Why Do
"Progressives" Like War?
Fleeing to Canada is no longer an option
By Philip Giraldi
February 21, 2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- "Unz"
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Liberals
are supposed to be antiwar, right? I went to
college in the 1960s, when students nationwide
were rising up in opposition to the Vietnam War.
I was a Young Republican back then and supported
the war through sheer ignorance and dislike of
the sanctimoniousness of the protesters, some of
whom were surely making their way to Canada to
live in exile on daddy’s money while I was on a
bus going to Fort Leonard Wood for basic combat
training. I can’t even claim that I had some
grudging respect for the antiwar crowd because I
didn’t, but I did believe that at least some of
them who were not being motivated by being
personally afraid of getting hurt were actually
sincere in their opposition to the awful things
that were happening in Southeast Asia.
As I
look around now, however, I see something quite
different. The lefties I knew in college are now
part of the Establishment and generally speaking
are retired limousine liberals. And they now
call themselves progressives, of course, because
it sounds more educated and sends a better
message, implying as it does that troglodytic
conservatives are anti-progress. But they also
have done a flip on the issue of war and peace.
In its most recent incarnation some of this
might be attributed to a desperate desire to
relate to the Hillary Clinton campaign with its
bellicosity towards Russia, Syria and Iran, but
I suspect that the inclination to identify
enemies goes much deeper than that, back as far
as the Bill Clinton Administration with its
sanctions on Iraq and the Balkan adventure,
which resulted in hundreds of thousands of
deaths and the creation of a terror-narco state
in the heart of Europe. And more recently we
have seen the Obama meddling in Libya, Yemen and
Syria in so called humanitarian interventions
which have turned out to be largely fraudulent.
Yes, under the Obama Dems it was “responsibility
to protect time” (r2p) and all the world
trembled as the drones were let loose.
Last Friday I started to read
an op-ed in
The Washington Post by David Ignatius that
blew me away. It began “President Trump
confronts complicated problems as the
investigation widens into Russia’s attack on our
political system.” It then proceeded to lay out
the case for an “aggressive Russia” in the terms
that have been repeated ad nauseam in
the mainstream media. And it was, of course,
lacking in any evidence, as if the opinions of
coopted journalists and the highly politicized
senior officials in the intelligence community
should be regarded as sacrosanct. These are, not
coincidentally, the same people who have
reportedly recently been working together to
undercut the White House by leaking and then
reporting highly sensitive transcripts of phone
calls with Russian officials.
Ignatius is well plugged into the national
security community and inclined to be hawkish
but he is also a typical Post
politically correct progressive on most issues.
So here was your typical liberal asserting
something in a dangerous fashion that has not
been demonstrated and might be completely
untrue. Russia is attacking “our political
system!” And The Post is not alone
in accepting that Russia is trying to subvert
and ultimately overthrow our republic. Reporting
from The New York Times and on
television news makes the same assumption
whenever they discuss Russia, leading to what
some critics have described as mounting American
‘hysteria’ relating to anything coming out of
Moscow.
Rachel Maddow is another favorite of mine when
it comes to talking real humanitarian feel good
stuff out one side of her mouth while beating
the drum for war from the other side. In a
bravura performance
on January 26th she roundly chastised
Russia and its president Vladimir Putin. Rachel,
who freaked out completely when Donald Trump was
elected, is now keen to demonstrate that Trump
has been corrupted by Russia and is now
controlled out of the Kremlin. She described
Trump’s lord and master Putin as an “intense
little man” who murders his opponents before
going into the whole “Trump stole the election
with the aid of Moscow” saga, supporting
sanctions on Russia and multiple investigations
to get to the bottom of “Putin’s attacks on our
democracy.” Per Maddow, Russia is the heart of
darkness and, by way of Trump, has succeeded in
exercising control over key elements in the new
administration.
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Unfortunately, people in the media like Ignatius
and Maddow are not alone. Their willingness to
sell a specific political line that carries with
it a risk of nuclear war as fact, even when they
know it is not, has been part of the
fear-mongering engaged in by Democratic Party
loyalists and many others on the left. Their
intention is to “get Trump” whatever it takes,
which opens the door to some truly dangerous
maneuvering that could have awful consequences
if the drumbeat and military buildup against
Russia continues, leading Putin to decide that
his country is being threatened and backed into
a corner. Moscow has indicated that it would not
hesitate use nuclear weapons if it is being
confronted militarily and facing defeat.
The current wave of Russophobia is much more
dangerous than the random depiction of
foreigners in negative terms that has long
bedeviled a certain type of American
know-nothing politics. Apart from the
progressive antipathy towards Putin personally,
there is a virulent strain of anti-Russian
sentiment among some self-styled conservatives
in congress, best exemplified by Senators John
McCain and Lindsey Graham. Graham has
recently said
“2017 is going to be a year of kicking Russia in
the ass in Congress.”
It is
my belief that many in the National Security
State have convinced themselves that Russia is
indeed a major threat against the United States
and not because it is a nuclear armed power that
can strike the U.S. That appreciation, should,
if anything constitute a good reason to work
hard to maintain cordial relations rather than
not, but it is seemingly ignored by everyone but
Donald Trump.
No,
the new brand of Russophobia derives from the
belief that Moscow is “interfering” in places
like Syria and Ukraine. Plus, it is a friend of
Iran. That perception derives from the consensus
view among liberals and conservatives alike that
the U.S. sphere of influence encompasses the
entire globe as well as the particularly
progressive conceit that Washington should serve
to “protect” anyone threatened at any time by
anyone else, which provides a convenient pretext
for military interventions that are
euphemistically described as “peace missions.”
There
might be a certain cynicism in many who hate
Russia as having a powerful enemy also keeps the
cash flowing from the treasuring into the
pockets of the beneficiaries of the military
industrial congressional complex, but my real
fear is that, having been brainwashed for the
past ten years, many government officials are
actually sincere in their loathing of Moscow and
all its works. Recent opinion polls suggest that
that kind of thinking is popular among
Americans, but it actually makes no sense.
Though involvement by Moscow in the Middle East
and Eastern Europe is undeniable, calling it a
threat against U.S. vital interests is more than
a bit of a stretch as Russia’s actual ability to
make trouble is limited. It has exactly one
overseas military facility, in Syria, while the
U.S. has more than 800, and its economy and
military budget are tiny compared to that of the
United States. In fact, it is Washington that is
most guilty of intervening globally and
destabilizing entire regions, not Moscow, and
when Donald Trump said in an interview that when
it came to killing the U.S. was not so innocent
it was a gross understatement.
Ironically, pursuing a reset with Russia is one
of the things that Trump actually gets right but
the new left won’t give him a break because they
reflexively hate him for not embracing the usual
progressive bromides that they believe are
supposed to go with being antiwar. Other Moscow
trashing comes from the John McCain camp which
demonizes Russia because warmongers always need
an enemy and McCain has never found a war he
couldn’t support. It would be a tragedy for the
United States if both the left and enough of the
right were to join forces to limit Trump’s
options on dealing with Moscow, thereby enabling
an escalating conflict that could have tragic
consequences for all parties.
Phil
Giraldi is a former CIA Case Officer and Army
Intelligence Officer who spent twenty years
overseas in Europe and the Middle East working
terrorism cases. He holds a BA with honors from
the University of Chicago and an MA and PhD in
Modern History from the University of London.
