Streetwise Professor

Where’s my World War III? I was promised a World War III!

As for indicators that the fact that the US blowed up Qassem Suleimani real good will not set off WWIII, or even Middle East Regional War MCCCLV, look at the oil price: it’s lower today than when Gen. Suleimani’s bell tolled.

The vaunted Iranian retaliation was of the “we have to do something but please don’t hurt me anymore” variety: they launched a few missiles towards bases in Iraq, and fewer still landed there, and those few that landed did not even inflict a scratch on an American.

This allowed Trump to act magnanimously. And limit his response to imposing more sanctions.

That is, the Dirty Harry equilibrium appears to be playing out. A rational thug put his hand on the gun, looked into the muzzle of a 44 magnum, and thought the better of it. Expectations have been reset. Deterrence has been revitalized.

“It is better to be feared than loved, when one cannot be both.” There is no way in hell the mullahs will ever love us: so fear it has to be.

There is other evidence that the mullahs and their security forces were petrified at the prospect of a robust US counterstrike–tragic evidence. It appears increasingly likely that a Ukrainian 737 that went down about the time Iran shot off its missiles was shot down by the Iranians. Interested parties–the US (though not yet officially), Ukraine, and Canada (which had many nationals on board)–have said it was highly likely that was indeed the case. Occam’s Razor says the same: the likelihood of a relatively new 737 spontaneously catching fire and crashing with no communication from the pilots is small indeed.

Shooting down a civilian airliner betrays an extremely jumpy–i.e., afraid–Iranian military that was dreading a US strike. It is horrible outcome–but one that rests entirely on the mullahs.

But not in the minds of many of the American “elite.” Apparently a memo went out dictating that talking heads assert that the plane was the victim of “crossfire,” and that the US generally, and Trump specifically, was to blame.

Representative of this regurgitation of the crossfire talking point was Susan Hennessey, well-known member of Lawfare, and hence a polyp in the colon of “The Resistance” and the deep state:

https://twitter.com/Susan_Hennessey/status/1215364827599790082

Hennessey received much push-back on her “crossfire” remark (as apparently did NBC journalist Heidi Przybyla, who cravenly deleted her tweet), and she felt compelled to respond, pissily:

https://twitter.com/Susan_Hennessey/status/1215384732688683017

Susie brings to mind Humpty Dumpty: “When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less. ” To non-Humptys, the word “crossfire” requires, you know, at least two people shooting. There was only one party shooting (evidently) in Iran. That being Iran. The US fired nary a shot after Senor Suleimani bit the dust.

Insofar as this was a consequence of Trump’s decision to respond to Suleimani’s extremely long history of terror–a history he reveled in–and the threat of terror to come, that is also squarely on the mullahs. They acted as if there were no consequences that they weren’t prepared to accept. Then there were. And then they panicked, and killed a further 176 people.

But everything must be blamed on Trump. Everything.

Along these lines, the media keeps slobbering over Suleimani, telling us how universally revered he is in Iran (while ignoring the other places in the Middle East where he is hated), and speaking in awed tones about the crowd at his funeral.

Arguendo, let’s assume that he is/was universally venerated in Iran. That is, a man who avowedly hated the United States, and ceaselessly waged war on it, and panted for its destruction (and that of Israel). What would that say about Iranians, and their attitude to the US?

Is that really the mullaphiles want to convey? Or are they just too stupid to grasp the implications of their idolatry?

The obliteration of Qassem Suleimani has done a great public service, if only for demonstrating the extreme levels of mental retardation among the so-called “elite.”

ZOMG! This will start WWIII.

Which is an extreme dumbing down of the concept of WWIII, which formerly was used to refer to a conflict between two powers possessing tens of thousands of nuclear warheads, and alliances encompassing dozens of nations. Iran has no nukes, and no allies. So other than that–totes the same!

A corollary stupidity is: ZOMG! They will reintroduce the draft! (Note that the Selective Service website crashed because of queries prompted by Gen. Suleimani’s impromptu car-b-que.)

ZOMG! Iranians are in the streets, chanting “Death to America!”

Which they’ve been doing for 40 effing years.

ZOMG! The Iranians will retaliate with terrorism!

Which they’ve also been doing for 40 effing years.

