Two years after the Pentagon shot down his ploy for a no-fly zone against Russia in Ukraine, the U.S. “top diplomat” has been at it again pushing an even more insane idea.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on April 24, 2024. (Official State Department photo/Chuck Kennedy)
By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News
On March 7, 2022, two weeks after Moscow entered the civil war in Ukraine, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CBS News from Moldova that the U.S. would give NATO-member Poland a “green light” to send Mig-29 fighter jets to Ukraine to enforce a no-fly zone against Russian aircraft.
U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer then also backed the no-fly zone. But within days the Pentagon shot down the idea as it engaged in a consequential battle with the State Department and members of Congress to prevent a direct NATO military confrontation with Russia that could unleash history’s most unimaginable horrors.
A no-fly zone “could result in significant Russian reaction that might increase the prospects of a military escalation with NATO,” according to then Pentagon spokesman John Kirby.
President Joe Biden was caught in the middle of the fray. Pressure on the White House from some members of Congress and the press corps was unrelenting to recklessly bring NATO directly into the war.
Biden ultimately sided with the Defense Department, and he couldn’t be more explicit why. He opposed a NATO no-fly zone over Ukraine fighting Russian aircraft, he said, because “that’s called World War III, okay? Let’s get it straight here, guys. We will not fight the third world war in Ukraine.”
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin backed him up:
“President Biden’s been clear that U.S. troops won’t fight Russia in Ukraine, and if you establish a no-fly zone, certainly in order to enforce that no-fly zone, you’ll have to engage Russian aircraft. And again, that would put us at war with Russia.”
(The administration plan was, and apparently still is, to bring down the Russian government through a proxy counteroffensive and an economic and information war, not a direct military one.)
Blinken, who stepped out of line to speak above the heads of the president and the Pentagon, lost that round. It’s surprising he kept his job. But he survived and now he’s come back for more.
Relentless
Blinken’s recklessness emerged yet again last week when he peddled a story — eagerly picked up by The Guardian and The New York Times — that Biden would approve a British request to fire its Storm Shadow missiles deep into Russia.
The Guardian story on Sept. 11 said:
“The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, gave his strongest hint yet that the White House is about to lift its restrictions on Ukraine using long-range weapons supplied by the west on key military targets inside Russia, with a decision understood to have already been made in private.
Speaking in Kyiv alongside the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, Blinken said the US had ‘from day one’ been willing to adapt its policy as the situation on the battlefield in Ukraine changed. ‘We will continue to do this,’ he emphasised.”
To fire British Storm Shadows, Ukraine would have to depend on British technical soldiers on the ground in Ukraine to actually launch them and on U.S. geolocation technology. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz revealed those British soldiers are already in Ukraine.
In other words, it would be a NATO attack on Russia, dressed up as a Ukrainian one. It would mean the U.S. and Britain were at war with Moscow, something Blinken seems to want and said was going to happen.
The next day Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that launching such missiles into Russia “will mean that NATO countries — the United States and European countries — are at war with Russia. And if this is the case, then, bearing in mind the change in the essence of the conflict, we will make appropriate decisions in response to the threats that will be posed to us.”
Nevertheless, The New York Times ran a story on the same day with the headline: “Biden Poised to Approve Ukraine’s Use of Long-Range Western Weapons in Russia.”
The Guardian added:
“British government sources indicated that a decision had already been made to allow Ukraine to use Storm Shadow cruise missiles on targets inside Russia, although it is not expected to be publicly announced on Friday when Starmer meets Biden in Washington DC.”
Blinken’s words evidently raised British Prime Minister Keir Starmer‘s hopes that he would satisfy his desire to strike Russia with his nation’s arsenal of long-range missiles, despite Putin saying that meant direct war with NATO.
Blinken and the British are trying to lead us to the brink.
Sanity in Arlington
Except that the Pentagon, the purveyor of the most monstrous violence in world history, has pulled the world back from it.
For at least the second time — publicly known — the Department of War secured peace from neocon recklessness fronted by Blinken.
Starmer was sent back on his chartered British Airways flight from the White House meeting licking his wounds. He’d evidently been led by Blinken to believe that it was a done deal: the U.S. would let Britain attack Russia with its long-range missiles using U.S. technology — even if the U.S. wouldn’t allow its own long-range ATACMS to be used.
