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It’s Time to Ask: Are We the Baddies?
I don’t mean “we” average Americans out here in flyover country. That’s always the way, isn’t it? It’s not the people of a nation we’re averse to. It’s their ruling authorities. In particular, the longtime foreign policy establishment — at least since the Reagan administration — or those whom Benjamin Braddock refers to as The Architects of Our Present Disaster.
The linked article is a semi-long read by my standards, but I simply “couldn’t put it down.” It’s packed with more information than I’ve ever had about American intervention and malfeasance in foreign affairs. It particularly calls out the color revolutions sponsored by the US in Ukraine, Belarus, and Libya, for starters. There have been 50-some attempts by the “smart set” in our foreign policy enterprise according to Braddock.
Here’s the (correct) angry outburst highlight:
These are people who think they’re clever enough to deal with powerful foreign countries run by sane people. They’re not, and those foreign powers have taken note of that fact. The kind of Americans the world fears or respects have been put out of government and military leadership and replaced by a menagerie of nursing home patients, human resources ladies, affirmative action hires, sexual degenerates, and obese four-star generals angling for board seats on the next Theranos start-up. The day of reckoning has arrived. Leaders like Putin, Xi, and Mohammed bin Salman are no longer amenable to being pushed around and morally browbeaten by the circus freaks that constitute the United States Government.
But, the rest is a must-read to understand the “present disaster.”
Published in General
Thank you for bringing that piece to our attention. It should be widely read and distributed.
Voters are absentee landlords, and slums develop wherever we go. We vote for people we don’t know and don’t supervise. They go off, with our money and our silence-is-consent blessing and do terrible things around the world and inside our own country.
The only answer is a dramatically decentralized government where it is closer to our homes physically and answerable to local voters.
Do you mean after the Reagan administration, or are you including the Reagan administration itself in that critique?
At least Reagan’s people weren’t delusional it seems. Read the article.
And there is the missing piece that no one talks about. Yanukovich rejected a BullS**t deal and got quashed by western greed.
These are the people that educated the Conservative right on foreign policy. All of the right’s heroes are embedded and embroiled in these disasters.
Trump was the BEST president since Reagan on foreign policy. He understood the proper thinking that most foreign leaders engage in where issues of sovereignty, independence, and governance are concerned – concepts that post-Great Wars Europe has been so laden in false shame over that they have wholly rejected these traditional philosophies as backwards and toxic.
Europe’s refusal to learn from mistakes of the Great Wars has created a power vacuum that has been filled by a truly destructive foreign policy that rivals Assyria in its destruction.
Ever since Congress capped the number of Representatives at 435, I find it difficult to blame the voters on this score. The average population of a Congressional district is now 761,000 people. There’s no way that the voters in a district that large can possibly get to know the candidates.
Personally, I see no problem with the House of Representatives having 11,000 members as per George Washington’s preference, especially in the 21st Century post-COVID age when Reps can watch the House on CSPAN, take meetings via Zoom, and the taboo against voting by proxy has already been broken. The number of seats was fixed at 435 way back in 1929 when only 10% of the US had a friggin‘ telephone. In my fantasy system they’d still be required to be physically in Washington if they want to address the House or introduce legislation, but that’s about it.
“But what about the cost?” people cry, but you could easily pay each one less and give each one a smaller office budget (i.e. the way the New Hampshire House of Representatives does it). If you split the current total compensation of the House of Representatives by 11,000 it comes to about $6,881 per year.
Ok, that might be a little low, so I’d be open to capping the salary of a member of the House to the GDP per capita of the United States, which is currently about $63,000 (i.e. less than half their current salaries, but still a decent living). This would create an incentive for Congress to focus on the economic health of the nation because their salaries would rise and fall as the GDP per capita rises and falls.
“But how can a legislature that large possibly get anything done?” As if Congress is super productive now with only 435 members? Puh-leaze.
End of rant.
(Edited because I realized that I was stupidly thinking that the Constitution says no more than 30,000 people per representative, when of course it really says no more than one representative per 30,000 people. There is currently way less than one representative per 30,000 people so the current apportionment is perfectly constitutional. Mea culpa.)
Another quote from the article:
“Biden declared upon taking office, “America’s back,” which is only true if you define America as a government run by insane kleptocratic clowns whose problem-solving abilities amount to those of a farmer who sets fire to his cotton fields to drive out the boll weevils.”