And let’s apply a little game theory. The equilibrium prevailing prior to January 2 could be characterized as the Chump Equilibrium. The Iranian leadership, Suleimani most notably, clearly believed that they could engage in a significant level of asymmetric warfare against the US without fear of serious retaliation or escalation from the US. The best evidence of this is the brazenness with which Suleimani operated.

Iranian beliefs were fully consistent with past American behavior. This explains their escalation in Iraq and elsewhere.

But then Trump demonstrates conclusively that the old beliefs are incorrect by smoking Suleimani. Whereas before, the mullahs and their military and paramilitary henchmen could operate on the belief that the US would not target their sorry selves, they now have to assign a considerable probability to the possibility that if they take American lives, they will pay a very personal cost.

So we have transitioned to the Dirty Harry Equilibrium: “Do you feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?”

In the original Dirty Harry, the rational thug backed off: the crazy thug didn’t, and took a 44 magnum round to the chest.

We will now see whether the mullahs are rational thugs, or crazy ones. Personally, it doesn’t really matter to me. Or to reprise another Dirty Harry trope: “Go ahead. Make my day.”

The Iranians will certainly “play” crazy, in the hope of buffaloing the Euroweenies and the bedwetters in the US. Here, the very fact that said Euroweenies and bedwetters are virulently anti-Trump means this is another losing tactic, for this means that Trump DGAFF what they think or what they say.

So my prediction is that the intensity of Iranian asymmetric warfare will decrease, not increase.

There is other evidence that Trump has totally upended the mullah’s calculations. They are suffocating under the sanctions that Trump has imposed, and have engaged in various provocations (shooting down a US drone, attacking Gulf shipping and Saudi oil installations), almost certainly in the hope of provoking a response (e.g., a bombing campaign against Iran) that would that would rally world opinion behind Iran, eventually leading to the lifting of sanctions.

But Trump didn’t fall for that. Instead, he made a completely unexpected play greatly raised the dangers the mullahs face, and which did not create the innocent victims that the mullahs were hoping to exploit to undo the sanctions regime that is throttling them.

Not that the retarded elites in the US, and the West generally, have not done their level best to make Suleimani look like an innocent victim. The slobbering and blubbering over this evil thug in the media precincts, and the Democratic Party (same diff, I know) is a sight to behold.

Which will also redound to Trump’s benefit, as the Americans the Democrats need to persuade will be revolted by their eulogizing and lionizing someone who has waged war against the US for his entire adult life, and who reveled in killing and maiming Americans.

If anything, the idiocy is metastasizing, rather than abating. Today the media seized on an alleged letter from a US brigadier general to some Iraqi military figure, supposedly stating that the US was preparing to withdraw from Iraq.

Why would anyone take this seriously, or without a Siberian salt mine? Consider the problems:

1. The letter was not signed.
2. Does anyone with two synapses to rub together believe that such a major decision would be communicated first by an Army BG, rather than by the President, the Secretary of State, or the Secretary of Defense? FFS, there are BGs who serve coffee in Pentagon meetings.
3. What is the likelihood that this represented US policy a mere hours after the cause of yesterday’s media freakout: Trump’s tweets saying that the US would not leave Iraq until they paid billions for the bases we built, and if they tried to force the US out, we would impose sanctions that would make those imposed on Iran “look somewhat tame by comparison”?

The story is now that this was a draft of a letter regarding redeployments within Iraq, and was sent without authorization–or a signature! Maybe–or maybe it is part of some accidentally-on-purpose psyop. It definitely psyched out the media.

But regardless, rather than expressing skepticism, the media ran with it, breathlessly–and brainlessly. (And maybe that was the point of the psyop–to demonstrate just how retarded the media is.)

Nigerian princes should focus their email scams on journalists. They’ll believe anything, apparently.

Another story making the rounds (courtesy of the NYT–you’ve been warned) is that, based on anonymous sources (I’m sure you’re shocked) the US military presented Trump with many options, and included whacking Suleimani as the extreme option, expecting Trump to choose the middle door instead. They were shocked, shocked!, that Trump went for the extreme.

Remember: there are loads of Obama-appointed people embedded throughout the government, including at high levels of the armed forces. Take every leak with a huge degree of skepticism.

And of course there is a counter narrative, 180 degrees from the NYT version. The WaPo states that Pompeo had been pushing to kill Suleimani for months, and that it took considerable persuasion, and the removal of numerous Pentagon officials, to get Trump to agree.

So take your choice. But discount both.

