21st Century Banana Wars

Silverfiddle Rant!

George Bush--and latterly, Obama-Biden Democrats--have done the equivalent of the following: Cosy up to nations or peoples living in very bad neighborhoods and encourage them to poke their dangerous neighbors in the eye, maybe stick their tongues out and brag that they are friends with the US.

I agree with retired Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor, who said something to the effect that if we become friendly with a nation that sits next to a more powerful, and perhaps dangerous nation, we should help that nation work out a modus vivendi.  Our empty promises did not work for Georgia or Ukraine, while failed projects like Libya, Syria and Afghanistan lie bleeding.

We cannot protect the whole world, and we should stop acting like we can, most especially in light of our horrible string of failures since WWII. 

United Fruit Company - Eastern Europe Branch

Obama-Biden imperialists (and, we could argue, the Clintonistas and Bushites) have sparked their very own Banana Wars in Eastern Europe (Maybe we can call them the Pipeline Wars...)  

Obama's State Department ran its own business investment brokerage out of the Kiev embassy, linking up well-connected global elites with preferred Ukrainian Oligarchs.  If a Ukrainian leader got out of line and started gumming up the money-making, they plotted his ouster.   

Now Ukraine has learned that buddying up with Democrats and their preferred foreign lobbyists and investors is just as dangerous as buddying up with Republican chickenhawk warmongers.  

Americans have learned, thanks to Senator Rubio questioning State Department poobah Victoria Nuland, that... 

“uh, Ukraine has, uh, biological research facilities. We are now in fact quite concerned that Russian troops, Russian forces, may be seeking to, uh, gain control of [those labs]” (Glenn Greenwald)

Echoes of Iraq

The gullibility of our ruling class and its media minions to Ukrainian information operations is no confidence-builder either. No one can blame Ukraine for trying to convince the West to join its fight – its survival is on the line. But we can blame our best and brightest – ugh – for believing every too-good-to-be-true story. There’s a sucker born every minute, and a bunch of them will eventually attend Harvard.

No, we’ve sacrificed enough to the foreign policy screw-ups of Ivy League incompetents. Who got us into the Vietnam War? Who got us into Iraq? Not a lot of guys with high school diplomas, but those guys got asked to fight those wars. The same is true here. I see a lot of Twitter tough guys with the yellow and blue flag in their bios and not a lot of them seem to be accepting Ukraine’s appeal for fighters and enlisting in the Bill Kristol Brigade. (Kurt Schlichter - No Sacrifices for Ukraine)

The next quote from George Soros calls to mind Dennis Prager's statement that if he found an article in the New York Times that agreed with a position he held, it would force him to rethink the position.

We can only hope that Putin and Xi will be removed from power before they can destroy our civilization. (George Soros - Vladimir Putin and the Risk of World War III)

Finally, Bill Maher (a dangerous turncoat rightwinger, in the eyes of the progressive left) lampoons Americans who view international events through their parochial political lenses. 

"Don't make world war 3 all about you," Maher said as he got into it. "Watching the reactions to war in Ukraine these past few weeks, it's become obvious that America in this age suffers acutely from a particular disease of the mind, which is: Everything proves what we already believed and everything goes back to the thing we already hate."

All issues today: Pandemic, war, whatever, become a stress test for our reflexive partisanship," he continued. "Can you take a vastly complex situation that is 100% not about your thing and somehow still make it about your thing? Our answer is, 'watch me.'"

What say you?

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Putin's Fall? Possible, but Unlikely