The Times of London reported that Biden withholding approval “surprised British officials who had listened closely to hints from Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, that America was edging towards authorising Storm Shadow, an Anglo-French weapon which relies on American GPS guidance systems.”
Starmer’s mania to strike Russia illustrates the British elite’s continuing pathological hatred of Russia, extending back centuries, compared to a perhaps more tempered, though determined, American geostrategic rivalry with Moscow.
Biden’s Limits With the Neocons
Biden has proven himself a supreme warmonger, his advocacy for the illegal invasion of Iraq and his complicity in the genocide in Gaza as the most egregious examples.
Like the two presidents before him, Biden allowed neocons to worm themselves into positions of power in his administration. But the extent to which Biden himself is a neocon, as opposed to a traditional warmonger, is subject to question.
As a creature of Washington of more than half a century, he seems to respect the military’s judgement about military matters and, on his good days, understands that even America has limits.
Barack Obama let Hillary Clinton, the “Queen of Warmongers,” bring Neocon Queen Victoria Nuland into his administration. Donald Trump let neocons John Bolton and Mike Pompeo into his. And Biden has Blinken (and for a time Nuland too.)
Instead of banishing these people, they are allowed to linger and drag the U.S. into evermore perilous failures: Iraq, Afghanistan, Gaza and Ukraine, leaving behind a mountain of squandered dollars and an ocean of blood.
As a careerist, Blinken said what he had to say to get to where he is. Obama in 2015 wisely decided against arming Ukraine after the Nuland and Biden-led 2014 coup because he did not want to antagonize Russia, for whom he said Ukraine was a vital interest, while it was not for the U.S. Obama also feared U.S. arms would fall into the hands of “thugs” — meaning neo-Nazi Azov types, whom Obama was well aware of.
Blinken at the time was Obama’s deputy secretary of state. To support the president’s position, he told a conference in Berlin:
“If you’re playing on the military terrain in Ukraine, you’re playing to Russia’s strength, because Russia is right next door. It has a huge amount of military equipment and military force right on the border. Anything we did as countries in terms of military support for Ukraine is likely to be matched and then doubled and tripled and quadrupled by Russia.”
But once he was freed of the restraints of Obama, he joined Biden’s aggressive Ukraine policy at the top of the State Department. From that position, and with a power vacuum in the White House because of Biden’s dementia, Blinken has been openly pushing the neocon agenda, laid out plainly in the 2000 report of the Project for a New American Century.
And what is that agenda? In another age, before it became a dirty word, it would have been proudly proclaimed as imperialism. It contains all of the hubris and sense of invincibility and impunity of any empire in history.
PNAC plainly promulgates that no power or alliance of powers will be allowed to rise up to stand in the way of the neocons’ mad quest to harness American power to achieve world domination. An alliance of powers such as that of China, Russia and the BRICS countries, which has only accelerated in opposition to unhinged, neoconservative adventurism.
No matter the many disasters piling up, notably Iraq, Palestine and now Ukraine, the neocons are undeterred and unrestrained. It’s about power and murder but it is made palatable to themselves with flowery language about America saving the world for democracy.
Their belief in their own supremacy, cloaked in an American flag, remains fanatic, no matter the death and destruction they cause. They do not understand that American power has limits and to test that, they risk everything.
In 2019, Blinken teamed up with arch-neoconservative Robert Kagan to write a Washington Post op-ed arguing for more aggressive use of U.S. power abroad and against U.S. domestic trends towards non-interventionism.
With Kagan’s wife Nuland out of the Biden Administration and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan crucially siding with the realists, Blinken has emerged as the undisputed leader of who George H.W. Bush called the “crazies in the basement.”
That was 30 years ago. The neocons are in the penthouse now and only the restraint of the Pentagon and Sullivan’s persuasion brought Biden back from the brink.
This time.
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange.
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Though sometimes I disagree with some views expressed here at Consortium News (as it should be), I praise God for having such a platform like it.
CN has a plethora o voices here, from Marxists to Anti-Communists and from Anti-Fascists to classic liberals and social democrats.
It is a breath of fresh air so I say: never give up Consortium News!
Well done and keep up the good work.