The fact is that Suleimani is dead, and that as a result the mullahs have to think seriously that Lockheed Martin or Boeing is putting the finishing touches on a toy with their name on it. All of the rest is sound and fury, signifying nothing. Or less than nothing.

If reality mirrors Beetlejuice, wherein you spend eternity in the condition in which you left this mortal coil, sometime last night a cloud of pink mist reeking of RDX and rocket fuel wafted through hell, that being all that was left of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Force commander Qassem Suleimani after an aptly named Hellfire missile interrupted his trip from the Baghdad Airport. I’d say rest in pieces, but I don’t think there are any.

I asked an Iranian friend what he thought. Beyond being giddy (for pace the WaPo, not every Iranian “revered” the thug or hates Trump), he related that he had been reading the “regime media,” and that it was in a state of “absolute shock.”

As well it might. Suleimani was no doubt shocked, or would have been in the instant before Hellfire lived up to its name. He obviously thought he was untouchable, shuttling between Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, frequently appearing in public, and pretty much living the life of a terrorist rockstar who never dreamed that Great Satan (or even Little Satan) would attack him personally.

And perhaps that sense of impunity was understandable. The Bush and Obama administrations blamed him personally for hundreds of American deaths–and did nothing. They restrained the Israelis from snuffing him.

And Trump did nothing after Iran shot down an American drone. Or after attacks on Gulf shipping. Or after an attack on the most important Saudi oil installation.

Complacency is quite understandable, therefore.

So what changed? Well, in fact Trump made this abundantly clear, and did so on Twitter of course. Under Suleimani’s direction, Iraqi militias killed an American, launched an attack on sovereign US territory (its embassy in Baghdad) and was apparently planning additional attacks on American. Trump said if you kill Americans, you will pay. And he said that wasn’t a warning, it was a threat.

Khameini retorted “you can do nothing.” And Trump replied: “Really? Hold my Diet Coke.”

Trump’s red line is clear as day: Iran kills Americans, and he will kill those responsible. A return to the “Pedicaris alive or Raisuli dead” model of foreign policy, but expressed via Twitter rather than the telegraph. And using Hellfires and JDAMs rather than the Marines or gunboats.

The conventional wisdom set is of course in a state of apoplexy. Despite the fact that Suleimani gleefully directed the deaths and maiming of hundreds of Americans, the media and Democratic politicians engaged in a frenzy of but tweeting; “Yeah, he was horrible, but . . . ” Hell, some skipped over the horrible part altogether and made the guy sound like some sort of paragon.

The most comment lament–shriek would be more accurate–is that this will cause a massive retaliatory response from Iran. Really? These people remind me of the See-and-Say Barbie my daughters used to play with: pull the string, and they say the same damn thing over and over.

The Iranians will no doubt compelled to do something, but Trump has obviously completely upended their assumptions about American responses to their actions. They killed one American contractor, threaten our embassy, and we take out their most important operational figure.

The Iranians, unlike the bleating conventional wisdom complex, understand escalation dominance. The American capacity to escalate dwarfs Iran’s. The US can extirpate Iran, or its leadership, or its military capability, or any inconvenient individual. The American potential for escalation dominance in beyond question.

The mullahs of course knew this, but clearly doubted the American will to escalate in a way that seriously threatened them. Hence Suleimani’s hubristic existence up to the moment of his vaporization.

The mullah’s palpable shock demonstrates that they now understand Trump’s will is far different from his predecessors, or that of the foreign policy establishment in the US.

Deterrence requires a combination the capability to destroy and the will to use it. The capability has always been there. The Iranians now know that they have to dramatically alter their assessment of the will.

Given that, don’t be surprised if the hand wringers are wrong. Again.

In 1678, two religious fanatics, Titus Oates and Israel Tonge, created a long document that supposedly revealed a plot led by the Pope, and to be carried out by English Jesuits, to kill King Charles II of England. Oates and Tonge used subterfuge to bring the document to the King’s attention. Although he dismissed it, the document touched off sweeping investigations that eventually led to the execution–including by drawing and quartering–of 22 innocent individuals.

The controversy over the “Popish Plot” convulsed England for three years. It helped feed the controversy over the Exclusion Bill (designed to prevent Charles’ Catholic brother James from succeeding to the throne).

