Uri Friedman, Defense One: America is facing a dangerous enemy. We just can’t agree who it is.
Among those who believe the U.S. is engaged in an ideological struggle, there is division on the question of which ideology represents the greatest threat to America: ISIS-style radical Islam or Russian-style autocracy.
Maybe the idea of the US being engaged in an ideological struggle is meant to force some domestic policies on Americans unrelated to the international political conflicts they use as justification.
The emphasis on radical Islamic terrorism certainly is being used to undermine what we used to call “integration” and now is called “diversity” undergirded with an ideology of “multiculturalism”.
The emphasis on Russian-style autocracy is being used to force down progressives of the Sanders mold who believe that government can have a beneficial role to play in the economy, especially in the provision of infrastructure. Also the secret and militarized state we have been living in for 70 years and intensely for the past 16 years has taken us away from democratic governance, human rights, and justice–those hopes that we had fifty years ago.
Both efforts are aimed at the “ideas” of “the enemy within”.
Both gloss over some very significant details about the historical relationships between US diplomacy and foreign policy and the origins of the conflicts.
Both are essentially for internal political consumption and electoral politics. Both avoid realistic discussions about policy and demand affirmation of “patriotism”.
Both are silly in that “clapping harder” doesn’t deal with the real challenges in the growth of low-cost asymmetric warfare in the past two decades nor does it deal with the failure of the US electoral process to deliver a government supportive of the constitution. If you want to look at a source for the first, it is the Reagan administration and succeeding administrations’ arming of factions in other people wars. It is the provision of cheaper and cheaper means of effective battle. Thank DARPA.
Cynics would say that part of the unofficial job of military leadership is to preserve the reason for being of militaries. Never allow agreements that will completely end the institution of war. After the scare with the Cuban Missile Crisis and Vietnam, the US military has gone above and beyond on this, don’t you think?
As for the failure of the electoral system, it was not Putin and Russian oligarchs but our own homegrown oligarchs acting through secret slushfunds called political action committees that bid up elected officials so much that parties lost discipline. And they could buy the politicians directly. Each party now has its coterie of oligarchs, who are most interested in shutting other people out. Most recently the Democrat coterie associated with Haim Saban showed itself and its power in enforcing the first ideological assertion: no Muslims can be trusted. That turned an insignificant election of a party functionary into a high-stakes ideological fight.
The Koch Brothers have used the American Legislative Exchange Council to seed the rapid-fire legislative and gerrymandering turnover after a surprise election victory — Wisconsin, Michigan, Florida, North Carolina, Kansas — who’s next? — into massive, insane and quick changes. Ending public union power in Wisconsin; saddling minority communities in Michigan with appointed emergency managers; restoring discrimination through NC HB-2–those moves were planned out by the oligarchs like Kochs for shrinking government’s role and DeVos for culture wars against minorities and those outside of strict binomial gender roles, orientation, identity, or symbolic typing. And then there is the rising expense of privatization of infrastructure and creation of yet new oligarchs.
But we are to “Look over there!” in order to avoid looking to closely here. And looking at the campaign consultants for Democrats in recent elections who either do not know how to win elections or have some post-political expectations for losing the right elections. Unemployment apparently is not one of those post-political expectations.
To all of those well-paid Democratic consultants in DC: Heckuva a job guys and gals. I’ve never witnessed so determined an effort at destroying a political party. I would say, “Too bad it was your own” except I’m beginning to question that. Who exactly is your loyalty to?