My suspicion is that the Pentagon crew are well aware that Russia doesn’t need to resort to nuclear weapons in order to make life miserable for the far-flung US network of foreign bases. A few conventional weapons in the hands of disgruntled proxies here, there and everywhere would provide no end of headaches for the Pentagon.
Great article!
The Neocons’ fanatical push for world domination looks like something out of the ancient Talmud. An excellent discussion of this by Jewish Israeli scholar Israel Shahak is in his book
“Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years”
hxxps://ifamericaknew.org/cur_sit/shahak.html
One has to wonder. considering the threat of nuclear war, who stands to gain? Who believes they can send nuclear capable missiles and planes toward Moscow without leading to a globally devastating nuclear war? What are these people? Are they nuclear immune lizards from some other galaxy? Who do they represent? Who wants this?
Even if Nato does not go nuclear, won’t Russia’s next move be to flatten Kiev with their most powerful conventional bombs on Kinzal hypersonic missiles, and maybe flood Nato bases of the most aggressive nations with drones ? Does the west have some secret weapon that Russia and China do not? How does this not end in nuclear war?
It is my opinion that Blinken works for Israel. Is this the Zionists’ bright idea? The PNACers’ ? Are there no Lloyd Austins in NATO?
All good questions. I ask them all the time.
The cause of the British elite’s “continuing pathological hatred of Russia, extending back centuries” and their invasions of Afghanistan every 40 years in 1839, 1879, and 1919, has been a mystery as they apparently never fought Russians there, but used Russophobia as a disguise for wars against Islamic threats to the Sikhs at the border, relied upon by Britain for military forces in India. So their Russophobia was internal propaganda now serving as the model for that of the US.
The endless wars of the neocons serve only to bring bribes to political parties from the MIC, anti-socialists, and zionists, made palatable in the US with “flowery language about America saving the world for democracy” while in fact saving the US for demoncracy.
I am so tired of all this BS…let suicidal Natoforces attack Russia directly and threaten Russian heartland existentially so hopefully Russia is forced to finish off EU and USA (NATO) with conventional or nuclear weapons whatever it will take. Put a final end to the EUUSNato menace terrorising the majority of this tortured planet.
Apparently Zelenskyy doesn’t intend to take “No” for an answer to his long range missile request.
Every here had enough of the B.S. yet. Or would you rather him end the war there by ending life on the planet?
I wonder if Kamala realizes she will not be president if the next election fails to happen.
We all, including the “Dopes” in D.C. , might want to consider the fact that Putin is cut from a similar fabric as his adversaries in D.C. who do not seem to mind the thought of everyone getting vaporized, or worse yet simply gravely wounded?
Best get on line or the phone and call you Senators.
“the fact that Putin is cut from a similar fabric as his adversaries in D.C. who do not seem to mind the thought of everyone getting vaporized”
Nonsense. Vladimir Putin has more diplomacy, restraint and common sense in one fingernail than in the whole US government. The only reason that we are not all little clouds of radioactive dust right now is that Putin has these qualities. Did you actually read the article, or did you just go straight for the knee-jerk?
Well haters are going to hate, so your opinion is duly noted.
I have a question Jams. I have contended all along this entire meat grinding bloody episode could have been avoided. And I am not going to even consider rehashing my every thought for the benefit of someone I seem to have missed commenting here before.
But I regress. Question is do you have a glass ball you could consult for future news.
D.C.’s “no tolerance policy” of Putin since they pushed him into a corner is obvious to everyone who has an objective perspective, one gained from studying the history. So, when will Putin tire of this U.S. NATO Ukraine B.S. baiting the Bear a former intelligence officer who I feel does in fact have quite a lot in common with intelligence officers in the U.S.. Imagine if rolls were reversed.
I did read the article same as others that I comment on.
All this being said I suppose I could have chosen my words more carefully. Maybe the question is , “do you have the bear or does the bear have you”. Regardless this episode with Ukraine and Russia is definitely not one of D.C.’s best efforts and in my opinion very much uncalled for. I’m also of the opinion that if you get enough NEOCONS and Zionist in one room room you will have big trouble.
I think you were right the first time, Robert. One of the things I hate is that people whose eyes have been opened to their own nations corrupt and execrable leaders nevertheless seem to have a rosy view of other nations’ leaders who happen to currently be in an adversarial relationship with ours and therefore say some truths about our system.