Eventually the public became convinced that Oates’ and Tonge’s charges were fabrications, and the frenzy abated. But not without political consequence: those politicians of the faction which would become to known as the Whigs who had been most ardent for the prosecution of the Plot and the Exclusion Bill were widely branded as subversives and extremists, and went into eclipse for some years (until the then James II was overthrown by William of Orange). The Popish Plot first empowered, then fatally undermined, the Whigs.

In the end, everything in the Oates-Tonge dossier was found to be a complete fabrication.

Twain said that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. Substitute Putin for the Pope, and Steele for Oates, and what has transpired for the last three years in the US does rhyme with what happened in England around 340 years ago.

In 1969, Laurence Peter introduced the “Peter Principle” to the world: in any hierarchy, people rise to the level of their incompetence. This principle certainly applies–in spades–to government bureaucracies, but as two stories that came out yesterday demonstrate, there is another, far more malign principle at work. Call it the Pirrong Principle: in a government bureaucracy, people are promoted to the level of their iniquity.

The first demonstration is, of course, the DOJ IG report on the Page FISA warrants. Although the hierarchy of the FBI and DOJ that was responsible–particularly the execrable (words fail) psychopath (and I mean that literally) James Comey–has seized upon a clip from the report to claim vindication, the report as a whole is a damning indictment of the gross iniquity of those who infested the FBI and DOJ hierarchy.

The fig leaf that IG Horowitz gave to Comey, McCabe, et al was his statement that he found “no testimonial or documentary evidence of political bias.” But at the same time, he could find no defensible explanation for the serial abuse of the FISA process, abuse that was used to surveil–i.e., spy on–the Trump campaign.

Thus, the circumstantial evidence for bias is overwhelming. For what else could explain the repeated and deliberate lying by commission and omission by Comey et al to obtain the warrants on Page and thereby obtain access into the communications of the Trump campaign?

I would also like to know what possible defense there could be for lying to a court. Isn’t this a violation of multiple statutes? This is far worse than some procedural violations, as Horowitz suggests. This is serial, intentional misconduct to deceive a court in order to obtain a writ to trample the rights of an innocent man, Carter Page, not to mention to intervene in the political process. This last was an act of “interference in an election” that makes anything the Russians did pale into utter insignificance.

The IG report also demonstrates that the Steele Dossier was a tissue of fantasies, fabrications, and gossip that even Steele’s unnamed “sub-sources” called bullshit on when questioned by the IG. It also demonstrates that this tissue of fantasies, fabrications, and gossip was the centerpiece of the Page FISA warrant applications. This completely vindicates Devin Nunes, who said the same in 2018, thereby unleashing a cascade of calumny that continues to the present. It also gilds the lily by showing that Adam Schiff is a lying sack of crap. Which we already knew, and receive demonstration of daily.

But here’s the thing. We already knew all of this. Here’s what I wrote in September, 2018:

Failing to detail Page’s full involvement with the prosecution and conviction of the Russian agents was therefore another crucial omission from the FISA warrant application.  Given this information, Page’s plausibility as a Russian agent would have been zero.
Second, Sperry doesn’t remind us that after failing in its first try to get a FISA warrant on Page, a dossier report miraculously appears which contains the account of a meeting in which Sechin supposedly offered Trump, via Page, a stake in Rosneft.  Presented with the new “information” of Page’s deep ties with the Russians, et voila!, the court issues the warrant.
This makes it highly likely–certain, in my view–that Steele was a short order cook serving up made-to-order material intended to advance the anti-Trump campaign.  His–and the FBI’s/DOJ’s.
The FBI’s cynicism here is off the charts, and appalling.  Carter Page helps them out in an investigation of Russian spies.  But Peter Strzok and his fellow badged gangsters saw that Page was now useful in their attempt to sabotage Trump, so they viciously twisted his previous cooperation with them into evidence of connivance with Russian intelligence by leaving out the crucial details of his cooperation, the Russian views of him, and the likely Russian knowledge of him.
Moral of the story? Support your local sheriff, perhaps, but the FBI–you’d be a complete fool to do so, because they will F*** you sideways when it is in their interest to do so.  Page is the poster boy for “no good deed goes unpunished.”
Carter Page should have a massive civil rights case against the US government, and the individuals who lied and conspired to deprive him of his 4th Amendment right against unlawful search and seizure–Strzok, McCabe, Comey, Yates, and others.

