The New Cold Warriors who surround Hillary Clinton have made Russia-bashing and McCarthyism the go-to tactics to silence the few voices warning of the grave and unnecessary risks of a new Cold War, notes James W Carden.
By James W Carden
Now that the 2016 election campaign is at long last over, an examination of the reckless, fact-free, innuendo-laden McCarthyite rhetoric which Hillary Clinton’s campaign surrogates deployed over the past several months is in order.
The first and most obvious point to be made is that the anti-Russia hysteria that characterized the election, particularly in its final weeks, did not come out of nowhere; in fact, it should be seen as part of a natural progression of the elite media’s Russophobia which took root in and around the Ukraine crisis of late 2013-early 2014 and led, almost ineffably, not only to charges of Russian election-rigging in the United States but in the identification, in the pages of Newsweek and the Washington Post, of Russian fifth-columns within the United States.
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
How the Ukraine crisis poisoned America political discourse is by now well known. As I reported in The Nation almost 18 months ago, the cottage industry of unscrupulous neo-McCarthyites which has grown up around Washington, London and Manhattan in recent years has sought to stifle debate by bandying charges of unpatriotic disloyalty against anyone questioning the wisdom of U.S. policy toward Russia. (It bears noting that something similar regarding Syria policy is happening as I write, driven, for the most part, by the usual suspects.)
As one long time political scientist told me at the time, “The atmosphere here in the U.S. created by the Ukraine crisis is poisonous – and I say this having been an academic for 37 years.”
The millennial careerists who help staff the ranks of the New Cold Warriors instinctually reach for ad hominem attacks over reasoned argument – and in so doing helped make way for the tactics the Clinton campaign unleashed in 2016.
By the time the nominating conventions rolled around this summer, the Clinton campaign was engaged in a Twenty-first Century witch hunt against any Trump adviser who had so much as visited Russia. Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and foreign policy adviser Carter Page were both hounded out of the campaign by Clinton-inspired media smears.
Clinton’s campaign, which was run by Robby Mook, a 36-year-old hot shot who clearly relished his role as a kind of millennial Roy Cohn, repeatedly attacked former Ambassador to Germany and arms control negotiator under Ronald Reagan, Richard Burt.
Burt was singled out, not only by the Clinton camp, but by Salon and Newsweek, because he had served as an adviser to Alfa Bank, the Russian bank which played a starring role in former New Republic editor’s Franklin Foer’s thoroughly debunked article on the Trump Organization’s (non-existent) “secret” email server.
Yet what is most interesting isn’t so much the smears – phrases like “useful idiot” and “Kremlin stooge” which are mostly warmed-over fare from the first Cold War – but the mindset of the New Cold Warriors. How is it that these self-anointed crusaders for “humanitarian intervention” and “democratization,” these self-appointed enemies of tyranny, end up on the side of neo-Nazis in Ukraine, Al Qaeda and al-Nusra affiliate in Syria, all the while stirring up sectarian and nationalist pathologies across the Middle East and Eastern Europe?
Cold War Nostalgia
The first thing to recognize is that our New Cold Warriors suffer from la nostalgie de la guerre froide. The historian John Lukacs has written at length on this pathology. In his destined to be classic The End of The Twentieth Century, Lukacs cast a gimlet eye on what he saw as the tendency of academic and media types during the first Cold War to practice “anti-Communism at a safe distance.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin answering questions from Russian citizens at his annual Q&A event on April 14, 2016. (Russian government photo)
This tendency, according to Lukacs, sprang from two sources: first, from a “sense of self-satisfaction: knowing that one is on the right side, on the respectable side together with all of those right-thinking people.”
Lukacs, himself no apologist for Communism, also observed that this tendency is driven by “the exaggeration of the diabolical powers and machination of Communism and the Communists.” Substitute “Communism and the Communists” for “Putin and the Kremlin” and you have a perfect precis of New Cold Warrior thinking.
No better example of this tendency to talk a tough game against post-Communist Russia by academics and journalists safe in the knowledge that they will never be called upon to fight, was a conference convened by Franklin Foer’s New Republic in Kiev in May 2014.
Some background may be in order: The Ukrainian crisis – involving the violent ouster of elected President Viktor Yanukovych on Feb. 22, 2014 – escalated into a full-scale civil war in and around April 6 in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk. The Western-supported government in Kiev, depicting the indigenous anti-coup movement for a Russian invasion, sent its military and privately funded militias to crush the uprising in what was called an “Anti-Terrorism Operation” or ATO.