Putin and Xi are right about a lot of their criticism of the uni-empire; but this does not make them moral and good people in most ways. Either way though, they are the Russian and Chinese people’s problem and issue and not ours: we need to fix our garden as that’s the one that’s our responsibility.
Putin and Xi are not a problem to their citizens. They both are popular in their countries. Putin just was re-elected and Xi is highly thought of by the Chinese people. It is not the business of the west to tell Russia and China what to do in their countries if the people support them.
As an simple citizen, I have some very basic, black & white questions:
How can an individual with dual citizenship legally serve as Secretary of State?
To whom does that individual serve?
Could a congressional Act of War by that individual’s other citizenship force a Secretary of State to resign? In Herr Blinken’s case, lets say Israel declared war on the U.S. or vice versus.
I believe the Russian Federation allows dual citizen status. So–hypothetically, could the U.S. Secretary of State also be a Russian/U’S. Citizen? (that could get some knickers in a twist)
Has the U.S. Congress declared war on the Russian Federation?
Do some nations receive special status by the U.S. government?
If so, who decides on such things?
Over the years, some countries the U.S. has fought with are now considered allies, like Britain, Spain, Mexico, etc.–In other words, these relationships change.
Could someone smarter than myself please help me out here?
Lawrence Wilkerson concurs. He states that it is indeed the influence of the more pragmatic officials within the walls of the Pentagon which has served to mostly sideline the rather dangerous impulses of the Blinken-Kagan-Nudelman cohort with respect to the conflict in eastern Europe…for now. It remains to be seen whether or not Biden’s successor, should she become President, would be more receptive to manipulation by the neocons. I fear that it may be so.
“Be careful with a fool cuz nothing you say will make him smart…” Johnny Winter
I don’t recall Americans demanding or even discussing any “project for a new American century.” Whatever happened to government by the people for the people? And whoever voted for Anthony Blinken or Jake Sullivan?
Well, when we elect an obvious long term servant of corporatism and empire like Biden (and soon, the new and improved model with JOY: Harris!), we naturally get imperial functionaries like Blinken.
It’s not like the American people do not have choices. We had the great Ralph Nader in 2000 and ’04, Ron Paul in 2008 and 12, and we had Sanders in ’16 and ’20 … but the system pushed for its candidates and the people limply acquiesced. USA USA USA!
Not me. I voted for the Socialist Equality Party and I will again this year. Stop keeping your enemies in office.
Joe, this is a great, incisive, historically sensitive analysis. Unfortunately it also strikes me as all too likely to be true. Would that CN had the reach of the NYT, WP, or CNN. The realist perspective doesn’t get much of a hearing in the Canadian Globe and Mail.
It isn’t “all too likely to be true”. It IS true. Don’t hedge.
Israel and England and U.S., etc. will keep at it until they have unleashed hell on earth. This time Americans will not be saved by their Oceans. Mr. Blinkin appears to be one of those heartless, lost souls who have no feeling for his fellow man.Unfortunately he is not alone.
Blinken, Kagan, and the evil Queen Victoria are responsible for thousands of needless deaths. How do insane people rise to such power? Give the three Chicken Hawks the gear they need to fight on the front lines and ship their sorry, worthless asses overseas.
“How can crazy people achieve such power?”
The “normal” political agenda should be: ‘Doing good for the American people’.
What if these three are just the tip of the iceberg of a powerful and influential group that for for decades pushing a different agenda?
What if these three: Blinken, Kagan and the ‘Evil Queen Victoria’ are not considering the USA as their only homeland and US citizens as their “true countrymen”?
What if these three think that the American people serve only as a “tool” to their ambitions?
Ah, yes. The $64.00 question. Who are there fellow countrymen?
The tyrant personality rises to power by creating invisible enemies and demanding power to protect the ignorant tribe from them. This is one of the ancient curses of civilization.
In the US the political parties coordinate bribery from the MIC, anti-socialists, and zionists, and coordinate internal propaganda via mass media to paint the opponents of their bribe sources as enemies, to terrorize the boob-tubers.
Few dare disagree because nearly all have great social and economic dependencies upon their ethnic, religious, and political tribes. Failure to comprehend and control the operation of tribalism and tyranny is fatal to civilization.