Nota bene the date–almost 2 months before the 2018 midterm elections. We knew the gravamen of the FBI’s conduct at that time (and earlier) but the slow-walk in the DOJ allowed the lies to flourish without official contradiction until well after the election. The same happened with regards to the Mueller Report: Mueller and his malign minions knew early in their investigation in 2017 that every word of the Russian collusion story was false, including “and” and “the.”

The ongoing impeachment fiasco is the direct result of the 2018 elections. How would those have been different had the Mueller and Horowitz revelations been made prior to them? How is the unconscionable dilatoriness of the iniquitous bureaucracy not grotesque election interference?

The second demonstration of the Pirrong Principle is the revelation (in the WaPo) of documents indicating that those responsible for running the war in Afghanistan (which, like Napoleon’s misadventure in Spain, has been a bleeding ulcer for years) have been lying about its progress and prospect for going on two decades.

Pace MacArthur, lying is a substitute for victory. At least in the minds of iniquitous bureaucrats.

Like Vietnam, Afghanistan illustrates that long, indecisive guerrilla conflicts corrode and corrupt even the most reputable American government institution–the military. The reason that revelation of this corrosion and corruption have taken so much longer to be revealed in Afghanistan is due to the smaller body count, the initial success in defeating the Taliban and Al Qaeda in 2001-2002, and the isolation of the battlespace which sharply limited independent observation and disclosure of the true state of affairs.

It is sickly ironic that the same elements who are responsible for years of stalemate and lies to cover it up have fought Trump tooth and nail in his (typically spasmodic and unfocused) attempts to wind down American participation. This is of a piece with the Ukraine fiasco, where the “interagency” that reigned over a chronically failed policy have waged their own war against Trump. Ditto Syria.

If the bureaucracy was only as good at waging guerrilla wars in the back of buggery as it is in the halls of DC, American would never lose a war.

Yes, I think the Pirrong Principle is as valid, or more so than the Peter Principle. We see demonstrations of it daily.

But other than alliteration and the allusion to the also alliterative Peter Principle, it’s not correct that I make the principle epynomous. It should really be named the Hayek Principle, in deference to Hayek’s chapter in Road to Serfdom titled: “Why the Worst Get On Top.”

We see his principle in action daily. But on few days do we see it demonstrated more forcefully than we did yesterday.

Communist China is notorious for IP theft. It’s gotten so bad, that maybe even the KGB should sue them.

Back in the day, the standard Soviet response to American criticism of the USSR’s human rights record was to say something along the lines of “well in the US you lynch negroes.” Supposedly this originated with Russian Minister of the Interior Vyacheslav von Plehve who “The Russian peasants were driven to frenzy. Excited by race and religious hatred, and under the influence of alcohol, they were worse than the people of the Southern States of America when they lynch negroes.” Variants on this were standard fare over the years up to 1991.

Today the CCP is freaking out over Western, and particularly American, criticism of treatment of Uighurs and its handling of Hong Kong. So, how to respond? By stealing a page from gospodin Pelhve’s playbook (or maybe from Matthew 7:5).

Lijian Zhao, “Deputy Director General, Information Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, China. Try my best to tell the story of China & spread the voice of China” (according to his Twitter bio) replied thus to Trump’s signing of the (entirely symbolic) act criticizing the CCP’s handling of Hong Kong

In Washington, the white seldom go to SE area, as it’s an area for the black. President Trump even demanded 4 women lawmakers of color to leave US. Out of respect for President Trump, US & the black there, please follow “America First” policy & take care of racial discrimination.

— Lijian Zhao ??? (@zlj517) November 28, 2019

It goes on. Check out his T/L, which provides numerous variations on the theme. All totally unoriginal, and a rather lame imitation of the Soviet original.

But maybe Mr. Zhao has a future. I hear there are openings on the Democratic Party platform drafting committee. He’d fit right in.

