (what a gloriously neutral, objective organization, that is! will it one day get the U.S. itself in its clutches?, as a friend of ours might say here, ‘bet on it’). What’s the expression, follow the money or something like that. So what’s the big mystery. If Ms Nuland (for the sake of mythology let’s suppose she’s an imperial goddess whose attribute is a cell phone) had only waited a year, the Ukrainians would have probably voted in a decisively western-oriented government and everything would have worked like a charm. The question is: were the gods impatient and did they decide to force the issu? If so, they’d say they did it for the Ukrainian people (whoever they are). Now I’m reminded of that bridge in Brooklyn which is still for sale.
Above: read ‘You can’t rule out that it MIGHT work.’
It’s about 2014.
Medicaid for all >>> death panels.
Progessives have a reflexive need to attribute mad ninjas skills to their opponents, when fear and incompetence are far more likely to be the prime motivators.
It was the Republican right wingnuts that were the ones that were up in arms about the video on day one. They were the ones who were outraged that the Egyptian embassy staff issued a statement distancing the US Government from that movie.
I remember them railing on about how Obama didn’t support freedom of speech.
They were the ones making hay of the movie that they now dismiss as meaningless.
Romney was out there spouting off about Obama/State Dept. failures while demonstrators were still outside the Cairo Embassy and before the wingnuts had been incited by their handlers. But you’re correct that they did push the “free speech” line along with “Muslims go crazy” ala the Danish Mohammad cartoon.
Some are saying this is about impeachment. If the Rep could impeach Clinton for lying to Congress is it a stretch to think they can impeach Obama if they can find a Benghazi ‘you lie’ moment?
They’re not crazy, but their base is. They got primary elections coming up and they need to look sufficiently butch.
They lost on the debt ceiling, lost on Obamacare repeal, lost on tax cuts, gay marriage. Even if you doubt that, it’s their perception of the situation. The GOP base believes that leadership is soft and leadership needs to do something to address that. Hopefully no Democrats will participate in the select committee and it will all look like the utter nonsense that it is.