The power struggle of teh State Dept trying to run the military like Albright and the Defense Dept running the State Dept like Austen claiming weakening Russia and regime change as goals.
So both military and the State are rotten to the core by competing profit motives as impersonal institutional operatives without morals or principles drunk with imperial powers robbed judgement.
Joe Lauria addressed the megalomania of Joe Biden in a previous article:
“About midway through what was billed as the most consequential interview of Joe Biden’s political career, he uttered the most consequential words in the interview: “I am running the world.”
Those five words explain why he refuses to withdraw from the race and confirm what most Americans deny, but which most of the world knows: U.S. presidents act as world emperors.”
It’s not just “the madness of Antony Blinken”; Blinken’s job is at the whim of Joe Biden.
Ukraine cannot be called a laundry in any literal sense of the word, as somethings would have to have come clean. I suppose a long-hidden threat-bribery maneuver, if allowed to surface all the way, rather than just a camouflaged periscope up, may have a medium-term cleaning function. So much more goo has to be explored from the deep, slimey lagoons of a territory rinsed of men. It is beyond distressing. Put Putin and Lavrov in a zoom word-battle with Biden/Harris, for the entertainment of the planet. How would Las Vegas lay odds on that, even if Kamala could wear magic earrings? Dang. I ran south in 2015–clean-water advocates bump into concrete industry. I do not recommend US airports if one has tangled with some corps. From water, I met electricians’ union guys who turned me on to what happened to USS Liberty. Strike Two, labor and transparency. And. I take no harma-suiticals. Strike Three. I am so out.
There was absolutely no justification for any of the NATO enlargements once “the evil commies” were gone with the USSR implosion. Blinken and Nuland and other neocons kept the hatred of Russia alive in their influence in the Administrations in the USA this century, and Blinken is probably the very worst “diplomat”, ever to “serve” in US recent history.
Great job Joe. Another short , succinct on point article.
Thanks to Joe Lauria for calling the US military establishment by its historic and still accurate name: the Department of War. IMO, media need to revert to this nomenclature more often. Ultimately we need to pry open the Overton window, and press for an official reversion.
For over 15o years, US forces fought and died under the Department of War aegis. (Cute the Star Spangled Banner, then Taps.) War criminal Truman — the only leader to have dropped nuclear bombs, let alone on civilian populations — subsequently pulled off one of history’s greatest PR coups, renaming the US military, the Department of “Defense.” Result? Hey, don’t get me started.
What’s in a name? Glad you asked. We just blew past the 75th anniversary of this monstrous evil, this name change (10 Aug 2024). I hope Consortium News follows up with a 75-year lookback on the vast human suffering and damage resulting — enabled by numbing the public via the term “defense”.
Good point!
And, Save Palestine!
SEE Biden’s limits with NEOCONs. Read this twice if that is what it takes.
Now for the sake of Dog! Figure it out. NEOCONs lurk constantly in the shadows of the White House, especially those types like John “Bombs Away” Bolton’. Kinda like Bush 41, back in the day.
All operatives of the nations national security | intelligence community. In the last twenty years their combined performance has been dismal as hell, in my opinion, if that good!
Now read it again if you become confused about who is what and what the implications are.
Joe Lauria is seldom wrong and rarely minces words.
It’s not referenced in this article and
Apparently very few are aware of her
Involvement, but Evan Ryan holds the
Very important position of Cabinet
Secretary, which is basically the job
Of Acting Liason between the Cabinet
And the President. Pay is @ 180 K / year.
Who is Evan Ryan ? She has been active
In White House politics since the 1990’s.
And she has been married to Antony
Blinken since 2002. Clearly they are
Keeping this connection (nepotism,
Anyone ?) as quiet as possible.
Well worth googling both her bio and
The Cabinet Secretary job description.
Irina – great find. Pretty sneaky judge. The fact they do not share the same last name is something commonly found when we scrutinize White House talent closely.
Individuals paving the way to employ their agendas. None ever elected. Write that down Kids!
Thanks for th info Irina!
Lauria is right on!
Ukraine is about to lose the war and diplomacy is not an option for the present US government.
Ukraine is advocating receiving long-range missiles from the West so they can fire them at Russia or engage in a covert false flag operation in the hope of bringing the US and NATO into WW III, in which we are all doomed.
thank you Joe Lauria thank you! I will share your article with some liberal/progressive friends, but sadly they believe MSM and cannot imagine the U.S. as a waring empire. May a miracle of peace negotiations happen.