When reading Allen Guelzo’s review of Elizabeth Varon’s narrative history of the Civil War, Armies of Deliverance, this jumped out at me:

What will redeem even this quibbling is the significance of the basic trope around which Varon builds her narrative. It is Varon’s fundamental belief that Northerners entered into—and stayed in—the Civil War out of the conviction that they were rescuing the deluded Southern white masses from the tyranny of Southern slaveholders. Northerners saw the Confederacy as a vast kidnapping by these elites, who had turned the slaveholding states into a closed economic system approximating what Karl Marx called “feudal socialism.”
By overthrowing this slaveholder coup d’etat, and by destroying the yoke of slavery for both white and black, the way would be opened to redeem the South, through opening its doors to “free labor”—to open markets, competitive wage contracts and, in a word, capitalism. “What a commercial world this State of Virginia should be,” marveled a Union army surgeon in 1862. With the overthrow of the slave oligarchs, insisted Henry Ward Beecher, “Schools will multiply. Books and papers will spread. Churches will bless every hamlet.”
Confidence that Northern victory would bring this deliverance in its train motivated the constant refrain in Northern writing that the war was aimed only at the oligarchs, and that poor whites and freed slaves would flock eagerly to the banner of Unionism. Hence the joyful predictions that, sooner or later, a latent Southern Unionism would rise from its repressed well; hence, also, Lincoln’s attempt to negotiate a generous amnesty and Reconstruction policy. Varon acknowledges that other historians have recognized the attraction of “the deluded-masses theory,” but virtually all of them limit its influence to the early months of the war, before the stiffening of Southern resistance led Northerners to embrace instead a “hard war” of conquest and subjugation. Varon sees no such evaporation. To the contrary, she demonstrates the “deliverance” idea’s persistence, marshalling evidence from Edward Everett’s 1863 Gettysburg oration (the “other” Gettysburg address) to soldier diaries to newspaper pronouncements—all the way to Lincoln’s last cabinet meeting on April 14, 1865.
The painful irony of this conviction was that Southerners—and not just the oligarchs—simply did not share it. They repudiated the accusation of oligarchy and instead stressed Southern white solidarity, a solidarity fired by the sufferings they endured during the war. The end of the conflict left Southern whites militarily defeated, but even more defiant in their loss—and more contemptuous of Yankee missionary efforts to convert them to free labor—than they had been in 1861. And from this refusal springs the bitter fruit of Reconstruction.

During the nadir of the American experience in Iraq, I often drew parallels with Reconstruction. One major parallel was that utter military defeat was a necessary, but by no means sufficient, condition to bring a vanquished region to heel. Conquering a populace is much harder than defeating armies.

The other major parallel is related to Varon’s interpretation of Northern thinking about the implications of victory. Per Varon, Northerners believed they were liberating oppressed masses from a small ruling class, and that the subjugation of that class would make the oppressed Southerners, black and white alike, into stereotypical Yankees who would adopt Yankee institutions and ways. In 2003, Americans (especially the neoconservatives) believed that the US was liberating oppressed Iraqis from a small (Sunni) ruling class, and that once liberated, (mainly Shia) Iraqis would adopt American (Western) values and institutions, and we could ride off into the sunset, like the Lone Ranger.

The happy visions of 1865 Northerners and 2003 Americans soon crashed into the reality that white Southerners and Iraqis didn’t want to become Yankees. The underlying reality here is that culture goes deep, culture is extremely particularist, and most of the world doesn’t share universalist American (Yankee) pretensions. Indeed, Civil War and Reconstruction demonstrate that at one time many Americans didn’t share such universalist pretensions.

If you look at many of the myriad debacles of what passes for American statecraft (e.g., the Wilsonian failure post-1918, Vietnam), they can be traced to a similar source: the American failure to understand the immense power of civilizational and cultural identity, and the concomitant belief that if given the chance–if “liberated”–everyone everywhere would become Americans.

Ironically, these beliefs have proved utterly resistant to repeated and decisive empirical refutation. Indeed, the near hysterical (well, maybe not so near) reaction to Trump in particular, and various strains of “nationalism” generally, among the establishment/government class demonstrates that they are still in thrall to such beliefs.

The ongoing impeachment farce is the most pathetic manifestation of this. Trump’s instinctual distrust of a corrupt and dysfunctional Ukraine clashes with the most deeply held convictions of The Interagency, AKA, the establishment Blob, which still pursues the chimeras that enticed Civil War-era Yankees and Iraq War-era policy elites. This time it will work! Trust us on this! Pay no attention to the sad litany of failures! We can make Sovoks into Yankees!

In a weird way, this is why I am an American exceptionalist, in the literal meaning of that term. I believe that the United States is largely an exception that proves the rule. America’s repeated attempts to make its very historically contingent institutions, culture, and development the universal rule are doomed to failure because they founder on the very historically contingent institutions, cultures, and developments of those it presumes to change.