To some, it was a tragedy of the first order that Kiev chose war and missed an opportunity to earn – via negotiation and compromise – much needed legitimacy in the east for what was, after all, a junta government.
Yet others, like Yale University historian Timothy Snyder and the New Republic’s literary editor Leon Wieseltier, embraced the ouster of Yanukovych and were positively exultant; so much so that they wasted little time in making their way to Kiev, “rallying to democracy’s side.”
The conference, “Ukraine: Thinking Together,” featured several luminaries of the liberal-interventionist left including Franklin Foer; Iraq War apologist Paul Berman; National Endowment for Democracy President Carl Gershman; a founding father of Poland’s Solidarity movement, Adam Michnik; a historian of Eastern Europe, Timothy Garton Ash; and the preening cheerleader of NATO’s war on Libya, Bernard Henri Levy.
In a note announcing the conference, Wieseltier, sounding an awful lot like Christopher Hitchens in the run-up to the Iraq War, declared: “We cannot just sit back and watch Putin’s imperialism and repression. There are times and places where one must stand up and be counted.”
From where did this impulse to “stand and up and be counted” arise? Well, Wieseltier’s remarks in Kiev are revealing and are worth quoting at length. In his rhetoric we can hear a not-so-faint echo of Edward Arlington Robinson’s Miniver Cheevy:
“I watched the progress of Putin’s imperialism beyond his borders and fascism within his borders, I ruefully remarked to Frank Foer that the moment reminded me of what I used to call my Congress for Cultural Freedom-envy — my somewhat facile but nonetheless sincere regret at having been born too late to participate in the struggle of Western intellectuals, some of whom became my teachers and my heroes, against the Stalinist assault on democracy in Europe. And all of a sudden, pondering the Russian aggression in Crimea, and the Russian campaign of destabilization in Ukraine, I realized that I had exaggerated my belatedness. I was not born too late at all.”
That explains rather a lot. Wieseltier – and in all likelihood Levy and Foer – were suffering from a bad case of history-envy and saw in the crisis in Ukraine a chance to assuage their consciences and prove their worth on the world-historical stage. It is, it must be admitted, an odd way to go about it, socializing in Kiev with a Facebook billionaire, your friends and neocon fellow travelers from the magazine all the while homes, schools and hospitals in eastern Ukraine were being shelled to bits by the very government you traveled so far to “demonstrate solidarity” with.
Putin Hatred
If Cold War nostalgia plays a role in shaping the weltanschauung of the New Cold Warriors, so too does their uncritical embrace of anyone who opposes Russian President Vladimir Putin. The New Cold Warriors are, in effect, blinded by pseudo-solidarity for Putin’s “victims” like the crass performance artists Pussy Riot and the wondrously corrupt former oligarch-turned-sainted dissident Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Screen shot of the fatal fire in Odessa, Ukraine, on May 2, 2014, that killed scores of ethnic Russians while Ukrainian nationalists cheered. (From RT video)
And then, of course, there is the new Ukraine where the government, so enthusiastically embraced by Franklin Foer’s New Republic, has embarked on program of de-Communization which, since Ukraine and Communism parted ways a quarter of a century ago, means, in practice, a program of de-Russification, with all that entails, including, a conscious erasure of the Soviet Union’s role in defeating the Nazis and a whitewashing of Ukraine’s ugly history of anti-Semitism, including the role of Stepan Bandera, the wartime leader of the nationalist OUN which was responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of Jews and Poles.
As the magazine The Forward reported: “The whitewashing, now a disturbingly widespread phenomenon, ramped up in earnest after Ukraine’s 2013–2014 Maidan uprising and the ensuing conflict with Russia. On January 1, 2014, 15,000 ultra-nationalists marched through Kiev carrying placards with [Ukrainian nationalist Stepan] Bandera’s image and chanting OUN slogans; today, marches honoring Bandera, the OUN and Ukrainian SS units take place regularly across Ukraine.
“In the spring of 2015, Ukraine’s parliament passed a highly controversial law, mandating that Bandera and his groups be regarded as Ukrainian patriots, and making denial of their heroism a criminal offense.”
In a way, these developments were probably a long time in coming and have been facilitated by the effective disenfranchisement of a large share of the Russo-phone east. Consider the spike in nationalist sentiment in Eastern Europe in the post-Cold War years.