“Like the two presidents before him, Biden allowed neocons to worm themselves into positions of power in his administration.”
No, I don’t believe they had to worm their way in. They already lived there. Neoconservatives have had their hands on the levers of foreign policy power ever since the collapse of the USSR. It was then that Realpolitik gave way to Idealpolitik, as there was no longer any Great Power peer to the U.S. It was then that Wolfowitz wrote his memorandum (google Wolfowitz Doctrine) and it was less than 10 years later (1997) that the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) developed its proposals. The PNAC was entirely neoconservative, founded by Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan.
From the Wikipedia page on PNAC:
“The organization stated that “American leadership is good both for America and for the world”, and sought to build support for “a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity”. Of the twenty-five people who signed PNAC’s founding statement of principles, ten went on to serve in the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz.”
At this point, it’s difficult to find anyone in the State Dept. who is not linton; Pompeo,Blinken,; Bolton, Sullivan).
Whether Democrat or Republican, when you rearrange the letters each one spells Armageddon.
b/s baffles brains an amazing story of US & UK war criminals supported by totally dishonest Western Media endorsed by the imbecilic UK working class
Author is an 85 year old UK working class Socialist
The Pentagon has been holding back neocons from starting World War III since at least the Baby Bush administration.
Do they ever look into who in the donor class has required every administration since Bush Jr to have these dangerous people in policy-making positions?
If there was a real “national security” apparatus, it would figure out how to neutralize that threat.
As wise Americans from Twain to Mencken to current ones realize, our system is especially prone to promotion of substandard persons to positions of great influence. This is always the case with an oligarchy like ours: the people placed in positions of power are selected by the owner class to do their bidding.
Thus, we get MBNA’s Biden and his sidekick Mr Blinken. Their job is to improve the bottom line for investment banking, mining, weapons, and other powerful interests. This has almost always been the case, though rarely as obvious as currently … perhaps the closest time to now was the end of the previous gilded age (the 1890s and early 1900s) before the progressives wrested some power away temporarily. But the powers that be learned their lessons and, with modern tools of manufacturing consent through propaganda, they are much more firmly in charge.
Who, or what, could have stopped this escalation? Is it Biden himself acting out of spite?
Biden himself is not acting at all. The man is gaga. He is not controlling policy.
The U.S. has had a very long line of absolutely TERRIBLE Secretaries of State. I can’t think of one good SoS in my long lifetime, with the notable exception of Jim Baker, who brought dignity and rationality to his office and seemed to want to do the right thing. The rest have been either sociopaths or reckless ideologues. Blinken is both. He is way out of his depth and never grasped the crucial role of a diplomat, never realized that diplomacy is about preserving peace and stability, finding common ground, actually reducing tensions. Before we had a Secretary of “Defense,” we had a Department of War. Blinken would be right at home as Secretary of War. His ineptness, sycophancy and recklessness has made a hash of things on 3 continents. Joe Biden and he are blood brothers, just not with their blood.
Spot on.
Thank You Joe
Excellent article Joe. Thanks for writing it. You are certainly right to observe that “the crazies in the basement” have moved to the penthouse. It is hard for me to comprehend the utter stupidity of these people.
Biden, Blinkin, and the dude that heads up the U.S. military are ALL WAR CRIMINALS.
And we have a bought and sold Congress that would rather stay elected than to stand up for
what is right.
Time to ask yourself the question, ” Who runs this country?” AIPAC?
Excellent article on Blinken and I wish that more Progressive journalists pay more attention to this loathsome, destructive creature. Seems to me that he’s usually treated as simply an instrumentality of Biden and Zion’s program when in fact, in my opinion, he’s running the show. How about an article on the Blinken Dept of State? There’s no conceivable way Biden is running things: Ukraine fiasco appears to be on autopilot and Joe’s Genocide is clearly now the Blinken Genocide. He increasingly doesn’t even try to conceal the fact that he’s running Gaza in a manner compliant with Netanjahu’s deranged schemes. So, more scrutiny needed on who in the Hell is running this gone amuck Republic.
Blinken should be charged under 18 U.S. Code § 1091, the US law that incorporates the Genocide Convention. Let’s find a way to charge him. He should have visions of prison all the days of his life.