In 1947 and 1948, President Harry Truman vented his anger at the “striped-pants boys” in the State Department, who fought him at every turn, especially over Israel. They were Arabists, almost to a man, and they despised Truman’s pro-Zionist policy, and assiduously attempted to undermine it.

This came to mind when I saw a picture from today’s impeachment hearings, which have transitioned from the secret Star Chamber phase to the public Show Trial phase. (Quite an accomplishment, combing two of the two most outrageous judicious processes in a single proceedings.)

Specifically, I saw a picture of State Department apparatchik George Kent, complete with bow tie, waistcoat, striped suit jacket, and presumably, striped pants.

George Kent represents everything that is wrong with the U.S. State Dept, and the pontificating elitists within it, who construct U.S. foreign policy over white wine spritzers and crustless triangle sandwiches. pic.twitter.com/r7MlB06XZF

— TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) November 13, 2019

Is he trying to play to caricature?

Kent told the assembled idiots that the Ukrainians were modern-day Minutemen, manning the front lines against Russian aggression. He followed fellow State Department apparatchik Bill Taylor, who echoed the party line: “Ukraine is important to the security of the United States…they are a young democracy struggling to join Europe and ally themselves with the United States.” Taylor also opined that Trump seemed more interested in pursuing investigations than supporting Ukraine.

What is gobsmacking about this is that these people were silent when the Obama administration adamantly refused to provide lethal military assistance to Ukraine. Hell, Obama was so concerned about upsetting Putin that he did not even permit American military planes to fly the pathetic non-lethal aid (blankets, and such) directly to Ukraine. Instead, it was flown to Poland and trucked in–and not on US military vehicles.

So, did the Ukrainians only become Minutemen on 20 January, 2017–more than two-and-a-half years after the Russians invaded Ukraine and seized Crimea?

As an aside, LTC Vindman, the National Security Commission’s Ukraine “expert,” testified that he was under the impression that Obama had provided weapons–Javelin anti-tank missiles, specifically–to Ukraine. Some expert. Yet we are supposed to believe that the oblivious Vindman and the rest of the “interagency [AKA Blob] consensus” considered it a vital US interest to arm Ukraine.

No, this is all bullshit. Ukraine only became vital in the eyes of these people the day it appeared that it could be used against their bête noire, l’homme mal orange.

These people are using Ukraine. Period. They really don’t give a shit about it. If they did they would have made a scene–and attempted their coup–in the Obama years.

Despite their many real differences, Trump and Truman share much more than the first four letters of their last names. Most importantly, they are outsiders who appeal to Jacksonians, and who are disdained by the Washington/East Coast “elites” (a term which can only be applied ironically, hence the quote marks). Truman came by his Jacksonianism naturally, coming up through the old Democratic Party from the heart of Jacksonian America: I have yet to figure out by what strange alchemy the New York mogul became a Jacksonian.

The main difference between what is happening today, and what happened nigh onto 70 years ago is that today’s administrative state feels far less constrained than its Truman-era predecessor. There were lines that they would not cross in 1948 that they breach today without a second thought.

Why? A complex phenomenon. Some factors that come to mind:

The bureaucracy has become so much bigger, so much more swollen today, that it is more difficult to control. That is a problem that any president would face.

Trump faces a much greater challenge because whereas even though Truman was not part of the governing elite, he was firmly embedded in a political support structure–the Democratic Party, which dominated American political life at the time–Trump is completely, utterly on his own. Truman was a party regular, the product of a Democratic machine, in fact (the Pendergast organization). He could rely on party loyalists–including many in the bureaucracy. Trump, conversely, can count on no such support. He is nominally a Republican, but the Republican establishment, especially in DC, dislikes him–when they don’t hate him. One of his major problems is his difficulty in finding loyal subordinates who have influence in the bureaucracy. The loyal have no influence: the influential have no loyalty.

These farcical proceedings, like the Mueller farce before it, is a the establishment vs. Trump. He is Trump agonistes. Trump the struggler, from the Greek ἀγωνιστής–“a contestant in the public games.”

Very appropriate. Very literal. And these games are deadly serious.

In my post on the reasons to target terrorist leaders like al-Baghdadi, I said it wasn’t the killing, it was the chase. A leadership focused on avoiding catching a JDAM or taking a 556 to the noggin isn’t able to take the initiative. I specifically mentioned paranoia, fear of traitors, stress, and the disruptions of communications from constant moves and the need to reduce the possibility of detection.