We return briefly to the historian Lukacs who observed in 1993 “a growing nostalgia and appreciation of nationalist Eastern European governments before and during the Second World War.” He observed that in the years following the fall of the Berlin Wall, “schools and streets” in Slovakia and Croatia were being renamed in honor of Nazi collaborators, while in Romania “the murderous Iron Cross now enjoys a recurrent wave of nostalgic prestige.”
The American media has willfully turned a blind eye to these similar and ominous developments in Ukraine (to say nothing of the recent torchlight parades in NATO-allied Estonia) because what matters among the New Cold Warriors is to appear to be “taking a stand” against the Russian bogeyman.
Ignoring Reality
And then there is the inability or unwillingness of the New Cold Warriors to take realpolitik considerations into account when it comes to Russia. This is odd, since they are as of one mind when it comes to far more sinister regimes like Saudi Arabia, where people quite literally have their heads chopped off in the middle of the street in broad daylight.
Nazi symbols on helmets worn by members of Ukraine’s Azov battalion. (As filmed by a Norwegian film crew and shown on German TV)
But, they will say, the U.S. needs Saudi Arabia because a) they have oil and b) they oppose the Iranians. As arch-neoconservative Bret Stephens recently said in an exchange with Sen. Rand Paul on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” we are “lucky” to have the Saudis as allies.
Leave that nonsense aside for the moment: the point is that the facility to think in terms of geo-strategy abandons the New Cold Warriors when it comes to Russia and Vladimir Putin. And so, the fact that Russia does not threaten American interests in our hemisphere; that it did more than most NATO allies to assist in the fight in Afghanistan (via the Northern Distribution Network); that it was a crucial player in the Iranian P5+1 negotiations (which the New Cold Warriors probably hold against the Russians, since they are nearly all opposed to the deal); and that it brokered the deal to dismantle Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapons program in Syria are all studiously ignored in their analyses.
In other words, panic and handwringing over the alleged “cyber war” aside, Putin’s Russia does not threaten U.S. interests, properly defined. Indeed, Russia has, whether we find its domestic politics and widespread government corruption distasteful or not (and I do), proved to be an important partner when its core interests coincide with ours – which is more often than not.
Interests should drive policy not ephemeral, so-called “shared values” to which the New Cold Warriors themselves only fitfully adhere.
Twenty-five years ago, one U.S. president sketched out an alternative path to the one that the U.S. has been pursuing since Bill Clinton took office. In a speech much derided by those who practiced “anti-Communism at a safe distance,” President George H.W. Bush traveled to Kiev on Aug. 1, 1991, to warn against succumbing to the siren song of ethno-nationalism.
“Freedom, democracy, and economic liberty,” said Bush, “No terms have been abused more regularly, nor more cynically than these. Throughout this century despots have masqueraded as democrats, jailers have posed as liberators.” He continued in a vein almost unthinkable by an American president today: “Americans will not support those who seek independence in order to replace a far-off tyranny with a local despotism. They will not aid those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred.”
Bush was prescient: the steady diet of Russophobia and anti-Putin hysteria now underway (and de rigueur among the New Cold Warriors) is fanning the flames of ethno-nationalist hatred within Europe. Does this development enhance or detract from pan-European stability and U.S. national security?
The answer is clear. And yet the new crusaders persist, and worryingly, as of Tuesday, may have a commander-in-chief who completely shares their views waiting in the wings.
James W Carden is a contributing writer for The Nation and editor of The American Committee for East-West Accord’s eastwestaccord.com. He previously served as an advisor on Russia to the Special Representative for Global Inter-governmental Affairs at the US State Department.
Thank you for your insights. It is refreshing to hear the facts you have uncovered and it helps me to solve what seems to be left out over the years.
They call Merkel and Atlanticist / Atlanticicsm . Someone who believes in that the alliance with the United States is paramount to European interests. . The United States kept Germany’s intelligence and political economic leadership in place after WW II ( excluding Speer and a couple others) and we have been joined since. This has been as solid a relationship as we have had with the Japanese leadership . Not a bump in the road. England was our Girl Friday but England is wavering and moving towards Chinese capital. France? Sarkozy was also an Atlanticist often called Sarco the American. Trump doesn’t know what an Atlanticist is yet but believe me he will be advised by people who do and they will suggest that he also requires services from our European allies from time to time.