Liberal rules-based world order simps love to pooh-pooh America’s pre-WWII isolationism, but was the world really worse off when America firsters (the original strain, not the Trumpian one) were content to sit back in ‘Fortress America’ surrounded by two oceans and watch the old world order burn itself to the ground while the Americas enjoyed relative peace?
Has the ‘Team America World Police’ footing that came post-WWII really made the world a safer place? For anyone? Anywhere?
Maybe those dead old white men who founded the country knew what they were talking about when they warned the inheritors of the Republic to avoid foreign entanglements.
Maybe those dead old white men from the early 20th century had it right to sit back and roast marshmallows while the rest of the world burned. They had a belly full of the horrors of war during the Civil War and WWI, and wanted no more of it. That is what the current generation of Boomer, Gen X, and Millennial leaders lack. First-person experience with the horrors of war from a trench rather than watching it in the safety of their living room on a TV.
WW3 will be the end of the world – don’t kid yourselves…
Finally, a worthy journalist draws our eyes onto Blinken. How I wish more and more eyes would assess him! A man with connections (“careerist”) and utterly without substance. A traitor to the remaining shreds of what has been best of the USA, Blinken in plain sight acts out his inflated and compensatory power complex to our and the world’s woe. Can you not wonder Biden’s rigid obeisance to Netanyahu’s viciousness has been daily fed by what this neocon keeps whispering into his already addled brain? Thank you Mr. Lauria for this bit of illumination.” Blinken has been openly pushing the neocon agenda, laid out plainly in the 2000 report of the Project for a New American Century. “
He’s a liability, and a dangerous one. Not once has he seemed willing to sit down and do diplomacy. And when he’s not making the world a more dangerous place he’s wringing his hands over the genocide he and Biden have enabled. Plus he hangs out with fascists in sleazy bars and – guess what, like another Anthony who caused mayhem (Blair), he plays the guitar. A bit.
Right…rockin in the free world indeed. Not…
Blinken’s diplomatic incompetence was first publicly revealed early in 2021 in Anchorage when he met with the Chinese and ordered them to obey the “rules based international order” or else. And he’s been a disaster ever since.
An excellent summation of neocon lunacy, Joe. How has this happened? And how can these ignorant fools be finally thrown out? A Harris administration will be another nest of neocon imbeciles, that much is clear.
The Neocons are not ignorant, lunatics or imbeciles. As a collective body they share a vision that “they” are ordained to ensure world peace via world dominance. In Sept, 2000 they published their plan for a unipolar world to be enforced by American military authority and paid for by American taxpayers (PNAC). To get the ball rolling their plan called for “a new Pearl Harbor” which resulted in 9/11 one year later.
Since then they have established themselves at the critical nodes of the American government with a special emphasis to surround whoever is President by their chosen advisors. And there is one other point that is generally overlooked….they are all….every single one of them….ardent Zionists.
In this way the wars in the Mid East and the Ukraine are products of the PNAC philosophy. Clearly the Neocons not stupid. They must have a plan to survive the inevitable catastrophe that they are composing.
Lauria writes, “Instead of banishing these people, they are allowed to linger and drag the U.S. into evermore perilous failures: Iraq, Afghanistan, Gaza and Ukraine, leaving behind a mountain of squandered dollars and an ocean of blood.”
How these psychopaths continue to resurface in Washington, despite their abysmal track record, remains one of this country’s great mysteries. Perhaps the “Deep State” rumors are real.
Great article.
Patriotism and militarism are two different things.
The imperialists combined them.
Chomsky called it “Irrational jingoism”.
Parenti calls it “Superpatriotism”
Patriotism is love of country. That’s it.
Not love of neocons, or politicians, or corporations, or capitalism, or militarism.
Those people are making people hate this country if anything.
Take a long walk anywhere in this country there is some forest.
Tell me your not a Patriot.
It is not only the rest of the world in which the neocons are breeding hatred toward the U.S., it is among their own countrymen. I have never been more embarrassed and ashamed to be American than I am now, it’s as if the last bulwark of hope has been shattered for me.
To paraphrase Chesterton, one loves his/her country like one loves his/her spouse: not because it’s or they are the best, biggest, strongest, most beautiful, richest, etc. … but rather because it’s yours. You love it with all its imperfections and needs and weaknesses.