An AP story from yesterday says, yeah, all that happened:

In his last months on the run, Islamic State group leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was agitated, fearful of traitors, sometimes disguised as a shepherd, sometimes hiding underground, always dependent on a shrinking circle of confidants.

Associates paint a picture of a man obsessed with his security and well-being and trying to find safety in towns and deserts in eastern Syria near the Iraqi border as the extremists’ domains crumbled. In the end, the brutal leader once hailed as “caliph” left former IS areas completely, slipping into hostile territory in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province run by the radical group’s al-Qaida-linked rivals. There, he blew himself up during an Oct. 26 raid by U.S. special forces on his heavily fortified safe house.

. . . .

During that time, al-Baghdadi was a “nervous wreck,” pacing up and down and complaining of treason and infiltrations among his “walis,” or governors of the group’s self-declared provinces, his brother-in-law, Mohamad Ali Sajit, said in an interview with Al-Arabiya TV aired last week.
“This is all treason,” Sajit recalled al-Baghdadi shouting.

. . . .

At times, al-Baghdadi was disguised as a shepherd, he said. When al-Baghdadi’s security chief, Abu Sabah, got wind of a possible raid on the desert Syrian-Iraqi border area where they were hiding they took down their tents and hid al-Baghdadi and al-Muhajer inside a pit covered with dirt, Sajit said. They let sheep roam around on top of the pit to further disguise it. Once the threat of the raid was over, they returned and put the tents back up, he said.
Al-Baghdadi moved with a circle of five to seven people, including al-Muhajer, al-Zubaie and Abu Sabah; and the group’s former governor for Iraq, known as Tayseer or Abu al-Hakim. Al-Muhajer was killed on the same day as al-Baghdadi, in a separate U.S.-led military operation, following a Syrian Kurdish tip, in Jarablus, also in northwestern Syria; al-Zubaie was killed in a raid in March. On Monday, Turkish officials said they arrested al-Baghdadi’s older sister in northwestern Syria’s Azaz region. All are areas outside of government control.

Now Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi is in the cross hairs. Enjoy, dude!

In a post last week, I wrote that LTC Alexander Vindman arrogated authority beyond his pay grade. I was wrong, to the extent that statement implied that there is a pay grade in the uniformed military that does have the authority that Vindman claimed for himself. There isn’t.

Here’s the Washington Post’s description of Vindman’s thinking and motivation: “he was deeply troubled by what he interpreted as an attempt by the president to subvert U.S. foreign policy.”

Hello! U.S. foreign policy is always set by the president. This is a Constitutional fact and a practical reality. As of 20 January, 2017, U.S. foreign policy has been set–to the accompaniment of wails, rending of garments, and gnashing teeth–by President Donald Trump. Full stop.

It is the job of everyone in the U.S. military, from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to some recruit getting screamed at in boot camp (if they do still scream at them) to implement that policy. It is also their job not to substitute their own view of what that policy should be, and act contrary to the policies of the lawful Commander-in-Chief.

Vindman’s view is an oxymoron. It is self-contradictory. The president cannot subvert what he sets. QED.

It is also incredibly dangerous to the military as an institution, and to the stability of the United States. The US military has been almost unparalleled in subordination to civilian authority. Having O-5s (or even retired O-9s, like McRaven) openly challenge that is the road to perdition. (I note that most coups are led by field and company grade officers, for a variety of reasons. Vindman’s middling rank is actually makes his actions more of a concern.)

Maintaining this subordination is of far greater importance than any passing policy matter, let alone Ukraine, a Sovok basketcase. (I am reminded of the line from A Man For All Seasons:  “Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world [Matt. 16:26]. But for Wales?” (Substitute “but for Ukraine?” and the meaning remains the same.)

Now we hear that Vindman is whining that he was told not to discuss the phone call with anyone. Well, obviously for good reason, given his evident agenda, not that it made any difference.

Was this a direct order? Is there even a colorable case that it was an unlawful order? If it was lawful, he acted in disobedience of that order.

Further, if the phone call was classified–as it apparently was, which is another gripe of Schiff and his fellow grifters–to discuss it with anyone without a need to know would also be a violation of the UCMJ.

And what about the guy with whom it appears that Vindman did discuss the call, in violation of his duties? It is evidently Eric Ciaramella. Does he look like the soyboy from central casting, or what? Who elected him to anything?

Just where the hell do these people get off?