Some questions for my fellow travelers here. (1) Has anyone heard of the new monument to be constructed opposite Union Station in Washington DC in honor of the Ukrainian “Holodomor” victims – a great famine of the 1930’s? A figure of 10 million people lost to starvation, due to both Stalin’s collectivization and natural drought, is perhaps being considered as a Ukrainian Holocaust? (2) If this is true, does anyone find it strangely convenient that we Americans remember this incident now, it having occurred even before the Jewish Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis a decade later? It makes me curious that we have suddenly discovered this deep affinity with Ukrainians, just as our neocon public opinion framers search to find ways to justify peeling Ukraine away from Russia after a thousand years of common history between the two. Finally, question (3) Who’s actually paying for this and who’s getting played? Thank you.
Hey, all you Hillary-haters won’t have her to worry about any more. Meet the new boss. Enjoy the ride.
Utilizing somebody’s clever phrase, It ain’t over till it’s over.
About a week ago a relative remarked about how the national polls showed Hillary was going to win in a landslide. I replied that I didn’t value recent polls at all. Even assuming honest pollsters (which I don’t) it still takes two to tango, and there is no way under heaven I’d trust what anybody said he was going to do regarding the two dopes we had running. Even if I was a fan of one or the other of them, do you suppose I’d admit that to a stranger?
But I still had a very bad feeling – maybe because of the universal consensus. If anybody had offered me 10:1 odds this would be a close election, I’d have laughed at them and kept my $10 bill where it was safe.
But it’s not over. Not by a long shot. In the event of a Trump victory, the NSA or FBI or CIA or one of the other alphabet soup agencies can declare Putin hacked the election and they have secret proof. WAY too secret to make public, but there is still the Supreme Court. Still Executive Orders. And the Good Lord only knows what other tools are available.
In a note announcing the conference, Wieseltier, sounding an awful lot like Christopher Hitchens in the run-up to the Iraq War, declared: “We cannot just sit back and watch Putin’s imperialism and repression. There are times and places where one must stand up and be counted.”
OK, Mr. Wieseltier, let’s see you and you fellow warmongers stand up and be counted on the front lines of an invading army in any of the countries you advocate aggression.
How is it that these self-anointed crusaders for “humanitarian intervention” and “democratization,” these self-appointed enemies of tyranny, end up on the side of neo-Nazis in Ukraine, Al Qaeda and al-Nusra affiliate in Syria, all the while stirring up sectarian and nationalist pathologies across the Middle East and Eastern Europe?
As they used to say about 50 years ago, “That’s the 64-thousand-dollar question.”
Self-proclaimed “rulers” of the world are facing more and more barriers in their quest for global domination. World has seen this before.
They shouldn’t be confused with the American nation, so don’t worry.
“And then there is the inability or unwillingness of the New Cold Warriors to take realpolitik considerations into account when it comes to Russia…And so, the fact that Russia does not threaten American interests in our hemisphere….and that it brokered the deal to dismantle Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapons program in Syria are all studiously ignored in their analyses.”
I think this portion of Mr. Carden’s essay is off base.
Washington’s new Cold Warriors despise Assad and are virtually attached at the hip to the Saudi-Zionist Terror Network. That Putin helped talk Obama down from attacking Damascus to destroy the Assad admin is precisely one of the key reasons why the new Cold Warriors and their media mouthpieces are so intent today on demonizing Putin and Moscow.
Off topic – Egypt and Russia cooperating, so Saudi Arabia cuts off oil to Egypt.
“While the proxy war in the middle-east rages, a curious, and largely under the radar pivot has been taking place in one of the countries directly impacted by Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy: Egypt. In mid-October, we reported that, for the first time ever, Russia and Egypt would conduct joint military drills. This followed news that Russia will sell attack helicopters to the North African nation and invest billions in Egyptian infrastructure. These items, along with the fact that Egypt is eager to be re-granted Russian tourism rights for its citizens after recent bad blood between the countries, lead one to the logical conclusion that Egypt has every incentive to cooperate with Russia going forward. […]
The official narrative is that while Saudi Arabia has been a major donor to Egypt since President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi seized power in a violent countercoup in mid-2013, Riyadh has become frustrated with Sisi’s lack of economic reforms and his reluctance to be drawn into the conflict in Yemen. During a visit by Saudi King Salman in April, Saudi Arabia agreed to provide Egypt with 700,000 tonnes of refined oil products per month for five years but the cargoes stopped arriving in early October as festering political tensions burst into the open. What is curious is that the deal fell apart just weeks after Cairo suddenly became friendly with Moscow.