That about covers this “administration,” such as it is. I knew the shameful Libya debacle, but not the more complex and recent mess. We are in serious trouble. Putin is not the devil many make him out to be. Brutal and ruthless, yes. But much more complex, as is always the case with foreign intrigues.
BCCI was the slush fund for the CIA, so that makes a convenient starting point which erupted on Reagan’s watch through a certain Vice President.
If I had to guess, no one actually has standing to bring a case. Except maybe members of Congress.
Highlighted for emphasis. ; )
The Board of Control for Cricket in India ?
I almost immediately edited my comment to explain the real reason. I was reading the Constitution way wrong.
Some day I’ll learn to double-check my comments before clicking the “Comment” button, but not this day!
Bush Clinton Corruption Inquisition
No.
The United States of America has a long and rich tradition of pretty sorry foreign policy. This is not new.
What occurred to me after reading this is that Putin is more rational than I gave him credit for, given how unreliable if not malign US policy has been.
I have believe this for years. One can be a criminal and be devious and smart without being nuts. He’s, by temperament, been considered cautious and strategic in his moves. This doesn’t mean he’s infallible or unable to make mistakes.
All too true. Reagan and Trump were refreshing aberrations in that their foreign policies were blunt and direct and focused on what was best for America and Americans.
Hitler made a really big deal out of the Versailles Peace Treaty–that it was not fair to Germany. In truth, it wasn’t, although historians today disagree on how badly it wronged Germany for World War I. And while he had everyone staring at their feet in guilt, he took over Western Europe.
That’s a cautionary tale for today. Putin had no right to invade Ukraine. Putin had no right to force 2 million people into refugee flight. He is a callous dictator. He needs to be stopped. Tell him to take his complaints about Ukraine to the United Nations. His country has been a member since 1945.
I agree Putin is a baddie too. But, I now see why he might see this aggression as a means to his personal survival. And maybe for the good of Russia, too, if he doesn’t want to see his country turned into the next Libya after he’s deposed.
I’m not sure I understand. We’re not the baddies, but we’ve been the baddies for a long time?
I took that as good intentions, poor performance.
This can be done by bringing functions back to the state and local level and restoring Senate positions to appointment and recall by those elected state officials. Such action would also allow the POTUS to concentrate attention on foreign affairs, national defense, trade, border control, customs, and immigration, and stop interfering in the daily lives of Americans and the people in foreign nations..
WC, I like the post, and thanks for the linked article. I do have a bit of concern about one part:
This has been our propaganda for a long time. I’ve questioned it for quite a while, especially since the “war on terror.”
There do seem to be a great many people around the world who see things differently than we do. They have their own religions, their own cultures, their own languages, and their own institutions. They don’t seem to want to be like us. They may even support ideas and ideologies that we don’t much like.
Between these cultural disagreements and the inevitability of a clash of interests between countries, it seems to me that we should expect to have adversaries around the world until the Lord returns. Often, the people of a country will be the problem, from our perspective.
I do think that our Founders’ general policy is the best one. I did not used to think so. I’m a former neocon. I now think that we should meddle far less in the affairs of other nations. We should form coalitions to counter serious threats to our interests.
Indeed, the Versailles Treaty wasn’t nearly as punitive as the treaties that were imposed on Austria-Hungary or the Ottoman Empire. Nor was it particularly more punitive than the treaties that had ended other wars in the previous decades.
Except I still struggle to figure out how a Siberian nationalist (?) murdering the sympathetic Hungarian prince results in GERMANY bearing the brunt of WWI.
I’m not an avid studied of that war, but that’s what I try to figure out when I do.
What we should have learned from WWI leading to WWII is that sanctioning a country that is torn by war to the point that everyone around them is profiting off their corpse a and their currency becomes worthless creates dictators that lash out with the sizable support of their nation.
a) He was Serbian.
b) Long answer: It’s because Austria-Hungary went to war with Serbia which was an ally of Russia so Russia declared war on Austria-Hungary which was an ally of Germany so Germany declared war on Russia which was an ally of France so France declared war on Germany and then in order to get to France Germany first invaded Belgium which was neutral and that’s just not cricket! Besides, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire got it way worse than Germany did. At least Germany was allowed to continue existing as a sovereign state.
Short answer: Germany lost the war.