Neocons, being focused outside, don’t understand this. They don’t love the country; they merely use it.
If no caution WW3 will be part of our history.
Future historians may well write that World War III began in Feb, 2014. Feb. 2022 is another possible date.
We could already be in Year 10 of World War III.
Don’t forget that the winners write the histories. So, what China or Russia believes may be more important that what the consumers of CNN and FOX think is happening.
Albert Einstein is considered a genius for figuring out that what you see is relative to where you are standing. If you are in Donetsk, you might have a different idea about when the war started.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken:
war monger,
sales rep for the arms industry.
Curious to see what job he falls into after the demise of the Biden disaster?
Don’t know what job Blinken will have after his disastrous gig as Secretary of State, but there most certainly will be many offers. Blinken, like Vicky, is a 2nd generation Deep Stater and if not in government for a Presidential term or two, they have their pick of NGO’s, think tanks, and Universities. Even the lecture tour will find gigs for them. Hopefully, our history books will properly record Blinken as the most inept negotiator in this country’s history. Blinken and Nuland make Pompeii and Bolton look like peaceniks.
Russia has lost a lot of men to this war created and provoked by the United States from its first moments. You American military saps essentially drafted into this predicament by your own uncaring, inconsiderate and murderous government should not expect any mercy or quarter from the Russians, especially not because “Yanks” are somehow special and most precious amongst all humans in their infinite varieties. Don’t leave home without your last will and testament, you are about to become someone else’s “pay back.”
What’s happening in Ukraine is essentially a Russian civil war. Russia has not stepped beyond the pre-1989 border of the old Soviet Union, and its SMO in Ukraine remains within that old Soviet border. The west on the other hand, with military hardware and personnel in Eastern Europe but specifically two Baltic States and Ukraine, is now well inside that old Soviet border. If this was 1988 the west would have invaded Russia while Russia, even if it was inside Ukraine as it is now, would still be within Russian territory.
No wonder Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said he will not meet Anthony Blinken at this weekend’s United Nations General Assembly. He said they had nothing to say to each other. He did say though he would be meeting others among the 130 in attendance, saying they had more than just Ukraine to talk about.
Well, it seems clear to me that the Americans were insane to want that war, floated as a “reasonable” move for any arrogant world hegemon, especially at that time. The Russians had already developed hypersonic missiles which Putin advertised to the world as weapons perhaps too potent and devastating to actually be used against his fellow creatures–unless pushed to the ultimate by relentless idiots. We have since seen them in action in the proxy war with Ukraine, and, like Iran’s missile armaments, they are all they were cracked up to be, and more. The US had not even developed a functional counterpart, and may still have not done so. America was acting strictly out of hubris which it just reflexively does so often now. Absolutely no other country was threatening America when Crazy Joe Biden crowned himself emperor of the United States and threw down a winner-take-all challenge to Russia. You would think that ol’ Crazy would have taken some notes on his favored “existential enemy” by now, but he still seems just as deluded as he did when he instigated this incipient world war back in 2022. At this point he’s gone so far as to encourage and underwrite Zelinsky’s direct assault on the Russian heartland around Kurst. Really, if you study Joe’s mentality you will find absolutely no rational constraints against using violence to get whatever he wants or thinks will aggrandise himself.
That’s how Empires always fall. The fights for power at home, the concerns and schemes of “The Court” become more important than any real strategies for the empire. The center of the Empire becomes so important that controlling that center is so important that the people there become blind to the rest of the world.
The money, power, wealth and politics at home was all that these fools were considering when they accepted the Power Point Presentations that said that Russia was weak and would collapse as soon as NATO kicked in the door. The Brilliant Plan would lead them all to wealth and power, so it was approved without any questions.
Then again, if the English hadn’t had that problem, we’d probably still have to all fall to our knees when Megan Markle goes shopping.
Maybe so, but someone has thrown Little Joe to the side. I wonder who?
“What’s happening in Ukraine is essentially a Russian civil war.”
Which is exactly as Mr. Lauria calls it in this article:
“On March 7, 2022, two weeks after Moscow entered the civil war in Ukraine,”
But, if NATO decide to poke their nose in, then we are dealing with a much greater threat.
(Which of course they know.)