While Egyptian officials said since that the contract with Saudi Arabia’s state oil firm Aramco remains valid and had appeared to expect that oil would start flowing again soon, on Monday, however, Egyptian Oil Minister Tarek El Molla confirmed it had stopped shipments indefinitely. Aramco has not commented on the halt and did not respond to calls on Monday. “They did not give us a reason,” an oil ministry official told Reuters. “They only informed the authority about halting shipments of petroleum products until further notice.”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-07/seismic-shift-mid-east-regional-power-saudis-halt-egypt-oil-supplies-cairo-turns-ira
Sounds like an opportunity for Iran to ship in their oil by tanker, and, once Turk-stream is up, Russia can do the same. If need be, Egypt can buy oil from neighboring Libya. Saudi can continue to lose customers doing Uncle Sam’s bidding.
Merkel too is going the route of blaming Russia:
“Merkel has said Russia may try to influence German elections through cyber attacks and a disinformation campaign. Analysts say Russia’s objective is to destabilize and highlight faultlines within Germany and the EU.
Chancellor Angela Merkel warned on Tuesday that Russia could try to influence next year’s German national elections through cyber warfare and disinformation, an assertion that comes after Washington blamed Moscow for interfering in the US election.
Merkel told a conference that Germany already faced “a daily task” of responding to Russian cyber attacks and a disinformation campaign.
“We are already, even now, having to deal with information out of Russia or with internet attacks that are of Russian origin or with news which sows false information,” Merkel said alongside her Norwegian counterpart Erna Solberg.
“That is why it can play a role in the election campaign,” added Merkel, who still hasn’t declared her candidacy but is widely expected to run for a fourth consecutive term in the September 2017 elections.
Authorities in Berlin suspect Russia to be behind a number of cyber attacks on German institutions, including an massive attack last year on the lower house of parliament, the Bundestag. Russia is also suspected to be behind cyber attacks on the headquarters of Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats. […]
Analysts say that Russia targets Germany with cyber attacks and disinformation in an attempt to deepen existing divisions within Europe’s largest economy and destabilize the European Union.
“Moscow’s course is designed to weaken the EU as a whole in order to improve its chances of realizing its economic and security agenda in Europe,” the Berlin-based SWP think tank said in a Russian foreign policy report in July.”
http://www.dw.com/en/merkel-warns-of-russian-cyber-attacks-in-german-elections/a-36314197
Merkel is a sock puppet. She is also calling Putin a war criminal… because Washington says so. Facts and reason have absolutely no role in determining what these “leaders” say or do. They are simply appendages of Washington to the great detriment of their own citizens. PCR says they are all “owned” by Washington, bought and paid for with pallets of shrink-wrapped hundred dollar bills. Plus they have all been spied upon and their careers cultivated from their beginnings by Washington, so they are all ripe for blackmail should they stray the slightest from their assigned script. The charade that is Western “Democracy” is really tragic. Since Brexit slipped through the cracks, they’ve even arranged for that failure to fix the vote to be negated by the British courts.
Next time your computer freezes, you know whom to blame. Still, many people believe this nonsense :/
If I recall correctly it was Obama’s people who infiltrated Merkel’s private cell phone, not Putin’s. Merkel is just another American satrap and Germany another satrapy.
Very incisive article. I believe nuclear war could be the end result (no pun intended) of the war criminals past and present, in positions of power. To put it bluntly, I believe we are in the hands of evil, and that these people are totally insane.
“Still, evidence won’t matter anymore if the big and final blast of nuclear war takes place. Will the war criminals behind all these “controlled” wars and regime changes have their final “reward” of an apocalypse? They might think they have all the answers, and so far they have got away with their planned wars and crimes against humanity. But that old saying “when thieves fallout” could come true. A push of a nuclear button by a crazed “ruler” could set in motion the final change of events that will destroy this planet we all live on. Unfortunately the innocent will die as will the war criminals and their supporters. The stage has been set for the final confrontation and the forces of evil are in positions of power. They are not only playing with fire but ultimately the fireball that will consume the earth.”
[read more at link below]
http://graysinfo.blogspot.ca/2014/11/will-war-criminals-perpetrate-nuclear.html
Thank you Mr. Carden for casting a correct light on the predicament we are in with the hawkish mentality of the American exceptionalists and interventionists in full sway in our defense and diplomatic establishments now following the “Wolfowitz Doctrine” – that no power should be left standing that can challenge American “leadership”. This is the main reason why the rest of the world considers the US as the biggest threat to world peace – not Russia. Voices like this are drowned out however, by the corporate powers driving the majority of the US government today – it sure ain’t people power.Possibly repealing Citizens United might prevent the suicide of the great American experiment that is now coming off the rails.
I hope this anti Putin Russian bashing is just an election ploy and not a serious foreign policy initiative. We have heard in various voices the Russians are coming, Stalin is hiding in the closet and they have way more missiles than we do, or was that bombers. I think they actually made up 2 gaps, missiles and bombers. Both were false. I am concerned this current Russia bashing is part of a larger initiative in the Middle East and that is where the real war is going to be fought eventually. I hope it doesn’t go nuclear but these idiots running around tugging on superman’s cape seem to think we have a pass or something or did they think Star Wars actually worked. No one can win a nuclear war, including us. If one is fought we can look forward to around 90% of the species on earth going extinct. That figure probably includes us. And what is left isn’t going to be very pleasant to live in either. Nuclear winter can be pretty cold. I think Hillary or her advisers panicked and just started throwing stuff at the wall hoping it would stick. If not, our future can turn real ugly real quick. Russia is not our enemy. Greedy capitalists with hidden agendas are.
I voted democrat over the last 9 presidential elections… including for HRC in the 2008 CA primary. The exhibited denial that exists within my party where HRC is concerned is nothing less than astonishing. Bill Maher said it best, “I don’t care if Hillary has Jon Benet Ramsey buried in her basement, I’m voting for her…” that says it all. HRC forced me to vote against the Democratic party for the first time in my life and against all that I fear in a Trump presidency. It was not a protest vote or a lesser of two evils vote. It was to state the obvious and hold Hillary accountable. Until we make our leaders suffer from the consequences of their actions, we the people are the big losers.
Great article, but the false narrative on McCarthy is what the Democrats are emulating. This shows the danger of propaganda that isn’t corrected with facts. The Democrats now believe the false McCarthy scenario and emulate it. It also scares me that we have raised several generations to believe the atomic bombs won the war against Japan ( they did not. Japan had been trying to surrender for a year and asked to keep their Emperor. After KKK Truman dropped the 2 bombs, we told them they could keep their Emperor. So exactly what changed as a result of using the bombs). The problem now is we have Trump saying we should use them, Obama re-starting the arms race. The lies told in the past are going to bite on us the butt. By the way, if the writer who mentions McCarthy in any article does not know there were two lists, that everyone on the second list ( of Soviet spies in CIA) was arrested and the only fake name Joe had was given to him via Jesus Angleton and Dulles before the Army hearings really doesn’t know the facts, only the propaganda. CIA and Truman/ Eisenhower were deadly afraid Joe would discover the 200 nazi architects of the holocaust we had saved, given money and jobs to.Which was against international law and would have been a propaganda field day for Russia). The Democrats knew their version was false. The FBI had shown the Welch group and Joe the proof the woman who had started as a kitchen worker, was a long time CPUSA member and was mysteriously placed on reading intercepted communication in Russia then went out in the hearing and attacked Joe pretending they didn’t know she was guilty. But over the years the propaganda line of the Democrats overtook the facts. Now they emulate something Joe didn’t do. Which means, they are doing it first.
These arm chair Cold Warriors are dangerous. From what I can see, they foment sectarian violence and destabilize countries – and now continents. They consider people expendable – their own people and the people living in their target countries.
They seem to lack any real talents or skills and try to make up for it by grabbing power and then abusing it.
I was disgusted by how Hillary Clinton used dirty Cold War tricks to try to discredit Bernie Sanders – one example below during their Miami debate.
Sanders, on the other hand, drew millions of people to him with policies that acknowledged how domestic and foreign policy failures were hurting us and offered sound solutions that made sense to people.
Clinton’s angry red bait of Bernie:
Towards the end of the Miami debate, moderator Salinas tried a gotcha attack on Bernie for his 1985 comments on our Monroe Doctrine aggression.
Clinton then interrupted her next response to employ McCarthyite Cold War Rhetoric against Bernie’s response to Salinas question.:
“SALINAS: In 1985, you praised the Sandinista government and you said that Daniel Ortega was an impressive guy. This is what you said about Fidel Castro. Let’s listen.
[begin video clip]
SANDERS: You may recall way back in, when was it, 1961, they invaded Cuba, and everybody was totally convinced that Castro was the worst guy in the world. All the Cuban people were going to rise up in rebellion against Fidel Castro. They forgot that he educated their kids, gave them health care, totally transformed their society.
[end video clip]
SALINAS: In South Florida there are still open wounds among some exiles regarding socialism and communism. So please explain what is the difference between the socialism that you profess and the socialism in Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela.
SANDERS: Well, let me just answer that. What that was about was saying that the United States was wrong to try to invade Cuba, that the United States was wrong trying to support people to overthrow the Nicaraguan government, that the United States was wrong trying to overthrow in 1954, the government — democratically elected government of Guatemala.
Throughout the history of our relationship with Latin America we’ve operated under the so-called Monroe Doctrine, and that said the United States had the right do anything that they wanted to do in Latin America. So I actually went to Nicaragua and I very shortly opposed the Reagan administration’s efforts to overthrow that government. And I strongly opposed earlier Henry Kissinger and the — to overthrow the government of Salvador Aliende in Chile.
I think the United States should be working with governments around the world, not get involved in regime change. And all of these actions, by the way, in Latin America, brought forth a lot of very strong anti-American sentiments. That’s what that was about.
SALINAS: Senator, in retrospect, have you ever regretted the characterizations that you made of Daniel Ortega and Fidel Castro that way?
SANDERS: I’m sorry. Please say that…
SALINAS: In retrospect, have you ever regretted the characterizations of Daniel Ortega and Fidel Castro that you made in 1985?
SANDERS: The key issue here was whether the United States should go around overthrowing small Latin American countries. I think that that was a mistake…
SALINAS: You didn’t answer the question.
SANDERS: …both in Nicaragua and Cuba. Look, let’s look at the facts here. Cuba is, of course, an authoritarian undemocratic country, and I hope very much as soon as possible it becomes a democratic country. But on the other hand…[applause]…on the other hands, it would be wrong not to state that in Cuba they have made some good advances in health care. They are sending doctors all over the world. They have made some progress in education. I think by restoring full diplomatic relations with Cuba, it will result in significant improvements to the lives of Cubans and it will help the United States and our business community invest.”
Clinton then interrupts her own response to a different question to angrily red bait Bernie on the earlier question:
CLINTON : “…..And I just want to add one thing to the question you were asking Senator Sanders. I think in that same interview, he praised what he called the revolution of values in Cuba and talked about how people were working for the common good, not for themselves.
I just couldn’t disagree more. You know, if the values are that you oppress people, you disappear people, you imprison people or even kill people for expressing their opinions, for expressing freedom of speech, that is not the kind of revolution of values that I ever want to see anywhere. [applause]
SANDERS: Well, as I said earlier, I don’t believe it is the business of the United States government to be overthrowing small countries around the world. And number two, when you get to Puerto Rico, there’s an issue that we have not talked about. That little island is $73 billion in debt and the government now is paying interest rates of up to 11 percent.
And many of the bonds that they are paying off were purchased by vulture capitalists for 30 cents on the dollar. And what I have said in talking to the leaders of Puerto Rico, we’ve got to bring people together. And it’s not the people of Puerto Rico, or the children or the schools.”
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=112719
As I’ve mentioned here before, Clinton’s 1969 College thesis – which can be accessed by googling “there is only the fight” – concluded that Saul Alinski’s solution of massive public works to help poor people and especially poc living around the Chicago stockyards might work in another country but not in this “mass production/mass consumption” country. She ends her thesis with a mocking cartoon of Salinski as a clueless do gooder – included on the pdf file.
She obviously had made her bed at that time with climbing to power within the current power structure.
She had no intention of bucking what Bernie and most of his current followers surely view as wrong.
“No better example of this tendency to talk a tough game against post-Communist Russia by academics and journalists safe in the knowledge that they will never be called upon to fight, was a conference convened by Franklin Foer’s New Republic in Kiev in May 2014.”
Those described as “academics and journalists” with “la nostalgie de la guerre froide” seem to be comprised of ZioCons, who, of have far more sinister nostalgia and agendas.
Don’t forget the “academics and journalists” numbering in the thousands who are actively recruited into the CIA and other secret intelligence agencies that operate as the shadow government involved in propaganda, disinformation, spying, torture, extra-judicial assassinations and the cover-ups that accompany these and other crimes undermining what little democracy that may exist.